Samnell's page

The thing is, once you add ABP and 3-action economy, it's not really PF1 any more and likely not what many "please just fix few small things but I've never had a problem with +2 swords and swift actions" people want.

That's kind of where I am. A lot of the issues that people have had with the game going back to August of 2000 are things I either don't think are problems or are, at least for me, genuinely good for the game and ought to be preserved. I don't mean like caster-martial disparity, which is egregious, but stuff like the Christmas Tree effect, wands of CLW, or magic not being "mysterious" and/or "rare", neither of which it has ever been in any mechanical sense. I honestly don't even mind a lot that the game fundamentally changes when players get access to teleportation, flight, or divinations.

'So we go straight to the barracks and whack 'em?; Looking at his big friend, Trimin sighs, "I don't doubt that, but I don't know if that will get our questions answered." He looks at the others, "What do you think, start at the top and work our way down, or start at the bottom and work our way up?" He then jerks on Namtar's pants, er shorts, er kilt, eeerrrr Dangly cloth??? adding "And stop calling me master."

Namtar married the last guy that tried that. Then there was the tragic affair of the three goats and one baboon. He doesn't like to talk about it.

So the Sleeping Peck, then?

Sorry. Delayed by sickness.

"Let us tarry not," Giosue said, speaking a quick incantation.

Haste for everyone. Enjoy your murder.

Still here.

Perc: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (10) + 6 = 16

"Just so," Giosue agreed. "But we cannot purge our entire path. We would be disobedient to our mission if we tarried."

Mittens? Jakun? Caitlyn?

Look at me, on top of things! :-P

I hope Thurvek doesn't kill you all!

Why must you hope for my dreams to die?

Ranek nodded in agreement, and pulled out his wand of shield. He didn't know how useful it would be if they encountered a dragon, but it was certainly better than nothing.

[dice=Perception]1d20

Ranek walked into an illusory wall covering the dragon's open mouth, then laid down quietly to take a nap. :)

The company ascended the spiraling tunnel that reached back and up for some sixty feet before ending in a chimney which ascended straight through the mountain. A rope dangled down from above, spiked into the wall and just long enough to reach the ceiling and a foot or two past, where heavily gouged rock like that in the previous cavern formed the chimney's walls. Misty air filled the space.

The keen-eyed among the company noted recent tracks, about the same vintage as the hanging rope at their best guess.

Samnell wrote:

Sorry everyone. Brief illness coincided with sleep deprivation and my mother having eye surgery done.

It's cool Samnell, hope you and your mother are doing better.

Not sure what to do here. I am going to say that having Tribim strip down, smear his body with honey and run through the building is OUT.

Tribim looks nervously from the bear to the others...

She's better than before, actually. They cut into her eye and now she doesn't need glasses in that one. Next is next Monday.

Also anything involving slathering things on nude halflings is likely to work in one of my games...

WOW that's a bad roll!

It's a gift. For Shadow. The club he'll use to beat us to death.

I just realized now that it's highly likely that I've confused Stephen Oates (John Brown biographer) with James Oakes (who used to be a pretty good historian but seems to have gone badly to seed in the last decade). Reception for his last book was basically: WTF, dude? Are you high? Anyway, having read some of Oakes -Slavery & Freedom, an essay or two- I believe he's a major dick.

Anywho, remember when I used to talk about what I read here? Good times.

So I finished Masterless Men not long enough ago. It's bad. Bad enough that I kind of want to yell at the author. That's not going to happen for a bunch of reasons, some of which are good.

Let's start with the good: as an ethnography of desperately poor Southern whites, it seems perfectly fine. They're an under-studied demographic and she's done good work there and provided some valuable pushback against the Southern Agrarians -a pack of reactionaries who were an influence on Genovese- that needed to happen. She rightly calls one of 'em out for basically writing about the South he wanted to believe in rather than one supported by crazy stuff like evidence.

Now let's move on to the bad, which is in the previous sentence. There are tremendous methodological issues with studying subaltern people, compounded when those people don't leave us much or any written record of their own. Those can't be helped. What could have been helped was bothering to support the main argument of the book with, well, anything. She absolutely gets how the enslaver class feel that very poor whites are a problem for the maintenance of slavery, but the work to go from that to showing that really are? Basically jack. The idea that they're allies for the Republicans? Handwaved by reference to interracial friendships and situational cooperation.

You would expect a scholar in this position to anticipate counterarguments, which she does. What about white supremacy? The idea that poor whites too fear a world racially leveled, or the results of a slave revolt, or otherwise have investment in whiteness? That's -I am not kidding, this is what she says- something that future historians are going to have to look at, but they'll find that she's right.

What.

I spent the back half of this book trying to figure out how something like this could even happen.

After that I read one of the few books on slavery in the North, The First Emancipation. It came to me all the way from Wales and it was pretty good but basically what it says on the tin.

Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 was next and a bit of a trip. It's surprisingly spare for a microhistory and not expansive enough to be a survey, so it suffers on both ends. Paragraphs are just "here are ten people who worked in this trade." But that's almost the only thing said about them, aside from their owning other people. The author's main point is to push back against the benevolent interpretation of small-scale black enslaving (most black enslavers are presumed to own loved ones and friends and treat them as free). It does that, but the more the book goes on the more clear it becomes that the author assumes black enslaving is exploitative by design and intention, which is contradicted by his own earlier chapters. Hazards of pushing back too hard on an old argument, I guess.

Then it's John Brown biographies. David Reynolds' John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights is good but gushy. I understand from some reviews that Reynolds maybe didn't do all his homework either. It's also a cultural biography so it's more about John Brown's world than Brown himself. He's the star, but it's not really a life. He also thinks John Brown didn't have a racist bone in his body.

I've read enough of Brown's own prose to know that's not true. He's certainly way less racist than most whites, sometimes stunningly so, but he also has a condescending white savior thing going on. I genuinely like Brown quite a lot. I'm primed to dig the guy by just about everything. I would like to believe Reynolds, but there's no way.

With those issues in mind, I ended up dropping it right after Pottawatomie in favor of picking up Stephen Oates To Purge This Land With Blood which is older but way better at getting into Brown's head. I basically picked it up with Brown in the stage of his life right before he goes to Kansas. He's out of there now, working on a new plan for activities elsewhere. Something about a ferry.

The sword does not detect as evil. It's not tainted by a corrupting, malevolent force like Jakun or something.

Caitlyn found a disused, dusty chamber bare save for a few bits of dislodged wall.

Been a while. Looks like I was reading Winthrop Jordan at last account. Very good. Very dense.

Then it was This Vast Southern Empire which was ok, but I think reaching really hard in some places. Like most reviewers, I think he's much stronger on the later parts than the early. It's never quite clear that he should really be speaking of slaveholders as a class doing things rather than an element of enslaver opinion.

Then came Stamped from the Beginning which is far more poppy than it lets on. It's not bad and might make a decent first book to read on racism, but it oversells itself. It's a survey of anti-black racist ideas specifically. It also falls into the same tedious trap I've seen elsewhere of assuming poor whites must be deluded in order to accept the advantages of whiteness as an acceptable deal.

Since I finished that, I've gotten into Masterless Men about desperately poor whites in the antebellum South. It's going to the same places as Stamped did. I get the impression that the author is a trained labor historian who doesn't quite get white supremacy. She's angling for these poor whites as maybe an incipient proletariat that would unite with the GOP and hasn't done much groundwork for that argument yet, despite the book being half done. It's obvious that enslavers fear that, but they also fear that about yeomen, urban white professionals, and their own class. Connecting the dots with the impoverished themselves has not happened at all, though race is the last chapter.

How are we doing on hitpoints? I'm down a little but could use some of my points to channel some healing.

The regular hp damage is enough to get through with a night's rest and a channel energy or something before bedtime. Consider everyone maxed to what their current Con permits.

Thats some detailed info. You're the first GM I've had who makes knowledge skills feel like they are worth having!

Thank you. :) Research is a hobby of mine (19th century politics, slavery & white supremacy stuff...you don't want to see my browser history) and I enjoy making up little frames to put information in so it feels more IC.

I think it's safe to say all of you are either being used or being considered for use by ancilla or older Kindred in the city. The Prince just gets to strong arm more directly, RHIP.

Only being considered? What are we, NPCs? :)

Finally, after two months, finished Roll, Jordan, Roll. I quite enjoyed reading it and will now have to purchase another copy (hopefully, used) as it has disintegrated into three different pieces.

Welcome to the I read Roll, Jordan, Roll and all I got was a Bunch of Good Information, Some Valuable Insights, and Dubious Ideas About Paternalism Club! We're still working on the name. :)

Humans are cool, Halflings are better

One of these days I want to run/play in an all-halfling game.

Finished up The Slave Ship: A Human History. It was really good, but the presentation got a bit disjointed sometimes. A few too many vignettes and not enough bridging and integration in some of the middle chapters. The final stuff on the Brooks was great. You may not have heard of it, but you have seen the Brooks. The drawing of all the slaves slotted in like lumber is of it and that's in about every textbook. It's the image of a slave ship.

White Over Black arrived yesterday, exactly on cue. Ordered used, expected one of the typical academic paperbacks: a little chunky and nondescript. I got...the Pelican edition from 1969. It's the same format as a fiction paperback, complete with their trade dress and a $2.95 price printed on the cover. It's actually kind of adorable. I've never had an original Penguin/Pelican (the main line is Penguin, Pelican is the non-fiction imprint) in my hands before. I can see how people get attached to the things. The format is a little awkward to read non-fiction in; tiny margins and thick text don't go together well, especially when trying to be mindful of the spine.

The thing about the density, though? This thing is dense and it's not the kind of BS dense you get sometimes where academics are just terrible writers or desperately tapdancing over how they're not really sure about something. When Winthrop Jordan sits down with you, he crams more into a sentence than a lot of authors do in paragraphs. Pretty sure my two chapter a day plan is right out for this one and I couldn't be happier. Jordan is thorough to the point where sometimes you have to stop and reread a little to catch the fine distinctions he's making. The slavery studies guy I used to know would always reference him and then recommend laypeople get the mid-Seventies abridgment instead and now I know why.

I am not one of those filthy casuals.

They're all good distinctions. The first chapter largely hinges on the distinctions between Englishness, blackness, heathenry, Christianity, and savagery. All of them mean different things in different ways at different times and indifferent settings...and he runs the permutations.

Thus the English in the 1500s (and maybe into the middle 1600s, but not in the West Indies) have an idea of blackness which has strong negative associations, but those don't immediately apply to black people lock, stock, and barrel. Englishmen called villains black-hearted and thought of black sins long before they had any sustained encounter with sub-Saharan Africans; they get how metaphors work.

Yet blackness is a big marker of visual distinction with a negative payload that intersects with heathenry, because West Africans are not Christian and that is not good. But they are also savages, to English minds, which is the opposite of being English in a different way. Heathenry is less significant a variable when regarding West Africans than it is with regard to Native Americans, though it does matter for both. So does savagery, but savagery becomes a more important characteristic for Africans. (I'm also skipping a fair bit of squicky stuff about stereotyped understandings of sexuality because ew.)

Jordan attributes the distinction in large part to the fact that Englishmen went to live on land where they expected to share space with Native Americans and might Christianize them. Further they conceptualized them as nations from an early stage, whereas West Africans are de-nationalized and subordinated so it helps, conceptually, to focus on them more as savage (unEnglish) whereas conversion is more sought (if still sporadically and nothing like the Spanish try) among Native Americans.

All those moving parts aren't even a full chapter. The second one goes into detail as miuntely as possible about the development of de facto slavery in the English New World.

I hope its not a stretch having a Halfling Hero guided by the gods to aid the elves? Which in turn should help Halflings overall

Everyone knows those elf gods are the perviest of halfling fanciers. :)

Well hello there. Dot.

Thinking a gold elf wizard/cleric, maybe a runaway noble: "You want me to marry who?! But I've got research to do!"

Wages of Whiteness is all done. It was good for clarifying and expanding on a lot of stuff I already kind of knew, which is the ideal experience for reading a seminal work. Surprisingly interesting stuff about blackface.

I have most of a week (maybe more) before another seminal work gets to me so I'm spending it on The Slave Ship: A Human History. It's specifically a history of the thing, rather than a general slave trade history, but so far there's a huge amount of overlap. The main issue I have is that it's a little disjointed. The lion's share of the chapters to date are series of vignettes that illustrate points, without a lot of connective tissue. They're all really interesting, but not quite fitting together for me.

Since I've finished that, I decided to finally take that brief break I've promised myself for about five months and read fiction:The Lies of Locke Lamora. It's funny so far, though the skipping around the timeline got me a little confused at first.

Finished it. The second quarter got a bit slow, but the back half really picked up. Started The Wages of Whiteness, basically the book that invented whiteness studies, a few days ago. I think it's about equal parts the one book break from history and that it's much closer to my wheelhouse than the previous two histories, but I'm really digging it. Second day I'm back to my two chapter a day standard and I'll probably finish the thing tomorrow. They're shorter chapters in a shortish book, but I'll take what I can get.

Went into the antique store for my semiannual book crawl. Came out $20 lighter and six books heavier. The first is a paper copy of At the Hands of Persons Unknown, which I was really disappointed with as an ebook. Picked up out of morbid curiosity and found the citations that let me down on the digital copy. Those were worth three bucks. Also got the first volume of Remini's Jackson hagiography, which I'll get to eventually.

Others:
Lincoln and the Decision for War, which was one of those hot new histories in 2014ish.

Confederate Reckoning, a leading book in the endless-internal-dissension argument about the Confederacy.

Black Society in Spanish Florida, which absurdly excites me because everyone tends to take a glance at Spanish Florida and shrug it off despite knowing the situation there is really important for colonial South Carolina and Georgia.

Jefferson Davis, a late Seventies biogrpahy of the dude. Davis is one of those guys who attracts wildly different takes and I have no idea how this one holds up. I basically impulse bought it.

And that's where it all went wrong. The guy at the antique store has opinions about Confederate monuments and started to bend my ear about how if we lived in the South that book would be burned by now. You want to play? Fine. It turned out he did not want to play it, but I got him worked up enough that something green and vile flew from his mouth at me. Landed on his glass counter top. (Related: I haven't eaten any food since.) After about two minutes and maybe six sentences back and forth he said there was no point in talking to me about it. I smiled, just a touch viciously, and told him this stuff is literally what I study.

In slightly-related news I've taken charge of the youtube archive of the AskHistorians podcast, which has been fallow for about six months and is years behind. So if anybody wants a roughly daily stream of new content for the next month or so, it's here. Latest episode is about four natural disasters in Alaska. My two as guest will be up in around 40 days. I'm working through the back catalog, so it will eventually catch up and then be about biweekly.

Note: I'm not looking to start a discussion.

Ok. We differ, but I'll leave it be.

Samnell wrote:

During his training of the refugees, Loren feels hot animal breath pass over him hears stampeding hooves. They had an odd finality to them, like the end of a long journey that also marked the start of a new one.

And you can use your divine powers now, as soon as you get a medallion from Mittens.

Woot! Now I get to slaughter the lambs! Uh, I mean, shepherd them to safety. >_>

Also you must ritually slay and bathe in the blood of one human child for every cow you have partaken of meat from. Pretty standard stuff.

After a quarter hour, perhaps a bit more, Hammer Lord Lathkiera Morlund entered the room. Her blue and spotless blue and purple robes hung precisely from her spare frame. She held her hands so the gloves on both betrayed not a wrinkle. She had the look of a hard woman who did not suffer fools gladly in her pinched lips and steel gaze. She wore her just starting to gray hair cut short enough to see the scalp beneath.

With her came a dusky-skinned man with a fully shorn head covered with a skullcap. He looked to be scarcely an adult, but his pale gray robes couldn't hide the heavy limp at each step or the deliberate way he moved. He bore the cold, blank look of a man bent on mastering himself. His fingers showed an angry redness, which darkened to near black in some places, and the same marked his ears and the tip of his nose. The Hammer Lord stood near to him, but spared him not a glance as she took her place in the chamber.

"Well met," she said, voice cool and even. "You must accept my apologies for the delay." Morlund paused just long enough for the gray-robed man to regain her side. "You are come here for divers reasons, some bound to us by many chains and others by the gods' decree. They are all your own."

"Hammer Lord, I am grateful to you," the limping man said in a thin voice, showing much strain. He spoke with a thick accent and a rising and falling intonation.1 "But it will not honor our gods to make a compulsion of this. We are all racked enough in our own ways, to shed our own tears."

"Nonsense," she said at once. "The gods' will is the gods' will, even as they watch us now. It is they who weave these fates, not I."

The limping man looked set to argue the point, but bowed his head anyway. The motion clearly pained him.

"Now then, on behalf of Tyr Grimjaws and Torm Truesayer, I call upon you eight in a matter of relief and obligation to our kindred faith, which Brother Bardeid of Ilmater will explain."

"My thanks, Hammer Lord," the limping man said. "Worthies, I am hight Bardeid Jassan, Adorned of Ilmater. My home is the Monastery of St. Fanal, which has suffered a grave loss."

"Our reliquary houses the mortal remains of St. Bakau the Tongueless, of Shoonach. He preached against the reign of the... Bardeid visibly searched for a proper word. "Necromancer King, who placed him under many torments for the amusement of his court. Still, Bakau preached and they felt a quailing in their hearts. The Shoon answered it by pulling his tongue from its roots and casting him in a dark place, but still Bakau prayed. Ilmater heard the words within his tears and gave them too to Fanal, who wrote each word though he knew not his letters and became a great teacher before his own martyrdom."

"It is the sacred calling of St. Fanal's to preserve and learn the lore of ages past, so we may learn from it the roots of suffering. The Shoon claimed Bakau's life after nine long years of torment, then burned his body in black fires and caught the ashes in three urns: for his tongue, his head, and his heart. They were to be taken to the far corners of Shoon's imperium and scattered, so St. Bakau might not rise to be twice martyred."

"In the Necromancer King's court remained one woman moved by Bakau's testimony. In atonement for her many sins, especially the joy she once felt in seeing Bakau's torment, she stole the urns before they could be scattered and carried them off to the hands of the faith. Her name is lost to us now," Bardeid bowed his head in deep sorrow and shame. "The three urns are the most sacred relics of my order, but they were lost to us a century ago. We believe cultists of Bhaelros2 or Loviatar -forgive me, Loviatar Screamkindler- took them from us for some dark purpose."

"Many of our faith martyred themselves in the search, but in the end we came to believe the loss of St. Bakau another scourge we must endure. Last year, our flagellations brought a revelation from the Crying God. The urns had come to the Savage North, where we would face new trials but may regain them. The vision showed a steep copper mountain with a tower and village at its foot. Ours is an order of scholars, but we dispatched word to other houses of the Crying God and a small company formed for the quest. I begged leave to join them as the expedition's historian."

Brother Bardeid paused and looked briefly at one of the hard chairs, but turned from it and straightened his back.

"We came to your lands too late, with the summer gone and the passes closing. We spent the coldest months in Waterdeep, learning your tongue and what awaited us. Our best efforts could bring only rumors. As soon as the thaws began, we set out to follow the River Rauvin. We took the Moon Pass3, on the advice of letters from Brothers and Sisters in Silverymoon who warned us those hungry for enchanted items and other secrets watch it most closely." Broder Bardeid sighed, "I would have liked to see the Vault of Sages. We had no time for the Edificant Library or Candlekeep."

"The late snows delayed us in the pass and wicked men fell upon us. Our warriors were strong and righteous, but the bandits were many. I survived the battle only from their contempt. Their horses dragged me for miles through the rocks and ice, then they stripped me, scourged me, and sent me unclad into the snow. I prayed, but became lost in the white cold. I laid down for my last night, but the patrols of your city found me and brought me here."

"I am a broken man now," Brother Bardeid said without shame. "The brotherhood of the Triad has done its work to spare my life, but I never was fit for questing. My Brothers told me to remain home, but I would not hear them. Now Law and Duty speak and them I hear: the vision sounds of the place called Auvandell, near to Sundabar."

"For the restoration of my relics I give my body and life gladly, though they will not buy it. I pray you, take up my quest. Restore the urns to my hands and I will take St. Bakau to his final home."

1 Ariyana and Aldondrick place him as a native speaker of Alzhedo, the tongue of Calimshan.
2 The southern god of destruction, often likened to Talos Stormlord.
3 The Moon Pass is southeast of Sundabar.

Day 1: Kythorn 16, Year of the Worm (1356 DR)

Noon in Sundabar. Somewhere above the blanketing clouds, the sun must shine. Only a dirty gray light struggled through to show on the city's looming stone. A hard wind blew from the Spine of the World, tearing at cloaks, doors, shutters, and biting exposed flesh. It carried snow enough to carpet the cobbled streets almost to the depth of a grown human's knees, far more where it caught under eaves and against buildings. The storm narrowed every street to a path wide enough for a wagon, at best, save those where countless feet must pass.

Sundabarians fastened their shutters tight, pushed hard against the drifts where they blocked doors, and stepped mindful of the slick ice that might lay beneath. Many shops had not opened in a few days. Everywhere firewood dwindled as smoke rose from chimneys.

The people trudged about, muttering kind words for Auril Frostmaiden and Lathander Morninglord in equal fervor. An Icepriest had come to the city during a break in the snows and many Sundabarians made the uncomfortable climb to the Frostmaiden's shrine to feel her caress and quench the fire of their blood in the sacred pool. The goddess hungered still, but soon she would rest. Spring had fewer than two tendays left to it.

At the Hall of Everlasting Justice, a chest-high fence mired deep in the snow separated the training ground from the street. The din of steel on steel rang across it. A few youths huddled near together, poised on barrels and crates to watch those a few years older hard at work under the unstinting eyes of grizzled veterans. Their hair matted down with sweat, arms wavering, shivers everywhere, the older youths strove against one another, blunt blades drawing bruises where not met by wooden shields. A few boys, white and trembling, showed the marks on their bare chests and looked longingly to stacks of furs off to one corner as they drilled on the hard mud.

One fell, tripping over his own feet. His opponent let out a cry of triumph, not seeing the veteran priest slip up behind and pull his own legs out from under him with a deft maneuver. A firm talk on keeping one's head ensued.

The temple guards, resplendent in their armor, stood two to a side: a pair of Tyrrans with hammers and a pair of Tormtar with heavy blades. More waited quietly, and with more comfort, within. None challenged the visitors as they arrived. Novices, many not yet bearing signs of their chosen devotion, met each just beyond the gate and in easy sight of the guards. A half dozen sat ready -and bored- on benches, dispatched by a duty priest with swift nods when guests stated their business. Frowns silenced those that tried to whisper amongst themselves when she turned her back.

One by one, the novices guided the guests through the temple. They passed Acolytes of Laws, in their blue and purple robes with white sashes, quietly set warm cider and fresh bread on tables, mindful of the black gloves on their right hands and white on their left all the while. A few Andurans in dark crimson joined them at the work, many frequently glancing out in the direction of the nearby yard.

They came to a spartan study, hung with thick tapestries showing the signs of the two gods. They were the only concession to color, all else wrought from dark wood graven with martial patterns. Shields marched down the edges of tables. The legs of chairs bore swords and hammers. All sharp corners and hard edges, little marked by wear and diligently polished. Upon a sidebar sat scanty refreshments. The novices bid those called to wait on the arrival of the Hammer Lord, who had temple business to occupy her. Each novice saw to the refreshments and the fire merrily burning before departing.

Go go go!

Trib gains a bonus feat: Possum - Your enemy never knows whether you have gone unconscious or just dropped prone, and neither do your allies!

"Should we heal Tribim?"

Pointing from the scuffing toward the body floating above the slab, Tribim, thinking out loud, as much as asking a question to the others "Do you's think that the statue here whacked tha stargazer and put him there first? Or did the stargazer lay down for a nap and then the statue whacked him?" Shrugging his shoulders, Tribim, starts to move out of the room. "Guess it don't make no never mind either way."

Turning to his Namtar, "It looks like the room with the bugs is our next destination. Do you have anyway of killin' em?" Smiling broadly, as he starts fishing out his two flasks of acid. "I mean other than those giant elephant feet of yours."

Amarekashu, I assumed we were taking everything of value, not sure if the statues scroll is worth anything or not.

In its present condition? Probably not a lot. Vandals.

Both of you guys need to read The Fifth Elephant and Thud! by the late great Sir Terry Pratchett. In fact, read all of his Discworld books but particularly the ones focusing on the Night Watch. He has a lot of fun with the classic idea of dwarfs and dwarveness.

Confession: I tried Discworld and it's the kind of humor that just annoys me.

Feliks sat back from the books and sighed, "I can't believe I want to sleep in this place. You should all lay down. I'll take the first watch and wake someone in a few hours."

And lay down being in somewhere it wouldn't be insane to sleep.

Jakun looks at the spark as it fades realizing that it is a counter and he is running out of questions, "What can you tell me of Fistandantilus? I wish to rid myself of the burden of his tie to me".

"HE IS A SLAVE OF THE DARK MOON. WHEN THE EARTH SCREAMED, THORBARDIN DID NOT HAVE THE FOOD FOR ALL THE HUNGRY AND AFRAID WHO FLED. THE GATES WERE SHUT AGAINST THEM. FISTANDANTILUS WHO DIES AND LIVES CAME TO THEM FROM SPEAKING TO THE SHINING HATE. HE WAS, THEN WAS NOT, THEN WAS AGAIN IN ZHAMAN. HE MADE THE MANY INTO AN ARMY AND THREW IT AGAINST THE GATES WHILE HE DUG DEEP AND FOUND A THING OF POWER. HE CALLED THE DARK MOON INTO THE EARTH AS THE FALLEN PRINCE'S HAMMER ROSE AGAINST HIM. THEN HE TORE THE STONE AND BLED THE STONE UNTIL IT WEPT AND DIED."

The third of the seven sparks died.

Jakun accepts the information with no visible result on his face.

"I seek a way into the place known as Skullcap - how can I enter this place?"

"THERE ARE MANY TUNNELS TO THE WHISPERING DARK, WHERE YOU AND THE FALLEN PRINCE AWAIT. THE HIGH HOLDS WATER. THE MIDDLE HOLDS LIGHT. THE LOW HOLDS BREATH."

Another of the seven sparks fades away.

Jakun grunts under the pressure, "No great God of the Forge. Reorx is it not!?

I am not of Thorbardin and I am indeed a venerator of but not a follower of Sargonnas. My God of choice is Lunitari, I am a Wizard. My friends and I seek to aid Humans, Elves, and yes Dwarves against the might of the Dark Queen. Will you aid us, me for what I seek to do or condemn me for how I was raised?!

We need the help of those from under the Mountain. Their skill and bravery is critical in these Dark Times, the Wizards have failed us, the Elves fled, the Humans divisive - can the Dwarves succeed where other Races have failed and fled? Paladine and Kiri-Jolith and their Clerics ride with me!"

"I AM THE MEMORY OF STONE, NOT THE ANVIL AND THE HAMMER AND THE STRIKE," the presence spoke, apparently unmoved. For a long moment it abided, then the weight shifted. It remained, and Jakun knew he could not move without its leave, but now only most of the mountain's weight pressed above him.

Mariel and Mittens felt the touch of the unseen, huge and heavy but also from a great distance. Their medallions of faith grew warm. Then the weight passed from them and returned to Jakun's shoulders.

"THE DARK MOON IS AT YOUR SHOULDER. THERE IS ANOTHER." Another long pause. "NO MOON SHINES HERE. WHAT IS GIVEN TO ONE," visions of Mariel and Mittens, themselves and tiny, faint points of light at once flashed in Jakun's mind, "MUST BE GIVEN TO THE OTHER. THAT IS THE LAW OF BALANCE." He heard a distant dragon's roar.

"DO YOU ASK STILL?"

Dragonofashandflame wrote:

. So, post actions and.. i'll resolve them in 6 weeks. :)

I wans't going to worry about it for a while, until he is coming back.

Same here. We've got until about a week into July.

A final salute to the Revolutionary Vanguard Goblin Party and a halfling roasted over every gobbo fire.

I'm here. Spent too much time fighting the site yesterday and forgot to check back. I wrote Pádraic with an open-ended backstory so he can have landed wherever's most convenient for game starting...but if people want to come visit. :)

"[incomprehensible accent]"

Everyone,

I very much appreciate your feedback and willingness to help isolate the problem. With that said, we do know where the problem is and the probable reason it's occurring. Tracerts end where they end for a reason... I can’t put an exact timeframe on when this will be resolved but we are putting all efforts into getting past this as soon as possible.

We at Paizo apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience during this time.

Dean

It's been frustrating and inconvenient on our end, but I'm sure it's been worse in the office with the pressure on. Thank you for the hard work of getting us back to socializing and playing our PBPs.

Southern Honor is in the can. Pretty good, but the takeaway is basically that honor is crazy-making. Truth, conscience, decency? All expendable in the name of reputation, and reputation for being a wild dick at that. It's clearly a system of thuggery with pretensions...which sounds about right.

Moved on from there to the first history of slavery that gets mentioned for more than damning as racist crap: Stampp's The Peculiar Institution. It's way dated, but he basically founded the modern field back in the Fifties. A surprisingly good read so far. He's got these punishing long chapters that are just page turners. I think I'm reading it word for word as quickly as I skim other stuff.

Sorry, got distracted yesterday.

Caitlyn, Jakun, Mittens, Thistletorp, and Loren set out for the giant bee hives in the caves once more. They had enough time to make four trips before losing their light, which brought them out stung and a bit bruised but laden with a tremendous amount of food. By the time the sun set, they believed they had taken all the honey combs to be had.

The foragers have a full eight hours of usable light, which is enough for four runs. With Loren's help, Caitlyn, Jakun, Mittens, and Thistletorp recover 550 food units with each run. Four times that is 2200. The hives contained only 1950 more, so they're empty now.

That night, Loren retired with the Disks of Mishakal. In his hands, the Disks had the weight of a sword, warm like a blade long-used. Something unseen guided his him through the them as the camp faded to softness, then nothing but a silent and watching dark that smelled of animals.

The heavens opened over a city of many tall spires, gleaming white. Day turned to night and the familiar stars blinked out until only a single one remained. It glowed red with hate and dragonfire raced across its face as it filled the sky. A thousand thousand looked up and their screams flowed into one endless, hopeless roar as the star turned air to fire, black smoke rushing up in great torrents like veins against the red hell descending. A terrible heat rushed across Loren's face and was gone.

A man stood in a high tower, his robes shone painful white of the sun at full noon in a cloudless, merciless sky. He rose a clenched fist to the heavens and spoke words that each struck the air like a peal of thunder. Each syllable struck cracks in the heavy white stones at his feet. Yet he swelled with every breath. Six medallions sat in niches on the walls, framing him as he spoke. At the close of the first awesome sentence, a copper medallion bearing the sign of a bison's horn to one side and a silver one bearing a blue phoenix broke in two. From each half flowed tears and blood as the man's light fled from their faces and they became dull, dead points in the terrible glory. The next sentence sundered two more copper and silver medallions, the copper holding a rose and the silver a flute. A silver sign of two rings joined and a platinum disk bearing a dragon in flight broke last and an endless, hopeless roar rose.

Loren stood at the foot of a mountain range, looking up at the snow-capped peaks. It was the mountains of the Tharkadan range. It was the Vingaards. The Garnets. The Dargaards. Mountains Loren had never seen. Every mountain. Between one heartbeat and the next, their snows melted and the burning red blood of the earth poured down their slopes as ash blackened the sky.

Loren stood on a dock, looking across the Bay of Branchala as the tide rushed up in a dead, red wave that crashed against his dock and raced past it into the streets of Palanthas. It drew back and left the city bloodstained, then rushed back again higher and higher. The trough drew carts, horses, buildings, and people into the deep.

Loren stood in the deep forest, watching as deer leaped through a glade. They stopped, fawns and parents still for a moment as the sounds of the forest tied. Then they turned upon each other, charging and kicking madly as blood flew and bones broke. In the air birds fell on one another and descended in a chaos of feathers. Serpents consumed one another.

Loren stood in another forest, on the edge of a graceful city standing on an island in a river. Cries of horror rose behind him as the branches of every tree bowed low, lost their leaves, and thin streams of blood flowed from where they had been.

A white mist filled the world and Loren saw monks in a scritorium grope about, unrolling scrolls that soaked in the moisture until their ancient ink ran. Then the mist closed in deeper still and everything vanished behind a wall of absolute white.

A Knight of the Rose delivered an elf princess from ogres, and Loren felt the lust quicken in him. The same knight stood before a council of honor, three high knights resplendent in their armor as they pronounced a doom upon him. Unbowed, he drew his blade. The knight again, clutching the elf close. She shone with a blue light as she spoke. He turned to the east and drew his blade. Still gleaming, he rode from his castle and met three elves on the road. They spoke to him and his wrath quickened. The blue light died as he turned and rode once more, into the west.

On the plain, Loren saw lightning strike from a clear sky. Flame raced across the horizon and columns of death black smoke darkened the land. In the distance he saw the Tharkadan range.

Somewhere deep under the earth, proud dwarves struck hammer to glowing iron again and again. Each blow echoed through the halls and sparks flew up. Unmarked, they hung in the air and drifted nearer one another with each strike. When they met, they dimmed, grew cold, and then came alight again with a black flame. The instant it tasted air, the dwarves fell dead where they stood.

The night sky unfolded above Loren, the silver moon and red moon shining. The black moon of evil passed before the silver, small but hateful, and then swelled. Its living shadow devoured the silver moon and the sky dimmed, then passed to the red and consumed it in turn. A cold wind passed over him.

The light of a bright forest faded to a silent, still gray and the smiles died on the faces of countless kender. They fled and cowered in tight knots beneath beds, weeping as the shook.

The sky was clear again above the city of the tall spires, but the angle of the light changed like at dusk and from the east a sickly green stained it like aged copper. A dreadful wind howled about one of the seven tallest spires. It leaned and then shattered. Marble rained down as the wind tore through Loren.

A man with Loren's face, not him, stood alone in a castle chamber. Somewhere outside angry voices howled for his blood. Heavy things struck the door and its wood creaked. The man who was not Loren laid down his sword and shield. He unbuckled his armor. On his chest rode a copper medallion with the sign of a bison's horn. He set his armor aside with care as the door began to splinter. Weeping, he fell to his knees and prayed.

A Knight of the Sword, no the Knight of the Sword, appeared before the praying man with all the virtues and honor of the order write upon his form. His head was that of a bison. The Bison Knight stood between the man with Loren's face and the door as the first crack opened in it, his back to the mob outside. He reached out and took the weeping man's hand and pointed with his free one. The weeping man turned and looked into Loren's eyes. The tears died on his face as the Bison Knight led him to Loren and silently laid a hand upon the copper medallion, then pointed to Loren again. The other man bowed his head and removed the medallion from his neck. Smiling, he held it up and touched it to Loren's chest. Loren felt warm metal about his neck and a comfortable weight for a shining moment before it faded away and left a coldness in its place.

The Bison Knight met Loren's eyes, a man, a vast stampede with thundering hooves that filled the air, knights with lances lowered in a charge, a minotaur. With them stood defiant men in antique armor and some wearing feathers, elves holding bows, dwarves with their axes, even kender that smiled as their gripped their odd weapons. At their back lay the weak, the vulnerable, every innocent being. Ahead lay every evil, proud, then afraid. Somewhere above, gold, silver, bronze, copper, and brass scales shone. The din of hooves, the creak of harness, armor and tack jingling and clanking, steel drawn, the snorts of the horses, the roars of the dragons, the hot breath that washed across Loren's face all spoke as one: "Est Sularus oth Mithas."

And Loren was in the camp again. He came back to it looking directly at the medallion around Mittens' neck. Something unseen but real about the minotaur reminded Loren heartily of the man with his own face just then.

DM Immortal wrote:

Just saw this and it struck me how much I missed Werewolf. I'm looking at putting a concept together. I am actually thinking about rebooting a character from my college days that could fit. He was originally a Silent Strider Ragabash (of the more Assassin oriented type than the fool type, though he definitely challenged the more outdated traditions of the Sept he was in.) He could easily be retooled as a Fianna though.

Silent Strider Assassin, cool concept :-)

Foot cymbal assassins are cooler. They really get your attention! :)

In the process of reading new submissions.

Edit: Samnell, just in case you were not aware, you named your character Patrick Stewart.

...I was not consciously aware of that. I just scanned through a long list of Irish surnames, most of which looked damned near impossible to spell, too cliche, or are shared by people I know. He's Pádraic as a little in-joke because that's my first name, Irish-ized. Did not read the two as a unit until just now.

I love the crap out of Patrick Stewart, the best Captain who is not America, but now that I've seen it I can't unsee. For the final draft, I'll rename him Pádraic Meagher.

It wasn't too long. This is a big deal. Also anybody who likes to be can be on hand for this, aside from their other stuff for the day.

The refugees could not muster a proper blue robe or white robe, but the believers had enough vaguely blue and white bits of cloth, blankets, and such to suggest them for Sunmist and Conel. They and a few score onlookers gathered that morning to see what Mariel had to say.

The crowd stood in silence as Mariel spoke. Then Sunmist stepped forward and the Revered Daughter embraced her. A blue glow suffused them both and the tatters adorning the plainswoman fell away to show a pure, sky-bloke robe and a gleaming silver medallion of faith on her chest.

The crowd murmured at the wonder and the blue light shone in their faces, then broke into elation when the same thing happened with Conel and a silvery white light a moment later. The third and fourth members of the Holy Order of the Stars beamed and bowed to the Revered Daughter. As they did a sudden, warm breeze washed out from the three clerics and into the assembled many. It carried with it a sound at once like the roar of a dragon, but inspiring awe instead of terror, and an infinite calm patience that soothed many of the petty aches of the camp and trail. Many fell to their knees in wonder.

Among them, but somewhat apart, stood a fit man carrying a heavy rucksack.

You're on, Loren. No sense making you wait and miss out on the scene. Feel free to fine-tune your stats and so forth. It shouldn't make a huge difference unless you want to start murdering random people that get in the way of your mission to slay Mariel and the other clerics in the name of Takhisis. :)

I have no problem with these concepts so far. If it was not clear, not all Get have the preservation of Nordic people, or in this setting Irish of Norse-Gael descent, as a primary goal; that's the special concern of the Sword of Heimdall camp.

I understand; you did a good job explaining it in the setting primer. :) I still prefer the Fianna at present, but the idea of playing a Get fighting against racist Get has an appeal too. Probably because I study slavery.

Chotka is a mighty orc and not about to let a little thing like "negative hit points" stop him!

Chotka let out a howl of bestial fury as his blood sprayed over the green creatures and swung is axe in a great arc as it crackled with lightning once more.

[dice=Greataxe]1d20+9-1-1, [dice=Damage]1d12+7+3-1+1d6

I always forget about ferocity. Orcs: too mad and dumb to die! :)

I'm currently beginning The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois. I have Booker T. Washington waiting with Up From Slavery after that. Maybe Samnell is rubbing off on me... :)

Sorry about the friction burns, but you know you like it.

Have never read either, but Black Reconstruction is probably the next Reconstruction book I read when I get back to the subject. Related: I'll be part of a slavery AMA on Reddit's AskHistorians this coming Friday.

Finished At the Hands of Persons Unknown, which was ok. It's clear that the ebook was a rush job because there are some obvious OCR problems here and there. I feel like Dray did everything right for framing a survey but didn't quite connect the dots well enough. He uses individual lynchings as case studies and signposts for changing trends, as he should. Then he transitions to national anti-lynching politics to show the fallout. But it feels like there are two books here that don't quite mesh despite the tight integration. It might just be me.

All the same, I guess it's a fine pop history first book to read on the subject.

Started in with Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, David Donald's not particularly friendly biography of Sumner that remains the standard work. Donald is basically hostile to antislavery figures and politics from the start, though he wants to pretend otherwise in the 1989 forward.

Donald was honest enough to admit that lines critical of Sumner by his contemporaries were just more interesting to him in the same forward. That's both annoying and totally something I'd do. The archetypes for a successful, admirable public man in the nineteenth century are pretty narrow so even if the praise is all genuine it has a samey quality that the invective doesn't. And the invective is more fun. The big problem is that Donald sees Sumner's politics as arising from psychological problems, which is both typical of his historiographical tradition and super problematic. Mainly it relieves one of the need to delve further and understand historical actors in their context by pathologizing them.

But I am having spiteful fun in reading about Sumner's early life. Donald pretty clearly means the reader to take Sumner as diligent and ambitious but not that talented or educated. I'm reading about a scrappy kid succeeding against considerable adversity.

A little story: Sumner went to Harvard. He could only get in because the governor appointed his old man the sheriff of Suffolk County, which was a lucrative job considering their meager means. Harvard had a fixed uniform for students that specified black with no more than about 10% white added. Sumner got sick of that BS and bought himself a nice buff vest. The disciplinary board hauled him up and harangued him about the thing. Sumner argued, each time, that his vest was white and so compliant. After the third time they gave up and voted to specifically interpret his vest as white for purposes of the dress code.

I think Donald wants that to read as Sumner being an arrogant prick. I read it as Sumner not putting up with this b$#$~**~ anymore.

Morgrym Black wrote:

I can go something besides toreador to not be in that clan but do want auspex and celerity hmmm...

No one has picked Venture.

Go Team Venture!

I failed a self-control roll.

That's another way of passing through the mold, I guess. - says Dommer - 'Aye just hope yar'all not planning to wrap a rope around my waist and send me to get the boyo again, and in the well back there.

Namtar just loves to be frozen nearly to death and rescued by tethered dwarves. I'm not one to judge normally, but that's a really weird way to get yourself going.

Finished Slavery at Sea today. No idea what I'll ask the author when she does Q&A. There are some great insights in it, but they're extremely overwritten and there's far too much meta narrative about what she's about to do or has just done. I appreciate that kind of thing in the right place, when historians situate themselves in the historiography and make their arguments clear. (This can be infuriatingly rare.) But every chapter began and ended with the academic equivalent of "my paper is about", often with digressions into it throughout the main body of the text. Excursions into the symbolism of events, the kind of thing that makes beautiful pull quotes, usually accompany them. So she's telling you, telling you that she's telling you, and going all lit crit. I shared a particularly bad example with a historian friend who thought it was from a bargain-basement essay mill. It's still a great, important book; I'm glad I read it. But it would be stronger at half the length and wouldn't have to lose any detail or interpretation to get there.

But that's done. It would have been finished yesterday, but I was a touch tired and misread the Kindle estimate of my reading time for the epilogue at 20 minutes. That was barely less than the time it took me to get through the previous chapter. Turns out ti was actually ten minutes.

Unsure what's next, but these are my possibles:

1) Some fiction. Any fiction. Reading about slavery is depressing. Reading about the Middle Passage is depressing as f+$@ even for a sick mind like mine that can put this stuff in a box when he's done. I have a Fahfrd collection maybe and I've never read a word of that stuff. I've got Kirth's and one other rec for historical fiction featuring John Brown, but I feel like I need an actual break if I'm going to take one just now.

2) Year of Meteors by Douglas Egerton. It's the first book in like forty years just about the election of 1800. I've also seen Egerton described as a little poppy, or at least his book on Reconstruction is, so it might go fast. The subject matter would definitely be easy. Egerton's also written well-regarded works on slave revolts so if I dig his prose that's a real plus.

3) At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America by Phillip Dray. I vaguely recall Dray from a state of field essay in the JAH a few years back that I really liked. Not quite my field but I got it for shockingly cheap as a Kindle daily deal. And also because I hate myself and express that hatred by pouring horrors into my skull.

4) Bound for the Promised Land by Kate Clifford Larson, which I think is the standard biography of Harriet Tubman. Badass subaltern people who take no crap scratch several itches of mine, and Tubman had more guts than a serial killer's walk-in fridge. And she's coming up to kick Andrew Jackson's ass to the back of his bill, which Old Hickory would probably take as one of the greatest of indignities.

5) Outside chance I'll pick up Donald's two-volume biography of Charles Sumner because I'm reading Sumner right now and damn I love that guy. What's Chuck think of Millard Fillmore signing the Fugitive Slave Act? Better he was never born.