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It also made me dream up a whole campaign theme of goblin conquistadors.Paizo, take note!
I will preface this by just saying that you were NOT taught about Vasco da Gama in grammar/high school.
So I'm working on a campaign world based on the stories and histories from and around the Indian Ocean. I combined two themes: the Western four element hierarchy and the Eastern four=death meme. The world as I present it has four cycles.
The first cycle, representing Air, is power through ubiquity. Anywhere there is nothing, there is still air. A culture of kobolds, lizardfolk, and troglodytes, led by dragons, spread out of the northwest to conquer the world. The basic feel of these cultures was Greco-Roman, meant to echo Alexander the Great. It eventually fell, but as Air, remnants of its former power can be found everywhere in ruins. As the first power, it is symbolized by singularity, typically by a single circle or single stroke.
The second cycle, representing Earth, is power through stability. The permanence of the land led to a growth that Air cannot blow back. A culture of gnomes, elves, and dwarves, led by giants, grew out of the northeast to conquer. The basic feel of these cultures draws from China and Tibet, with a strong "celestial bureaucracy" in place to manage interactions. Although they are no longer the power in charge, they are still common throughout the lands. Duality is key in Earth symbology, such as the branches of the tree above and the roots of the tree beneath, or the yin-yang.
The third cycle, representing Water, is power through adaptability. Water flows, ignoring Earth's position, and eventually cutting through stone with persistence. A culture of halflings, humans, and orcs, led by celestials, sailed from the islands in the southeast to conquer. This is the present culture, so humans, with support from halflings and orcs, dominate throughout the world. The culture uses many pieces, starting with the theme of the Austronesian migrations to include Indian, Persian, and Arabian elements. Symbology involves three elements, such as a triangle or a trident.
The fourth cycle, representing Fire, is power through consumption. Fire chokes Air, burns Earth, boils Water. A culture of goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears, led by fiends, are encroaching on the lands from the southwest. In the campaign, the fourth cycle is just beginning, and the third cycle is just reaching its end. For a long time, I wasn't sure how I wanted this represented, culturally. I thought about African cultures first, but it didn't seem quite right. Then I read about Vasco da Gama--he didn't sail around Africa to explore, he sailed around to conquer and subjugate. And he entered the Indian Ocean area from the southwest! So now, they are conquistadors, with heavy Western European influences. They fight with scorched earth policies, slavery, and disease. They introduce firearms, and I might even eventually introduce steamships and ironclads through them. As for their symbol, it takes the standard four-pointed red cross, but turned 45 degrees to be a large red X.
I'm trying to divide the spells into four categories as well. At first blush, I'm putting Illusion and Divination in Air, Conjuration and Abjuration in Earth, Transmutation and Enchantment in Water, and Evocation and Necromancy in Fire.
First, let me thank TOZ's self-interest.
Second, yes I did. In elementary school. Rounded Cape Horn or some shiznit. NH public education rocks! Don't remember any goblins, though.
Third, now I've read your spoiler and it's pretty cool even though your equation of goblins with subjugation just makes you yet another bigot hoodwinked by Paizo's racist lies. Goblins, unlike Portuguese "explorers," are all about love, people!
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Second, yes I did. In elementary school. Rounded Cape Horn or some shiznit. NH public education rocks! Don't remember any goblins, though.
Yes, of course you learned about rounding the Cape of Good Hope and all that sunniness. You probably didn't learn about the raids along Mozambique or in Mombasa, or the attacks on Calicut. When I have the chance, I'll share with you a relevant quote from the book.
Goblins, unlike Portuguese "explorers," are all about love, people!
Love of what? (I have come to realize that, in the case of goblins, "Love of whom?" is a nonsense-question.)
Yes, of course you learned about rounding the Cape of Good Hope and all that sunniness. You probably didn't learn about the raids along Mozambique or in Mombasa, or the attacks on Calicut. When I have the chance, I'll share with you a relevant quote from the book.Second, yes I did. In elementary school. Rounded Cape Horn or some shiznit. NH public education rocks! Don't remember any goblins, though.
Yeah, I wrote the second paragraph before I read your spoiler.
Goblins, unlike Portuguese "explorers," are all about love, people!Love of what? (I have come to realize that, in the case of goblins, "Love of whom?" is a nonsense-question.)
Nonesuch and nonsense! Don't tell me, Lord Dice, that you've fallen for Paizo's Big Lie, too? Not you!
Goblins love everyone and everything.
Goblins do it in the street!
No, I haven't fallen for the big lie; I keep the estate goblin kennel neat and tidy, and the goblins themselves are quite well fed until I release them for the monthly goblin hunt!
...What?
Edit: I will admit that the goblins breeding rate allows for monthly, rather than bi-annual, hunts.
All night, all day,
Goblins do it in the street!
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Don't be afraid to get some sleep somewhere in there, it's not a sign of weakness.
Start the Alliance-Union stuff with Downbelow Station; after that you can (sort of) bounce around from whichever book to whichever, but I read DbS four or five books in and felt like I'd discovered the Rosetta Stone.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the Chanur series :)
Downbelow Station was good!
Downbelow Station was good!Don't be afraid to get some sleep somewhere in there, it's not a sign of weakness.
Start the Alliance-Union stuff with Downbelow Station; after that you can (sort of) bounce around from whichever book to whichever, but I read DbS four or five books in and felt like I'd discovered the Rosetta Stone.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the Chanur series :)
You know it dude; Merchanter's Luck and Finity's End are the most direct sequels to DbS (Cyteen too, from the Union side of things) but just about anything she's written with a space ship in it is connected in some way. Viva Mallory!
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Today I started reading the King James Bible. I think [CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED! CENSORED!], but the story of Onan was pretty cool.
Just had to put down the Stephenson (brain-ache) to find some relief in Picnic in Paradise by Joanna Russ; I tell you, I'd marry Alyx, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't survive the experience.
That chick is for real.
Found my copy of Lipstick Jihad, a book that I never finished from like...6 years ago. Got about halfway through it before I put it down. I just can't seem to force myself to finish that book, even given half a decade, appearently- the writing is just too bland, for lack of a better word.
I'm trying to find a book that I read around the same time as the above. It was about the horrible things the presidents immortalized on Mt. Rushmore did that history seems to have forgotten, written by a native American, if I recall correctly. It is hard to find a book when you remember neither the title nor the name of the author.
Random question, but have you guys read anything by Connie Willis? To Say Nothing of the Dog is TOTALLY worth it.
Judy Bauer has. I've only read Jerome K. Jerome.
I'm trying to find a book that I read around the same time as the above. It was about the horrible things the presidents immortalized on Mt. Rushmore did that history seems to have forgotten, written by a native American, if I recall correctly. It is hard to find a book when you remember neither the title nor the name of the author.
Ward Churchill, maybe? That's all I got.
The long, hard slough through Melmoth the Wanderer continues. Finished the second volume. Will now take a break at the highly climatic cliffhanger of our protagonist escaping from the Inquisition with the intercession of an apparently immortal sadist.
In the meantime, I have finished Genesis and have begun poking through Allen Ginsberg's Collected Poems. I'm not even up to the fifties yet, but here's a potentially D&D-themed Beat poem:
A Mad Gleam
Go back to Egypt and the Greeks,
Where the Wizard understood
The spectre haunted where man seeks
And spoke to ghosts who stood in blood.
Go back, go back to the old legend;
The soul remembers, and is true:
What has been most and least imagined,
No other, there is nothing new.
The giant Phantom is ascending
Toward its coronation, gowned
With music unheard, but unending:
Follow the flower to the ground.
I'm going to finish up Jack Vance and then get back to Melmoth and The Bible.
I don't know his other work, but Howl is fantastic. There's at least one recording of him reading it on Youtube. I heard one from when he was younger where he was screaming parts years ago.
If I had better access to recordings of readings, I'd probably like poetry more. I have no ear for it so the text sort of lays there and comes across as just oddly formatted to me. Howl and Rime of the Ancient Mariner are about the only ones I've ever gotten the sense for whilst reading.
Also I just noticed that Ginsberg and the Queen were born in the same year. That's a cute coincidence.
I saw the best minds of my generation: The Musical Interlude!
As far as poetry goes, I find reading it aloud while [bubble bubble bubble] helps. At least, it works for me.
2. I always got the impression that IOUN is an acronym, although I won't hazard a guess as to what the letters might stand for.
I've been keeping my eye out for what IOUN means, but it hasn't shown up. Also, so far, the stones don't hover around the wearer like they do in our favorite rpg.
Also, there has been some time-stopping, but I'm not sure if it's up to full-on hijinks speed, yet.
Also, so far, the stones don't hover around the wearer like they do in our favorite rpg.
Just you wait...
Finished Rhialto the Marvelous. Hee hee! There wasn't one explanation of the derivation of the term "IOUN," btw. I think I will next read Sunfall by C.J. Cherryh.
the once and future king, by t.h. white.
How was it?
I was in love with the cartoon as a child. I remember feeling particularly sad for that female squirrel who falls in love with Wart during his Transmutation/Mating Ritual ceremony... :(
I am finishing up Sunfall which is ALSO about cities at the end of time, under a dying sun, so that's a little syngeristically weirdiose--and most of the stories don't have much sci-fi to them, and that's a bit wygeristic seiridose--and then Elizabeth I shows up, whom Samnell was just talking about...
and the synergistic weirdiosity is totally freaking me out!!
I hated TO&FK. With a passion.
I'm sort of idling my way through Herbert Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. I read it about eleven years ago for a paper and did not much like it then, but I was reading it in a hurry. I don't appear to have actually finished it either. Found it on my shelf and decided to take another look.
It's doing a lot to remind me why I hate biographies, even though it's far from the kind of hagiography a lot of them devolve into. I feel like there's a vast amount of context that's just missing because everything is focused on Hirohito. Maybe I'll pick up one of my two or three surveys of Japanese history afterwards and get the context back from those. They postdate Bix and so probably are at least aware of his work.
Also, of course, he's a profoundly unpleasant character given to the kind of self-serving evasiveness I find pretty grotesque even independent of its horrible consequences for East Asia and the fact that he deliberately strangled to death genuine democracy that had been growing in Japan since his apparently rather impaired father took the throne.
I hated TO&FK. With a passion.
If you have nothing nice to say, come sit down next to me! Hee hee!
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How was it?
I was in love with the cartoon as a child. I remember feeling particularly sad for that female squirrel who falls in love with Wart during his Transmutation/Mating Ritual ceremony... :(
I am finishing up Sunfall which is ALSO about cities at the end of time, under a dying sun, so that's a little syngeristically weirdiose--and most of the stories don't have much sci-fi to them, and that's a bit wygeristic seiridose--and then Elizabeth I shows up, whom Samnell was just talking about...
and the synergistic weirdiosity is totally freaking me out!!
I thought a pinko revolutionary goblin such as yourself might enjoy the Tower of London story, but didn't want to jinx it.
As for The Once and Future King, as a tween I enjoyed having an Arthurian book in such conversational language, but now I'm the sort of guy who reads The Faerie Queen for fun, so there you are.
Or the oppressed proletarian liners, striking against the murder of their comrades by malicious construction consortiums! Vive le Cherryh!
Read Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated last night and today. I think [censored! censored! censored!].
Am jealous that Hitdice is talking about 16th century British poetry and not me. Tomorrow, it's back to Melmoth and The Bible. Maybe more Ginsberg.
But, first more comics. Gray Horses by Hope Larson.
I have no idea why I own this. Must've been those tricky minxes at the comic store. I mean, it was alright, but I can't imagine spending $15 for it. Maybe it was on clearance; or maybe they just gave it to me.
I haven't ever bought that one, but have you read Baker Street by Guy Davis?
WORTH IT!!
(It's a comic not a book.)
I haven't ever bought that one, but have you read Baker Street by Guy Davis?
WORTH IT!!
(It's a comic not a book.)
No, but it looks cool.
Damnit! I don't want more comics to buy!
Finished "The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes" by Steven Pinker. Very interesting and uplifting.
Started; "The Summoner" by Gail Z. Martin. Problem ; all the protagonists are described as handsome or beautiful...
Just finished "Ganymede" by Cherie Priest.
Just started "City of Gears" by Felix Gilman.
Hmm. I'd composed a post baiting Kirth, but either I didn't send it or it disappeared. Hmmm.
Anyway, strayed from my plans and started reading The Once and Future King. It's awesome!!
Actually, I'm only on page 30 or so, but it's fun so far. I learned more about falconry than I'd ever known and enjoyed the cameo appearance of Sir Pellinore and the Questing Beast.
And come to think of it, I don't recall any children's fantasy books that Kirth has ever admitted to liking. I think that he and the Grinch are the same person.
And come to think of it, I don't recall any children's fantasy books that Kirth has ever admitted to liking.
John Bellairs' The House with a Clock in its Walls. Changed my life forever. Not only was it was my first brush with fantasy literature as a genre (I was absolutely hooked after that), but it also marks the start of my voracious reading in general -- up until then, I mostly only cared about the pictures in books.
I think that he and the Grinch are the same person.
Actually, now that you mention it, I seem to recall that I had a girlfriend in college who used to say that...
Halfway through The Sword and the Stone (just hooked up with Robin Hood) and I like it so far. It is a little cutesy, but, it's for the kids!!
Also, one of the few problems with being a pothead is that you can't always remember what books were about or, in fact, whether you've even read them or not. I was at ye olde usede booke store (couldn't help myself!) and bought Toni Morrison's A Mercy only to get home and find out I've already read it! Aaargh! The clerk took it back for store credit, thankfully, so now I've got a copy of Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth which would make a nice run through the kids' lit, but I've got to get back to Melmoth and The Bible soon, before I forget what was happening (see beginning of paragraph)!
Halfway through The Sword and the Stone (just hooked up with Robin Hood) and I like it so far. It is a little cutesy, but, it's for the kids!!
Also, one of the few problems with being a pothead is that you can't always remember what books were about or, in fact, whether you've even read them or not. I was at ye olde usede booke store (couldn't help myself!) and bought Toni Morrison's A Mercy only to get home and find out I've already read it! Aaargh! The clerk took it back for store credit, thankfully, so now I've got a copy of Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth which would make a nice run through the kids' lit, but I've got to get back to Melmoth and The Bible soon, before I forget what was happening (see beginning of paragraph)!
This has happened to me more times than I can count, but see the genesis of the problem as regards my tallying ability. If I still lived in California I'd introduce a Proposition against new book covers...
I have an uncanny ability to remember names of authors, books, movies, actors, directors, bands and albums. No new covers ever fool me!
It's just that sometimes I don't remember the old covers...
What prompted a move from Cali to Rhode Island?
I started out in RI, moved to San Francisco for 3 years and came back; what can I say, I'm a yankee born and bred...
(Dude, I know, I kick myself everyday, twice a day in the winter.)
Just read The Hunger Games, pretty much in one sitting (except for a brief pause when one of the Careers went all stabby-mutilation-funtimes and I instinctively threw the book across the train car in revulsion and had to be talked down and into reading the rest—you'd think Paizo would have toughened me up more, but it's harder when it's kids). On to Catching Fire!
Finished Hirohito and started in on W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello's The Opium Wars. I'm not very far in but already completely disgusted with a whole new Earl of Elgin. The son of the Elgin of the Marbles oversaw the looting, vandalism, and ultimately burning of a staggering collection of art in China in 1860. The whole of the imperial Summer Palace, in fact.
It was in retaliation for genuine and gruesome atrocities, but atrocities for which the drunk and opium-addled emperor was hardly responsible. Apparently his brother and various court officials called all the shots, so the retaliation against the emperor's personal property is just random. Way to punish the wrong guy and deprive the world of what would surely be an awesome museum today, 8th Earl of Elgin.
Finally finished The Confusion, the second book of The Baroque Cycle; I'd hoped to read them one after the other, but it's just not that kind of trilogy.
I may well read Brideshead Revisited while my Stephenson buffer regenerates. Why Brideshead Revisited? Cause Downton Abbey wasn't adapted from a novel :(
Good morning, Hitdice.
Who's that, Waugh?