Soronlin Blog

Odd Files

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 13:02:10 +0000

This is just a place to store some files

by soronlin

A Path Of Adventur

Tue, 08 Aug 2017 19:56:07 +0000

Oops. Bad link in the game schedule. Please click here.

by soronlin

A Path of Adventure

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 17:12:15 +0000

Game Description

Title:A Path of Adventure
Players: 6
Mode: Tabletop

All things come to an end. And so it is with the adventure that started so long ago when Miss Trees went missing on an aeroplane.

Life at the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans was not a bed of roses; the academic regimen was punishing and the discipline was worse, but at least the surroundings were pleasant. Set in one hundred, fifty acres of idyllic Californian countryside, the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans offered a chance in life to those children who are so often failed by the modern world. But now it is gone. No sooner had you laid eyes on the benefactor that nobody had seen for years and her freckled companion than you were bundled out with scarcely time to pack and stuffed into two broken down old coaches. After the first couple of days even the old songs dried up. And then things got really … odd. There was a ship with masts and sails. You were only on it for a few days but this must be Europe, because nowhere in the USA is this old. You've yet to see or even hear a motor car since you got here. There are horses though, lots of them, producing lots of stuff that would be great for the rose-beds back home. Home, which was grand if a little draughty, and not bare and dirty like the half-timbered warehouse you find yourselves in. The teachers seem as confused as the pupils. Something is going on though; the city around you is bustling with it. When the principle asks for volunteers, for most of the pupils it may just be a chance to find out what is going on. And for those few who have some idea, it is a chance to be a part of it.

A game for six players. Characters comprising teenagers of between 14 and 18 years to be created by the players before the con. For Character design requirements see the right-hand bar.

This is a continuation game; new and returning characters are welcome.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans

Set in one hundred, fifty acres of idyllic Californian countryside, the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans offers a chance in life to those children who are so often failed by the modern world.

Life's tragedies are harsh on all children, but how much harder is it for their intelligence to be quenched by the unfeeling and under-funded behemoth that is the state welfare system? These children, who may be tomorrow's great men and women — scientists or politicians, doctors or artists — are welcomed by the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans. Whoever they are, whatever their background, we are here to see that they achieve their full potential.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is a private foundation, funded by private donation. None of our children pay fees of any kind, and all truly gifted children are welcome.

But it is not just in school-time that the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans excels. All of our pupils take part in a wide-ranging programme of activities. Our founder, Carlos Cory, worked his way up from lowly ranch-hand to millionaire horse-breeder. He felt strongly that caring for horses taught many great life-lessons and determined that every pupil of his school be taught to ride. It is a tradition that we are proud to continue to this day. We own thirty horses, which are cared for by the pupils and used by them on frequent outings and vacations. Not to mention their use during lessons as varied as art, genetics and mathematics.

We accept all children who come to us. We have a good relationship with the California State Welfare Department, but many of our children come from other states and even other countries. Some are brought to us privately. Whoever the child is, whatever their background, whatever their needs, however they are gifted, bring them to us. We won't let them down.

The Journey

We'll run through this briefly, but there's not much chance for role-play. Miss Flaumel and Mrs Sawall are running the show.

Somewhere in the city called Amber

The new location of the school is far less salubrious than you are used to. This is obviously a rush job with far too few resources. The warehouse is large and open with little privacy to begin with — boys on the first floor, girls on the second. Canvas covered camping cots are all that is available to sleep on. There's also a big pile of timber, a barrel of nails and a packing crate full of tools. Even home-schooling wasn't this DIY.

November 1986 (click here)

In which a goose was chased into a trap and some 'armless fun was had by one and all.

October 1986 (click here)

In which, with hardly a break to catch one's breath, an ancient page of doggerel led our intrepid adventurers through six labyrinths and into deep water.

September 1986 (click here)

In which the schools enemies suddenly departed for places unknown, taking everyone's favourite teacher along for the ride.

September 1983 (click here)

In which some kids disappeared for two years and then returned looking exactly the same. For a whole year now they've been sitting in classes with younger kids as if they were abducted by UFOs or something.

September 1982 (click here)

In which the kids foiled murder and piracy on the high seas.

July 1982 (click here)

This year those odd pupils did not come camping, instead they hung around the school being boring. So why do they jump every time a car pulls into the drive. Why have certain of them been heard crying themselves to sleep? And why does Skye Roberts keep staring at John Nelson?

July 1981 (click here)

Everyone had a wonderful time camping in the Sequoia National Forest. There was white water rafting and fire building and survival training and bird watching and all sorts. Of course some guys went off on horse-back right at the beginning and missed everything. Almost everything anyway; when everyone else got evacuated because of the forest fire, they seem to have stayed and helped to fight it. How cool is that? But if the police have no idea who started the fire, how come those pupils say it was a group of really odd women? How likely is that?

July 1980 (click here)

One would think it was difficult to lose someone on an aeroplane, but somehow Miss Trees went missing while chaperoning seven pupils on a visit to the school's benefactor Miss Evelyn Flaumel in New York. They returned some days later on horseback accompanied by Miss Flaumel. Various rumours of alarming and fantastic adventures circulated the school for a while. Nobody believes any of them, although the fact remains that Miss Trees is now scared of elephants, and the smell of oil makes her sick. There is probably some perfectly rational explanation that does not involve prehistoric tar pits, saber-toothed tigers and a New York socialite wielding a longbow. And where does being burned as a witch fit into all that?

There have also been some unexplained events in the past couple of years concerning those pupils. How does someone walk straight past a hall monitor without being seen, or always seem to have exactly enough money for a candy bar? How can someone go out and buy hairspray at midnight and be back twenty minutes later?

Matters Arising

This is an Amber game, set somewhere within the books' sequence, although beginning characters know nothing of Amber, Chaos or anything else, and returning characters know little more.

The date is the 10th of December, 1986.

Copyright

The images used on this page are:

They are used without permission for private, low-volume, non-commercial use, in the hope that a little free advertising will satisfy.

Returning Characters

I would be interested to know what you have been doing since the last game, and how you have been changed by your adventure. Almost no time has passed since your last adventure.

Those strange pendants that you picked up have some strange powers, some of which the mysterious dark queen Fiona taught you to control:

Concentration, meditation
Feeling the amulet, empowering the body
Communication between amulets
Shadow walking: fetch me a leaf from the next room
Controlling the destiny of another amulet: have her fetch me a four-leafed clover from the next room.
Probability: throw a six

You are pretty sure they have others too, but there is nothing you have been able to make them do reliably yet. Miss Trees has told you not to use them in school, so of course you don't use them in school… much.

New Characters

Pre-Design Considerations

Firstly, before you begin designing the character, please keep in mind that you'll be acting as a party a lot of the time. So sociopathic loners and loony rebels are probably a bad idea.

Be aware of the "Gifted" in the name of the school. All the pupils at the school tend to excel in several subjects, often to a great extent, and not just on the academic side. The school regimen takes account of that, so your character may not understand just how good they are.

Age

New characters should be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen or eighteen years of age. Returning characters will, of course, be the same age as they were last year, or suitably older if they didn't take part last year. The dates of the various chapters are listed in the blurb. It is now 10th December 1986.

Primary Character Design

I need to know what your character looks like, (including their build,) what they like and dislike, how they are viewed by the staff and students, (that's probably at least two different things.) Then I need to know how proficient they are at the various school subjects, or at least which their best and worst subjects are, and the various skills they have picked up outside school. (Pickpocketing? Sailing?) Finally you need a shtick.

Shtick

The shtick is something you are better at than anyone you've ever met, and probably better than anyone on the planet. This can be anything you like. If your shtick is a normal human ability, then you'll be great, maybe phenomenal. If it is super-natural, then I'll probably rein it in somewhat; you're still young and still learning to control it. The more powerful the ability, the weaker it's going to be, simply for game balance reasons. I reserve the right to veto, but I don't expect to use it; I'll roll with it if I can. No shadow-walking or time travel, no Pattern or Logrus.

Secondary Character Design

I would like to know how long you have been at the Carlos Cory school, how you came to be there, and what you were doing before. How did you get to be an orphan? Who were your parents and what did they do? What do you remember of them? Do you have any other relatives? No plot-hooks please; I will ignore them.

by soronlin

Emacs Cookies

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 14:48:53 +0000

Way back in the 1970s, Richard Stallman (rms) created the GNU project in reaction to the commercialization of software, which was taking away the cooperative world that he was used to. Over the years more and more applications were added to GNU until it became an entire operating system. Finally all it needed was the "kernel". Linus Tolvalds created that and called it Linux. Today what we call Linux is almost entirely built on the back of the GNU project.

EMACS is a text editor written in 1976 by Stallman as the first part of the GNU project. For many years there was a text file in with the distribution with several recipes for cookies. Unfortunately it was removed in 2014 so it is now apocryphal and I include it here. The file itself is here: http://www.soronlin.org.uk/local--files/emacs-cookies/Emacs%20COOKIES.txt

But I will also expound on the first and original recipe in the file which I find makes fantastic cookies and requires a great amount of fun since it makes so many. You need a huge bowl, or even two, and you need to have a production-line process to cook them, which is a great caper. Unlike lesser recipes, you won't eat them all in the first evening either.

This is not a full recipe's worth

EMACS Cookies

Cream together:

2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
2 cups brown sugar

For people outside North America this is even more fun, since we measure butter by weight and have no idea how much a cupful is. Great fun cramming it into a measuring cup and scraping it back out. (Or you could find an online converter.)

Add:

4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla

Mix together in a separate bowl:

4 cups flour
5 cups oatmeal powderized (put small amounts of oatmeal in blender until it turns to powder. Measure out 5 cups of oatmeal and only "powderize" that, NOT 5 cups "powderized" oatmeal)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda

That's right — 9 (nine) cups of flour-oid ingredients. Do you see where this is going?

Mix:

All of the above

This actually requires a fair amount of muscle-power and will make a hilarious mess if your bowl is too small. (Your bowl will always be too small.)

Add:

24 oz. bag of chocolate chips and
1 finely grated 8 oz Hershey bar (plain)

Rubbish; you can't get that many chocolate chips over here and Hershey's is horrible chocolate. Replace this with 32oz of the best chocolate you can afford. Chop it up fairly finely. You'll end up with plenty of chocolate powder as if you'd grated some of it. Try to avoid chocolate containing palm oil as it is a sign of cost-cutting and harms orangutans.

Add:

3 cups chopped nuts (any kind)

Any kind indeed. Tosh! Only use high quality nuts. You're spending time here. This is a performance. Don't skimp. The Devil takes those who use peanuts.

Bake on greased cookie sheet (make golf ball sized balls) and bake about two inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees for 8 - 10 minutes. DO NOT OVERBAKE. Makes 112.

That's 350 Fahrenheit of course. And to be honest I've never got over a hundred cookies. It comes close though.

I use four baking sheets and a cooling rack. Fill one baking sheet, put it in the oven and set the timer for four minutes. When that time is up put the next sheet in and set the timer for another four minutes. Next time around you'll take the original sheet out and put a new one in. Leave that sheet cooling for one cycle and then transfer to the cooling rack so you can use it again. The cooling rack can contain a few baking-sheets-worth of cookies but you'll eventually have to decant them elsewhere. When they come off the baking sheet they are still very soft but as the chocolate sets they become more handlable.

Of course you can make a half-size batch, but where's the fun in that?

by soronlin

A Black Road Adventure By Catarina Rodriguez y Osuna (age 11)

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 20:48:23 +0000

Katie’s journal, October 1986

The call through our crystals came when Victoria and I were in class. We both did the same thing, our hands shot up, and we said we needed to go to the toilet. Victoria was quick enough to change it to ‘I need to take Katie to the toilet’, which is kind of weird, but we got out anyway. It was Harryn who had called us, and as we hurried to the groundskeeper’s cottage Victoria realised we had a bit of a wait on our hands, so we could have stayed in class. It would be a while before Dave and Harmony would be back at the school.

There was a new boy at school, his name is Tony. Actually, there are two new boys, only the other one, James, has been here already, but he was kicked out. I wonder what you have to do to get kicked out of the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans… It made me a bit scared. Anyway, Tony found something, and James saw him find it. It’s a cigar box, which was buried under one of the stones of one of the paths. Harryn says that path has been there for at least a hundred years, and when I ask the plants they agree that the box has been there for at least as long. Anyway, a cigar box is one thing. The poem and the old compass inside are something else. The poem is written in modern English, and at least at first means nothing to me. There is something six people (that would be us) will have to do, ‘from least to most’, so probably me first, as I’m the smallest and the youngest. After me comes Victoria, then it becomes murky by what standard the poem is measuring us. It also speaks of an ‘ebon line through Shadow’. We think that is the black bad thing that we followed, or which followed us through all kinds of shadow on our last adventure. Besides the poem is an old compass. It seems broken, as it is pointing South East. It is beautifully made, though. The needle is finely engraved with a lot of squiggly lines, which hurt if you look at them too long. I shake it, and everybody screams that I shouldn’t. I lick it, and they do so again. Tastes like brass and old, nothing else happens.

One refects three.
One in the Earth.
One in the Water.
One in the Air.

Three cast shadows,
And shadows of shadows,
To the end of Reality,
Into Abyss.

From that dark well,
An ebon road now runs,
Between all the Shadows,
Bringing Death to the One.

One that creates all,
Refects three with power,
Each shadow distorted,
Less true than the last.

A line drawn in blood,
Answers only the blood,
Generations passed,
Estrange from the One.

Imperfect reflections,
Imperfect blood,
Each one accepting,
More debasement in turn.

A line that is bright,
Dims at the last,
Lies broken and sullied,
Fit only to shun.

There step the shadows,
Between the bright line,
Gain some measure of Power,
Of use in their spell.

The Shadows of Shadows,
Where the light still burns,
Capture the Dark Stain,
And hold it a while.

Six walk a line,
Each one but once,
From Least to the Most,
As the perils increase.

Six walk a line,
And step onto the stage,
Prepared to defend,
The place they desire.

Harmony for some reason changes the car to a pink colour.

Tony seems to be able to feel and see things we cannot. That is how he found the box. The poem gives him an image of an old man with a long beard, bend over. The compass actually gives him a shock.

Tony, James, Victoria and I get into the SPV (Victoria drives) and try to triangulate where the compass is pointing to. We can’t find it, so we go off into Shadow. We find the Black Road, and the needle is pointing across it. We retreat a bit and try to explain to James and Tony what is happening. Tony seems to be in shock. Well, yeah, I remember when I first heard my parents were actually killed, and that we were all related. I wished Skye was there, she’s better at that stuff. Luckily Harmony and Dave arrive, so we can focus on getting on with our poemy mission. We discuss how to cross the Black Road as a squadron of tanks drive by. We really don’t want to be seen, they’ll attack us again. We think about flying across (after my plan to use pogo-sticks gets ignored), but decide it is too risky. What if the plane stops working when we’re halfway there? Besides, none of us know how to fly, and we don’t want to bring in someone else.

To gain a bit of time, we first go to the vault to get some blue crystals for the two new boys and we explain how to use them for communication. The others all get guns as well. I don’t want one. I decided I don’t like fighting and I know others keep fighting us, but… Maybe I’m just a coward. I always hide when there is trouble. I don’t want to let the others down, but even the thought of carrying a gun scares me. I’ll bring bandages and stuff, that I can do.

We tell Harryn to tell Miss Trees that we are following the Black Road. Victoria can feel currents in Shadow, and the current current goes left, just like the Black Road, and the compass. So I guess we go left. It’s a bumpy ride and when we take a break, it needs to be away from the Black Road, because there is steady traffic which seems to be bent on attacking us. When we get back to the cars, the needle of the compass is moving, now pointing more towards where we were going (as opposed to straight across the Black Road). We’re in a desert, and Harmony for some reason changes the car to a pink colour. On the road there is a Roman Legion. Our lives are once again absurd if you would talk about it, but living it feels very tense.

After a while we stop changing Shadows. Victoria stops driving, and James takes the wheel. In the distance, a city appears. All broken skyscrapers under a blue sky. Well, somewhat blue, huge columns of smoke make it a bit less blue. When we reach the outskirts of the city, there is rubble everywhere and we can’t get in. We look for another route, but this keeps happening. When we try to shift Shadow, it’s very hard, and bumpy, making us arrive in a city which looks like the other one, but is completely fine. We go out again and try to find the broken city, and we need to backtrack a whole lot. We finally decide we can’t get over the rubble using our cars, so we get out and start walking. We all have our bags with us, and yes, mine is still the largest. Nobody laughs at that anymore, though, because I always bring useful stuff. Food and medicine.
It seems to me that will come in handy in this city once again. There are stains on the ground, not red anymore, brown now. There are drag-marks. There is a left foot, still in a trainer, under a car. Tony walks up to it and touches it. “Teeth. Fear,” he says.

Something here is eating people.

In the centre of the city is a big, gothic looking, building.

Harmony climbs up a bit to keep an eye out and Dave takes point. Everybody else seems to want to be in the middle. Dave hands out guns, he wanted to give me one, but I let Victoria have two. Tony doesn’t want a gun either, but he does accept one of my knives. We can’t see anything yet, but there is movement around us. And the compass tells us to go to the centre of this city.

In the distance Harmony spots three men walking down the street in military formation, they are heavily armed. We scoot down a stairwell to remain unseen, but the middle of our party, which would be me, gets attacked by real zombies! All the others start shooting the zombies, and they die again. Once it’s done, I look at our attackers, and I can tell you, that is some very rotten meat. Nobody would eat them. They might want to eat us, though.
To make things even better, it’s getting dark. We can’t stay outside in this, and we can’t leave either. Not if we want to follow the compass. So we need to find a secure bunker, which Harmony provides in the form of an abandoned old bank. We set watches, eat (and you can tell how bad I feel by how I don’t want to describe the meal), and try to get some rest. That’s hard, because things are moving out there. We hear gibbering, screams, and something heavy being dragged away not too far from us. When we look outside, we spot zombies dragging a big bag down the street. After some indecision, none of us do anything about it, and I just have to cry. When I try to find a corner to do so, I see Victoria is crying as well.

The next day, we venture out into the street, trying to stay in the light. We have to go straight into zombie central. When Dave has to shoot a hand which was attacking him, the zombies are alerted, and we have to run.
In the centre of the city is a big, gothic looking, building. The compass points straight at it. When we get closer we see stained glass windows, a spire, and a dome. This is a cathedral. It will be dark inside, and the only thing keeping the zombies somewhat away is the light… Victoria and I want to do something with mirrors, but the others think it would take too long. James climbs high, and spots tons of zombies inside. And a blue glowy thing, different from the crystals.

After some false starts we finally get in through a side door. There is a great chittering and scurrying inside. Dave starts shooting, and there are explosions, and when we see them back up, we use a torch to scare them with the light. It helps a bit, but not that much, and these aren’t mindless creatures. They seem to be organizing themselves. So we put the pews on fire to create more light and fire, but now there is black smoke, which the zombies use to hide in. We couldn’t back out if we wanted to, we have to press on to the blue glow, which seems to be the only thing the zombies are trying to avoid.

It turns out to be a blue line in the floor, sort of labyrinthine. Even though the light is clear, it doesn’t reflect on the walls. It doesn’t smell, so I decide to give it a lick (hey, this is Shadow, we saw some pretty strange stuff which turned out to taste great!). Anyway, I accidentally step upon the line and once I’m on it, I know I have to keep walking. Victoria follows me, and the rest of us are shooting at zombies. There is a smell of ozone in the air, and it is somewhat like feeling electricity. It’s also quite a long way around, but not particularly difficult. I’m not that graceful, but I don’t fear falling off the line. Except for, you know, the zombies. Even so, I can feel a tingle start in my feet, moving up my legs, by the time I reach the centre. …!

And then we’re all sitting in a diner. Just like that.

We wonder whether there is a time loss, and the compass is pointing again. All the others start fiddling with their watches. I just look around in amazement. I would never take us to a diner! Yet somehow it seems I did take us here…

We think we will have to travel onwards (per the compass), so we re-stock. Victoria picks up the local version of the Financial Times, and it is, indeed, local. We’re not on Earth. The paper is written, and people speak, a gypsy-like dialect. Victoria, Dave and I understand it, and somehow we know it’s called Thari.

So, after shopping, we follow the compass again, and it leads us to the business district, which is guarded by armed platoons. Victoria walks around like she owns the place, and she buys us clothing and sashes which make us look like we belong as well. We try shifting, and find this is a sticky Shadow, too. We just know that if we were to leave, we couldn’t find it again.
Finally, the compass zooms in on a very hoity-toity structure, the De’croit Building. Victoria does the snotty thing she does so well, but even she can’t get us in! She is mildly upset by this, this is her turf! But we really can’t get past the reception area, so eventually we leave.
We know where we have to go, and we know we have to get Victoria in. After all, according to the poem (‘least to most’), she’s next.

We rent a helicopter to take us to the building, since we can tell we have to be up high somewhere. The roof has a helipad and guards, but no blue line. I can feel living plants inside and try to get information that way, but it’s only mould, and mould isn’t that talkative. Dave sneaks around and finds information about all the floors, except the top two ones. So that’s where we need to go. Eventually, we decide to take the fire-steps. We know there are guards around, so we make a plan: once we are inside, we will wedge the doors shut. Victoria will follow the line, the others will guard the doors and I will hide.

Plan made, we get going. Up and up, it is very high. James takes my backpack, but we’re all knackered when we reach the top. We can’t hear anything through the metal door and hoping the other way around is the same, we decide to take a break and catch our breath. Tea-time.

Half an hour later, James climbs up to where there is glass, and peers in. He can see a glowy thing, and more people. We try and use the crystals to take out the alarms, and push open the door behind which we were sitting. There is a concrete room, with another door at the end. Again we ask the crystals to turn of the alarm, and we push the second door open.
I don’t know about the alarms, but there is a man standing there, who hasn’t seen us yet. He’s wearing a bullet-proof vest, but no helmet, which turns out to be as foolish as it sounds when James charges him and KO’s him before he can reach for his radio. Dave takes the radio and his security pass. With the security pass and the crystals, we can get to the double doors.
Behind them is the biggest office ever. The carpet is so luxurious and plush, it takes an effort to walk over it. And there is the expected blue line, which Victoria starts following. It isn’t easy, it looks harder than ‘my’ line did.

All of a sudden, we hear a *ping*! There is another guard coming up in the lift! More *pings*, the guards are here!

Suddenly, things stream out of one of the doorways! Catlike, claws, teeth…

We all move quickly, shoving a desk in front of the doors to block them. There is a big bang, and the doors are gone. We are all barricaded in, except for Victoria, who keeps walking. A gunfight breaks out, it is loud and smelly. I hide behind a bar and decide to take one of the fancy looking bottles as souvenir. If we can come here and shoot at people, stealing one bottle shouldn’t matter all that much, right?

I am biting my nails, watching the shattered glass which shows Victoria making it to the end of the line…

… And we are somewhere white and cold. Very cold. And louder than you would expect. We’re in a blizzard, and there are faint shadows in front of us. Ever more wise of the things we encounter in Shadow, we run for cover. There are squarish shapes in the distance, which turn out to be huts. Heated huts, we discover when we close the doors behind us. Then we see we are sharing this space with a dead man. A single gunshot, close range, while he was sitting… This man committed suicide. Poor man! Yes, everything we find is creepy and bad and very, very scary, but to take your own life… Maybe he was very alone. I at least am with my friends. My friends who keep busy, so I better join them again. Also, coming here wasn’t Victoria’s choice, so the diner wasn’t my fault. Which is good news, right?

The huts turn out to be connected by corridors. We start searching them, and pretty soon we find warm clothes, which we put on. There’s paperwork as well, in Thari. This is an archaeological expedition, where they are looking for the source of a strange artefact. They are tunnelling through the glacier.
One of the next rooms is a lab. There is a cube, with strange blue engravings which seem to move when you look at them too long. It’s, I don’t know, even I don’t want to lick this one, my tongue just doesn’t want to go near it. Weird thing.

We check the compass, and it points towards the glacier. To where the expedition was going…. Again, the others look at their watches. I have no idea what I’m doing, but when I look at mine, it seems just fine. Anyway, we leave for the glacier. There is a huge hole, surrounded by floodlights, and a guide-rope leading in. We’re all a bit nervous, except for the dead man, we haven’t seen anybody. Who knows what’s around? Still we go in.

Pretty quickly, it gets warmer. There are lights, thank goodness, but they seem to be motion-sensitive, which I’m sure saves energy and all that, but it means they turn on when we get there and switch off behind us, leaving us in a bubble of light surrounded by darkness.
It gets warmer and warmer. Liquid water drips down, making tiny rivulets, then puddles. The left wall… there is something in it. Something large. It seems to be getting closer. Victoria speculates it’s the Black Road (which we haven’t seen in a while, so it could well be). The wall has changed from ice to stone, and it is slightly overhanging.
There may be something in the right wall as well.

We break through one of the walls, only to find a new one. We’re inside a double shell. The walls are straight, but the angles are all wrong. I like to draw, and I can tell these angles don’t make sense.
In one of the walls, there is a six-sided doorway (without the actual door). Inside we can see strange shapes. Again the walls are all out of true. The strange shapes look like functional sculptures, we spend some time looking at them. Apart from these ‘sculptures’, there is nothing here.
The older ones think the cube we first saw could be like an egg, which could grow into these things. I am forbidden from trying to make an omelette.

Eventually, we walk on. The passage becomes wider, and more six-sided doorways appear. The compass tells us to walk on, so we do.
We hear a strange sound, at first I think it may just be weird because after the dripping stopped we only heard ourselves for so long, but no, it’s really discorded.
The passage starts to rise, but the doorways seem to remain in a straight line, so now the floor we walk upon cuts them in half. Still, we walk on. The floor feels like rubber, by the way. Maybe it moved at one point? It doesn’t intersect any more doorways, they are at a normal angle again, so we seem to be on the first floor.

Suddenly, things stream out of one of the doorways! Catlike, claws, teeth… The sound of bullets and hissing fills the hallway. Then, Tony gets grabbed by a gelatinous pseudo-pod. More shooting, which doesn’t do a whole lot to the jelly. I poor salt on it, which doesn’t kill it, but does help, the thing shrinks, and we manage to pull Tony out. He is unconscious, because he couldn’t breathe. I hope, think, he might be all right, though. When we hear more noises, we start running.

And we’re running about 1,5 floor up. There is movement around us, we can’t see exactly what, but we can feel it! And then, a blue glow. We’d thought Tony might be the next one, but he’s still out of it. So Harmony dives towards the glow.
Actually, Tony has green foam at the mouth. That doesn’t look right at all. It seems soapy, so I use some vinegar (acidic) to wipe it away. Everybody seems shaky (and please don’t tell anyone, but I think Victoria wet herself). All we can do is hope Harmony gets to the centre before we get attacked again, and that we go somewhere else when she does. Somewhere where they can help Tony, preferably. I don’t know what else I can do for him myself.

Since we don’t have creepy black tentacles we must be good guys

Harmony gets to the end of the line….

… And we are in some sort of liquid. Thankfully, we have breathers at our belts, so we put them on quickly. We put one on Tony as well, although it almost looks like he’s breathing? So Victoria takes of her breather, and finds out that we can, indeed breathe here. Weird. It’s not water, around us, it’s more viscous. There also seems to be a ceiling above us. Wait a minute, we’re in a laboratory!

“Who the hell are you?”

We are not alone! There is a man in a grey coverall, wearing several badges. Victoria replies: “We are a bit lost.”

The man says we’re in Neptune World, and that no-one can just enter Neptune world. Victoria says: “We are very lost.”

He seems to agree, and takes us to see the boss. Tony, in the meantime, is not getting any better. Carrying him is much easier than it was before, though there is some inertia. The sign on the wall says we’re in Neptune 1. The whole complex is smaller than the set of huts in the snow was. Outside it’s dark, and there are fish. Victoria greets them, and the fish look as if they understand her. Somehow, this freaks James out. Dude, Victoria can talk to fish, okay? Don’t worry about it.

We drop Tony off at a medical lab, while the rest of us try to explain where we came from. I look at what the doctors are doing. Nothing much seems to be happening, so I poke him with the compass. It seemed like a good idea, he reacted to it before, and I thought the shock might wake him up. Not really. Instead, he goes into convulsions.
I hand the compass back to James. Quickly.

Thankfully, through the blue stones we can communicate without the grown-ups hearing us. We decide to say we were exploring a strange blue line, and then we were suddenly here. So, the truth, basically.
So when the boss asks us how we ended up here, we tell him the story. We hope he will say ‘Hey, we have a strange blue line as well, wanna check it out’? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way. He doesn’t believe us, but he tells us ‘since we don’t have creepy black tentacles’ (like when we were grabbed and brought to Dara’s place?) we must be good guys… We are left free to wander around a bit.

Victoria goes outside to talk to the fishes some more, and they tell her there are no blue glowy things around.
Dave goes to eat.
I want food as well, but I also want to take care of Tony, so I go to the medical lab first. He seems to be sleeping, so I join the others in the mess hall, where we get taught how to drink under water.

Meanwhile, Victoria finds a whale, and it tells her there is a Blue Glowy thing after all, outside Neptune’s walls. But before we can do anything, we have to wait for Tony, who does seem to be getting some more colour. So we all get some rest.

Tony is out for 12 hours, then too weak to do anything but recuperate for 12 more. We eat, cook, heal and sleep for a whole day. Victoria talks to the sea creatures, and asks them to protect this place, so there is warning when black tentacles appear.
While we wait, we find out that this is an archaeological mission to Atlantis, which is about 10 minutes swim from here. We are allowed to check it out, and can even borrow breathing gear, as long as we bring it back. Not that there’s anywhere to go but here, so we have little choice. Is what they think. We just laugh and agree.

Then, finally, we go to Atlantis! We start out swimming, and the whale Victoria spoke to before decides to swim along. He lets us hang onto him, which is super! Before we have to say goodbye, I give the whale a big hug. I can’t talk to him like Victoria can, but that was sooooo cool! She has a great gift!

Atlantis: the ruins of an ancient city. We follow the compass to an open plaza with a recognizable design on it. This seems to be the only place without any rubble on it…. It seems too easy. There is writing on the buildings, in modern Thari.

Tony lands near the start of the design and just goes for it. As he starts moving along, sparks begin to rise. This is usually when the scary stuff happens, so I hide.
Tony is having a hard time of it, visually slowing down. In the water, he is sharply leaning, pushing himself, working hard, but slowing down, slower, slower…..

… *POP* We are all coughing as our suits explode. We are in a small metal environment. The writing on the sign says ‘airlock’. Uh-oh. Especially since we seem to be in the outside-facing part. And outside is only blackness.
The compass points inwards. Given these circumstances, we head in.

Pretty soon, we get stopped by a guy in uniform. “Stop right there!”
We can see everything here looks military, with lots of stars on the insignia. The man takes us with him, and he won’t answer any questions. Instead, he puts us in a cell. It was a bit of a walk, this thing is larger than the Neptune 1 ever was. Luckily, we’re all in the same cell. The guns and stuff are taken away.
We decide to talk using the crystals, so we can’t be overheard. We think they are leaving us here to sweat a bit, and to stick to our story. Which, once again, is the truth, so remembering it is easy enough. It’s just the getting people to believe us, is the hard part.
After an hour or so, the door opens. A man enters, and he points at Victoria. This is scary, and we all grab each other, and hang on. The men try to pry us apart. Victoria bites them, I kick some shins, but when we get tazered, the fight is over quickly.

There are no pictures of the aliens themselves, but we do see black alien star-ships.

Victoria gets taken to a bare room. There is a floodlight blinding her. A voice asks who she is, and who she’s working for. “I’m just a school-girl,” Victoria says, telling them about the Blue Glowy thing.
She gets told it’s a stupid story. Victoria eventually tells them there are multiple worlds, and we follow the Blue Glowy thing, because it makes the black tentacle things go away.
“What is your citizen’s ID-number?”
Victoria says again there are many worlds, and she’s not from here. The man tells her that means she’s an illegal alien.
“No!” Victoria says, “I’m from Greece!”
“Not our Greece, so you’re an illegal alien.”
Victoria just tries to tell them that she can’t be expected to know their laws….
The man orders her to tell her more about our world, and about tentacles.
Victoria just starts babbling, telling him about the tentacles, and the Black Road, and the corruption which is everywhere, and that the tentacles can grab you, and that there is an attack coming, and that the tentacles seem to be aiming to corrupt something on the other end of the Road, whatever there is on the other side, so we are trying to get there, too, to help, and that the Blue Glowy things might take us there. “I really am fourteen,” she ends, sobbing.

She gets taken to a different cell, all alone.
Clearly they haven’t figured out we are communicating (through the crystals), so we know exactly what she’s told them.

Tony is next. The thing is, he’s just new to the Carlos Corey School for Gifted Orphans, and he hardly knows what’s going on (I still feel that way myself a lot of the time, so I can relate). So he starts telling them the same thing Victoria has told them. His name is Tony, there is a Black Road, there are many worlds…. Then he starts babbling too, a whole long, confusing stream of consciousness about everything he’s been through and I was there and even I can’t follow it.
The interrogator zooms in on one detail: “Which school, where?”
“The Carlos Corey School for Gifted Orphans, in California,” Tony answers.

One by one, we all get interrogated, but we can coordinate our stories. So we all tell them the same, more or less. This completely confuses the interrogator. Yeah, it’s a strange story. And children breaking only a little bit must be even stranger.
When we ask him about the blue thing, he says he doesn’t want to take us there. So it is here, too!
We are taken out of our cells, and put into a locked stateroom. There is food, but we don’t get our guns back. We finally hear we’re on a spaceship called the Pegasus.
Victoria turns on the television. There is a news show on, showing war preparations. Apparently there are nasty, evil, aliens coming. There are no pictures of the aliens themselves, but we do see black alien star-ships.

Suddenly, there is a red light, and sirens sound. We try to get to the corridor, but the door is still locked. We try the vents, and we are small enough to make it work. We make our way to the corridor and follow the compass.
There’s a thump on the hull, and the whole place starts to shake. Luckily, the compass points in, so we get away from the portholes. We find our locker (because it has the spare blue crystals) and get our stuff. Pretty soon we can hear a fight going on within the spaceship. Not long after that, we encounter a large tentacle-monster. It shoot, but misses. Dave returns fire, and hits! The thing immediately shoots back, with a sort of phaser-like gun, and Dave is hit! But the next shot makes the monster topple over. While I clean and dress Dave’s wound, the others pick up the alien gun. They soon figure out it takes too many arms to use it, so we just leave it.

There is fighting everywhere, and we try to get around it, but if we follow the compass we have to pass through it at one point. We try to use our crystals to avoid being hit, but we end up having to retreat, with the aliens in pursuit. Then, since they are following us anyway, we turn around and dodge and weave so we at least are being pursued in the right direction. My pack gets shot, which jolts me forward, but somehow we get through! It helps that the aliens are now being shot at from two directions.

There is a big door, with a security lock, and a card slot. What we have on us doesn’t work. We use communications to ask the captain to let us in, but he doesn’t. What now? Harmony decides to sneak back and try to find a security card on a body, however creepy that sounds. She succeeds, and we try it in combination with the crystals. The lights flash red, then green, and we’re in!

There is a big blue thing of glass and metal, not just a line. It’s in the floors and the walls, too. We can tell it’s the power source of the station. Also, there is a great ray gun pointing down at us.

So cool, seeing the herbs they use, the ice cellars, and the long spoons they use

James goes for it, while the rest of us take up defensive positions. Sparks start coming of James pretty quickly, and his hair is standing on end.

A bright flash of light goes upwards…

… And it’s windy. We’re on a hillside. In the valley below is an army, and on the opposite side of the valley is a walled town, on another hill. On the hill is a castle. It’s all very medieval, I love it. Dave is more into sci-fi, and he checks his gun. It works.

On close inspection, the army doesn’t look very human, they are sort of furry¹. We can’t tell anything about the besieged town, but we assume we have to go there.

We walk around, scouting and trying to think of a plan. We can feel it will be very hard to control probability around here… In the valley there is lots of army (bows, arrows, spears). The hills are more spread out. A small stream enters the city through iron grating. There is a gap between the vegetation and the wall.

Unable to think of anything better, we just try creeping past the enemy. We’re trying to use the crystals to make them look the other way. We might be in full view of the castle, but we’re okay with that. When we reach a tall tree, James climbs it, and then he uses a mirror to catch the attention of one of the guys on the battlements. Now the archers there are looking at us, and we see a runner go down. We are all waiting for them to bring up a spy-glass, so they can see we’re not part of this army. But then, the attention the castle-guys are showing this tree attracts notice of the army around us.

We cry for help and run for it. From the castle walls a rope ladder comes down. We run and run, and again Victoria has to drag me. I hope I’ll grow a bit, next year, so I’m not always the smallest. I hope I live to see next year. Arrows fly around us, but we reach the ladder. We climb up, Dave is last. He’s being pulled up while he’s still returning fire. Only when we’re all up do the furries stop shooting.

We’re brought up to the captain. He’s obviously human, and they seem glad to see us. “Why come to a city under siege?” they ask.
We tell them we need a Blue Glowy thing.
They will consider helping us, if we take out the ballistae. WHOOSH. Dave takes out the ballistae with his ray gun.

Thoroughly impressed we get off of the walls and go up to the castle, where we are brought to the War Room. There is a king there, who gets told about the ballistae. “Can you do that some more?” he asks Dave.
“Yes,” Dave says, “I can. But we need to get to a Blue Glowy thing. We’ve come a long way, and there is war everywhere. If we get to the Blue Glowy thing, we can help in all of them.”
The king tells us the Blue Glowy thing kills people.
Dave says he wants to try anyway. He will give his gun to Harmony, in case he dies.

But first we rest. Everybody gets chocolate. Dave gets to shoot some more, but I’m not there to see it, as I’m checking out the medieval kitchen as it actually was. So cool, seeing the herbs they use, the ice cellars, and the long spoons they use…

The king takes us to the basement, where they keep their Blue Glowy thing. He calls it a Pattern, which fits and is perhaps a better name than Blue Glowy thing. Dave hands Harmony his gun, and, with a face like he has to eat a wholesome home-cooked meal, starts walking the Pattern. Sparks fly, there is a smell of ozone…

…. And we’re under water again, salty, but we can breathe. We’re on a staircase, inside an archway. Way below, on the bottom of the sea, is a city, and a castle. The city is lit by flames on poles.
Up, the staircase disappears into blackness.
In the city, we can see a lot of topless people, and their flesh is pale, kind of greenish. Their hair has tints of pastel.
There are other things too, tentacled and chitinous things. There is a battle in the city.

There is a loud ping from the compass. The needle has split, and there is one part buried in each end. That’s ominous.

We zigzag into the city, since a city under attack seems familiar, and it’s better than climbing into darkness. Of course we try to avoid the worst, but troops form on us. This is the tail-end of a battle. Our guns work, though, and we’re forcing the tentacles that were pressing on the castle out. We fight a bit more, but we are running low on ammo as we press on towards the castle.
Someone riding a saddled dolphin comes our way. Of course, why wouldn’t there be greenish people riding dolphins under water? What a pity Skye didn’t come… The rider is female, and greets us with a hearty: “How the hell did you do that?”

There are a lot of herbs I’ve never heard of, and I get some samples

She means the guns, so we show them to her.
“Earth-standard?” she asks. She tries to fire one, but it doesn’t work. Victoria tries, and shoots.

Yeah, yeah, guns, whatever. “Hello, I’m Katie,” I introduce myself. “Hello Katie, my name is Llewella,” she answers. We all bow.
Victoria tells Llewella Corwin’s army is coming here to invade from Earth.
Llewella says it doesn’t surprise her.
We show her the poem, and tell her that we just want to make things better.
Llewella says we have. “About an hour ago,” so around when we arrived, “the reinforcements of the Black Road stopped coming in.”

We tell her about the Blue Gl Patterns, and that they became more and more difficult. Mine wasn’t hard at all, I’d like to try again. Llewella says it is right I didn’t, it would kill me. Something about diluted blood. Bah, I’m no worse than Dave! My blood isn’t more diluted than his! Llewella thinks the real Pattern might kill us. There is a real Pattern! But, I don’t need to try a new one, I just want to do the ones the others did, I want to be the same as them. And I want to show that I can do whatever Dave does.

They are talking about Shadows, but I’m sulking, so I miss it. Nobody even notices I’m feeling bad, so I start listening again. Llewella is just saying how “It is unpolitical to say we are a reflection of Amber.”
She feels like I do! I say: “It could even be the other way around. You’re not worse than they are.”
“Exactly,” says Llewella, “We both might reflect something else, after all.”
“Is there something beyond this?” I ask, wondering whether this isn’t the last Pattern at all.
“I don’t know,” Llewella answers. Well, that isn’t much help.
Victoria tells me I’m just as good as the rest of them are, jumping on the first line (even if it was sort of by accident) was the right thing to do. That makes me feel better. “And you saved Tony,” she adds. Tony seems surprised, and I am too, a little. Maybe I did, at least I helped. Tony thanks me, and we hug.

We ask whether we can take a look at the Pattern, since we’ve come this far…. Llewella decides that since we’re Royals, we can (being Royal sounds fancy and good, but having a family is better). We’ve all realised by now that the inscriptions on the needle of the compass seems Pattern-like. This Pattern is big, much more powerful than the once we saw before. I get a bit closer, but realise I don’t want to get too close.

Next, we go to the kitchen. An underwater kitchen!!! It is amazing! The cooks let me look around as much as I want, as the others talk. There are a lot of herbs I’ve never heard of, and I get some samples, and the instruction to keep them wet. Keep them wet! Herbs! I’ll have to use them quickly!

Anyway, Llewella tells us Erik is dead, and Corwin is regent. The others explain about Corwin, and the ES. We wonder whether we can safely leave. We want to go home now we’re done. Llewella says the ES will be staying in Amber, with their guns.²

We tell her about Dara as well. Llewella doesn’t know her, so I go to the table and show her the Trump. She takes it, and tells us to wait. Fine by me, this kitchen is amazing! The other children talk about the ES some more.

After a while Llewella returns and hands me the Trump of Dara. She hasn’t trumped her, she says, but she has found out Dara has just walked the Amber Pattern and has threatened that Amber will fall. “Was the attack merely a diversion to get Dara to the Pattern?” Llewella wonders. “But why would Dworkin rearrange things so you could intervene?”

Next she takes the poem, and wanders off again. When she returns she confirms it was written by Dworkin. We ask who this Dworkin is. Llewella thinks he is family, since ‘the redheads’ call him grandfather. With the six parts of Pattern we apparently empowered, the Black Road was contained enough that something changed in the battle.
Uh, okay. Whatever it all means, we did well!

We don’t have a Trump of Misty, so how do we get home? And then…. Llewella gives me a whole Trump Deck. She tells me to take care of it and be careful. The pictures are beautiful. My dad was a painter, I love art…. I can tell these portraits are exquisite. We only recognize some. There’s Mrs Flaumel, and Julian, but no Misty. Llewella Trumps Julian, and we go to him. Wow!

Once we’re with Julian, our crystals start working again. We contact Misty, she has a Trump of Julian, and another hand-holding feast later, we’re all home! That was a lot quicker than the way here…

We tell Misty all that’s happened, and she warns us not to go into Shadow now, as there are still armies about. We also find that although we still need the crystals for communication, we can now walk Shadow without them (though it’s easier with them).

So, all that’s left is to figure out what we’ll tell Dara when it’s time for her update. I wonder if she’ll tell us about her adventures. It sounds like she’s been busy.³

by soronlin

Footnotes

A Dream Of Adventure

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 19:11:48 +0000

This game ran at Ambercon UK 2016. It is only here for nostalgic reasons.

Game Description

Title:A Dream of Adventure
Players: 6
Mode: Tabletop

Life at the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is not a bed of roses; the academic regimen is punishing and the discipline is worse, but it never used to be boring. Few other schools even have a stable-block, and none of them have a Spectrum SPV parked in it, even if it is a little worse for wear. And yet with the Eternal Society gone to Amber with Corwin, the school and everyone it protects is safe. Maybe one day Chaos or Amber might look your way but right now they are content to fight each other. It all seems very quiet after the last few years. So an unexpected request brings a welcome chance to break the monotony and to meet someone new.

A game for six players. Characters comprising teenagers of between 14 and 18 years to be created by the players before the con. For Character design requirements see the right-hand bar.

This is a continuation game; new and returning characters are welcome.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans

Set in one hundred, fifty acres of idyllic Californian countryside, the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans offers a chance in life to those children who are so often failed by the modern world.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is a private foundation, funded by private donation. None of our children pay fees of any kind, and all truly gifted children are welcome.

October 1986 (click here)

In which, with hardly a break to catch one's breath, an ancient page of doggerel led our intrepid adventurers through six labyrinths and into deep water.

September 1986 (click here)

In which the schools enemies suddenly departed for places unknown, taking everyone's favourite teacher along for the ride.

September 1983 (click here)

September 1982 (click here)

In which the kids foiled murder and piracy on the high seas.

July 1982 (click here)

July 1981 (click here)

July 1980 (click here)

Matters Arising

This is an Amber game, set somewhere within the books' sequence, although beginning characters know nothing of Amber, Chaos or anything else, and returning characters know little more.

The date is the 10th of November, 1986.

Copyright

The images used on this page are:

They are used without permission for private, low-volume, non-commercial use, in the hope that a little free advertising will satisfy.

Returning Characters

I would be interested to know what you have been doing since the last game, and how you have been changed by your adventure. Almost no time has passed since your last adventure.

Those strange pendants that you picked up have some strange powers, some of which the mysterious dark queen Fiona taught you to control:

Concentration, meditation
Feeling the amulet, empowering the body
Communication between amulets
Shadow walking: fetch me a leaf from the next room
Controlling the destiny of another amulet: have her fetch me a four-leafed clover from the next room.
Probability: throw a six

New Characters

Pre-Design Considerations

Firstly, before you begin designing the character, please keep in mind that you'll be acting as a party a lot of the time. So sociopathic loners and loony rebels are probably a bad idea.

Age

Primary Character Design

Shtick

Secondary Character Design

For last-year's game see A Black Road Adventure

by soronlin

A Black Road Adventure

Sun, 02 Aug 2015 18:54:07 +0000

This game ran at Ambercon UK 2015. It is only here for nostalgic reasons.
Read Katie's journal here

Game Description

Title:A Black Road Adventure
Players: 6
Mode: Tabletop

Life at the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is not a bed of roses; the academic regimen is punishing and the discipline is worse, but never let it be said that life is boring. Few other schools even have a stable-block, and none of them have a Spectrum SPV parked in it, even if it is a little worse for wear.

With the Eternal Society gone, the school and everyone it protects is safe for now, but for how long? Corwin is marching on Amber and the Black Road that you defeated a few years ago on Earth is nevertheless spreading through shadow. War is coming and Earth will not be spared. This is a brief respite, a regrouping with milk and cookies, before the battle begins and it will be a shooting war, with blood and bullets, magic and exploding bodies. But where will you stand? With Florimel of Amber, who protected you all these years? With Dara of Chaos, who you swore to aid? Could Earth stand without supporting one side or the other? How many sides are there, anyway?

A game for six players. Characters comprising teenagers of between 14 and 18 years to be created by the players before the con. For Character design requirements see the right-hand bar.

This is a continuation game; new and returning characters are welcome.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans

Set in one hundred, fifty acres of idyllic Californian countryside, the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans offers a chance in life to those children who are so often failed by the modern world.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is a private foundation, funded by private donation. None of our children pay fees of any kind, and all truly gifted children are welcome.

September 1986 (click here)

In which the schools enemies suddenly departed for places unknown, taking everyone's favourite teacher along for the ride.

September 1983 (click here)

September 1982 (click here)

In which the kids foiled murder and piracy on the high seas.

July 1982 (click here)

July 1981 (click here)

July 1980 (click here)

Time is Running Out

And so you returned to school, like you did after your other adventures, and for a moment life continues serenely as it always has. Misty Reese is still principle but her platoon of rangers has been called back to defend Amber.

Matters Arising

This is an Amber game, set somewhere within the books' sequence, although the characters know nothing of Amber, Chaos or anything else.

The date is the 1st of October, 1986.

Copyright

The images used on this page are:

They are used without permission for private, low-volume, non-commercial use, in the hope that a little free advertising will satisfy.

Returning Characters

I would be interested to know what you have been doing since the last game, and how you have been changed by your adventure. Almost no time has passed since your last adventure.

Those strange pendants that you picked up have some strange powers, some of which the mysterious dark queen Fiona taught you to control:

Concentration, meditation
Feeling the amulet, empowering the body
Communication between amulets
Shadow walking: fetch me a leaf from the next room
Controlling the destiny of another amulet: have her fetch me a four-leafed clover from the next room.
Probability: throw a six

New Characters

Pre-Design Considerations

Firstly, before you begin designing the character, please keep in mind that you'll be acting as a party a lot of the time. So sociopathic loners and loony rebels are probably a bad idea.

Age

New characters should be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen or eighteen years of age. Returning characters will, of course, be the same age as they were last year, or sutiably older if they didn't take part last year. The dates of the various chapters are listed in the blurb.

Primary Character Design

Shtick

Secondary Character Design

For last-year's game see The Strange Case Of The Missing Ancestors

by soronlin

Character Questionnaire

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 18:19:51 +0000

I'm having a go at NaNoWriMo this year. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. In honour of this vast undertaking, here is a character questionnaire I made a while ago.

There are several such questionnaires around on the web but, frankly, knowing a character's favourite colour does not help me to get into their skin. Instead this one concentrates on exposing their inner selves, by digging out their complete back-story in detail.

For ease of comprehension I'll copy it here but, if you want to use it, here is a version in RTF format, and here is an example of its use for a rather unusual character. (Warning: there are a couple of four-letter words.) Answer as many questions as you can. Sometimes some of them don't apply, sometimes an answer to one is an answer to another, but generally try to answer them all. Answer in first person and stay in character.

Character Questionnaire

If you really want to get into character answer as many as possible of the following in as much depth as possible. Answer in the first person if at all possible.

The First Ten Years

When and where were you born?
Describe the community you were born into. What are its beliefs, composition, communications and technology?
What is your astrological sign? Is it a good match to your character? Why?
Who are your parents?
What are their careers?
Who are your grandparents and great-grandparents?
What are your parents relationships to their parents?
What are your parents relationships to their parents-in-law?
How and when did your parents meet?
How did their getting together affect their lives?
Did they marry? Why?
How old were they when you were born?
How did your birth affect their lives?
What is your earliest memory?
What was your relationship with your mother over the first ten years of your life?
What was your relationship with your father over the first ten years of your life?
From the first ten years of your life which events that you remember were: the most exciting? the most dangerous? the most frightening? the most important?
Who was your best friend?
Describe a secret, from this period, which you have never told your parents.

Teens

How did your relationship with your father change during your early teenage years?
How did your relationship with your mother change during your early teenage years?
Describe a secret, from this period, which you have never told your parents.
How did your relationship with your father change over adolescence?
How did your relationship with your mother change over adolescence?
How old were you when you first fell in love?
Who was the first person you fell in love with?
Describe the relationship.
How long did it last and how did it break up?
What is your relationship with that person now?
How did your life change over your teenage years?
What was your relationship with your peer group during your teenage years, both same and opposite sex? How did it change during this period?
What is the most important event from this period?
Who were the three most important people in your life in this period? Why?

Adult

What were your politics when you were twenty?
What are your politics now?
What is your current relationship with your father?
What is your current relationship with your mother?
What is the most important event of your entire life? Describe it.
Would you rather be loved or feared?
What would be sufficient cause to make you kill a person?
What would be sufficient cause to make you kill someone you know?
What would be sufficient cause to make you kill someone you love?
How has your morality changed over your adult life?
What is your religion? How has it changed over your life?
Describe your first religious experience? How did it affect your life?
Have you ever had a transcendental experience? Describe it/them. How did it affect your life?
How do you relate to the Diety?
What aspects of a different religion would cause you to condemn it?
How many lovers have you had?
In which period of your life were you most happy?
In which period of your life were you most unhappy?
If you could live your life again what, if anything, would you change? Why?
What question did you expect to find in this questionnaire, but did not? Answer it.

by soronlin

The Strange Case Of The Strange Case By Catarina Rodriguez Y

Sun, 03 Aug 2014 19:57:33 +0000

Stuff I’m Not Supposed to Tell Anybody by Catarina Rodriguez y Osuna (age 11)

The new school year had only just started. My new school! The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans. That’s right; everybody here is an orphan, just like me. And getting in is a gift indeed, this is a great place. The gardens are really big, and we are even supposed to ride horses and stuff. There are a lot of interesting things to be found in the gardens as well, and I’ve already found the vegetable garden, and I can use the kitchens if I clean up (of course I will, I’m not a baby!) and most kids and grown-ups are real friendly. I like to make them treats. I couldn’t help it that my pudding exploded that one time and I had to clean up the whole kitchen, and I found where the good knives were kept and then I rearranged the herbs to taste rather than to alphabet and I had to undo that, which is really stupid, ‘cause who places cardamom and camomile that close together, they are like totally different and you would never use them together and…

Okay, well, anyway, that’s stuff everybody should know. But there are also things no one is supposed to know, because it is secret. This is how it started, on September 21st:

Victoria, who is older than I am, but still younger than all the others, came running up to me. She’d caught a fish in the pond and wanted me to prepare it. But it was a green one, and they don’t taste very nice, so I told her to catch a silver one instead, and she did. Real quick too! Victoria is very nice and she is on the swimming team or something, so she is pretty strong as well. Also, she knows a lot about fine dining, and not many people here do, so it is nice if I can make her something. I was asking her how she would like to have the fish prepared and I made her cry, which was very bad of me. But I know of a place where you do get the fish while it is still alive and carve of pieces. I’m kind of glad she didn’t want that. I know I should experiment and I do, but eating something while it watches you do so sounds very nasty. Anyway, I was trying to comfort her and then I made a Ceviche with fresh limes and coriander and gave it to her. Wynona was there as well, she is older than Victoria and I, like 15 or so? So the three of us were standing there when Harryn walked up to us.

Harryn is like a grown-up or something, but he is still one of the kids as well. He’s already graduated, but he is still on the football team (and he works around the school-grounds and the stables). He is the quarterback, so he is really dreamy, all the girls say so. He is very nice and makes sure no one gets bullied, which is good. Also, he likes to eat a lot. Real food, as they would say in the orphanage, not the cuisine Victoria enjoys, but steak and stuff. So he walked over to us, and said there was an extraction that needed to be done and Victoria and Wynona and I should come along. Victoria seemed mostly surprised that Wynona and I were supposed to come as well, but Harryn said they needed to train new people. I didn’t know what an extraction was, but I heard that this group of kids do like special extra-curricular stuff and have adventures and I really don’t like to be left behind so I wanted to come with Victoria and Harryn. Wynona had some more questions, though. Then Harryn said some really frightening things. He said that way far back we were all related, like, not like all people all over the world are related, but closer by than that. All the people in this school! And some without as well, and some of them were evil and in some sort of group, like the Evil Society or so, except the word wasn’t evil, ‘cause who would call himself evil? Oh, no, it was like Eternal, or Eternity? Anyway, they should call themselves the Evil Society, ‘cause Harryn said that they had killed my parents! And I said, no, my parents died in a car crash, but he said yes, the ES had killed them. And I had to cry, and Wynona’s lip was trembling too, because her parents had died in a fire and Victoria was comforting us and scolding Harryn for telling us like that and that meant she knew it too, and that it was true and someone killed my parents! Because of some ancestor long ago! And Harryn said we should grab some stuff because we had to get going and Victoria said we had to get our backpacks so we could be fitted for a climbing harness, only we never got to that. But I did get my backpack and some food for everyone and some stuff to make more if needed, and then I thought about my parents some more and then I thought that I have a whole new family now, everybody in this school is my family! I don’t care if it is far back, we are all orphans, and now we’ve got each other. That, and I was really excited to go with the bigger kids.

Maybe she thinks we can’t hear her, but she says some rude things in Spanish.

Harryn drove one of the school vans (I told you he’s old!). There was another older boy as well, Dave, he’s 17 and all in black. Skye is 17 as well, she’s also nice, I met her when I was outside gathering herbs, she’s always outside, and she works with the horses. I’m really looking forward to learning how to ride. Wynona can ride real well, she’s from Montana and her parents had a lot of horses, that’s why. So with Victoria and Harryn and Skye and Wynona and Dave and me we were six. Skye said that what Harryn said was true, that we were all related (even though she didn’t know how I was related to them yet) and that the ES were all related to us as well (that sucks). Apparently all of us are special, and the ES thinks that makes us better than others and they want everyone who is like us to join them and if people don’t wanna, they kill them! So they killed our parents, and are waiting for us to grow to recruit us or kill us as well. Wynona was very upset, I didn’t want to think about all that, so I thought about how these guys were my family now, and that they didn’t leave me behind, but took me with them! Still, I was a bit freaked that Dave was carrying a shotgun. That just isn’t normal. I think I fell asleep then, at least, Victoria said so, since it seemed we drove through a tree and then we were at the sea and then there was like fields of grain and then we were at Monterey Bay and then it seemed like hardly any time had passed, but we were at LA and I was awake.

We got out of the van in the staff parking lot of some hotel. Harryn told us we are supposed to pick up a Dr and Mrs Strange, and their son, since they are related as well, and the ES is coming for them. The boys and Wynona go up by the staff stairs, but Victoria says kids are never stopped and so she takes me up via the reception. Skye follows us. I like Victoria and she seems to really know what she’s doing, but it’s kind of nice to have one of the bigger ones looking over us. But I don’t tell Victoria I think so, I don’t want her to think I’m a baby. We get to the room, but it is locked and nobody answers when we knock, and Victoria dashes off and returns with a key card. Wow!
We open the door and this horrible smell comes out, like eggs gone bad. Gross. No one is there. Before we can enter, a maid comes up to us and yanks the key card from Victoria’s hands. Maybe she thinks we can’t hear her, but she says some rude things in Spanish, about rich folks who think they can do anything and who’s going to clean up that room and stuff, and then she stomps off. We enter the room, and there is a strange circle on the floor. Salt, I know, ‘cause I tasted it. I smelt first! But every cook knows you should taste things. I don’t think the other girls saw, as they were in the bathroom. They said there was nothing there except toiletries and an empty salt tub, and that the smell was less there. They seem worried that someone seems to have stepped on the circle (not one of us, before I mean). Apart from standard hotel stuff there is only a suitcase. Then Victoria gets really agitated; there is a black limo outside. This somehow means the ES is here and we have to get out fast. Skye brings out a disposable camera and takes a picture of the circle and the room, and then we have to clean everything we touched quickly, as we hear the lift arrive. Victoria and Skye have a bit of an argument about whether to take the lift or the stairs, while dragging the suitcase (and me), but since they have it while taking the stairs, I guess Victoria won. Also, I am not permitted to take a peek at the ES. I just wanted to see what the evil people look like! We quickly go to the minivan and tell the others what happened. They say the limo won’t be able to follow us, since it now has a flat tire. Still, we drive off and find a big parking lot where we park way in the back among some trees.

Dr Strange does summon demons, but he follows a recipe when he does.

The suitcase is quickly opened while Dave calls the school. He sounds like he’s from TV or something as he practises his lines: “The package wasn’t delivered, there were some complications and we’re looking into it”. I do get slightly worried; earlier when I asked whether we were allowed to leave the school grounds, Harryn told me we were supposed to. Then why this secrecy? But Victoria says the secretary won’t know about this, and I guess the others know what they are doing, so….
The suitcase contains overnight clothing and toiletries for a man, a woman and a teenage boy. That’s ‘cause it’s Dr Strange, and Mrs Strange en their son, right? The other stuff is weirder, or stranger, haha. The other stuff is just weird: four solid silver candle sticks, a silver and glass crystal chalice, two boxes of candles, a book which the others call a grimoire by someone named John Dee, a piece of tailor’s chalk, a notebook with computer paper and phone numbers, tubes of crystalized resins of different kinds, an incense burner, charcoal blocks, an ornate silver dagger, a lump of very heavy rock (meteorite, they say), and a deck of cards with beautiful but strange 1930s Art Deco drawings, not the normal suits of cards. Dad would have liked that last one and my eyes linger on it for a bit. They are differently shaped from normal playing cards as well. Wonder what they’re for. The older kids say it’s all magic stuff, and not of a good kind. Magic is real, and there is good and bad kinds. I will try to remember that.

Wynona starts reading from the notebook. Skye reacts to one of the names mentioned. She says she has a brother named Neil Amster, who is in the ES. She’s never met him and he was born in 1924! Then she says her father died three times and I get excited, thinking that with all this magic and being special people we can get our parents to come back! But she means he faked his death three (or two, then?) times, since he was living so long.

Anyway, what with thinking that my parents may come back, and then hearing they won’t, and just smelling and tasting the resins for a bit (turns out to be incense) I can’t really follow everything Wynona is reading, but from what she says and how the others react I get the impression that Dr Strange is an evil demon-summoner who keeps a cleaning record. Also, he thinks other people are idiots, who don’t clean up and are ‘bastards’ (really, I didn’t think of that, he did) for also summoning demons. Apparently they should stop.
When we read it for a second time I understand better, I think. Dr Strange does summon demons, but he follows a recipe when he does. There are other people who use like ready-to-go products and think it will taste the same. Also, they don’t clean the kitchen when they are done, leaving their dirty dishes for the morning shift. That is not what it says at all, but it is what it really means. Dr Strange is a chef; the idiots buy TV-dinners.
Dr Strange contacted our school for his son, T.

There is a bunch of dates and phone-numbers and names. Three names: Neil Amster, Sarah Graham and Douglas Clark. They are the idiot-summoners. I mean they are idiots who summon demons, according to Dr Strange, not that they summon idiots. In fact, they summon all kinds of demons. There is HHW, who according to Dr Strange is a ‘nasty bugger’ (I’m sorry, that’s what it said!), and who once came after Dr Strange, but he send him back to the sender like one sends a bad meal back to the kitchen. Then there is a demon called XF. Also he names GHK, who is an avatar of time, and that might be why the dates are all in a wrong order and at one point cities are destroyed that aren’t really and stuff like that, and Dr Strange was killed but he wasn’t. GHK turned events back for 2 dozen cattle. But the worst is that there was also Pestilence, like, one of the four horsemen Abuelo told me about! From the Bible!
Other dates just talk about the three idiot-summoners, and where they went and for how long. We put all the dates in the normal order (I won’t write that down here, it’s really boring) and there is a pattern. They travel around, and sometimes they meet up. There are these special dates (Lammas night, the summer solstice), when they all go to Chicago. NA (that’s Skye’s brother) always comes three days, SG comes two days and DC comes just the day itself, and then they summon something evil and then within a few days Dr Strange gets attacked.

The spell will falter like a flat soufflé, right?

In two days, September 23d, it will be the Equinox. So they will probably go to Chicago to summon something bad! We decide to go there as well, and stop them. Victoria thinks Dr Strange summoned GHK, the time avatar, to keep the family save, and he might be frozen in time or something. I say we should give GHK some cows then, he seemed to like that according to the notes. I am not allowed to summon or feed demons, ever, not even to free the Stranges. Well, okay. We discuss the possibility that the idiot-summoners are part of the ES, since Neil Amster is, but we don’t really know.

We go to Chicago, and this time I didn’t sleep and I have never been to Chicago so quickly and so strangely. I think some of the other kids did something, but they don’t talk about it. Can they do magic? They do talk about someone called Fiona, but when I ask who she is, all they say is that she is scary.

When we are in Chicago, we go to a library. I think I can find out more about the cards, they would be something my father would have liked. As I thought, they are from the 1930s, it’s something called a tarot deck…. It’s very pretty, but I don’t understand it at all. I do find out who drew them: a man called Aleister Crowley. Dave knows the name (from an Ozzy song, he says); it’s a scary man, an evil wizard or something. Skye looks up Dr Dee, who is placed in the same section as Mr Crowley and was a wizard as well. Victoria, Wynona and I play with the cards, but we don’t know the rules, so after a while I get bored and look around the library some more. From the grimoire, and from what Skye finds about Dr Dee, you need all kinds of ingredients to do magic spells. I figure we should just change the ingredients in that case, and the spell will falter like a flat soufflé, right? Like when Dr Strange used salt, if we just exchange it for sugar (or mix some sugar through it), then maybe it wouldn’t work? The older ones think I’m silly, but Victoria thinks I should be prepared just in case.

The older kids think we should hire a PI for the phone numbers. Victoria gives Harryn and Dave some money and they go to find some people to look into it. I wanted to just call the numbers up, but apparently we shouldn’t. I still don’t know why.

We rent a crazy luxurious suite in the Sheraton Hotel, with its own kitchen no less! I can really cook for them all. Then there is something about the ES, and that they might wonder why we are here, since they can see that Victoria spend a lot of money here. So Victoria and I go shopping as a cover story. We go to a place where they put stuff on your face, like a nice smelling mud, and she books in a hairdresser, but then we don’t have time to go. And she wants to power-shop for/with books? And, and, and, we go to this amazing store that sells cooking gear for real chef and Victoria says I can buy whatever I want!!! There are knives, and pans, and rolling pins, and all kinds of equipment, and I buy and buy and buy and Victoria says it will all be delivered to the hotel, but I can’t bear to let go of some of it, so I carry it in my backpack (which is my dad’s old backpack, so it is really big), which gets rather heavy and clangy but I don’t mind! I have like this great cooks-knife, a new thing from the Global company which has been balanced and everything, and boning knives, and skinning knives, and a rolling pin, and a crème brûlée burner(which later on gets greeted with an enthusiastic ‘miniature welding machine!’, unfortunately I haven’t used it yet) and a frying pan and, well lots of stuff! When things quiet down, I will cook Victoria the best meal ever!
Also, we buy lots of ingredients, just basic stuff like flour and sugar and stuff, so I can make fake magic ingredients (which we didn’t use in the end), and we buy battery acid, to pour on the copper circle.

Oh, I didn’t tell about that yet. Dave has been leaving through the grimoire, which is in Latin, and picked up some stuff (apparently he is good with languages). To do magic, you need certain ingredients and circumstances. We figure out the idiot-summoners will go for something from the sixth level. To do this, you need three things (well, apart from the spell): clean silver sand, clear running water, and an intricate copper circle. So the plan is to melt the copper circle with the acid. I’m stubborn, though, so I bring extra sugar (to throw into the sand, so it won’t be clear anymore, with luck it will even attract ants) and a bottle of shampoo for the water. Anyway, we buy battery acid.

Dave is stupid, he says my pop-tarts don’t taste right.

Meanwhile, Harryn and Dave go visit several PI’s. Some phone numbers they recognize immediately: the airport, a taxi company, the Ritz and… the Sheraton! Apparently Neal Amster regularly stays in our hotel, and given that it’s only a few days to the Equinox, he’s probably already here! The PI’s tell the boys to return tomorrow for the other numbers.

We all get back together in the hotel to talk things over. Then Skye buys a stack of books to look up the mythical history of Chicago, to spot a likely place for Big Magic. I cook everybody dinner, and Dave is stupid, he says my pop-tarts don’t taste right. They don’t taste like that pre-made microwavable connerie is what he means! Tsk, he can’t appreciate good food if it comes up to him and introduces itself. Stupid boy. The others are happy, though, there is steak and fish (for Harryn and Victoria), and a salad with walnuts and other nuts (for Wynona and Skye), and I’m just happy using all my new gear!

After dinner Dave sneaks down to the reception to check if Neil Amster is here. And he is! All we can find out about him is that he’s called only one phone number, and it’s not on the list. We shouldn’t go to his room.

Then we all go to bed, except for Dave who reads through the grimoire some more.

The next morning (September 22th), over breakfast, Dave tells us the grimoire is hard to get through in one night. Unfortunately, the Equinox is tomorrow, so we have to work with what we know so far. He has found the names of the demons Dr Strange mentioned in the book, they are really unpronounceable! Also, the sand and water needed for the ritual should really occur naturally, and the proper place to do it is isolated.

Wynona brings out maps of Chicago and the area around it. She starts looking for places that have all the things needed for the ritual. She narrows it down to three possible places. Meanwhile, Skye brings out one of the blue crystals everyone but Wynona and me is wearing and starts moving it over the map. She’s trying to locate the circle, but she doesn’t have much to go on. The crystal keeps returning to Chicago, but that may be because we are here, and we have the book (which has a drawing of what the circle should look like), or that the idiot-summoners are here, and they may have the circle with them if it is detachable (we thing a copper circle would have gotten some attention over the years), but they still need a secluded spot with natural clean silver sand natural clear running water to do the ritual, so that can’t be in Chicago, really.

The boys check in with the PI before we leave, and the other phone numbers are mainly taxis, and one is of the Masonic Lodge. I’m not really sure what that is, but the others say it’s a red herring (yes, I know, not the edible kind), so we go with the van to visit the three places Skye found on the map. Unfortunately, none of them seem quite right. The first had dirty sand, and the water ran through concrete. The second was just all wrong. The third had no sand at all! We wasted the whole day and we are running out of clues!

The others say I shouldn’t have tasted it, ‘cause it could be dangerous.

For lack of anything better to do, we decide to break into the Masonic Hall, which has a two layer basement. Maybe they have a place to do a ritual? Skye en Victoria check the sewers, but that water is very not-clear (duh), and it’s also not an entrance to the building. So we have to wait until it’s really late, and then the boys will go in while we girls watch the entrance.
So, it was real late, okay. I don’t know. Victoria and I just fell asleep. I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one! I’m the baby of the group as it is, and they all said bringing my backpack was too heavy, and it was heavy, but not too, and I just wanted to bring my new stuff and some food for the wait, and I guess I just got tired!

When we wake up, we are all going in after all. Victoria gives me a blue crystal like they all have. Cool, like I’m really part of the group now. My new family! Also, the crystal doesn’t really taste like anything. The others say I shouldn’t have tasted it, ‘cause it could be dangerous. As if… I smelled first, and it wasn’t like I took a bite (lucky for my teeth it wasn’t!) and the others are wearing them against their skin; how big a chance that it would be poison? Really. Unlike the battery acid, that Skye poured in empty bottles and handed out.

So, we go in, but I’m slow because of my backpack and my wanting to be careful with the open bottle of acid. Then it becomes really scary. Apparently the idiot-summoners are in the basement, and they have a porta-fountain and brought in sand and they are summoning something! Dr Strange was so right! The recipe said ‘natural occurring’. This isn’t natural at all! But it looks like it worked anyway, because there is an actual big scary demon in the circle. It speaks, to, in English, which is good, so we can understand. It says: “I told you I would deal with them. Don’t worry about Strange anymore. Who are your friends?” It’s noticed us!

So, we want to stop the evil people and we fight. A really real fight. Skye tells us to put on the masks we brought and she drops teargas. Harryn is lobbing some kind of spiked balls. Everything happens real fast, I don’t really see what everybody is doing, but the idiot-summoners are surprised. Skye knocks over the fountain to stop the water, but the demon just giggles. The idiot-summoners yell that the Demon should take care of us, and they start shooting with real guns. I’m scared and don’t know what to do.

Victoria and I weren’t really in the fight, so we notice when Shadows seem to be gathering in the corners. Victoria draws me upstairs. Harryn takes Victoria’s bottle of acid and throws it at the circle, and Victoria and I grab the salt. I think we want to send the Demon away, but then the Shadows reach out, and Skye disappears! I can’t believe what is happening, but Victoria is still pulling me along and then we are somewhere else. We run, and with my free hand I hold my crystal and I think of Skye, but then I feel my hand slipping from Victoria’s and I see Dave and Wynona being grabbed by some sort of black tentacles and then the Shadows reach me…

I can’t really see, because Skye for some reason or another holds her hand before my eyes.

And suddenly all of us are in a 5 hotel room. At least as luxurious as the Sheraton was. We look out the window and we see the strangest view ever. The sky is half blue and half red and there is, well, a city, I guess. All different styles of buildings jammed in together. I mean, really different. Some parts seem to move. As do the people who walk around. Well, some walk. Some fly, some crawl, some shamble… and they are mostly demons. The window can’t be opened (which might not be a bad thing, considering), and the door is locked, too. Which makes this place a prison. The minibar is stuffed with chocolate and alcohol, the labels in an unreadable language Dave says he’s seen before. Victoria picks up the phone, but there is no room service.

The strange view from the window scares me, and I find a corner as far away from it and from the door as I can. I open up my backpack and start cooking. Cooking always calms me. For Harryn I make steak, and I still have some muffins that we better eat now. Even from where I sit, I can see the sky changing colour, and the buildings changing place.

Victoria picks up the phone again, and she gets the reception! She demands to speak to the manager, but ‘this is currently not possible’. Also, they will let us know how long it takes. Also, there are apparently no air miles in the fourth dimension.

The older kids start talking. They think the demon put us here, probably pre-arranged by Dr Strange. It is all a bit much for me; I just stay in my corner. There is a finger-plant, it’s looking very healthy. I stroke its leaves and… it hugs me back! The others are amazed, and I’m amazed that this is what surprises them, with all that’s gone on over the last couple of days. Whatever, it feels good that someone is holding me, not that I’m a baby or anything, but just… Anyway, the plant tells me there are often people in this room, often for a long time. Usually they die. Although, it has been a while. Not very comforting, and it doesn’t help that the plant tells me this in the same tone of voice that people use when they discuss how plants die. It also says it would like a bit more light, so I ask the bigger kids to help me move it closer to the window.

Then the door opens, and someone in black and white clothes comes in. He doesn’t speak, but he has food for us and he starts watering the plants. I take the food, of course, and mind my manners and say goodbye as we take the change to run out the door!

In the corridor we see more doors, and a painting with a topless woman in disarray. I can’t really see, because Skye for some reason or another holds her hand before my eyes. I recognise the style though, from daddy’s books. It’s a Van Klomp, I think. Wynona reaches for the door handle of the door next to it and again there is that feeling like we’re in a lift or something (Dave calls it special distortion) and even though we’re not moving, Wynona is suddenly gone! Then she appears again, and she says she was on the moon and jumped into a crater and then she was here again!

Victoria takes a closer look at the painting. Suddenly, she’s gone as well! When she returns, she says she was on a beach. She picked up a conch shell and then was back here. She and I try again; we touch the painting, and there is indeed a beach! The shell takes us back. According to the others, the blue crystals feel when we are in different Shadows. Or something. I do feel a pull, or a thingy, so I guess that’s what they mean.

They wear uniforms and they have six legs each, and mandibles, and machine guns!

Everybody starts poking around, to see if there are other things that can pull someone through. I keep watch and get nervous; I know we are trying to get home, but everybody is going off in different directions. I don’t want to be left behind, and I don’t want to leave anyone else behind either…

Skye walks through a glass panel and finds a stairwell. Victoria starts poking the walls. At the end of the corridor she disappears and it takes really long, so Skye goes after her. Then she comes back and Victoria is badly burned! Wynona starts crying, and Skye goes straight on through to the beach, to put Victoria in the water. That helps and they tell us that they were in a large, nice, sitting room, but then they found a world of fire. There is another door in the sitting room, and Harryn goes to try that one. He gets sucked through again and ends up in a library. Then we all go there. It is the hugest, enormousest library I’ve ever seen! So many books! There is a book about the ‘History of the Courts of Chaos’ in that strange language Dave sort of understands. From the windows, we see that same weird city. It sure is chaos there/here, so maybe this is where we are? Skye touches one of the windows, and is gone, again. When she doesn’t return after 10 seconds, Victoria follows her. Then we all go, again. There is an old-fashioned study, like on pictures when I was just a baby. When you click the lamp you go to a laboratory, all black and white, except for one red tile. There is a stool which can take us back to the study, but when Wynona stands on the red tile she is in the open air! The red tile leads to a hill, there is a bramble bush and on top of the hill are a tower and an apple tree. There is also a path, and there are soldiers on it! They wear uniforms and they have six legs each, and mandibles, and machine guns!

We quickly go back to the sitting room. There is a burning fire and there is discussion about going through that. I do it, and it leads to the library. The library has stairs going up, but then we are in the dunes at the beach. With the conch we’re in the corridor again. Skye goes back to the beach and touches the driftwood, which leads to a dining room with a window and a painting. Now we can see that there are soldiers on the beach as well. We start jumping into other places like crazy, finding some new ones as we go along. There are more soldiers around and we don’t want to go back to the hotel suite of death! We split up some, come together again, and there are soldiers everywhere until finally we are trapped at the Tor. As the soldiers approach, we hear a young woman call “Stop! This way!” We have to run, and I’m too short, and my backpack is too heavy and I just can’t keep up. Then Wynona picks me up and carries me as we run down the path. She’s really strong!
We arrive in a large hallway. The young woman, who is called Clara Smith, touches a tapestry, and then we are at some stables. From there we cross a courtyard, pass some iron doors and then we are out in the city. ‘People’ move past. Wynona keeps on carrying my backpack and I walk on my own again. We try not to draw attention.

As soon as we enter the room, we all spin around.

Clara takes us to a small in, and explains she is looking for her parents, John and Jane, who were captured by someone called Dara. Victoria describes the demon we saw back in Chicago, and Clara says it sounds a lot like Dara. She hasn’t seen any other normal people around here. She found one of her father’s books and read it aloud and then she was here. That was a year, maybe two, ago. Long enough to know a bit of the lay-out, anyway. She says we have to wait for things to quiet down again. We still need to find Dr Strange, and find a way home! Huh, the school is home, now. That’s weird.

Clara tells us she’s from Chicago. We tell her we just were there. Her parents disappeared a long time ago and when we try to figure out how long ago that was exactly, it turns out to have been in June 1956! 1956!!! That is really long ago, but Clara doesn’t look that old at all. Her father could cast spells, and she herself heals Victoria with magic. Magic! Real magic! This day keeps getting weirder. Clara has a sort of map (I’ve pasted it here¹.) of the whole place, and I can see there is a kitchen, but I’m not allowed to go. To pass the time we practice Thari, which is the language here. When I want to cook, I don’t recognize any of the ingredients, but Clara helps me and we cook together and it turns out all right and then we all eat.

Later on, we all go in. Everybody is looking for stuff to take, but I’ll just stick to my backpack. We bring Clara’s map. So, we hop around a whole lot, and someone spots us from the courtyard and screams, so we hop around a bit faster. And then….. we are in a dungeon. Not a scary house one, a real one. There are all kinds of torture things on the walls. After Victoria tries tapping the torture stuff, we open the left door. As soon as we enter the room, we all spin around. We end up in a square room with a door in each wall. Victoria goes straight ahead, and comes back into the same room! Wynona makes a mark on the wall and keeps doing that. This is like a labyrinth of identical square rooms with four doors. We start marking the rooms with numbers. There are five rooms in total. We try walking through them real quick, and with the torture equipment, nothing happens. Oh, if you enter the right door, you just start in room 5, but otherwise it’s the same.

The people that are missing are supposed to be here somewhere, but for the longest time we’re just moving from room to room. We all know how to get through them now, but we can’t find the Strange family, or Clara’s parents. Then Dave opens a thing called an ‘iron maiden’. It looks really scary, but nothing happens. Then Victoria climbs in, and Dave closes it, and suddenly she’s gone! Good thing, because she would have been really hurt otherwise. We all follow, and end up in a now somewhat crowded cell. Except for us there are four adult people, a boy and a skeleton.

We free them all (except the skeleton), the Strange family, and Mr and Mrs Smith. We go quickly, through the dungeon, the stain, the lamp, the library, the stairs, the reception room, and then the door through the fire doesn’t work! All the jump-places stopped working!
And then Clara seems to be growing taller, and she gets tentacly hair, and Mr and Mrs Smith are changing shape, too! Clara is Dara! We’re trapped!

I can’t help it, I start crying.

Dara is very calm, and she does something, and there are dark tentacles, and then there is a settee. Dr Strange looks on, but Mrs Strange and the boy (Tommy), look as horrified as I am. Tentacly Dara holds like a speech. She says that she was seeing us as messing with her plans and she was wondering whether to kill us. The idiot-summoners didn’t catch her, they came to her attention. She calls them ‘power-mad idiots’. Now she wonders whether we could be useful. Her original plan was to take over the Shadow and use it as a resource space (well, she can use shadows, I saw her do it, so I guess she could take over all shadows. Would we be like Peter Pan, then?), the idiot-summoners gave her a foothold in the Shadow while they think they hold her captive.

Dr Strange says that she is no demon. That the others were, but she isn’t. Dara laughs.
She tells us that she wants us to be useful to her. I tell her I don’t want to be bad people. She wants to know who we are, and Skye tells her we’re distant relatives of Corwin. Dara says she doesn’t know him, but she tells us the idiot-summoners are more than human, like we are. Well, we don’t know who this Corwin is, either.

I can’t help it, I start crying. I don’t want her to kill my new family! Victoria comforts me. Then she starts bargaining. She asks Dara whether she would mind betraying the ES. Dara has no problem with that. I ask whether she would betray us. Dara answers that she is using the ES, as opposed to where we would have a deal.

Victoria says Dara would have a, a khalif? That Earth would become a protectorate of Dara, if we make a deal. I’m horrified, but Victoria explains that Dara could kill us easy, and then she would have Earth anyway. Well, yeah, but…

Dara tells us what the deal would be: we’d have to report to her, and do the occasional favour.
Harryn, Dave and I ask immediately what kind of favour that would be.
Dara says it wouldn’t be anything suicidal, or anything endangering our Shadow.
Harryn asks whether she would teach us, and I say I don’t want to endanger good people! She asks whether I mean I don’t want to assassinate anyone. Harryn says ‘not in cold blood’, but I don’t want to hurt people, not just not kill them! But I don’t get a chance to say that just yet.
Dara says she wants us to report anything interesting (the kind of things she would be interested in), especially anything about this Corwin, or about shadows, or about Chaosians. Victoria asks for access to the library. Dara says she’ll pay us with knowledge. And we would have to do jobs for her. It seems like everybody is agreeing to that, so I have to speak up even though I’m really scared. I say I do not want to kill people from our school. Dara says she won’t ask us to endanger anyone we don’t want harmed, or to kill our friends. She says that would be a silly thing to do. It seems we have to make a deal and I don’t dare ask for more, so I say okay as well. Everybody agrees, we can all live with this.
Dara says she thinks we can, too. And she thinks she can as well.
She turns to Dr Strange and says the ES won’t trouble him again. Also, we will take Tom to our school, even though he isn’t an orphan. He’s family. I have lots of family now.

Dara gives each of us a tarot card. It’s the Princess of Wands, and she looks just like Clara, or like Dara, I suppose. We can use the cards to contact her. Then there are tendrils of black again and suddenly we are back in the Masonic Lodge. Let’s hope we can get back to school without any trouble!

Rules I learned:

No looking at the ES
Summoning (and presumably magic in general) is much like cooking: you have to follow the recipe and clean up after yourself. No free-wheeling unless you really know what you are doing
No summoning demons
No feeding demons (except I did cook with Clara and she ate from it and then she turned out to be Dara and a demon, so I kinda broke this rule, but I didn’t know)
No calling up strange phone numbers just to hear what’s on the other end
No taking a look at the idiot-summoners rooms
No to the eating of Blue Crystals
No looking at paintings of half-naked women, even if they are art
No sitting in the deck chair, for you’ll end up on the moon and there is no air there
No going to the kitchen when soldiers are trying to find us
Losing your shadow is a bad thing.

by soronlin

The Strange Case Of The Missing Ancestors

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 21:51:52 +0000

This game ran at Ambercon UK 2014. It is only here for nostalgic reasons.

Game Description

Title:The Strange Case Of The Missing Ancestors
Players: 6
Mode: Tabletop

Okay, so the school life isn't the most important thing on your agenda right now.

In fact some of you have graduated already, sort of. Others of you sort of should have done. Life would be a little easier if you had not lost two years while wandering around Chaos looking for Doctor Strange and his family. Your friends are suddenly two years older than you and some of them ask questions that you can't answer and some of them… don't. Somehow that's worse.

And then there are those left behind, who had to take up the slack while Harryn, David, Skye, Wyonna, Vic and Catrina were missing presumed… missing. Two years of ferrying families to the safety of the island. Two years of waiting for Miss Trees or any of the dozens, maybe hundreds of people who know about the school to tell the wrong person the wrong thing.

Another year passes and things are sort of back to normal when official-looking cars pull up and there are loads of serious people in suits poking their noses in everywhere. Is the game up? Or is it merely afoot?

A game for six players. Characters comprising teenagers of between 12 and 16 years to be created by the players before the con. For Character design requirements see the right-hand bar.

This is a continuation game; new and returning characters are welcome.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans

Set in one hundred, fifty acres of idyllic Californian countryside, the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans offers a chance in life to those children who are so often failed by the modern world.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is a private foundation, funded by private donation. None of our children pay fees of any kind, and all truly gifted children are welcome.

September 1983 (click here)

September 1982 (click here)

In which the kids foiled murder and piracy on the high seas.

July 1982 (click here)

July 1981 (click here)

July 1980 (click here)

Time is Running Out

And so you returned to school, like you did after your other adventures, and term started as it unfortunately always does at the beginning of September. That Eternity Society is still out there and if they ever found out about you, you know they wouldn't hesitate to kill you, or maybe even blow the school up. Fortunately they still don't know about the school Misty Reese is still principle and her platoon of rangers still patrol the grounds. Miss Trees has infiltrated the Eternity Society and passes regular warnings to those able to foil their plans. The longer the school can continue to operate, the more children (and adults) can be rescued, but you can't help thinking its days may be numbered.

So every contact counts. Every chance to extract a family to the safety of the school or the island must be taken. And there are many still out there; it is incredible how many descendents one man can have after three and a half centuries.

Matters Arising

This is an Amber game, set somewhere within the books' sequence, although the characters know nothing of Amber, Chaos or anything else.

The date is the 21st of September, 1986.

Copyright

The images used on this page are:

They are used without permission for private, low-volume, non-commercial use, in the hope that a little free advertising will satisfy.

Returning Characters

I would be interested to know what you have been doing since the last game, and how you have been changed by your adventure. Harryn, David, Skye, Wyonna, Vic and Catrina will be one year older than last year. Others will be three years older than they would have been for last year's game. Ask me if you're confused.

Those strange pendants that you picked up have some strange powers, some of which the mysterious dark queen Fiona taught you to control:

Concentration, meditation
Feeling the amulet, empowering the body
Communication between amulets
Shadow walking: fetch me a leaf from the next room
Controlling the destiny of another amulet: have her fetch me a four-leafed clover from the next room.
Probability: throw a six

New Characters

Pre-Design Considerations

Firstly, before you begin designing the character, please keep in mind that you'll be acting as a party a lot of the time. So sociopathic loners and loony rebels are probably a bad idea.

Age

New characters should be twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen or sixteen years of age. Returning characters will, of course, be one year older than they were last year.

Primary Character Design

Shtick

Secondary Character Design

For last-year's game see The Strange Case Of The Strange Case

by soronlin

E Cigarettes To Stop Smoking

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:08:07 +0000

So can e-cigarettes help you to stop smoking?

Obviously, I have not carried out a mass randomised trial, and it seems to me that there still has not been such a trial run. One has just reported, see here, but it seems to me that it was flawed in that it did not use e-cigarettes to their full potential.

Problems

When the man, or researcher, on the street thinks of e-cigarettes, they think of the cig-a-likes in the newsagent. Those promise to offer good control, which is something researchers look for. However in tests, and in my experience, they are not as useful for giving up smoking.

It is not possible to use an e-cigarette the same as a tobacco cigarette. The technique is different; e-cigarettes are vaped with a longer, less powerful draw. This technique has to be learned.

The rate of nicotine delivery is not well understood. Almost all studies to date have used e-cigarettes that have delivered much less nicotine than the subjects are used to. In the one study that allowed experienced vapers to use their own equipment, nicotine delivery was seen to be comparable to tobacco smoking. See here.

It's Not A Silver Bullet

Ask any ex-smoker; there is only one way to give up smoking. One day you decide that you are now a non-smoker and you will never smoke again. Whatever tools you use to help you, they are only there to help you. The thing that makes you keep away from cigarettes is your own determination. Do not expect e-cigarettes to do the work for you. They wont.

My Experience

I have tried nicotine gum. It was horrible and didn't help one iota.
I have tried reducing my cigarette use in various ways. The most successful was to extend the time before I had my first cigarette. I got to 7pm, and then the anxiety got to me.

That's my bug-bear. I need to know that I have a stable supply of nicotine. Otherwise I get anxious and then I smoke more. My worst nightmare was to find I had run out of tobacco and the shops were closed.

So in September 2012 I was in Ann Arbor and there was an e-cigarette kiosk in the local mall. They didn't export. Nevertheless I bought an e-cigarette at vast expense¹ and sufficient supply of cartridges to last about six months, in fact they lasted over a year. At that point I was only intending to use them between cigarettes, to keep my intake down.

In September 2013, my fiance had had enough and made me promise to give up. At that point I was secure enough in the knowledge that I could get nicotine from the e-cigarette, that I could make the commitment. I was, as of that moment, a non-smoker. I never smoked again — well so far so good, anyway.

I made a conscious decision not to remove the smoking paraphernalia around me. I still have papers, lighter, filters, tobacco. There was a full packet of tobacco on the table behind me until Christmas, I don't know where it went, and now I don't care. I didn't even make a note of the date I quit on and count the days. The point was to remove all possibility of anxiety. There was, however one source of anxiety I had not addressed. I now had only 15 cartridges left and no way to get any more. I needed to either get a new e-cigarette or learn how to refill the one I had.

On a day trip I came across a printer supplies shop that also sold e-cigarettes and eliquid. I bought a bottle and tried refilling the cartridges. It worked, although the taste wasn't great. In browsing You Tube for tutorials on how to do that, I came across such things as clearomisers and MODs. So I did my research and sent off for an EVOD clearomiser, an eGO C-Twist battery and a few different eliquids. I finally had a stable support mechanism. Now I have three batteries, seven clearomisers with another on order and fourteen bottles of different eliquids with more on order. Definitely no anxiety.

My lungs cleared themselves, confusingly in the aftermath of a cold, in a mucus cough that lasted three weeks and worried my fiance. But now the cough is gone. E-cigarettes do cause short term coughing, but only immediately after vaping. Everyone says my complexion is better too.

So now (December 2013) I am a vaper and a non-smoker. Vaping is giving me everything that smoking used to. I'm enjoying investigating everything this new hobby has to offer; instead of a zippo lighter, I've just sent off for a ProTank 2. I can sit in quiet contemplation and enjoy the oral satisfaction of exhaling white plumes, and instead of choosing tobaccos and rolling cigarettes I now choose eliquids and fill tanks.

Every now and then, I still fancy a cigarette. But I don't smoke now, so I can't have one. I just take a puff or two on my e-cigarette and the urge goes away.

I don't know what the future holds. There's a worrying plan to regulate e-cigarettes in 2016, which may make the cig-a-likes the only legal devices. But that's two years away, and I may have given up entirely by then. Right now I am not smoking and I don't worry about it.

Update: August 2017

It's coming up to four years since I smoked. I've never felt better and there is zero chance that I will ever go back to it.

I stayed with the Protank II for a month or two and then moved up to a variable wattage "mod" and a rewirable tank. There have been a few of both of those things over the years. Currently I'm using an Innokin Coolfire IV TC100 with a Russian 3.0 tank with dual nickel coils at 0.13 ohms. I still vape at under 20 watts. I've tried increasing the power — which this equipment will do — and I hate it. I don't see what anyone sees in it. But that's the good thing about this hobby: it becomes what you need it to be. I like the tech and the fiddling but other people don't. If I had to give advice to a new smoker looking to use vaping to quit it would be this: keep reading and researching to find yourself the right equipment at the right time. There is no right and wrong thing to vape. Whatever works for you is what you should be using. Forget the cost because it's always going to be less than you would have paid for cigarettes; it's just in bigger chunks.

The Tobacco Products Directive has been a massive pain for me. My current tank is irreplaceable now because it's over 2ml, and my big bag of 30ml bottles of liquid is emptying. 10ml is the biggest bottle I can buy now. Those are annoying but acceptable. My major concern is the 20mg/ml limit on nicotine. Because I don't vape for the clouds and I like to keep down the quantity of liquid I use (it's now thought almost all the danger to health is going to be in the flavourings, which you consume in proportion to the amount of liquid you consume) I still vape 18mg/ml liquid. It is now illegal for me to purchase any liquid of over 20mg/ml. And that means that I can't mix my own liquid. It needs to be about 10% flavourings, and that's impossible when you cannot buy nicotine at over 20mg/ml.

Will It Work For You?

I have no idea if e-cigarettes will work for you like they worked for me. The research on inadequate (in my opinion) e-cigs says they are three times as effective as NRT. That's a 15% success rate instead of 5%. Anecdotal evidence seems to point to them working for 30% or more of people and that may be increasing as equipment gets more sophisticated and easier to use, and vaping becomes more socially acceptable. All I can say is that it is worth trying.

by soronlin

E-Cigarette Types

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 22:44:00 +0000

Electronic cigarettes come in various different types.

Cig-a-like

These are the ones from the newsagent. They are slim and white with a light on the end. The cartridge is often brown to match a tobacco cigarette. The cartridges are invariably pre-filled with a tobacco flavoured liquid. They may come with a choice of nicotine strengths and a choice of a few flavours, for example standard and menthol. In addition to the newsagent versions, there are other more up-market cig-a-likes. One hopes these have a higher quality.

Elusion e-cigarettes are among the e-cigarette market leaders in Australasia; … We commissioned analyses of these e-cigarettes: … nicotine cartridges (labelled 16 mg) contained 10—16 mg nicotine per mL … Vapour analyses done midway through the trial (using Goniewicz and colleagues' methodology) showed that 300 puffs from one nicotine e-cigarette cartridge delivered 3—6 mg nicotine, equivalent to smoking between one and five tobacco cigarettes.
— Electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation: a randomised controlled trial — Dr Christopher Bullen MBChB et al.

A tobacco cigarette is smoked in approximately ten puffs. These market-leading e-cigarettes are only delivering between a sixth and a thirtieth of the nicotine delivered by a tobacco cigarette. That is pitiful.

Cartomiser

Now we get into the area of the separate battery. A cartomiser (a contraction of cartridge and atomiser) is identical to the cartridge of a cig-a-like, but it is sold to be refilled and it is generally sold empty. Vapers now have a choice of eliquids from whichever vendor they choose. Most eliquid still comes from China, where the e-cigarette was invented, but some companies are sourcing their ingredients locally.

Tanks

The wadding inside a cartridge must remain wet if it is not to burn and spoil the flavour, maybe permanently. A tank system wraps the cartridge in a glass tank full of liquid. The cartridge has holes punched in it to allow the liquid to penetrate. It has the advantage of a greater capacity with more constant vapour production. But it is fiddly to fill and rather expensive.

Clearomiser

This horrible term refers to a system that places the atomiser directly in the tank, removing the cartridge with its wadding. Since atomisers have a finite life, the cheap clearomisers are disposable items. At around £5 each, that is not too much expense. The more expensive ones have replaceable atomisers, with replacements costing around £2. The disadvantage is in the control of the liquid flow through the wick and onto the coil. If not enough liquid flows the coil runs dry and the flavour tastes burnt. If too much flows the coil floods, hampering vapour production and leaking liquid onto the battery below.

Clearomisers come with an atomiser either at the top or at the bottom. Both alternatives have pros and cons. A top atomiser tastes better and delivers warmer vapour, but it can run dry when the liquid level is low. A bottom atomiser is more consistent, but can flood more easily.

Rebuildable

At the top end of the market are rebuildables, where the user has to make their own atomiser by winding the coil around a silica-based wick. They generally work like clearomisers.

Genesis

This is a high-end alternative to the rebuildable. In this design, the wick is a roll of stainless steal gauze and the atomiser is built above the tank. It gives a consistent vapour with good flavour and warmth. However setting it up is even more bother than a standard rebuildable with a silica wick, and I suspect it may leak badly if left lying down.

Battery Types

Batteries too come in various guises. They can more or less be used with any of the various types of e-cigarette above. There are only a few standards for the design of the battery to atomiser connection and adapters are commonly available and dirt cheap.

Rechargable

This is a lithium battery designed for zero maintenance. You charge it with the supplied charger, you use it. Eventually, (after a year or two,) you throw it away. Generally, rechargable batteries are larger than those supplied with cig-a-likes. They are around 15mm in diameter.

Passthrough

A passthrough battery is a rechargable battery that allows you to use it for vaping while it is charging.

Variable Voltage

There is at least one¹ rechargable battery with variable voltage. Varying the voltage allows the user to control the heat of the atomiser coil, which affects the flavour, the vapour production and its warmth.

MODs

These are battery holders. The batteries are commercially available Lithium batteries, which are charged in an external charger. MODs come in two varieties — mechanical and electronic. A mechanical MOD is simply a tube with a button. The battery is connected directly to the atomiser coil when the button is pressed. Electronic MODs have electronic circuitry between the battery and the atomiser. They deliver a constant voltage to the atomiser, which results in a more consistent vape. Some have the ability to alter the voltage and to measure the resistance of the atomiser coil. Because MODs have to hold batteries, they are larger than rechargables. MODs are generally 22mm in diameter.

by soronlin

How Electronic Cigarettes Work

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 16:21:41 +0000

The Components

An electronic cigarette consists of the following parts:

A battery with a switch
A tank containing liquid (eLiquid)
An atomiser
A mouthpiece

The battery

The battery's purpose is to provide power to the heating coil. The over-the-counter electronic cigarettes have a disposable or rechargeable battery. The switch is automatic; it detects the user drawing air in, and switches on. The more advanced ones have a separate switch that the user has to press. It isn't a problem. The even more advanced ones deliver a variable voltage (set by the user) for more control. Some are self-contained, whereas others use rechargeable batteries that you have to take out and charge. These latter are called MODs, probably because the first ones were hand-built modifications of commercial e-cigarettes.

The tank

In over-the counter electronic cigarettes the cartridge is the tank (and usually the atomiser too). It is filled with wadding that is soaked with eliquid. The more advanced ones use a simple tank that just holds the liquid. Some vapers like to do away with the tank and just drip a few drops of liquid at a time into the atomiser. It's more bother, but it improves the flavour.

The atomiser

The atomiser is generally part of the tank. It consists of a heating coil and a wick. In over-the-counter electronic cigarettes, the atomiser is hidden inside the cartridge. The wick takes liquid in controlled amounts from the tank and delivers it to the coil where it is turned into vapour.

The mouthpiece

In the over-the-counter electronic cigarettes, you just suck on the cartridge directly. The tanks generally have built-in mouthpieces, but the more expensive ones generally have a standard-sized hole where you can plug in your favourite mouthpiece. It's called a drip-tip since it was first used by the dripping fraternity. (See The Tank, above.)

Putting it all together

Here is the sort of electronic cigarette you have seen at the newsagents. This is the one I started out with, a "Clean Cigarette" that I bought from a mall in Ann Arbor. For what it is, it's good. But I spent about $200 on this and a large number of cartridges.

The red bit is the battery and the yellow cartridge screws onto it. At the base of the cartridge is the atomiser and the rest of it is filled with wadding that is soaked in liquid. There's a tube running up the centre from the atomiser to the mouth-hole at the end. I've taken one apart here to show you.

The liquid in the wadding wets the coil and the coil turns it into vapour. Meanwhile air is being drawn in from around the battery connection and is passing across the coil and up the pipe, taking the vapour with it. That's how they all work, the good ones and the bad. Everything else is optimisations and bells and whistles.

One thing you can do, once you know how it all works, is to re-fill the cartridges. For that you need a source of liquid, but there are hundreds to choose from, and they are much cheaper than pre-filled cartridges. It works out at 30-60p per day. (I vape about 1-2ml of liquid per day, at £10 per 30ml bottle.)

As a matter of fact, I've just spotted something that exposes the major flaw in this design.

Because the wadding is in contact with the heating coil, it can and does burn. That will do nothing for the flavour. Nothing good, anyway.

There's another way to improve matters, and that is to take out the wadding and drip a few drops of liquid directly onto the coil. The flavour is excellent, but a drop of fluid only gives you a couple of puffs. It's a lot of bother to go to, but some people like it.

Here is the electronic cigarette I am using now.

It's bigger and heavier, maybe twice the size and weight of the Clean Cigarette. Instead of an automatic switch, this one has a manual switch on the battery. The tank is clear plastic so you can see the level of the liquid. There's not much in this one at the moment, so you can also see the air tube going up the centre to the mouthpiece. The atomiser is hidden at the bottom of the tank, so here's one I disassembled for your delectation and delight.

It's a little different; the first is an EVOD 650mAh battery with a Kanger TS3 tank. This one is an EVOD tank with a eGO 450mAh battery. As I have said, this activity becomes a hobby. Anyway, the bit in the middle is the atomiser. You can see the air tube going up the centre and, just under the silicone washer, you can see the ends of the wick poking out. The coil itself is inside. Here's one I destroyed earlier.

Like I said, I destroyed it, the coil is a mess, but you can see how the it sits between the slots that the wick pokes out of, and the air hole below it.
Sometimes the atomiser is at the top of the tank. That's better for flavour and gives warmer vapour, but it tends not to feed the liquid in as well. Vapers get into winding their own coils, varying the air-flow, using more or less voltage on their coils, and using a stainless steel mesh as a wick. But they all work the same way.

The e-Liquid

CAUTION eliquid contains nicotine, which is a powerful poison. When vaping one ingests it slowly enough to cause no toxic effects. However in liquid form, 2ml may be enough to cause death¹. That's about the amount in a single e-cigarette. Treat it with care, always work over a paper towel and wash your hands immediately after handling it. Store it well away from children and pets, just the same as the other poisons in the home.

E-Liquid is composed of four ingredients:

Vegetable Glycerine
Propylene Glycol
Nicotine
Flavourings

All of these, except the nicotine of course, are safe for human consumption. Propylene glycol is not anti-freeze (that's ethylene glycol.) Propylene glycol is used in stage smoke machines, asthma inhalers and as an anti-bacterial in hospital air-conditioning systems. Whichever flavourings are used, they are food-quality additives.

by soronlin

An Introduction to E-Cigarettes

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 15:39:20 +0000

Over the last year the use of electronic cigarettes has grown exponentially. More and more people are using them either to help reduce smoking or to get around smoking restrictions. If you look into the topic in any detail you will find two camps. One group condemns them as unsafe and unregulated, the other praises them as a safe alternative to tobacco. Both of them point to scientific research to prove their point of view. So who do you trust?

I have another page explaining How Electronic Cigarettes Work.

Electronic cigarettes are a revolutionary technology, and I use that term in its political sense. Standard Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) uses products that are created by the pharmaceutical industry. They are regulated for quality as medicines (or close — I'm no legal expert) and they deliver a fixed dose of nicotine. These are seen by the establishment — doctors and the pharmaceutical industry — as good and vital qualities. Doctors like drugs to be given in fixed and known doses, it's how they do stuff.

However electronic cigarettes came in through the back door. They are not regulated like NRT, and they are not controlled for quality other than as consumer goods. They do not deliver a single fixed and known dose of nicotine, and they have not been tested as drugs. That horrifies anyone in the industry or medical services. It seems insanely dangerous. However the important fact to remember, is that nobody is suggesting that electronic cigarettes should be used by non-smokers. Electronic cigarettes do not have to be absolutely safe. They only have to be safer than smoking. And they are. Don't take my word for it, here's a leading expert on tobacco addiction.

Self-determination is the key. Cigarettes are a drug that the user controls. They decide how much they want and when they want it. With NRT, that control is taken away. Smoking cigarettes, especially when hand-rolled, are a ritual. Smoking is even a hobby, ask any smoker with a Zippo lighter, a painted tobacco tin or a rack full of pipes. Smokers are a community. NRT addresses none of that. Electronic cigarettes addresses all of it. Users of electronic cigarettes call themselves "vapers". They have forums to chat on. They have vaping equipment to buy either cheaply or at vast expense. And they have rituals every bit as engaging as a pipe smoker cleaning and filling a pipe. But most importantly, they are in charge of what they vape, how much they vape and when. They self-medicate, in a dosage that they determine. They are in control of their own destiny.

Electronic cigarettes are available over the counter in newsagents and chemists. But I don't recommend you use those, at least in the longer term. By all means try them out to see if you might be able to use them, but they are proven to be inferior. The manufacturers do not need to ensure that they deliver a reasonable amount of nicotine, just as the anti-lobby suggests. But there is an alternative. Electronic cigarettes are now available that are governed by market forces in the shape of informed and knowledgeable vapers. These e-cigarettes are high quality and proven to deliver nicotine in the same quantities as smoking cigarettes. Every piece of the electronic cigarette is available mix-and-matched to visible standards of quality and their contents are listed and of definite provenance. In the case of electronic cigarettes, the free market works, and works well.

Why I Hate DRM

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 21:14:20 +0000

Digital Rights Management, or Copy Protection, to give it its old name, is all around us. It makes sure that we have bought the books on our Kindle, and that we have bought our copy of Windows 8. It ensures that the hard-working writers, artists and programmers get paid. Without it pirates would steal all their creations and give them away for free. DRM is a good thing, right?

Wrong. DRM is the best way there is to alienate your customers, and it doesn't stop piracy. It is the worst of both worlds. And this is why.

A few years ago I bought an unabridged DRM'd audio book from Amazon as a Christmas gift for a friend. It was in mp3, but my friend doesn't have an mp3 player, he only has a CD player. I needed to burn the mp3 to CDs and give it to the friend as a pile of CDs.

The DRM gave me one chance to burn it to 23 CDs. It was not a hands-free operation. I had to note where each CD finished, as a five digit index number, and start the next one at the same place. It was a long-winded and terrifying process. Half-way through I thought I had got it wrong and duplicated almost an entire CD. Remember this was a gift; it was bad enough to hand over a stack of CDs with labels written in felt-tip, now I had to give it along with a note apologising for the mistake.

As soon as I had burned the CDs once, I could have duplicated them any number of times without the DRM getting in the way; it was entirely pointless to restrict the number of times I could burn them. I have never bought another mp3 audio book from Amazon, I don't even consider looking for them there, and I never will buy one from there again unless it comes DRM-free.

Every bit of DRM you put in will annoy some innocent users. The more you put in, the larger the fraction of your paying customers you irritate. If, like Kindle, you allow them to read an ebook on up to five readers, there will always be some innocent customer with six readers. There will always be the customer who wants to lend a book to their aunt, because their aunt will love it and buy the entire series.

No DRM stops piracy, you only have to look on the Internet at the vast numbers of Windows downloads to see that. Microsoft is pretty careful about stopping piracy; every copy of Windows has to be registered online or by phone using its own unique key-code. Imagine how many ebook customers that would annoy.

Back in the days of the BBC Micro, the word processor of choice was WordStar, which came on a Sideways ROM. I had a Second Processor, which meant I had more memory for my documents. But WordStar refused to work on the second processor — I had to switch it off and write my stuff on the unadorned BBC Micro. One day at a computer exhibition I came upon a representative of the distributors of WordStar and asked him why this was. It turned out it was to prevent copying: it checked to see if it was running in RAM by trying to write to itself, and if it was it would crash, on purpose, with no diagnostic or warning messages. On the second processor, the contents of the ROM were copied over the tube to the second processor's RAM, hence the test saw RAM, and the application crashed.

The thing was, every extension board on the market that had RAM, had a switch to disable writes. The copy-protection did almost nothing to stop copying, and nothing at all to stop real pirates copying the ROM into another ROM and selling it. All it did was to inconvenience innocent, paying customers such as myself.

There are many different types of pirate. Most pirates are opportunists. They will copy your product if they can do it quickly and easily, otherwise they wont.
The first, simplest piece of DRM you put in stops 90% of piracy and aggravates maybe 1-3% of your customers. That is where the Kindle is sitting at the moment. I can rip the DRM'd eBooks into unprotected versions if I want to, I know which piece of software I can use to do that. But in the main it is too much bother, and I would feel bad doing it. That small amount of protection is just enough of a disincentive to keep me honest. But if I had a good and moral reason to do it, if for instance I needed to read my books on a different reader, or if Amazon went bankrupt, the capability is there.

Other pirates are more technologically aware than the average customer. They can circumvent DRM that would stop most people. There are techniques you can use to stop them. You can have your application check its license with your servers. Then you annoy the innocent customer who doesn't have a network connection. You can register the application with the serial number of the user's hard-disk. Then you annoy the customer who had a disk crash and had to replace his hard-disk. Every piece of DRM that you add, will alienate some of your customers. The more DRM you add, the more honest customers you will drive away.

A few pirates are so good that no amount of DRM is going to stop them. You can not prevent these pirates stealing your product. Try as hard as you like, you will still find your product available for download on Pirate Bay — with all your expensive DRM stripped out. The cost of adding that much DRM is immense. Not only is it expensive to develop, support and maintain, but if you think you are stopping 99% of piracy, the chances are that you are losing half your paying customers because your DRM is so intrusive.

National Instruments allows you to install Labview on multiple PCs, even though you only have a single-user license. They allow you to change the PC and user three times a year. That lets you get out of the hole where your PC has exploded and you need to move to another, or when the developer has retired and another takes over. It also allows you to have two developers that use it one at a time for projects lasting a month or three each, and allows those developers to ask for technical support without one having to masquerade as the other. I am sure that National Instruments would prefer you to buy two licenses for that but, given that Labview costs thousands of pounds, they know that it is going to happen anyway and the goodwill they earn by making it easy, far outweighs the small number of extra sales that more stringent DRM would force.

It is always going to be galling to see thousands of people downloading pirate copies for free, while your sales stagger along in the low hundreds, but the fact is, those pirate copies are not lost sales. Most of the people who download your product would never have bought it at the price you are asking. Just as sales go up when you cut your prices, so a cost of zero produces more downloads. It would be lovely to get all those downloaders as customers, but the only way to sell to all of them is to cut your price to zero. Many people will pay a premium to buy from you. When they buy from you they know that they are supporting you and that you will support them. They get a nice feeling when they do the right thing. Other people are only downloading your product because it is free. These sort of people have vast libraries of swag that they never use. They will never be your customers and you are better off without them.

The more people there are who like you, the more customers you will have. If people feel that they matter to you, even that you will forgo sales just to make their life easier, they will go out of their way to support you. Maybe they will burn your mp3s to CDs so they can listen to them in the car, and maybe you would prefer that they buy the album twice, but they will buy your next album, and the one after that. Maybe you wince when you think of them lending that CD to a friend, and wince again when he copies it, but maybe that friend buys your next album too. On the other hand, annoying people does not endear them to you, it drives them to the pirates. Then when your next album comes out, they'll go straight to Pirate Bay.

It would be nice if every person that used your product had paid you money, but it isn't going to happen. On the other hand, everyone who uses your product and enjoys the experience, whether they have paid for it or not, is an advertisement that you don't have to pay for.

When you buy site licenses for some Microsoft products, your employees are allowed to install them on their home PCs as well. Microsoft know that it is going to happen anyway and it would be difficult for either you or them to stop it. It is far better public relations to embrace it than to annoy paying customers by trying to stamp it out.

Given that your product has been expensive to produce, some DRM is probably a good thing, but it should be the absolute minimum that stops only the most casual of copying. If you are charging thousands for your product, then, like National Instruments, you might add a little more DRM and allocate extra to your support department to field the calls from the customers you will aggravate. People who have paid that much for your product are invested enough to take a little time over it now and again. But if your product is selling for only a few pounds, then the most you should do is to stop someone dragging and dropping the files. Any more than that will probably be counter-productive. Even that much will lose you sales.

The same process operates on the Internet, with articles and pictures. Most people pay no attention to copyright and take any pictures they fancy and copy any text. Most web pages display no copyright notice or license which, in most jurisdictions, means that their content cannot be copied without infringing their copyright. People do it anyway, just as they go to Pirate Bay for their music. That is why I post my pictures on flickr and my articles here on Wikidot, both of which have the capability to display clear copyright notices. By doing that, I hope to give pirates a moment's pause. But then I make almost all of my content available for them to copy, so long as they give a nod to me and don't make more money out of it than I do. So if you want to quote this article somewhere, or use one of my pictures of cats for your own personal web page, then please go ahead. You're going to do it anyway, I may as well give you permission. On the other hand, if you want my article for a commercial publication, then you'll have to talk to me first.

by soronlin

Debugging The Manuscript

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 12:49:20 +0000

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
— Maurice Wilkes

Not many people understand programming these days. The Internet and the XBox have created a generation for whom computers are consumer boxes. Back in the 1980's it wasn't like that. To get a computer game running you had to type it in, or if you were rich enough to afford commercial games, at least know the right commands to load it from cassette tape. All the kids knew enough to be able to wander into a Tandy store, type a two line program:

10 PRINT "TRS80 SUCKS!" 20 GOTO 10

They would set it going and then run away laughing.

The glamorous art of programming, the art schools used to teach, and may soon teach again, is the art of putting a program together. First you design how it is going to work. You decide what its initial conditions will be, and what its output will be, and how it will get from one to the other. That's very boring and everyone tries to skip that bit. Then you write loads and loads of cryptic instructions to tell the computer to do what you want. That's the fun bit. That's the bit you see in the Hollywood movies. The sort of program that you write in school might be a dozen lines of code. The first time you try to run that program it will probably fail, so you find the silly mistake, and you correct it, and the program works.

And then you get a job as a programmer in the real world.

Commercial programs are measured in thousands of lines of code and not just one or two thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lines. Windows XP had forty five million lines of code. That's a lot of opportunity for making mistakes. Some of those mistakes will be trivial, like the one in the programs you wrote in school, but some of them will be so complex that they take days to fix. As a rule of thumb, programming in the real world is about one third programming and two thirds debugging, if you are lucky. That one third also includes the design work you do before you set finger to keyboard. So the actual writing of code might be only one sixth of the time you spend getting your program to work.

Nobody ever tells you that the majority of your work is going to be finding and fixing problems.

Then you give your program to the test department, and they find more problems for you to fix. Finally they accept it and it goes off to the marketing department who spend ages working their arcane magic until it is finally released to the public. Then the reviews and the support issues start coming in, and you find there are more problems that both you and the test department missed.

In school, when you wrote an essay or a story, you did it in one go from start to finish. When you wrote that final full stop, you were done. Maybe the teacher pointed out your spelling mistakes and bad grammar, but those were silly mistakes and easily fixed.

And then you get a job as a writer in the real world.

What nobody ever told you, is that the first draft is only the first step of the journey. You will be going over that manuscript again and again, finding things that don't work and correcting them. It isn't a quick process either; it will be the majority of the time you spend working on the story. You go through draft after draft until it is as good as you can make it. Then you send it to the publisher and back comes a list of more edits for you to make.

I could force the analogy further, but the problems in writing are not really the same as bugs in programs. Maybe forgetting to mention a detail of background that makes a plot point confusing might correspond to an uninitialised variable, but that's rather a stretch. Other editing tasks such as polishing the prose until it shines, engaging all the senses, or making sure the first paragraph grabs the reader, have no ready analogues in programming. But like debugging, editing is a skill that has to be learned, and it is almost entirely separate from the skills you learned in school. There are books that help you learn how to write, my favourites are the Elements of Fiction Writing series from Writer's Digest Books¹, and they tell you what your final manuscript should look like. Between the lines, you will eventually gather that editing does play a part in writing and that your first draft will not be your final one. The full truth sinks in later when you start to put all this into practice and start submitting work. Like a commercial program, it has to be smooth and perfect with no rough edges, and that takes a lot of work; more work than you ever imagined when you were writing two page stories in school, and probably more than you feared when you decided it was time to write your first novel.

by soronlin

On Being Stuck

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 13:18:05 +0000

A long time ago in a school far, far away, I was given an essay to write. I had over an hour to write a two page essay on the rise of the Nazis. That assignment made such an impact on me that even now, forty years later, I can quote that essay in its entirety word for word. Here it is:

One day Hitler jumped onto a chair.

It wasn't that I didn't know the subject; I wasn't the world authority on the Nazi party, but I had been listening. Still, I stared at that almost blank page for an hour and couldn't think what to write. It wasn't that I didn't think I was good enough; it was only a stupid essay in a subject I intended to drop the next year. It wasn't that I expected to have some mystical inspiration; nobody was going to see it except me and the teacher, and I didn't expect a gold star. I didn't have to do the washing-up, walk the dog or fetch the children; at that particular time and place I had nothing to do except write that essay. After the first five minutes or so, I knew that I would not be writing anything. I knew that that stupid sentence was going to sit there, forever alone. The longer I debated what to write, the more trivial it seemed. Nothing that my mind could come up with was worth writing.

I dropped history as soon as I could. Maths, on the other hand, I studied for rather longer. Mathematics doesn't have essays, it has proofs, and the construction of proofs is precise and and exactly defined. Nobody has to ask "is this fact important?" A fact is included if it is necessary to prove the hypothesis. If it is not necessary then it is not included. A proof starts with axioms. Axioms are the facts that are known to be true beyond a shadow of doubt. They are what define the world. If axioms were not true, then the world would be different. Next come predicates. Predicates arise from axioms, they say "if this is true, then that must be true". The first predicate arises from the axioms alone, and then each subsequent predicate arises from the axioms and the predicates that came before. The Hypothesis is that which you wanted to prove, otherwise it is identical to a predicate. It says "given these axioms and predicates, this must be true". The axioms, predicates and hypothesis form a single chain of truth, from the form of the world, to the conclusion we wish to reach. Every predicate in there is part of the chain. Every axiom is part of the chain. Every predicate is depended on by a subsequent predicate or by the hypothesis. If it isn't, then it's a blind alley and it doesn't belong. Every predicate, and the hypothesis, depends on, and only on, the axioms and predicates that came before.

It isn't easy formulating a proof. There are many blind alleys you can go down. There are multitudes of wrong approaches that you can make. Many times there is more than one valid proof of a given hypothesis, and often several different ways to represent it. People spend their entire working careers trying to prove a single hypothesis, filling page after page, hard-drive after hard-drive, but when they finally publish that proof it might only be two pages long. Every blind alley is erased, every alternative is ignored. All that remains is a single perfect chain of truth from the axioms to the hypothesis.

Writing essays is a well understood process. If I was given the same assignment today I might start with a list of things I wanted to say, arrange them in order from evidenced truths, with bibliographical references, through a sequence of arguments to the conclusion. Each argument would depend on, and only on, the truths and the previous arguments, and the conclusion would arise as a natural outcome of the arguments. Writing and ordering that list would be the hard part, although rarely a life's work. There would probably be many extraneous facts and many arguments that did not advance the thrust of the article. Those facts and arguments would have to be discarded in order to avoid confusion. Once the list was complete, writing the actual words would be trivial shovel-work. The essay would flow inexorably from evidenced fact, via reasoned argument from those facts, to the required conclusion.

Creative writing is not essay writing. The skills involved are completely different, and yet they have the same structure: axioms, predicates, conclusion¹. The axioms are what define your world. They include the whole world you build and everything in it. They define your characters, who they are and what drives them. The predicates are the events that occur in your story, each arising naturally out of previous events in view of the world you have created. These events build one after the other toward an inescapable conclusion, the changed world at the end of the story, quod erat demonstrandum. Like a mathematical proof or an essay, a story has all the events that build toward the conclusion, and no others; it forms a perfect chain of truth from axioms to conclusion.

Being stuck is not an inability to write glowing prose. Choosing the perfect words is not the task in hand when writing a first draft. If you hate the only words you can think of, highlight them for future attention and keep writing. In my experience, being stuck is not an inability to decide how to write, it is an inability to decide what to write, and there are only two reasons for that. Either you don't know what is important, or you don't know something that you need in order to write the next page. If you don't know something, then you need another axiom; you need to define something new about the world. In that case, all you need to do is to define it.

The other reason for being stuck is that you can't see where to take the story. Maybe you don't know what to write about next. That's easy: you write the next predicate in the chain between axioms and conclusion. There might be a few possibilities, but sooner or later you are going to have to write them all, because they are all necessary. So pick one, any one. If you still find you have problems then you can't find your way from where the story is, to where it needs to get to.

Remember that mathematician with the overflowing waste-paper bin and the lifetime's supply of pencils. Sometimes when you start out, you don't know where you are going. You might start out just looking for interesting facts about triangles. You prove predicate after predicate, dodging here, there and everywhere, and then finally you come across one that seems interesting and you write a paper on it. You go back down that chain of derivation, pruning out all the unnecessary predicates and axioms until you are left with a single, perfect narrative. It might take a long time to find that interesting result, and you might have to write out a lot of dead ends and boring results before you finally find one worth publishing. On the other hand, if you have a goal in mind, a lot of those dead ends will be pruned quicker. The waste-paper bin will not overflow quite so much.

If you find yourself with no way to advance toward the conclusion, then you need to either change your axioms or choose another alternative predicate earlier on in the story. It doesn't have to be something that happens on stage of course, it could be something that has happened previously that only now makes its way into the narrative. As Raymond Chandler said "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." The reason that man comes through the door, and he must have a reason, is that a chain of events happened in his past to put him there at that precise moment. You don't have to be explicit about those events; so long as him being there is believable, that's good enough. But even if the current manuscript says nothing about him, if he is now nowhere to be seen, and you want him to come through the door with a gun, something in that chain of events must change, or at least be defined.

If you know how a story is going to end, then you can keep in mind a plot structure that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. If you can see no way to advance, then you need to either back-up and find another route, or you need to change an axiom to allow you to find a route from your present situation toward your goal. Maybe instead of taking a taxi, the protagonist drove to the theater. Maybe instead of cowering before the thug, the little girl with pigtails knows karate.

There are an infinite number of ways to prove any conclusion, an infinite number of stories to be written, and an infinite number of ways they can be written. In the face of such richness, being stuck can not last. Sooner or later you will realize what needs to change in order to make the story work. It will be right, it will be beautiful, and your story will shine that little bit more.

Being stuck is your story's way of telling you that you have made a wrong turn. Trying to continue without addressing it locks you in a blind alley with no escape. You rush about pushing this way and that, and nothing works. Nothing is worth writing. The page is blank and the muse has fled, ahead is only fear, uncertainty and paralysis. If instead you welcome being stuck, if you listen to that little voice telling you that you have gone the wrong way or that there is something that you do not understand, then you can turn away from that blank wall and find your way.

by soronlin

The Strange Case Of Miss Trees By Harmony Ackerman

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 21:32:55 +0000

We didn’t have to wait a whole year for our next adventure this time. We’d only been back a couple of months when things at school started to change. For one thing, the teachers were suddenly worried about money – the usual lectures on being nice to one another and not running in corridors were replaced with instructions on how to cut the electricity bills by turning off the lights. Since Miss Flaumel is our main benefactor, this worried us a bit. We knew she was annoyed with us for almost getting caught by the ES, but we didn’t think she was that cross!

The next thing that happened was that Miss Trees didn’t turn up for class. The other teachers said she was ill, but it still seemed weird that no-one had seen her at all. She lives here, after all. Then a few days later, a police car pulled up outside the school. Four officers went into the headteacher’s office and Dave and Harryn went round to the window to listen in. To our relief, it wasn’t the ES come to take us away. They’d come to ask questions about Miss Trees, as they'd found her car crashed into a tree somewhere in the National Sequoia Park. This would have been upsetting, if they weren’t acting as if they thought she wasn’t in it when it crashed.

Of course, the head teacher couldn’t give them any useful information, so we decided to go check it out ourselves. We took the new girl, Victoria, with us – she’d been hanging around with Skye since she arrived at the school, and Skye seemed to think she could handle it. So we got ourselves a truck and Harryn drove us up to the spot the policemen had described. The car was there alright, we recognised it straight away. But the seatbelt was undone and there were no skid marks on the road, which supported the theory that Miss Trees hadn’t been in the car. Odd thing was, there was nothing else in the car either, and it was clean as a whistle. Not that Miss Trees is untidy, but why would she have her car valeted and then jump out and let it crash?

We gave up on the car and had a snoop around the surrounding area. Skye found some tracks leading up into the trees, so we followed. Further along the trail, we found a spot where something had been dragged out from under the bushes (leaving behind a patch of oil), and then the footprints were replaced with bike tracks. These led us to a dirt track and then to a main road, where the bike tracks turned back towards California. We couldn’t track it any further, so we decided to try to find Miss Trees by more direct methods.

At the end were the words ‘torpedo?’ and ‘time-bomb?’.

Victoria was reasonably calm during her first experience of 'travelling by pendant', though she did look a bit pale. We put her in between Skye and Harryn so she wouldn’t get lost, so Dave, Sean and I had to sit in the back of the pick-up. It was freezing! I was very glad when we arrived at our destination about an hour later, and not entirely surprised to find we were in Westchester, outside Miss Flaumel’s house. We knocked on the door and Miss Flaumel answered (Carmella didn’t seem to be around). We explained what had happened to Miss Trees and she said she would help us. But first she suggested we get a pendant for Victoria. Miss Flaumel wanted one for herself as well (which seemed a bit odd, but maybe she’d lost hers). Anyway, the boys went off and got them, and then we all went to bed to get a good night’s sleep.

We got a bit of a shock when we woke up. All the furniture in the house was covered in dust sheets, as if the place hadn’t been lived in for a month! Considering what happened to us last time we stayed the night in Miss Flaumel’s house, we thought it was déjà vu or something. But this time wasn’t quite the same. The date was the 22nd of September, as it should have been, and everything outside looked as it ought to. It was just the inside of the house that wasn’t right.

When we had a closer look around, we found that the bureau in the library was missing its dustsheet, and had been broken into. Naturally we had a look inside it too, and we found two very interesting pieces of paper. The first one was a letter from some private investigations agency, informing their client that a Mr Tony Sill and family had bought a 50 foot sailboat and would be somewhere in the South Pacific on the 25th September. At the end were the words ‘torpedo?’ and ‘time-bomb?’. Someone else had scribbled on the letter in pen - it said: ‘Be careful – MT’. We recognised the handwriting – we’d seen it enough times on our schoolbooks after Miss Trees had marked our work.

The second piece of paper was another family tree. This time, the family tree of one Donald Fillmore, son of Joan Fillmore and Corwin, the man who Miss Flaumel says is the common ancestor of everyone in the ES, and us as well. There were some familiar names on there – Christopher Gill, and James Tully, and also Miss Trees (whose first name, it seemed, was Michelle). Then Victoria started to cry – she was on the list too, along with her parents, who’d died in a plane crash last year. It was not nice having to explain to her that their deaths might not have been accidental. Poor Victoria.

Two of them had British accents and one sounded American, which is pretty unusual for the Australian coastguard.

Tony Sill was on the tree as well, which explained why someone was wanting to torpedo his boat. We all agreed that we couldn’t let that happen, but we only had three days to find him and warn him. It was a good job Victoria had come with us – she used to be rich before her parents died, so she knew who to speak with to find out where the best shipyards in the South Pacific were. The private investigators letter had mentioned Sydney, so we started there, and sure enough, the first place we called had sold a boat to a Mr Sill three weeks ago. From there, we were able to get the blueprints of the boat and some information about the Sill’s destination. Meanwhile, Harryn and Dave went off to another world to acquire a boat for us. Best not to ask how they did it!

So, soon we were sailing off into the Pacific. Victoria was the Captain, cos she was the only one who knew how to sail. The boys crewed the boat while Skye and I drove the pendants, concentrating on the pictures of Mr Sill’s boat that we’d found. We didn’t get very far before we saw another boat approaching, but it wasn’t Mr Sill, it was an Australian coastguard boat. The boys kept calling it a PT boat, but I don’t know what that stands for. Anyway, it definitely looked like it was armed.

The guys on the boat hailed us and asked if they could come aboard to do some routine checks for drugs. We couldn’t really say no, so we let them on. Dave watched them very carefully to make sure they didn’t plant anything! We weren’t sure whether they were genuine or whether they were ES, but two of them had British accents and one sounded American, which is pretty unusual for the Australian coastguard. Eventually they went back to their boat and sailed away. So we did too, but this time we used the pendants as much as we could to cut down on the distance we needed to travel.

It was an hour or so later when we heard the explosion. There were no other boats in sight, so we came to the conclusion that the ES had managed to plant the timed bomb and it had gone off. We really thought we were too late, but when we got closer, we saw four people in an inflatable lifeboat. It was Mr Sill, his wife and two children.

As we were helping them aboard, we saw the PT boat arrive on the scene. That’s when things got really scary! Next thing we know, they’re firing at us. Of course, the first thing we tried to do was lose them by going to another world with the pendants – but to our horror, it didn’t work! It was the first time they’d ever let us down. Luckily, when we tried to make the waves more choppy to put some mist in between us and them, that did seem to work. However, it seemed that the ES had some powers too, cos then a huge shark started attacking our boat. They hadn’t reckoned with Victoria, though, who seems to be able to talk to dolphins (I know, I know, but nothing surprises me anymore). She got the dolphins to chase the shark away, and we were off.

The pendants were still behaving strangely so we had to be clever about what we did to lose the PT boat. We managed to make a small atoll, and then another one, and then we made some rocks appear off the coast between us and them. That did the job – we heard a loud crunching noise and when we looked back, the PT boat wasn't following anymore. We all breathed a sigh of relief!

That was when Harryn came up with his theory about the pendants. He thought that someone was manipulating them to make us go in a particular direction. It was worrying to think that someone was herding us, but there wasn’t much we could do, because Mr Sill’s young daughter Regina had been hit by some shrapnel when the boat exploded and she needed a doctor. So when the next atoll we came to had a harbour and a town with a hospital, we didn’t have much choice but to stop.

The SWAT team had threatened to kill everyone inside if they didn’t come out with their hands up.

After we took the Sills to the hospital, we decided to leave our boat behind and travel by land, and see if that was any more successful. We promised Mr Sill we would come back for him later – he knew about the ES and that they were trying to kill him, but he still wanted to go home. I don’t know why, it’s not like he has to finish school! As it turned out, the pendants weren’t working any better on land than they had been by sea. We found ourselves approaching a beach hut, and Sean bravely decided he would go and have a closer look. Turns out he’s not that great at sneaking – he was soon spotted by the people who owned the hut. Luckily it was only Misty Rease and Miss Trees, so no harm done!

Miss Trees explained to us why she’d left the school. She’d realised that the ES were watching her, and so she fled to Miss Flaumel’s house for help. When she got there, she found that Miss Flaumel had left and the house was deserted. And then we turned up. She didn’t want us to know it was her, so she made some kind of illusion to make the house look normal and make herself look like Miss Flaumel. Then when we gave her a pendant, she was able to leave our world and go and find Misty. I don’t know how Miss Trees does her illusion thing, but it's really cool! She made us tea in some posh china cups, but then as we were drinking from them, they turned into old chipped mugs. I wish I could do that!

Knowing that we would find the note and go rescue the Sills, Miss Trees and Misty then did something to the pendants to make us arrive at the atoll. Actually, I think it was mostly Misty that did that, but it was Miss Trees idea to start evacuating all of the people that the ES are after to this world. Misty explained that Miss Flaumel had been called back to Amber, and would not be returning to our world for a long time. So now it's up to us to save people from the ES.

Our first task was to rescue Miss Trees' brother Douglas. When Miss Trees realised the ES were watching her, she sent a message to Douglas to warn him to leave home and get to the safehouse in Los Angeles that they'd set up previously. So we all set off back to our world to find him and bring him back to the atoll. Miss Trees and Misty came with us, but when we arrived, there was a limousine with blacked out windows waiting in the car park. We agreed that Miss Trees and Misty would try to distract the ES whilst we went to get Douglas, then we'd all meet up at the McDonalds about five miles down the road. We got out of the car and Miss Trees and Misty drove away. The limousine followed them immediately.

Meanwhile, we got ourselves the most normal looking van we could find and went to the hotel where Douglas and his family were staying. Skye and me went to reception and got the chalet number, then went to speak to Douglas, while the others waited outside. I didn’t see how it started, but while we were waiting for Douglas and his family to pack, we heard a commotion from the car park, so me and Skye decided to take the Trees family to the meeting point on our own. Later, we got the message through the amulets that the boys and Victoria had managed to knock out three ES henchmen and were going to dump them in another world so that they couldn’t report back.

Skye, me and the Trees family were the first to arrive at McDonalds - and to see the road blocks and the SWAT team outside. We spoke to Miss Trees through the amulets, and she confirmed that she and Misty were inside, along with lots of families with kids, and the SWAT team had threatened to kill everyone inside if they didn’t come out with their hands up.

Well, we know the ES are nasty bastards (Mr Sill’s words, not mine), but we didn’t think they’d do what they said they were going to do if they thought it would get them too much attention. So we started phoning around all the local newspapers and radio stations to report an imminent massacre in McDonalds. Sure enough, the local press turned up in their droves, and it was obvious that the SWAT team guys were none too pleased. Meanwhile, Misty and Miss Trees snuck away through the ladies room using the pendants.

We all met up again at the atoll, and Miss Trees was very pleased to see Douglas and his family alive. It isn’t safe for any of them to go back, so it’s all up to us now (and maybe Misty, if she’ll help). Problem is, without Miss Flaumel, there is no-one on our side to continue researching the family tree. How many more people are there on the Eternity Society’s list that we don’t know about? I wonder if the school could arrange some genealogy lessons…

by soronlin

Writing and Roleplay

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 09:08:12 +0000

I've just come up against a deadline. I had to come up with a concept for my latest work of fiction by the end of July. Fortunately all I needed was the blurb. The next deadline is September 21st. By then it must to be completed; there will be no second chances, no excuses. I will publish it to six people. Eight hours later it will be finished with. Only those people will ever experience it.

The blurb is for them, those six people, to entice them to want to experience my work. It isn't for my publisher, she is crying out for product. She publishes around twenty four works a year and will accept anything she is offered. She has a difficult enough task to find so many; she can't afford to pick and choose. There is a down-side of course; I don't get paid. In fact I have paid a considerable amount to publish my work and experience three works others will be publishing.

If it were a book it would be a novella, maybe twenty or thirty thousand words, but I wont write down any of those words. I will piece together the plot structure, do my research, plan the set-pieces. And then, in those eight hours, those six people and I will create the story. There will be no extensions, no editing, just eight hours, once through, from beginning to end. Those six people haven't seen my preparation and never will, but they will be working against me all the way, trying to find a way to avoid the set-pieces or turn the plot troughs into plot peaks. They will take the story to places I haven't researched or in directions I haven't considered. They are good, some of the best in the country. My job is to guide the story to a satisfactory conclusion via a timely and satisfying climax, preferably the one I have planed.

The present work in progress is the central piece of what I hope will eventually become a trilogy of trilogies. It is an ongoing story with continuing characters. And that means that those six people have to enjoy themselves, because if they don't, then next year they will chose something else. This year I will find out if I did a good job last year. If I didn't then I will have to invent a way to continue the story with none of the existing protagonists. That won't be easy… or pleasant. The trilogy of trilogies will become a series of four works, with a disagreeable blob on the end; the sort of series about which people say "it started well, but it went downhill and trailed off."

No pressure then.

I suppose you want to see the blurb now.

Title:The Strange Case Of The Strange Case
GM: Richard Urwin
Players: 6
Mode: Tabletop

Life at the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is not a bed of roses; the academic regimen is punishing and the discipline is worse, and then there are the people who are trying to kill you. It has been over a year now since you discovered the truth about the Eternity Society and you are just about getting used to being scared most of the time. You fondly remember the times when all you had to face was a pair of sabre-toothed tigers or a dozen demons. Miss Flaumel has disappeared and Miss Trees has left the school. Now you have no insider in the Eternity Society, intelligence is rare and you have little hope that any attack will be forewarned. The new deputy head, Miss Reese, has brought with her a few new security guards that are occasionally seen around the school and grounds. Their green and brown uniforms are very smart, but what's with the swords? Sooner or later the school will either be attacked or closed, but for the time being it remains the only hope for the scattered descendants of the mysterious Corwin.

With the new school year you settled down to classes again. For some, if not all, of you this would be your final year at the school. And then the note arrived. Contact had been made with another family and someone had to extract them before the ES got to them first. It seemed an amusing diversion before supper, but darker events were afoot.

A game for six players. Characters comprising teenagers of between 11 and 15 years to be created by the players before the con. For character design requirements see the web-page or contact the GM.

This is a continuation game; new and returning characters are welcome.

See: http://www.soronlin.org.uk/the-strange-case-of-the-strange-case

by soronlin

The Strange Case Of The Strange Case

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 16:48:10 +0000

This game ran at Ambercon UK 2013. It is only here for nostalgic reasons.
Read Katie's journal here.

Game Description

Title:The Strange Case Of The Strange Case
Players: 6
Mode: Tabletop

Life at the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is not a bed of roses; the academic regimen is punishing and the discipline is worse, and then there are the people who are trying to kill you. It has been over a year now since you discovered the truth about the Eternity Society and you are just about getting used to being scared most of the time. You fondly remember the times when all you had to face was a pair of sabre-toothed tigers or a dozen demons. Miss Flaumel has disappeared and Miss Trees has left the school. Now you have no insider in the Eternity Society, intelligence is rare and you have little hope that any attack will be forewarned. The new deputy head, Miss Reese, has brought with her a few new security guards that are occasionally seen around the school and grounds. Their green and brown uniforms are very smart, but what's with the swords? Sooner or later the school will either be attacked or closed, but for the time being it remains the only hope for the scattered descendants of the mysterious Corwin.

With the new school year you settled down to classes again. For some, if not all, of you this would be your final year at the school. And then the note arrived. Contact had been made with another family and someone had to extract them before the ES got to them first. It seemed an amusing diversion before supper, but darker events were afoot.

A game for six players. Characters comprising teenagers of between 11 and 15 years to be created by the players before the con. For Character design requirements see the right-hand bar.

This is a continuation game; new and returning characters are welcome.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans

Set in one hundred, fifty acres of idyllic Californian countryside, the Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans offers a chance in life to those children who are so often failed by the modern world.

The Carlos Cory School for Gifted Orphans is a private foundation, funded by private donation. None of our children pay fees of any kind, and all truly gifted children are welcome.

September 1982 (click here)

In which the kids foiled murder and piracy on the high seas.

July 1982 (click here)

July 1981 (click here)

July 1980 (click here)

Time is Running Out

And so you returned to school, like you did after both of your other adventures, and term started as it unfortunately always does at the beginning of September. That Eternity Society is still out there and if they ever found out about you, you know they wouldn't hesitate to kill you, or maybe even blow the school up. Fortunately they still don't know about the school, and Misty Reese has returned and brought a platoon of rangers with her, just in case. Miss Flaumel is still away, but Miss Trees has taken her place and is administering her affairs. The longer the school can continue to operate, the more children (and adults) can be rescued, but you can't help thinking its days may be numbered.

Matters Arising

This is an Amber game, set somewhere within the books' sequence, although the characters know nothing of Amber, Chaos or anything else.

The date is the 21st of September, 1983.

For the family tree you found last year see the attachment below. The previous two are on last year's page.

Quotes

A lovely exchange that took place while the old hands were hamming it up for the newbies:

Harryn: I'll drive the minibus. Who will take the shortcuts?
Skye: I'll take the shortcuts.
Dave: I'll ride shotgun.
Skye: [Take's a large gun from a holdall] Here's a shotgun.

Copyright

The images used on this page are:

They are used without permission for private, low-volume, non-commercial use, in the hope that a little free advertising will satisfy.

Returning Characters

I would be interested to know what you have been doing in the past year, and how you have been changed by your adventure.

Those strange pendants that you picked up have some strange powers, some of which the mysterious dark queen Fiona taught you to control:

Concentration, meditation
Feeling the amulet, empowering the body
Communication between amulets
Shadow walking: fetch me a leaf from the next room
Controlling the destiny of another amulet: have her fetch me a four-leafed clover from the next room.
Probability: throw a six

New Characters

Pre-Design Considerations

Firstly, before you begin designing the character, please keep in mind that you'll be acting as a party a lot of the time. So sociopathic loners and loony rebels are probably a bad idea.

Age

New characters should be eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen or fifteen years of age. Returning characters will, of course, be one year older than they were last year.

Primary Character Design

Shtick

Secondary Character Design

by soronlin