Happy New Year!

Life remains, as always, under construction.

Merry Christmas!

Flaucher, Munich, late Christmas Eve

A breather in Refugium

Father Ling is happy to support the group while they recuperate, setting them up in Sue Snell's hotel. As soon as Mal feels fit, he starts to sell the group's loot to Chaucer and Jaxxon Tomorrow, a stranded merchant in the village. The scorpion worshipers carried some fine gear: A Steyr AUG goes to Zed Memphis, while Dan Hawking keeps a scoped hunting carbine - "two rifles are better than one", he says. Rod insists on keeping the M79 grenade launcher because "it underlines his natural authority", even if he has no ammo for it. Nor knows how to use it. Secretly, he thinks that the fat barrel of the weapon makes him look like a mean hombre, and that's the image he wants to project after all he's gone through. That still leaves some guns and knives, some ruined sets of armor and some gear. With skill and patience, and always only hinting at the great service the group did to Refugium when they took down the raiders in Bakersfield, Mal is able to turn the loot into ammo and useful gear. He also picks up some low-priced grenades from Chaucer, who seems to be glad to be rid of those things.

Rod spends much of the time with Lla Viper. The girl had promised him some lessons in the fine art of preparing poisons, and she keeps her word. For hours, the two are crouched over pots and pans, "bottling death", as Lla says. Rod watches and learns - it is not quite what they teach in the Institute, but only a fool would disregard Lla's skill. In the evenings, the villagers see him out in the fields, training the fast-draw trick that makes Zed and Mal such dangerous persons.

Zed spends idle days on a bed in the hotel, endlessly disassembling and cleaning his guns, sharpening his knives, waiting for his leg to heal. Dan just watches, and waits.

Meanwhile, life in Refugium goes on: Once or twice, a trader arrives, spends a night, and returns to the routes in the West. The farmers work the fields, while the monks follow their inscrutable routine in the old correctional facility. One day, after a few weeks passed in this happy fashion, Rod thinks that Zed's leg is whole again. The plaster came off a week ago, and the man from Memphis is yearning for action. A comparably large caravan under master trader Balthasar Cut is in town, making its biannual run to Refugium, supplying it with fuel and ammo. The bustle might be useful for all kinds of things, but Rod and Mal have something different in mind. In the evening, they walk up to the correctional facility, its wall covered in the names of travelers, and ask Chaucer for another audience with the master of Refugium. It is time to lay the cards on the table.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Smile or Die

This book takes a incisive look at the (mostly American) culture of "positive thinking". Tracing the roots of this world view to a backlash to Calvinism, that, perversely, incorporated Calvinism's penchant for psychic self-flagellation, Ehrenreich analyses the effects of positive thinking in business, religion and academia.

On a gaming tangent: This is the thinking heavily satirized (and lethally enforced) in the Paranoia RPG, where open critical thinking, dissatisfaction and unhappiness in general is grounds for immediate termination. Unsurprisingly, everybody smiles in Paranoia.

This is not a book that offers the reader comfy shudders of doom and gloom. Ehrenreich would rather see us all happy. But she makes a convincing case that positive thinking is used as a highly sophisticated means to squeeze more work (and tacit compliance) from workers at the cost of their own well-being, that it put powerful and dangerous blinders on key decision makers in the ongoing economic crisis and that it, ultimately, is not going to make you happy and successful. Instead, the industry-grade variants described in the book tend to lead their adherents into a sugary solipsism characterized by unrealistic expectations and self-reproach - if you fail, you didn't think enough happy thoughts.

4.5 of 5 crucified motivational speakers

Highly recommended

Lego is aggro

Just what the doctor ordered. Via who killed bambi.

Refugium

Refugium is another addition to the scorched earth materials, a correctional facility from the Long Ago turned into a monastery.

A tradition to be proud of

Don Alphonso describes 700 years of wikileaks in his blog at he F.A.Z. He puts Assange into a tradition with reformers and whistleblowers since the late middle ages, and I heartily agree. It might take two or three centuries, but the Australian (as figurehead and symbol) will get his highly deserved monument.

Big Gee

The Good Lord made many creatures, and many plants, and he created man in his image. But as a good Christian, Dan Hawking also knows that the Adversary got his hand into creation as well, that he made creatures in his image, to test the righteous and bring destruction and despair into the world. The abomination that crashed into the Bakersfield Christ Risen Church was testament to the Adversary’s power. It burst through the main entrance like a locomotive, a tempest of claws, barbs and legs, its armor black as night, riven and pitted by decades of fights. The grandfather of all girtabs, an emperor scorpion with a body like a pickup, as old as the sun, rushed into the cavernous auditorium. It pushed aside seats and rubble like a ship cresting the waves. The whole building shook with Big Gee’s entrance. Dan was hurting very much then, thanks to Big Gee’s little brothers and sisters, but he knew what he had to do and raised his rifle to his shoulder. And he thought that it was true: They never stop growing.

In the old correctional facility, Ling asks, again, still incredulous, “As big as a van?” “If you don’t believe us, send your people to Bakersfield,” Mal says “Dan and me peppered it with high-powered rifle rounds. Rod and the girl just got away. Zed was still on the balcony over the auditorium, where he went after Prophet. I shot one of its legs off with my FN FAL, but that just seemed to make it angry. It crawled up the balcony, where we had our little shootout with Prophet’s gang – and it made the balcony collapse. Which took Zed with it.” Zed continues “I fell right in front of his pincers, but he seemed distracted by the balcony coming falling down, so I got away before he pulled me to pieces.” Also, my fucking shotgun jammed on me, twice – but he does not tell this to Ling “When he finally came after me, I ambushed him and put a twelve gauge slug right into his kisser. Boom!” He slaps the table “That gave him pause. He crawled away from us and just pushed through an old emergency exit – he basically put a new hole into the wall.” Rod goes on “On the second floor, we had freed the girl and made our way downstairs. But by then, those pheromones we had splashed around during our fight had attracted the girtabs in and around the church. They hunted us. We shot about a dozen of them, but I still was stung. A most unpleasant experience, basically, the toxin overloads your cardiovascular system and you go into shock after a minute or so. After we had driven off the scorpions, we had to stop in the ground floor of the building. I just could not go on. While Dan and the girl watched over me, Zed and Mal went after Big Gee and finished it off.” Zed goes on “That we did. We tracked him outside. That was like following the tracks of an army. But those tracks ended suddenly, just at one of the walls of the church. He went up that wall and lurked on the roof. It was the devil’s own luck that the roof held him. And just as we came to that wall, he jumped us. Literally jumped us. He got Mal here pressed into the sand, and got my leg between his pincer. Broke it, too. But I still got my shotgun between his, whatsit, manacles?” “Mandibles.” “His mandibles. I pulled the trigger, and that was that. His corpse still lies next to the church, if you need to verify our report.”

And that was that, Dan thinks, outside, in the sun, periodically giving the evil eye to the camera watching the space in front of the gate. Zed pulled Mal from under the monstrous cadaver. Everyone in the group was a mess, in different ways, so we patched ourselves up. Zed was quite lucky, with a clean fracture. That thing could have ripped his leg clean off. We looted the Prophet’s fighters, and some fine loot it was. We took the girl – Lla Viper, an unusual name – and went back to the jeep. We tied the bike to the roof, and although he made the painful face every time he stepped on a pedal or the jeep hit a hole larger than a thimble, Mal got us back to Refugium.

Interview in a prison cafeteria

“And what happened then?” Mal Porter, Zed Memphis and Rod the benefactor are sitting in one of the large cafeterias that once served the facility’s prisoners. The walls are stark concrete, all tables and chairs are bolted to the floor. Red, man-sized letters on one wall say “PLEASE KNEEL WHEN SHOTS ARE FIRED”. In one corner, a surveillance camera scans the hall. The men look a bit worse for the wear. Zed’s left leg is in a plaster cast, Mal sports a number of bandages, patches and band-aids and moves with the slow deliberateness of a man covered in bruises. Only Rod looks as if he had a good last week. The man asking the question is an old Asian man in a monk’s habit with a sparse crown of silvery hair and perfectly trimmed beard. While he asks, he powers up a laptop. He is Father Ling, the “primus inter pares” of Refugium, as he would say, or the “big cheese” in Zed’s words.
While there are other inhabitants of Refugium in the cafeteria, the interview seems to be closed to the public at large. Mal answers: “Well, it was your standard setup. A trap for the car and some shooters on the roofs and at the crossing ahead. A classic ambush.” Zed cuts in “Not wholly standard. The stuff they splashed on the car? That was no poison, but it attracted all the girtabs in the vicinity. The scorps came out of the sand, lots of them, and attacked the car. That would have made anyone nervous, and those shooters would have had an easy job picking us off while we dealt with the scorps. Of course, I was up front on the crossing on my bike, and the others were leaving the car in a hurry, when Rod here screamed that the stuff was nerve poison.” Rod gives a tiny, lop-sided smile. “Well, my mistake. But getting away from the car was for the best. Mal here got to high ground and took care of the attackers on the other roofs, while Dan Hawking and me cleared the ground floor of scorpions.” “Where is Hawking now?” “He is outside, watching the car.” And he got the worst of it, Mal thinks, the girtabs took him down in the old wooden church, when I hosed the church tower with the MACs. Rod had to inject him with his last dose of aesculapin, and Dan still can’t remember the minutes just before he collapsed under the mass of claws and stingers. Mal continues “It was hard going. They were very well equipped with all the guns they got from their previous ambush. Assault rifles. One of them had a grenade launcher. Anyways - Zed engaged the men at the crossing. In summary, we were able to kill those attackers that we couldn’t drive off, and took one of them prisoner.” Like the other attackers, the man was mal-nourished, but fierce, sporting a crude painting of a scorpion on his chest. He lost his left hand many years ago, and fought Zed with a primitive prosthetic hook and a knife, before the man from Memphis knocked him out and handcuffed him to a car wreck. Mal goes on “We questioned him, and he told us some things. About a dozen of his gang were still around after our little tussle, well armed after taking down that group of scavengers. One member of this group was still alive. A girl. The gang had made a camp in an old community building at the other edge of the town, that’s where they held her. They had fed the others to Big Gee. At that time, we didn’t know what he was talking about. We thought that the gang was practicing cannibalism. He also told us that they followed a man he just called Prophet, and he was scared of him – Prophet made poisons and the fluid which attracts girtabs, he planned the ambushes and he somehow controlled the scorps in Bakersfield. Sounds like he got himself a little cult following him around, while he followed Big Gee.” Ling stops typing “Where is this prisoner now?” “We let him go”
The gun in the girl’s hand, tracking the one-handed man as he vanishes in the darkness
“We got the jeep out of the pit and hid it in the ruins. Then we decided to have a look and find out if the last prisoner was still alive.” “That is a very noble thing to do.” Zed says “Well, that’s what we do where I come from. I reconnoitered the building, some religious structure with a big ass steel cross in its front yard, all cube-like. Said Bakersfield Christ Risen Church out front. It’s quite sizable, with a theater that seat two- or even three hundred people. Then I got the others and we infiltrated.” And we infiltrated the hell out of it, Mal thinks. Zed went in with is large combat knife drawn, moving from one sentry to another. Not easy going, not at all, but at times rather slippery. “We were able to stay hidden until we got to the second floor. There we got into a firefight with Prophet and his surviving men. That was fucking furious, real up close. Textbook definition of point blank. Prophet had himself a laboratory of sorts, bottles and bowls, some burners, and lots of hacked apart girtabs. The girl was there, too. They had her in some cage made of shopping carts. Of course, with Mal here spraying the place, and with the Prophet’s gang shooting, something was going to break. Prophet smashed some of the bottles on purpose, before he made is exit.” Ling raises an eyebrow “He was able to escape?” Zed goes on “We had him. We had him. All his thugs were dead. He was running like a hare, Mal would have put him down if not for his vest.”
“So why didn’t you stop him?”
“Someone ran heavy interference.”
“Who?”
“Big Gee.”

Elene

Elene, a dangerous little camp close to Chicago, has been added to the scorched earth materials post.

The Digger seeks answers, not work

Novac was next on Omar’s blood-soaked way
And he pranced into town in no mood to play

“Dear people of Novac, come close, come near”
“If you answer my questions, there is nothing to fear”

“I look for a man in a checkered suit”
“He did me a wrong, shot me for loot.”

Manny Vargas stepped forth, Novac’s stout defender
But if he messed with Omar, he’d be a mouse in a blender

“You help us, we help you, this way we can deal”
“You take care of some ghouls, and we do a reveal.”

And the digger, he smiled, with teeth black as sin
No sight in the world is worse than that grin

“Dear Manny, I have a most curious feeling”
“That I, as well, can do some revealing”

“The ghouls are – methinks - just the first part of a quest”
“which leads to nightkin, and more ghouls for Novac’s guest”

“And more nightkin, more ghouls, in REPCONN’s old site”
“Still more nightkin, some ghouls and their noble fight”

“To get their asses in rockets and travel in space”
“Which they can’t until some parts are in place”

“Which would force me to travel up and down the whole land”
“Until those fucking parts are fucking finally at hand”

“To sum up, in short, it’s a big-ass quest, and a chore at that”
“And all this grinding just to get what is under your hat”

“Or I could just shoot you”

And Manny grew pale under Novac’s hot sun
Not quite sure how to end this exchange in good fun

While Omar, that old demon, the furious old digger
Just kept smiling and playing with a well-thumbed trigger

And Manny swallowed his pride with a shiver
Because nothing is worse than being Omar’s quest-giver

And he points to his room in Novac’s motel
“Just go in there and look around for a spell”

“Then there’s no need for you to linger around”
“The next hero along will save Novac town”

“Much obliged” said Omar, when he returned from the room
And thus Manny Vargas evaded his doom

Kettling

An article in the New Statesman about demonstrating pupils in London who were kettled for hours in freezing weather. It is news like these that scare me the most. It points to a change in the way the citizens of Western Europe are handled by their governments. After reading this I really asked myself how far this repression will go - and experience whispered "sky's the limit". I just hope that some parents get really angry at the treatment of their children. We are in dire need of an identification system for the policemen that make such tactics possible.

The Digger keeps Order

Omar ambles on in no need for a rush
When two armored figures jump out of a bush

They screamed at Omar, the bloody black wanderer
“We are skilled assassins, serving Caesar the Conqueror”

“The Keyser marks you for death!”, that’s what they said
“Profligate! Degenerate! We will drown you in lead!”

The digger looked at the two armored accusers
Two sprats sent to kill him, two sorry losers

He looked at them with pity, as if pity he knew
“Dear nitwits, please stop and hear my point of view”

“Back home, on the hill, in Caesar's big camp”
“Did you steal, joke or curse the old scamp?”

“Disrespect some fruit? I mean, frumentarius?”
“Or break other commandments, manifold and abstruse?”

“If you search your souls – and be thorough!-”
“you’ll find failure and sin” And this made them swallow

“You are not my chastisement – but I am yours!”
“Caesar’s creative when settling his scores.”

“I’ve killed so many from Caesar’s dumb band”
“To send just two more only shows his hand”

And realization dawned on the two sent to kill
Of little infractions and they soon felt a chill

And the digger, he grinned, his teeth black as guilt
His soul an abyss, a bad man to the hilt

If an assassin’s a killer, that much must be true,
Then the digger’s a killer to the power of two

And if Caesar wants to get rid of some figure
He commands and sends him after the digger

Thus Omar ambles on, two more dead in his wake
And the Legion stays trim through threats of this rake

The Shadow Scholar

Not related to Dark Heresy in any way - although this would be a kick-ass name for a short scenario. Shooting administratum adepts is always fun. I am of two minds about this issue. On the one hand, an important skill set seems to become a lost art to exactly the kind of people we expect to be able to write usable text about their field of expertise. Also, I distinctly remember feeling quite angry when I came across such work as a tutor: Partly because I was obviously failing at my task of teaching a student how to write a paper and partly because someone thought I was stupid. On the other hand, I must admit that I am a bit envious about this job and the related income. In the end, it seems to me that this is just another sign that our lives are turning into some kind of kabuki show. The essence of education is being replaced by a hollow and wholly purchasable symbol, constituted by a big pack of paper, with a class of professionals creating these symbols - like woodworkers creating crucifixes.

The Digger gets a New Helmet

Nipton was next on the digger’s revenge-driven route
His blood-spattered violent desert commute

But when Digger Omar entered this village
He saw nothing but remnants of bloodshed and pillage

Tons of corpses smoking in heaps and on crosses
And in the center one of the Legion’s big bosses

Vulpes Inculta (the fox) did this deed
A righteous prissy in an asshole’s elite

A voice like bathwater, a nice wolfskin hood
A strong sense of mission (as he well should)

Vulpes stopped - for a moment - to pull the legs off flies
And took some care to explain Nipton’s demise

“Nipton, you see, was town full of whores,
So we put them on crosses to teach them some mores”

“While I don’t like your motives, I do like your style”
“And I dig your helmets” said Omar with a smile

A smile full of malice, a smile full of ice
“I dig yonder helmet, pray sir, name your price”

“The thing’s not for sale, it’s an honor to wear”
“How dare you ask?” quoth Vulpes with a glare

“I’d think, I’d ask first” said Omar full of guile
and then spammed frags at the soldiers in file

And the legion went up and the legion came down
some more blood, guts and gibs in dead Nipton town

And out came the digger to root through the corpses
Got a nice comfy helmet from great Caesar’s forces

“Legion’s infamy gained” says a box in the sky
“No prob” says the digger as he moseys on by

This you should know about the man with the spade
If he can’t pay with caps, he’ll remit by grenade

Four levels of incompetence

Another nice essay by Dmitry Orlov. I like his expanded view on the Kruger-Dunning effect and I second his view on finance being the last refuge of the truly incompetent. Social studies majors take note.

...But you'd hate it there

Charles Stross - one of my favorite SF authors - wrote about steampunk in his blog a while ago. He puts my unease concerning this fad into words. If you know something is wrong when someone romanticizes top hats, corsets, rampant industrialization and colonization, but just can't figure out the right arguments, then this is the text to go to.

Lord of grease

A nice column by Georg Seesslen about middle class values, the semiotics of KT Guttenberg's hair and the gel keeping this hair in place and order. German conservatism sees "the Baron" as its Kwisatz Haderach (you can basically see the curtsies and erect nipples when CSU members of any gender speak about him), and thus a closer look at his appearance appears necessary - although the results are not altogether surprising.

Bill Moyers on the new plutocracy

This is the long Howard Zinn Lecture by Bill Moyers which has already been linked up and down the net. It is quite a bit of text, but necessary read - a basic primer on the government of the United States, as it works today. This text might make you angry, and it should.

The Digger and Low Cuisine

Omar walked into Primm, his first destination
Walked out of the dust and the radiation

Looking for protracted baroque grim vengeance
To punish his killers and extract proper penance

He entered the ruins, was – of course – shot at
Dismembered the shooters (not much of a combat)

Looted the corpses and then turned his steps
Toward Primm’s casino, to get rid of his caps

There he was greeted by Johnson and Ruby
Johnson the merchant, and Ruby the foodie

The digger went shopping and pressed on with the quest
But Primm offered more to its goat-faced guest

Old Ruby spoke up (with age girls become brave)
And made a unique offer to the visiting knave

“To keep a strong man hearty, to keep a hearty man whole
There’s nothing better than my radscorpion casserole”

“Bring me peppers, salt, some scorpion stingers”
“I’ll cook it, you’ll eat it and you’ll lick your fingers.”

“But avoid the bug’s sting” the old lady said
“No poison left, no flavor left, and also you’d be dead”

So the digger went hunting with kukri and gun
Small bugs, big bugs, bugs as big as the sun

And the bugs stung him, again and again
It certainly was a most painful campaign

But the digger gritted his teeth black as sin
And took all the bugs of the waste for a spin

It was late - very late - when the digger returned
And all through his body the scorpion juice burned

He went up to Ruby, his eyes flaming and hot
He hawked and coughed and spat in the pot

Croaked Omar “Here’s the requested ingredient”
“My gut’s full of the stuff, and it was expedient”

“To hawk, to cough, to season to taste”
“To keep it inside would be such a waste”

Ruby stared at Omar, the hardy old digger
Stung and filled to the brim with bug ichor

“I talk to a dead digger, and that freezes my soul”
“But at least you proved worthy of my casserole”

And hands him a bundle, dripping with fat
“Here’s your food, and I enjoyed our chat”

“But you know, Omar, that it is time to go”
“To find your killers and to lay them low”

And Omar left Primm, his pores oozing with venom
To find his killers and put his boot up their rectum

Don't be it - dream it!

Synergon is a roleplaying game set in the corporate rat race. Very funny, but might make you weep at work. Via BoingBoing.

The Digger travels onwards

Digger Omar and the Liar

Towards east went Omar, the hoary old digger
His mind full of blood, a shady grim figure

But on the way, with Primm in the distance
He was stopped by a guy in need of assistance

“My name is Thorn, and I am truly blessed”
“Because you look like a man in need of a quest”

“Please, traveler, in distress is my damsel”
“Go up yonder slope to rescue the mamsell”

“She’s surrounded by geckos, the fierce little grislies”
“If you don’t act fast, she’ll soon be in pieces”

And the digger smiled as the digger will do
The mouth parting the beard, putting black teeth in view

“While I slept in the grave, people got thicker”
“If you’re no match for the geckos, you’re no match for the digger”

“I’m not much for questing, but I do like the digging”
And with that did Omar start the cutting and kicking

He trimmed the Thorn, dug him out by the roots
But he felt a bit hungry when he tried on Thorn’s boots

“Gecko’s good eating, if I remember correctly”
“Some steaks cut from lizard would fit me perfectly”

And Omar climbed the slope, shovel in hand
To find some ol’ Geckos, stomp them in the sand

Cut out some meat for a steakhouse revival
Which Omar can do ‘cause he’s skilled in Survival

It was some hours later when Omar clambered down
His hunger was sated but he still wore a frown

Went up to Thorn’s body, all cold, still and dead
And kicked the poor corpse full tilt in the head

“You filthy old liar” Omar scolded the stiff
“There were only male bodies on the top of the cliff”

We’ll never know why Thorn wanted Omar to help
But it seems to be well that Omar busted the whelp

A whelp sending travelers to rescue his squeeze
When there’s no squeeze to rescue – that guy was a sleaze

So Omar went eastward onwards to Primm
Grim was his face, as his temper was grim

His mind full of blood, a shady grim figure
Because a questgiver lied to the hoary old digger

Not Halloween at all

A brilliant new comic at subnormality - refreshingly skeleton-free.

Stefan Gärtner is still writing for The European

Short, sharp columns , making their point in a few passages - highly recommended.

Yahtzee's little dictionary

This week, the incomparable Yahtzee of zeropunctuation fame delineates some terms in his column at the escapist. There exist some very good scholarly treatises about computer gaming and how it relates to other narrative forms, but most gamers don't have the time or inclination to read them. So rather have a look at this: It is short, sweet and grounded on knowledge one can only acquire with a lifetime wasted on games.

Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas is out and it has kept me very busy. It's far too early for a in-depth review, but from where I am standing, it is at least as good as Fallout 3. Also, the first good mods are out. FOOK has made a return, as have Blackwolf's backpacks - both are heartily recommended. As a small redress for my long absence, I present to you the ballad of Digger Omar - the adventures of my FNV character, which I plan to present here on a weekly basis.

The Ballad of Digger Omar, First Canto

Digger Omar worked for Mojave Express
That much you should know before I digress

The face of a demon, the beard of a prophet,
The hands of a strangler, much feared in his outfit

He kept a bloody sharp kukri in a blood caked sheath
And his soul was as black as the back of his teeth

Now Omar, he worked for Mojave Express
And one day he met with bad luck in excess

Four men came to kill poor old Omar
And, cautiously, wisely, shot him from afar

Down went Omar, for ages he went down
Down to the hot place, in fire to drown

But Satan got scared when he looked from his throne
“By my grannies’ eyes, he’s not one to stay prone”

“He’s the worst, this Omar, this evil old digger,
He’ll rule hell in short time, this much I figure.”

And thus Satan, the pussy, thought it was fit
To inflict Omar on the living, at least for a bit

Up from hell went Omar, up always up
til he woke on a bed, as weak as a pup

There sat an old coot who called himself Mitch
Who put Omar back together stitch for stitch

Who took the digger for some tests and some screenings
And discovered with dismay Omar’s violent leanings

“You are strong, you are swift, you are hardy,
Neither fast in the brain-box, nor overly tardy”

“Too ugly and uncouth to be a town greeter,
that much I see with my old vigour-meter”

“Now let’s take a glance at your psychical health.”
And Doc Mitch diagnosed: melee weapons, stealth.

With a shiver he returned the digger’s gear
The armor, the kukri, one cut-off ear

Some coin, an old shotgun, a handful of shells
a bottle of poison for spear tips and wells

“I patched you” said Mitch “and I now ask a favor.”
“And to some this favor might have a strange flavor.”

“Goodsprings is peaceful and no place for grief.”
“And thus I just ask you, dear digger, to leave.”

The digger, he grinned, with teeth black as ice,
with a soul like a grave, no man to play nice.

“I like you, old doc, and I’ll do you this favor.
I’m not ungrateful to one who’s my savior.”

“Just a small, tiny thing, before I must fade,”
“My gear is all there, but I miss my old spade.”

A tear in his eye, with trembling finger,
Mitch indexed the shop to the grim harbinger.

Omar went in and the air grew a bit colder.
Omar went out with his spade on his shoulder.

“Thanks, Doc Mitch, for restoring my vim.”
“If someone should ask: I’m going to Primm.”

A regretful doctor, a shop cleared of things,
That’s how Omar left the town of Goodsprings.

Something for a rainy sunday

This is a webcomic for everyone who likes Star Wars and RPGs, very much in the vein of "DM of the Rings". Roleplayers will recognize the usual suspects: The rules lawyer, the man asleep at the wheel, the avatar of chaos and, of course, the long suffering game master - Be advised: This will kill a day!

The depiction of the goings on in the scorched earth campaign will continue later in the week.

Dead Town Bakersfield

As soon as the group is back on the road, Mal puts the foot down – at least until the crossing, the route seems to be safe enough for some speeding and the day is growing shorter. Zed is on his street bike, a hundred meters ahead, his black duster flapping in the wind. After they leave the route to Good Water they become much more careful. Some call it “exploration pace” – driving no faster than twenty klicks per hour, a scout on bike ahead, constant radio contact and frequent stops to check the surroundings. They are in the wastes now, flat land to the west, the Appalachians rising in the east. Only few things live in these places, and there are few signs of the Long Ago apart from the ancient blacktop and a rusted hulk now and then, serving as a windbreak for hardy shrubs. Dan Hawking finds tracks of the other group’s jumper at one of those stops. “Three days, may be two. Hard to say, tracks age fast here.” They drive on, towards the afternoon sun. Soon, they get a first glimpse of Bakersfield. “Quite sizable” is the first thought in Mal’s head when he scans the ruins with his binoculars. “Twenty thousand souls. Bad shape.” The road seems to run right through the ruins, with another blacktop coming in from the south, forming a T-crossing in the middle of the ruins. Lots of red brick buildings, two or even three stories – sadly, their roofs have mostly caved in long ago. Some old billboards on the walls, long bleached white. There seem to have been some fires in the days of the Fall. A church at the crossing, still a fine-looking structure with its white bell tower. Apart from the big roads, the streets are choked with sand and brambles. No signs of human habitation or recent visitors. The binoculars change hands. “It seems quiet enough.” Rod says “Probably the others are somewhere in a building, trying to fix their jumper. Shall we go for a look?” “Yes, but let’s be very careful. They could also be in a slaver’s cage or rotting in shallow graves. A hundred men could hide in these ruins. We go very slow, and always keep an eye on a way out.”
Dan nods, and Zed goes back on his bike, his unspoken, unenviable duty being to scout the road in the ruins ahead and being the first to be shot at. The Conquistador creeps up to the edge of the ruins, then halts, as Zed makes a run up to the crossing and back. He goes in with some speed – if you have to be a target, at least be a target that’s swiftly moving, that’s what Judge Boyd said at times like these. Zed roars in, his head low between the handlebars. Empty ruins flash by, mostly burnt out shells now filled with underbrush, car wrecks nearly covered by the shifting sands. Rusted streetlamps and road signs, partly obscured by some kind of creeping vines. He mostly runs on sand: the blacktop is only visible in some spots. He reaches the mid-town crossing and stops the bike. A short look around: Not a living soul, not even animals, just lots of sand and brambles. At the western edge is a big whitish structure, a large building. It seems to be in better shape than the rest of town. A school, maybe. He guns the engine and races back. A bit breathless, he reports. Mal nods “Okay, we go in. Zed, please go fifty ahead. We stop at the crossing and then think about further action.” He looks at the sky. “Maybe two more hours of good light. I’d like to return to Refugium before it gets real dark. At least back to the route where it’s safe and cozy.” Dan makes his hang-dog face “I don’t like it.” “Of course you don’t.”
The small convoy goes in, no faster than a wanderer on foot. Zed reaches the crossing, the Conquistador fifty meters behind, just at the old church and its looming tower, when the heavy vehicle breaks through the sandy surface and drops a yard into a large pitfall. Mal, Rod and Dan Hawking are jolted around. Mal screams “Ambush!” and draws two of his MACs. He bursts from the hatch in the roof like a ludicrously well armed jack-in-the-box. At the crossing, Zed has realized the predicament of the others. At the same moment, a bottle thrown from above bursts on the roof of the jeep, a clear, honey-like fluid spattering everywhere. Rod gets a whiff of the stuff and turns pale. He shouts “Nerve poison! Everybody out out out!” Everywhere, the sand seems to boil – black stingers and pincers rise from the dust, shaking the sand off pitted carapaces…
Bakersfield is one of ten thousand dead towns. Year after year, it lies silent under moon and sun, rotting away, sanded down by the soft wind coming from the mountains. In two generations, only a few mounds of brick will be left and maybe some name in maps which are becoming obsolescent fast. From a mile away, the town already starts to look more like a patch of vegetation than a human artifact. But this afternoon, the silence is broken by the roar of a motorcycle accelerating deep in the ruins, and, at first, short bursts of automatic gunfire and disciplined rifle shots. But after a moment, the shooting becomes frantic – long, barrel-melting bursts, rifles fired as fast as the trigger will go, interrupted by one, then another hollow explosion. As suddenly as the shooting began, it stops. A final, long burst from a submachine gun, then silence returns to Bakersfield.

Legwork in Refugium

The men reconvene in the safety of the car, sheltered from the cameras. Dan does not like the place “They watch us. Every step, someone is watching us. With those cameras. They hide something, in there.” The others do not share his deep distrust. Mal says “We are about as smart as before. But with some luck, we’ll meet their leader tomorrow. Maybe he will let something slip.” Rod concurs “And until then, we should pay the settlement another visit, and talk to the locals. I’ll offer my services, maybe a grateful customer will tell me something useful. You could visit the two hotels and ask around for guests that were more noteworthy than the rest.”

The Conquistador rumbles down the incline back into the square. As soon as the car comes to a stop, Rod begins his routine of offering help and succor to the sick, the weak and the wounded, promising the merciful benefactor’s well-schooled eye and deft fingers as a remedy whatever ails the good people of Refugium. In most settlements, there would be a queue of the desperate and hurting after few minutes – here, it takes about a quarter of an hour before a supplicant turns up. A worried mother asks Rod to follow her to the bedside of her sick child. While the young parents look on, Rod quickly diagnoses a common pediatric disease. It does not take much time, nor more than a modicum of his skill to bring relief to the sweating boy. He tells the parents what to do during the next days and also inquires why they did not go to the monks to help them. The grateful young man is a bit embarrassed “If it had become any worse, I would have gone up to Brother Chaucer. But the monks do not heal people for free – it would have cost me quite a bit of the next harvest. And then Marge found out that you were here.” Rod really seems to be the first benefactor visiting Refugium after a long time, and maybe more frequent visits would be a good idea. At the moment, there seem to be other visitors in town: A single, wild-looking biker at Sue Snell’s and a group of explorers at Dago’s. “But they left before the finished their business with Chaucer, and left their stuff with Dago, or so I’ve heard.” While Rod firmly refuses payment in scripts, the mother still is able to thrust a packet of food into his hands “It’s the least we can do.” When the others hear of the single traveler, they become suspicious - The other false benefactors also traveled alone. They are prepared for bloodshed when they enter Sue Snell’s establishment, a cleanly, spacious place, its furnishings scavenged from some roadside diner and lovingly maintained. Their fears are unfounded: While the man seems to be accustomed to violence, they quickly rule out the possibility that he is the one they are looking for. He is just a drifter making his way across the Desert Heart who bought the answer to a rather difficult question and is just waiting for the monks to supply an answer. That leaves the other group – the men saunter over to Dago’s. They soon realize while this is the second-best place to stay in Refugium. The whole building smells of bad cooking, the sleeping cots are nearly on top of each other. To Rod it seems that insects scamper away at every single step. The ho’teller himself is a nasty little runt, complaining about the group of four which rented cots for three days an then just vanished without making the final payment. They left some of their equipment – sleeping bags, clothes, a few books – and Dago sees it as right and proper to sell of these things to cover for the lost earnings. The three men and their female companion told him that they would pay the close ruins of Bakersfield a visit “but they definitely skipped town. Probably lost interest in the research they sponsored, and thus not only scammed not only me, but also the honorable monks. They’ve been gone for two days now – probably sitting in Holy Flame City drinking away the scripts they owe me.” The longer the explorers listen to Dago’s justifications for trying to sell the equipment, the stronger becomes their feeling that the other group is missing in Bakersfield. It is early afternoon by now. still lots of light to burn till sundown. Mal interrupts the ho’teller’s stream of recrimination “Listen, Dago, how about a deal. A proposition. This Bakersfield, is it far from here?” “Oh no, about twenty klicks from where we stand. In the early days, we even got some of our building materials from there. Just go the road towards Goodwater and turn left and the first crossing, going west. It’s a blacktop from the old days. Your car – a most magnificent ride, if I may say so – would have no problem there, while the jumper of those thieves...” “Yeah, I might have an offer for you. We too have some time to kill. What if we go to Bakersfield. If your guests aren’t there, they have most likely skipped town, and you would be justly entitled to their stuff.” “As it’s right and proper.” “And we would be entitled of a cut, making sure that everything is right and proper.” Again, some fierce haggling occurs. But finally, a deal is cut, and the Conquistador leaves Refugium, back on the old route.

The Bookseller

The explorers drive the Conquistador up the incline towards the looming building. The walls are concrete, as are the watchtowers. No guards man them, but someone has placed strange machines in the shadow under the flat roofs - too far in the darkness to make them out clearly. If there are buildings apart from the large tower in the middle, the walls are high enough to hide them from sight. As the vehicle gets closer, the travelers can make out signs, letters and words on the walls, some as high as a few feet, others miniscule, as if written with a pencil. They find the campsite; a level field with a water pump at the side and another surveillance camera on a pole in the middle. The only entry to the jail-monastery is just across: It looks as if someone bolted a rusted metal box at one side of the perfect hexagon. This box is quite large , a square ten meters long and slightly higher than the walls. It has a gate big enough for a truck. There is a door cut into this gate, just big enough for one man, standing open and leading into the darkness.

Dan Hawking stays with the jeep, cradling his rifle and eyeing the camera balefully, while the others step into the convent gate. It is a gloomy, cluttered place, lit only by ancient, blind skylights. A metal gangway crosses the room at half height, and there, between a jumble of humming juice brains and monochrome monitors sits the master of the gate: The visitors just see his big, jowly face, the severe half-moon glasses and a corona of wispy white hair, lit by the greenish glow off the monitors. His voice fills the gate “Ah, new faces! That’s swell, swell indeed. I am Brother Chaucer, and responsible for all and any deals, trades, requests and agreements between Refugium and the outside world.” By now, their eyes have adapted to the murk, and the explorers see two youngish men in cowls, their heads shaven, standing right next to the small door. They carry submachine guns. The hall itself is filled with low tables full merchandise: household items, electronics, clothing and books. Many, many books. There are lockers with guns behind wire mesh. “We pay in scripts for any equipment that you might sell us. We are paid in scripts for wares that are on offer here and for the special services that we deliver.” “Great,” Mal thinks “another crackpot currency to join the collection.” But he remains silent. Chaucer goes on: “If you have come for information, I will help you formulating the correct inquiry, estimate the chances of success and the probable duration of the query. I will also set down a non-negotiable price for this service, if we are successful. If you want a certain piece of text multiplied or changed from an electronic source into a real book, the cost is fixed at three pages per script.” “So, what’s a script then?” Zed asks. Chaucer seems just too happy to answer. “A script is a promissory note, guaranteeing the bearer of one script the instant issue of ten sheets of white paper in this hall. That means that one script is worth ten sheets of paper.” Mal makes some calculations in his head. Rod speaks up “Would it be possible to pay with our own services rendered? I am a very proficient physician, and if one of your brothers or sisters needs treatment…” “No, benefactor, we have our own people for that. But thank you for your generous offer. So, if you have a query to be answered, just ask me.” He gives a strange smile “I’ll be here all day. You may also look at the selection on the tables, but in any case I must ask you to leave your weapons with the two brothers at the door.” Zed has spent the whole exchange looking around. As Chaucer comes to an end, he spots movement just below the ceiling: two machine guns sit on rails in the shadowy corners, away from the skylight. No one seems to operate them, but there seem to be cameras fixed to the weapons. Mal leaves the hall, while Rod and Zed study the merchandise under the watchful eyes of the young monks. Chaucer seems to be busy on his machines. Nothing on the tables interests the two adventurers as much as Zed is interested in the machine guns under the ceiling. They track him as he moves about the hall, fingers a book here, has a look at a knife there. As he suddenly turns and looks straight at the cameras, the guns return to a neutral position with a short whir. Rod asks “You surely sell many books. I thought you collected them?” “These are duplicates. We sell them at good prices – they are surely not useful to anyone rotting in storage. But we pay very good prices for new books.” “I see. Excuse me, but I have to ask. Part of our modus operandi, really. When did the last benefactor visit Refugium?” “Oh, there hasn’t been a visit for more than a year. It seems the people of your order working these parts know that a doctor is present. You are very welcome anyway.” Mal returns, having left his guns in the Conquistador with Dan, carrying a sizeable package wrapped in cloth. He strides up to the gangway and addresses Chaucer “I have something valuable to sell. I’ll take scripts if those scripts buy me certain things we agree to beforehand.” He opens the package and pulls out a book. This book is unlike the many damaged and warped paperbacks on the tables. It looks like something that was already old when the Long Ago fell and yet was preserved through some lucky coincidence. It is bound in thick leather; its pages are of a strange strong paper, the letters of a very unfamiliar type. “It’s a bible, but it is also very old. Older than the Long Ago. Very rare, possible the last of its kind. I thought this might be a good place to keep it safe, but I also recognize value when I see it. And I expect to be paid for value.” Although Chaucer keeps quiet when he receives the ancient bible, his hands tremble as he puts down his glasses and examines the book. This takes some time, with Mal reading every twitch and every breath of the gatekeeper. “Ah, yes, quite so, truly old, although possibly not older than the Long Ago. A common misconception. Surely very valuable. Indeed, this is one of the rare purchases where I will have to confer with other people. Someone is on his way as we speak.” A few minutes later, a young black woman in a cowl enters from the other side of the convent gate. Rod can’t help but think of an old acquaintance back home, although this one wears her hair quite short. She introduces herself as Sister Zola, responsible for the acquisition of books. She, Chaucer and Mal start a serious discussion about prices, possible deals take the unique nature of the item into account. After a short while, one comes to the conclusion that Father Ling will have to decide if Refugium needs “another bible”, as Zola puts it, and what kind of resources he would be willing to spend on such a vanity item, or as Mal puts it, this unique and basically priceless work of art and last remnant of our heritage. This will take a day – Chaucer recommends the two hotels down in the settlement, tomorrow afternoon at the latest the master of Refugium will have an answer concerning this surprising offer. "I see you tomorrow" he says as the explorers leave "Do not forget to write your name somewhere on the monastery's walls - if you can."

Arrival at Refugium

Thankfully, the explorers and their passenger have a thoroughly eventless ride to Refugium. While the roads from the Long Ago are in a sorry shape, someone put up posts and warning signs to guide travelers towards the settlement – also a hint, perhaps, at the dangers lurking off the safe roads. Mal makes good time, and the group reaches the former high security jail at about midday.



The old concrete building looms over the little farming community like a fastness of ancient times. The farmers’ homes are small boxes in the shadow of the large hexagon, its walls still crowned with rusting razor wire. After entering the settlement, the Nissan Conquistador is stopped by a small group of armed men led a tanned, burly brawler in metal armor with an impressive red beard that nicely complements his skin color. He introduces himself as Rupert Ropehands to the explorers, responsible for the security of the village and contact person for any strangers that come into town. He seems to be polite enough, if wary of the well armed visitors and their armored conveyance – at least until sister Duerrenmatt exits the car. She introduces the group and Rupert’s behavior changes at once. He gives some short orders to the other guards, who shoulder their shotguns and crossbows and leave the group. Then, Rupert readily answers many questions. Yes, this is Refugium, although they will probably want to talk to the monks, and not to the farmers. Yes, the monks will receive them, at least during daylight hours. Getting the information that a traveler came looking for might take a few days, though. There are two hotels in town, of which Sue Snell’s is the nice one, while Dago’s caters to those visitors who are on a budget or do not mind his dodgy food and unctuous manners. For those who do not want to pay anything at all, there is a small clearing close to the walls of the jail where one might put up a tent or two, and there is also a hand pump for water. Yes, there are other visitors in town: A group of travelers “just like you people”, and a single man on a street bike, both have business with the monks. No, Rod is the first benefactor who has visited Refugium in months.

While Rupert informs them about the wheres, whos and hows, the explorers get a good look at the square and the surrounding buildings. The houses look clean and well-built, as if following a certain pattern, and there are many signs with stenciled letters. The fields surrounding the village look fine, at least to the untrained eye. Adults and children mill about without giving more than a glance to the armored jeep: Refugium seems to do well. Dan is the first to spot the surveillance camera. It sits on a high pole and points at the middle of the small square where Rupert stopped the car.

After about half an hour, Rupert takes off, not without offering further help and information. Sister Duerrenmatt has long taken her heavy backpack and walked off towards the fastness. The group retreats into the armored jeep to deliberate. They have very little to base their further actions on: the false benefactor might be here, he could even be in the jail, infiltrating the small society there. They know next to nothing about Refugium and decide that their next steps should change that. Dan mentions the security camera above their car – he might be a bit overly cautious, but no one disagrees with his reminder that this is surely not the only camera pointing at them. Rod, who lit up after the stressful conversation with Rupert, asks “It would be nice to have some inroad or leverage when talking to the monks. Do you gentlemen have an idea, apart from me offering my services to any people in the jail who suffer from some injury or sickness?” Zed just glowers through the heavy smoke, but Mal smiles. “A few months back I stumbled across something that might fit the bill. They collect books? Rare, valuable books? I think I’ve got just the thing to get their attention.”

The harsh hand of justice

LAW is one of the most powerful organizations in the Wastes. Thus it was about time to add something about the judges and their ways to the scorched earth materials.

In the rusted trunk of the wreck you find...

This list of tables can be used to find out what kind of scav the characters pull from the ruins in a post-apocalyptic campaign. It was designed with GURPS in mind and with regard to a group where a member with a level of 14 or lower in scrounging was seen as a half-blind no-good lackadaisical waste of skin. Players may want to skip this list, as reading it might spoil some surprises. Or you may inform yourself to keep your game master honest. This list also is part of the scorched earth materials post.

Are you working for free?

Maybe you should stop that, especially if you work for Facebook. Global Guerrillas showcases a nice short thought experiment about the value you create if you are a Facebook "superuser".

The White Zones

No one goes there, therefore it is logical that there would be lots of tales and opinions about them. An addition to the scorched earth materials post.

Write your own short story

Dmitri Orlov has a new essay over at ClubOrlov. This one deals broadly with the fictions we create about our present and our murky future, and how to escape these fictions. Enjoy!

Drop

Drop - a settlement in the middle of the Great White - has been added to the scorched earth: materials post.

I am away for a while...

...it's time for the beach. If you want to waste some time until my return, go visit 5secondfilms and go through their stuff. They will leave in childlike glee and slack-jawed wonderment.

Monsters on Post-Its

Don Kenn draws little cthulhuoid vignettes on Post-Its. They rocked my day. Via Who Killed Bambi.

They built great underground vaults

While they are not underground so much, one easily recognizes Fallout's vaults in this piece about futuristic cities in an apocalyptic wasteland, as shown in an exhibition in Hamburg. Via der freitag.

At the other end of the republic: The exhibition about realism in the Hypo-Kunsthalle, Munich, is very interesting. But do not expect to see many works by Hopper or Courbet - that was just marketing to get you inside.

The use of cars

An older, but quite enlightening article by Dmitry Orlov on cars and homes as irrational images. Via Culture Change. I second every word he writes about bicycles!

Finally, the resistance is constituting itself

A short look at the macchiato-mothers who took over the Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin - and probably other spaces as well. Via taz.

After a long day, a bit of mirth and levity may be in order

I think this speaks for itself.

Yesterday, we tried D&D 4th

We had us an dwarven warrior, a tiefling warlord and a human wizard and went into a forest to look what all this noise was about. Then, we got ambushed by kobolds.

yeah, kobolds

Still, it was fun. Very much like a tactical board-game, a bit like Space Hulk really.

Lots of work

Work has me in its clutches like a huge, slightly odiferous teddy bear: It's nice that he's there, but all that love is also a bit...smothering. So there won't be any writeup of the scorched earth campaign for the time being.
But there are good news; at least for me, the insufferable Bioshock fanboy. A third part of Bioshock is in the making - it's scheduled for 2012. Here is the first trailer. More information about it can be found on io9.

So I got this great idea for a game, right?

This is a post about the failure of the FPS to try something new, and a look at one way to return some spice to the genre.

I played around with Singularity (here is a good review) and was thus able to pinpoint the exact moment in which I would lose interest in super soldier projects going tragically awry. I was poking around in a ruined Soviet laboratory and found this old note, which said that the rats treated with E-99 showed exponential muscle growth and that one should attempt and then my eyes glazed over.

First person shooters have been used before, similar to horror films, to convey the social fears of their audience. It is often a subtext, but it is nonetheless present and shapes the gaming experiences. Doom 3 dealt with the pressures of the modern corporate workplace, the scattered audio logs and e-mails conveying the fears and frustrations of the common office drone. Half-Life and Half-Life 2 were angry and rousing indictments of the treatment commonly suffered by doctoral and postdoctoral students, with Dr. Breen standing in for a thesis supervisor everyone could recognize. Resident Evil 4 gave voice to the half-conscious dread everyone feels in the presence of people speaking Spanish. The list goes on.

But looking at the central plot of many shooters, one would be forced that the main fear of our age is super soldiers. Future cultural historians will think that we feared nothing so much as military experiments about bulky fighters with low self-preservation instincts when they do their studies from their levitating reclining chairs. As they twiddle their dayglo tresses and stroke their pheromone lapdogs, they will say: “The old civilization fell due to an influx of super soldiers with miniguns, as long predicted by the dominant idiom in their cultural record. Tragically, even as they trained their youth in simulations to deal with this threat, it was not enough to stave of the inevitable, the inevitable being partly-invisible super soldiers which jumped from wall to wall while small lightings crackled all over their armor.” And then they will take a sip from their genesplice cocktails and sigh with the sighs of people being right.

Another thing strikes me as conspicuous: Apart from large, evil corporations (f.i. UAC) and the Nazis nobody is in the business of villains. The soviets have entered this small club, mainly because the swastika seems to be sucked dry as a symbol of evil, while Stalin’s portrait and the hammer and sickle still create a kind of frisson, and the USSR appears as a suitable sponsor for crazy science, while Belgium, for example, does not.

So this is my idea: Make a cool company the villain. A company the gamer knows firsthand, because he uses its product every day. A company that the player cannot live without – and most players can live without corporations creating viral zombies. And let’s make a subtext that everyone can recognize and get queasy about – privacy.

Let us call this company Bongle, for the moment. Or until the lawyers tear down the front door. In the world built for this game, Bongle is the dominant search engine. It is crazy good, having eliminated all competitors two years after its introduction. They present the ideal repository of all possible knowledge. Your term paper, your nuclear research, the speech at your daughter’s wedding: They are unthinkable without Bongle. You use it, your mother uses it, the grocer at the corner uses it. And everybody uses it every day. If you are not findable by Bongle, then you must be nonexistent. And it is a cool company. Everybody likes them, they make cool gadgets and they are obviously a force of good in the world.

You play a visitor to Bongle’s headquarters. You start out as the customary cipher we all know and love from shooters (basically because they keep their mouth shut). You have a name, something like “Dave Webster”, and looking in a mirror you see a nondescript hipster with a funny t-shirt. You are Dr. Gordon Freeman without the powered suit and the PhD. You don’t say much.

Something goes horrible wrong as you enter the HQ. Not satisfied in knowing and describing the world in the tiniest detail, but bent on changing it according to its whim, Bongle has found the algorithm to transforming the world itself, and the changes wrought are bizarre and inimical to human life, to say the least. It is upon you to put things right.

Yawn. Right? Wrong!

- There is no Gate to Hell, no Citadel or volcano base. The algorithm is everywhere; it suffuses the reality completely and changes it. All the Dave can hope for is to master it and force a reality into being that he can live with.
- There will be e-mails, databases and audio logs: Apart from information about the algorithm and Bongle, they will contain all kinds of information about Dave Webster. One of the themes would be Bongle’s power to know everything about a person. All of Dave’s surfing habits, downloads (legal and illegal) and other personal information will become available to the player. Step by step, the figure you are playing will be filled out. He is no mass murderer or secret operative, but the level of info you get on him is astounding: especially private stuff, making this an r-rated game – his ex made some pictures and put them online. At the end of the game he will be one of the most fully realized characters in a game ever, with the player in the position of a voyeur.
- Bongle’s HQ is the coolest and nicest office environment you will ever see. It presents the right mixture between the ideal, funky workplace and advanced techniques to squeeze the last drop of performance from the office plankton. As the reality becomes dominated by the algorithm, this ideal office becomes a surreal labyrinth of distorted hallways and cubicles, peopled by crazed office drones and the wandering “effects” of the algorithm.
And I’m thinking demons. Yes, definitely demons. Not the Doom kind, but some really crazy, M C Escher stuff with a bad attitude and heavy use of high-end graphics to make it tick. Think Hound of Tindalos and go from there. Also, changing gravity.
- The player finds a journal early on that allows him to effect changes using the algorithm: It is basically Half-Life’s gravgun, the Portal gun, plus Singularity’s time manipulation device and a few other crazy powers rolled into a block of yellowing paper. The journal looks like a small moleskine, full of mad scribblings and strange geometric drawings. The source of the algorithm can be anything. At the moment, I’m going with an Assyrian kind of metamathematics, which uses sympathetic magic – but it could be anything, apart from a super soldier program, of course. So, more riddles, and less shooting. But still a bit of shooting. It’s a shooter, you know?
- One of the powers uses the algorithm to access the luxurious beach house of Bongle’s founder, now a crazed hermit, deeply desperate about the damage his garage-project has done. It serves as kind of base – a very Mies van der Rohe kind of base. You use the algorithm to change the founder’s personal history and personality, and change the beach house as well. If you want to gun up, you make him an arms collector and plunder his private museum of rare firearms. If you need further information on the “weaponized memes” running amok, you make him a hobby philosopher and hope that he can answer your questions. But with every visit, the possible changes for the beach house narrow down…
- The Game Options are designed like an official Wikipedia-page. You choose the entry “the game was lauded for its friendliness towards beginners” instead of “The game is thought to be one of the hardest shooters in existence”, and the game difficulty goes from “very difficult” to "easy".
- And the end? Well, what will a hipster named Dave Webster with 45.000 illegal downloads do with the power to change the world in whatever kind he chooses?

So, there you have it: a shooter with a new villain, a new environment, a new subtext and nary a super soldier in sight. Any Russian oligarch with a billion to spare and no fear of litigation may pick up this idea, as long as the resulting game is good.

China Miéville: Kraken

Kraken is an urban-fantasy page turner about eschatological cults and magician gang-bosses in modern London. It is well made, always interesting and, when its not blood-soakedly gruesome, quite funny. I would be stumped to translate the many word-plays that are used to explain some mechanics of magic, but this kind of language together with the treatment of London as an arcane playground/ war zone create the right atmosphere for this kind of tale. I think that true Londoners might find it even more amusing. So, it's a good read: Light enough for a train journey, but with enough substance to keep you reading at home.

But while it feigns to be a fantasy novel about religion, magic and armageddonim (that's the plural of armageddon), it really is about how to structure and present an awesome Unknown Armies campaign. Someone starting with Unknown Armies (or, to a lesser extent, Witchcraft, or Over the Edge, or Mage) will find out how magic could hide in the everyday, how a normal person could stumble into the occult underground, how the magical economy works and how everybody is kept in line and in the dark (or not). The development of the protagonist could be used as a showcase for a PC's journey from the mundane to magical mastery and might enable new players to ease into the world-construct of Unknown Armies.
The longtime game master will find reams of inspiration. Here are jovial malevolent forces, surreally terrible fates, literally tens of cults (and their respective armageddonim), interesting characters and magic tricks to last you a long time. If you want to make London the setting of your supernatural campaign, this novel is indispensable. Read it and From Hell back to back and you are set. I will steal from this book for years to come.

Robert Rodriguez: Predators

This is a gritty little adventure in the jungle. It basically copies all iconic elements of Predator from 1987 and updates a few of them - for example, the in-tune-with-nature indian is replaced by the in-tune-with-the-tao yakuza. It is highly amusing (if you're into that kind of thing), quite coherent and works entirely without jump scares. The characters are basically ciphers, but for a game master it is nice to see the typical cardboard cutouts in action and to take some notes for the next session. Adrian Brody works ok as an action hero, Laurence Fishburne is hilarious and I would liked to have seen more of Danny Trejo - but Mexicans seem to die just before the black guy gets it, and that's very early in the movie.

I predict this film will be standard Christmas fare for the late night slot on December 24th on the private TV channels from 2013 onwards. Some gun porn.

4 of 5 creepy convicts

Christopher Nolan: Inception

Just a few thoughts:
- Expectations were very high, and as the movie is good, but not comparable to your garden-variety epiphany, I came back a bit disappointed. I guess nobody will film a mix up of Matrix and Mullholland Drive anytime soon. And that's too bad.
- Nolan doesn't like women. He thinks they are clingy, emotional, stuck-up toddlers that mainly exist to get in the way. See Batman Begins for another blatant example. That the woman in question is just a figment of a character's subconsciousness doesn't make her less irritating.
- There were two films in one. One was a kick-ass SF movie of the good kind, the kind that asks a "what if" questions and follows the answers to the end. The other was a psychodrama about a husband's guilt trip. Those two movies shared the space, uneasily, and sometimes tripped over each others' feet.
- Zero gravity never looked so good. I think, this was the first zero g fight that really looked like the real thing.
- In your dreams, car doors are bulletproof.
- The plot is convoluted, but not willfully opaque or complete gibberish. If you try, you will keep up. But don't think too much about the mechanics of entering other people's dreams. The more you ponder it, the less it works out.
- I like Leonardo DiCaprio better with every movie he makes.
- The same goes for Cillian Murphy.
- This is possibly the one good blockbuster movie this year. If you want to see a movie, this is a good choice. But it is not a must-have cultural artifact, necessary for inclusion in this particular civilization.

3.5 of 5 spinning tops.

The Lowly lasgun

Demon swords and books that scream their hideous contents at the savant are not the only eldritch artifacts of the grim dark future. When enough blood is spilled, even mundane tools may take on a life of their own. The Lowly lasgun is such an artifact.

The legend has it that guardsman Stanislaus Lowly was a member of the XIII. Casbian, a ragged outfit just a step above a penal battalion, a non-descript soldier in an average unit in a standard Guard regiment. The Imperial Guard is said to achieve victory by drowning the enemy in the blood of guardsmen, and the treatment of the XIII. Casbian epitomizes this saying. During a nameless pacification on some nameless backwater world, Lowly's unit was thrown into the meat grinder. He and a hundred other guardsmen were to storm some pillboxes held by renegade elements - over an open field in open sight of the heavy stubbers. Regrettably, foreseeably, the decoys were cut to shreds. Lowly was the only guardsman to survive the ordeal, and was reassigned to a different element of the XIII. Casbian, the dreaded Gruldark Trench Rats, a group of habitual survivors and misfits.
Lowly was with the Trench Rats for a week, before this legendary outfit was caught in an ambush. The Trench Rats, known for their tenacity and their ability to get out of the tightest spots, were wiped out to a man, that man being Lowly. Again, he was sent to a different unit, just in time for the XIII. Casbian's departure for the Mordecai system. 

The fate of the XIII. Casbian during the Mordecai massacres is well-documented as the nigh-perfect mixture of incompetence, hubris and sheer bad luck. While the Imperial Guard  held the strategic high ground after an interminable and very bloody campaign, the tatters of the XIII. Casbian were damaged beyond any hope of restitution. The few surviving veterans were scattered over various colonies. Lowly's name, together with the number of his lasgun, appears on the lists of the survivors - a few dozen out of a couple of hundred thousands - and his trail ends there. He probably died in his bed in some small hamlet.

The war gear of the XIII. Casbian was split up by the Departmento Munitorium. Lowly's gun was appropriated by another regiment and has wandered from hand to hand ever since, from the Imperial Guard to Local Defense Forces to Skitarii to enforcers and mercenaries. It even graced an Inquisitor's cadre for a time. Over the course of a few centuries a disquieting pattern became clear: While the holder of the Lowly lasgun seems to survive any situation, however hairy, all his comrades seem to be ill-fated. They die in droves, they die like flies, while one man drags himself out from under the corpses, holding the Lowly lasgun. But the gun seems only to work for the grey multitudes of humanity - the meek guardsman, the hollow-faced scribe, the technomat who is but a cipher to his superiors. Soon after some radiant champion of humanity picks up the Lowly lasgun, he is struck down by fate and the fickle tides of battle. The gun only has its "benign" influence in the hands of a man belonging to the teeming masses.

The Ordo Calixis has followed the trail of the Lowly lasgun for some decades now and acquired the artifact on the battlefields of Tranch. The gun is said to rest in the depths of the Tricorn palace, but everyone who knows the Ordos well enough would seek the Lowly lasgun somewhere else. It is of great interest to the Istvanian faction, as the gun seems to find those individuals which are fated to survive everything the universe can throw at them. Others see the gun as a means to achieve the hollowest kind of victory: One single man planting the standard on bodies of his comrades.

The Lowly lasgun is said to be a standard pattern lasgun. Its only markings consists of a "13" in low gothic script on the left side of the barrel and a heavy brass key on a short chain hanging from the muzzle. It is beat up and  full of dents and scratches, but is still a reliable weapon.

In game terms, the holder of the Lowly lasgun has an extra fate point, which may only be used for burning and thus surviving certain death. It works only for mediocre characters - anyone with any characteristics score of 35 or more does not profit from the gun. And everyone in the holder's company suffers from strokes of hideous bad luck - how this affects gameplay is decided by the gamemaster.

The life sciences are not the life sciences

Daniel Miessler has a shortish blog post about this. I think it was in the early Noughties that some hard sciences (e.g. biology, chemistry, genetics) tried to label themselves as the "life sciences" - but this approach may be older. This led at least one smart liberal arts researcher to the conclusion that this label was quite wrong: It's history, philosophy and literature which teach us how to deal with life. Biology and chemistry just provide helpful tools.

Dancing with the corpse

A new essay by Joe Bageant. It is long, bitter and funny, like a man-sized chicory leaf slipping on a banana peel.

An interview with Martin Sonneborn

Via Süddeutsche Zeitung. Sonneborn - formerly the lord and master of titanic, Germany's only satirical publication of note - is one of my personal heroes. It's good to see him keeping up the good work.

The War Nerd is back!

Via the eXiled. He is the guy who critiqued wars instead of movies or music or books. Peculiar sense of humor. All of his stuff is recommended, and I welcome his return like that of a favorite uncle. Even if my Mum doesn't like him and he talks a bit too loud.

And you won't like what he says about cousin Gus on his aircraft carrier.

The fictional realm of linearity

Straight lines are the fiction we live by. As described by Dmitry Orlov.

It is so very hot

At least here it is. You are probably looking for an excuse to stop working for a few hours, some deceptively shallow amusement to while away the sun-scorched afternoon, something that speaks to the darker parts of your soul but still puts a smile on your sweat-drenched face. Look no further. This one is classic, but well worth revisiting.

Stefan Gärtner has a new column

I am looking forward to his two pages in titanic each month, and now we are treated to a weekly column in The European. Pure bliss.

Summertime, and the living are easy

I haven't touched the blog for some time now. Basically, three things are responsible for this.

- work
- weather
- world cup

The first point needs no elaboration, that's just the way things are on this gray planet of the clocks. But after some interminable delays summer finally got its shit together and hit the city with full force. Everybody tries to spend as much time as possible in streetside cafes, beer gardens and parks. Clothes come off left and right. Only very sad persons stay at their computers after work. You can feel your skin sucking up the sunshine. And the world cup is just a time waster, but last Sunday everybody was running around with a big broad smile plastered on their faces. 4:1 against England - truly, we have left the sphere of the Real and entered the Realm of Dreams. Next, it will rain roses.

While the Dark Heresy campaign moves along nicely, things are a bit sluggish in the Wastes at the moment. I'll post about developments around Refugium as soon as something happens.

Have a nice article about watches and status instead.

Servitor Wheelchair

Due to recent developments in my Dark Heresy campaign I humbly present to you the servitor wheelchair.

At times, a servant of the Emperor is grievously wounded while performing his duty. But only in death does duty end, as we all know. And thus, the servant has to struggle on. In Sinophia Magna exists an ancient hospice called the House of Alms. Like the whole hive, this institution is hovering uneasily between decadence and utter dissolution. But when the arbitrators asked for something, anything to keep a crippled dignitary mobile, the house provided.

The wheelchair is made from black, lacquered wood with huge wheels extending nearly to the head of the person placed within. The varnish is scratched, and there are unwholesome spatters on the maroon leather of the seat and the backrest. The chair has a high back, keeping the patient very straight. Leather straps fixate the legs of the patient on a metal rest, while his arms remain free.

Behind the backrest, a servitor is placed. The medicae tell that it was once an infamous strangler terrorizing the docksides of Sinophia Magna in service of the Rag Court. Now it spends eternity serving the frail. Its legs are gone, and its long hands rest on the wheels. There are extensive lobotomy scars on its skull. Its back is studded with brass studs, glass tubes and wires. Its mouth was sewed shut and his ears replaced by brass grilles, but its calm, curiously mild eyes remain. The patient can use common gothic to direct the servitor, which turns the wheels with its long arms, assists with simple tasks and helps the patient to rise from the wheelchair.

The armrests of the machine contain a small dedicated cogitator linked to a drug injector rig. If the patient should suffer any kind of physical crisis, the rig will inject him automatically with a potent mixture to keep him breathing just a little longer.

The huge, black wheelchair with the lank figure of the servitor hovering over its backrest is speedily delivered to the arbitrators' HQ, for there waits a broken servant of the Golden Throne who still needs to go to dark places.

Hugh Three Cuts

Duerrenmatt turns up at early dawn. While Good Water is still fast asleep, the group starts out. Again, Zed takes point, followed by Mal Porter’s massive Nissan Conquistador. They pay the toll in values, cross the dam and roar off towards the ridge separating Refugium from the rest of the world.
They reach the crest long before midday and decide to take a break. A t-crossing and a small picnic area from the Long Ago sit on top of the ridge. Weathered benches and tables sit in the sun, an ancient billboard advertises the view down Bozeman Valley and a newer sign points out the safe route to Refugium and Goodwater. An old blacktop leads north, towards the broadcasting tower the men saw the day before. During the whole drive up the hills, Mal and Rod were looking at the ancient structure, and, naturally, they broach the subject. Sister Duerrenmatt only knows that the tower belongs to an old broadcasting station: Neither she nor anyone she knows has ever visited the place. Mal and Rod exchange a short glance, and Mal proposes a short visit to the old building – he is just too much of a scavvy to let such an opportunity slide. While Duerrenmatt is less than enthusiastic about this sudden change of plans, Rod’s honeyed words manage to get her on board for a small trip.
The old blacktop is decidedly off the safe route, and thus the convoy travels very slowly. After one hour, the explorers see a flat brick building next to the large broadcasting tower. The man-sized letters “BBYK” sit on its sagging roof. All windows are gone. The building seems to have burned in the past. The tower is rusting, only some aluminum struts at the top glint in the midday sun. There are no signs of human habitation or other visitors. Mal stops his vehicle at twenty meters from the dark entrance on the old parking lot in front of the broadcasting station. He, as well as Rod and Duerrenmatt leave the jeep, while Zed stays on his bike, about ten meters in front and Dan Hawking covers from the hatch of the Conquistador. They carefully approach the building, spread out, weapons ready. Rod glances at Duerrenmatt: The young woman seems to have shed her reservation towards this little adventure.
Suddenly a voice calls from the darkness of the building: “Stop where you are! Keep your guns down! Who are you? What do you want here?” A male voice, middle aged, rough. While Mal and the others stop, Zed slips from the dirtbike and moves towards the building: No reaction from inside. Mal starts to parlay “Everybody stay calm, we mean no trouble. We’re just exploring. We saw the tower and decided to have a look.” “Well, I saw the place first, and it’s my scav, so you better go on your way.” Zed crawls through one of the empty windows into the building. A large, dark office, burned out, long since plundered of anything of value. The voice comes from another large room just across a corridor. Meanwhile, the exchange between the explorers and the stranger goes on. Mal shouts “Come on. Let’s just have a short talk, we are new in this region, and need some pointers. We won’t take anything away from this place, alright? Can we have a talk?” “We a have a sit-down and a friendly chat, you don’t take anything away, not even a screw.” “If you have found something interesting, we might barter. But neither I nor the others will take anything away.” Zed slinks oh so silently across the corridor, sidestepping broken glass and rubbish on the floor. He peeks into the next room and gets a good look at the stranger. A middle-aged, haggard man in what once has been a trench coat, his narrow face and neck disfigured by two long knife scars, standing in the darkest spot in the room. He holds a large revolver with a scope and seems to aim outside, into the sunlight. His head is covered by a grey scarf. As Zed ponders his options – Shoot? Rush and stab? Rush and punch? With a punch dagger or without? Listen to this guy rambling on? – the man lowers the revolver. “Good. Come on in. But no funny business. You would regret it.” Mal holsters his guns, and Dan takes his sights off the windows. The group meets the man inside the building. He introduces himself as Hugh Three Cuts: a single scavvy bound for Holy Flame City to meet some old acquaintances. He is making a short detour – “Every day in Holy Flame costs a fortune, so I rather spend a few days here digging the dust than waiting for my people bleeding values by the hour.” Three Cuts seems friendly enough. He apologizes for the unfriendly welcome, but then this region has a bad history. He even extends a stiff offer to share water and food with the group.
As they squat down for a small meal in the cool interior of the broadcasting station, the explorers have a good look at their host. Wary eyes, thin blond hair, weathered skin and those two large scars: He might be older than forty or younger than thirty. Beneath the coat is an ancient Kevlar vest, mended dozens of times. Three Cuts also wears a heavy brace on his left knee and walks with a pronounced limp. Apart from that, he is kitted out like many scavvies. Lots of tools on an old police belt, a sawn-off shotgun in a belt holster, a rugged flashlight which doubles as a club for troublesome critters one might encounter in the ruins. There are a small automatic on his boot, and the large, well-cared for Colt Python with the pistol scope in a shoulder holster. He surely has other weapons on his person, and even when the mood starts to become friendly, one of his hands is close to a gun at all times.
After a silent, awkward start, Three Cuts seems to warm to his visitors. He tells them of his own visit to Good Water two days ago: He planned to drive to Refugium, but he changed his mind “I had a bad feeling when I looked at the people living at that dam. Something was not right. One young fellow gave me a strange look. The route to Refugium once had a bad reputation, and I am not the trusting kind. So I decided to skip Refugium and have a look at this place.” The scav has been bad. Most things have already been taken away or rotted: no fancy electronics or books or computers. When the group came in, he was busy in the basement, ripping out old copper wiring. The trunk of his sedan – hidden under camouflage netting – is full of this junk. The explorers have a look of their own, but Three Cuts is right. There are no easy pickings left.
The group finishes the meal and bids farewell: Three Cuts tells them he will spend the next day, two days max, on the ridge. Then he will be off to glorious Holy Flame City. He wishes the group the best of luck “Best take care and keep your eyes open. This is a strange country. They say the bad days are over – I have the feeling they are wrong.” With this final warning, the group leaves Three Cuts behind and rolls back to the safe route between Good Water and Refugium.

Little boxes are for trinkets and dead people

I don't know Maureen Johnson. But I like her manifesto about personal branding. Via io9.

Gaze upon Unhappiness

Pictures of unhappy hipsters. Pictures with funny captions. I am easy to amuse.

They are building Rapture!

Via The eXiled. City of the elect, away from all those dirty unwashed "parasites"? Check! Life of luxury? Check! The bleeding edge of technology? Check! On the high seas? Check! Of course, it's planned as a surface vessel, but looking at the people heading this project I can't help but think how fast this thing will be on the bottom. They'll have their first civil war a month after launch, and I am sure that both sides will resort to genetic augmentation, as well as knives and wrenches, as soon as the ammo runs out.
The article is heavy on the biographies of those involved, and while I would have welcomed floorplans of the ship, these guys make excellent NPC villains. So my players may expect the Utopia to make an entrance somewhere in the future.

This post makes me a hypocrite

A furious take on facebook. Via The eXiled. I still have a facebook account, although I do my damnedest to limit the information that can be gleaned about me. Recently, an old - one could say ancient - acquaintance made contact - which, on the one hand, is nice, but also demonstrates how eminently findable you are. Even if you are just lurking.

We all make mistakes

That is, we fuck up all the time. This handy list of cognitive biases tells you why. So, before you sign that contract, marry that one-legged transvestite or take that sniper rifle up that water tower, take your time to check if your reasoning was in some ways skewed. Via BoingBoing.

Matt Taibbi on the future of politics

Just a short article via True/Slant. The question remains: Who flatters us, and how? Maybe we should have another look at the lists of politicians visiting the Kirchentag...

The British are losing their sense of humor

Via the Guardian. This seems to be part of the UK's "criminalize everything" campaign. There are few means as readily available to show the limits of power and fear as jokes - and it is scary how easily we have accepted the new social rules about not joking in the presence of airport officials and security personnel. As the article says: We would rather make fun of the pope then send up some goon at the gateway. Of course, this also has to do with raw power: The pope may deny us Heaven, but the TSA official will force us to spend Christmas at the airport.
Defend your right to be funny! Make a bomb-related joke today!

Kirchentag in Munich

If you have been in Munich's inner city this weekend, you have possibly noticed the many young people with orange scarves, sensible glasses and rapt expressions - people who found out they share the same imaginary friend. And the terrible, terrible music. Seriously - Christina Stürmer? Wasn't she interred in some weapons storage facility in Utah, along with the nerve gas and unstable tactical nukes? It is all very friendly and huggy, and people try their damnedest to have a good time with their pal Jesus. But something is missing. It is quite religious and all, but there is a certain lack of flair. First I thought not enough people were frothing at the mouth and convulsing on the ground. But then it struck me: No penitents! As a long-time GM and veteran of many LARPs, I feel certified to give a few hints for the next ÖKT, to increase the drama of the whole thing. I humbly present to you:

 The black penitents of the burned heart, united in merciless expiation

The penitents walk in a slow procession of maybe twenty men. Stripped to the waist, they wear nothing but short black trousers and their trademark long pointed black cowls, completely covering their faces, with only two little holes to look through, all made from horsehair. Coming at you, they look like a long row of black pointed teeth. They are, of course, barefoot. Each wears a big iron crucifix round his neck, together with long metal chains. These chains end in sharp-edged iron weights, which knock into the penitents' shins and knees with every faltering step. Each penitent carries a whip, which sports seven short iron chains, one for each mortal sin. With each step, the penitents swing these whips over their shoulders onto their naked backs, which are soon covered in bloody welts. Before the procession, the penitents have been shrouded in a mixture of salt and ash. As they proceed on their way, a priest throws further handfuls of this stinging powder on those who have been washed clean by sweat and blood. They are further humbled by long strips of parchment pinned to their naked chests, listing their lapses and sins.
In the middle of the procession is the Low Sinner. He carries a large wooden cross. It should be really big, he should look like an ant trying to drag a sugar cube. The penitents have driven one nail for each of their sins, big and small, into the wood of the cross, now blackened by the sweat, blood and ash of hundreds of processions. Each time the Low Sinner handles the cross or tries to shift it, these protruding nails draw further blood. A "1000" has been tattooed on his forehead and struck through, signifying that even a thousand processionals like this cannot expiate the Low Sinner's transgressions. Spectators are encouraged to throw small stones or the like at him. The procession moves in silence, accompanied only by the Latin exhortations of the priest throwing the ash, and the dull slaps of chains on skin.

A possible route would be Theatinerkirche - Marienplatz - Stachus (short ritual of universal debasement in front of the gospel choir) - Sonnenstrasse (in full traffic of course) - Sendlinger Tor -Theresienwiese just before Nena's gig starts. I think the inclusion of the black penitents would give the whole proceedings are direly missing note of somberness and purpose, and I can think of some people involved in churchly matters which would be ideal for the role as Low Sinner.