Random Stuff - Well Dressed Warrior Woman - Vryloka Blackuard Katartha

Random image from Google, and I have no idea of the source. If it's from something like A Game of Thrones I apologize, having not yet been able to catch a single episode of that series (but I have read the books, yes indeed....)

Anyway, this is how a warrior woman wears decent armor into battle!

UPDATE: Thanks to Gareth Larter for identifying her as "Leelee Sobieski who plays Muriella in "In the Name of the King" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460780/"

I'll have to add that film to my watch list!





Just for fun, here's some theoretical stats for this woman as a vryloka blackguard in 4E:

Katartha of Kharabys

Race:   Vryloka            Class: Blackguard    Level: 3     Homeland: Kharabys  Alignment: evil

STR  19      DEX 10         CON 11       INT 12         WIS 8        CHA  17      HPs 38        FORT 16      REF 12         WILL 12      AC 20          INIT +1       APs 1

Speed: 7 squares    Vision: Low-light   Healing Surges: 10  Amt/Surge: 9  Bloodied: 19         

Armor Worn: plate+1 (+9 AB)             Resistance: Necrotic 6

Attacks/Powers                                            

Basic Melee Attack: Greatsword +1 (+9 vs. AC; 1D10+5 dmg; Crit 15+1D6)

Ranged Basic Attack: Long Bow (+3 vs AC; 1D8 damage; Crit 8 Range 10/20)+24 arrows

At-Will:

Dominator’s Strike (Melee T 1; +9 vs. AC; 1D10+5 dmg; gain Cha (3) temp HP)

Vengeance Strike (Melee; T 1; +9 vs. AC; 1D10+5 dmg plus power bonus to damage equal to twice the number of enemies adjacent to you (max 8))

Encounter:

Lifeblood (Free; Personal; Trigger: you kill or bloody a foe; Effect: gain one: 1. Shift up to speed; 2. Gain temp Hp = 5+1/2 level; 3. Gain +2 power bonus to attacks uteoynt*)

2/ENC: Dread Smite (Free; Personal; Trigger: you target an enemy with an at-will weapon attack power; Effect: target takes 2+Cha (5) cold and necrotic damage; if attack hits, deal 5 cold and necrotic ongoing (save ends)

Shroud of Shadow (Minor; Personal; Effect: gain concealment uteoynt and 5 temp HPs)

Vice’s Renewal (Minor; Personal; Gain 5 temp HPs and make a save; gain +2 defenses uteoynt)

Feats: Born of Shadow (+1 to saves when in dim light or darkness), Shadow Control (+1 to all defenses when in dim light or darkness)

Class and Race Abilities: Blood Dependency (-2 surges when bloodied), Human Heritage (+5 to bluff when passing as human), Living Dead, Necrotic Resistance (5+1/2 level), Vampiric Heritage, Lifeblood, Dark Menace (+Cha mod damage to enemies you have C.A. against), Spirit of Vice (domination; 1/rnd deal Cha damage to self and add Cha to damage against target), Vengeance Strike

Languages: Planar common,Deep Tongue

Skills:  Athletics +10, Bluff +9, Intimidate +9, Perception +1, Stealth +3, Thievery +6

Equipment: adventurer’s kit, saddle, saddle bags, war horse

Wealth: 92 gold pieces, 180 SP, 1 gem worth 100 gp

 *My home NPC stat abbreviation system: uteoynt = until the end of your next turn.

Katartha is a devilish rogue, though her ancestry owes more to the ancient curse of the red witch. She revels in the profiteering she can engage in by working for the various factions of the devil city of Dramen and the sprawling, ruinous port of Kharabys in the Astral Sea Island of Isnathar, seeking to turn a profit and sew discord wherever she can. She has served the god Typhon for several years now, since she was bitten by a venomous serpent in the marketplace of Kharabys and mysteriously survived, though her feverish dreams left her with the sense she had been given a vision by the ancient primordial titan that she would one day aid in the freedom of the ancient titans, that they may rise up again in a vengeful new titanomachy.

Cursed Mountain

I finished Curse Mountain a few weeks back, and it was an enjoyable and interesting experience. It's not a game for people who pride strong FPS-style gameplay. It's not a game for people who thought Silent Hill was dumb because you couldn't machine gun down the demon nurses. It's not a game for people who prize gameplay over atmosphere and story...etc. etc.

It is, however, an amazing and very much unknown Survival Horror tale about a man searching for his mad brother on a Himalayan Mountain that labors under a terrifying, ancient curse, is riddled with demons and hungry ghosts, and contains an eerie, slowly revealed mystery about why the protgaonist's brother journeyed to the mountain, the tragedy that was set in motion by his actions, and what you must do to find redemption for him.

I learned to Haaaaaate this jerk demon dude

Cursed Mountains was originally released for the Wii, and I lamented never getting a chance to play it until I discovered a PC port available over at Gamersgate, amazingly.

Cursed Mountain will appeal to you if you like Silent Hill and other similar games, where the psychological horror is as meaningful as the atmospherics, the loneliness, the horror of the slowly unfolding tale, and the frailty of your character. It's unique among survival horror games for picking a haunted mountain as its center-piece, and it manages to provide many hours of interesting gameplay with only few frustrating moments to it.

Take note that while Cursed Mountain has been noted for its mountain climbing elements as distinctly unique, they are not overly elaborate in terms of actual gameplay; things like oxygen and freezing to death are elements you will see dealt with, but when actually going up an icy cliff, the game is reaching more for "get the job done" and less of the "precise mountain climbing emulation." Not being a hardcore mountain climber, this did not bother me.

The game's key problem is both innovative and annoying all at once: when you encounter supernatural entities or objects you can defeat or overcome them by manifesting through mystical means the mandala which empowers or controls them. This is clearly a carry-over from the Wii-mote sensor, for you effectively draw the pattern of the mandala to activate it. The concept probably worked well on the Wii, but it translates into a mouse-drawn marginally annoying process here, which manages to allude to the interesting notion of the mandalas but in a fashion which can grow quite tiresome for some, especially since it consumes only time and offers no real challenge unless you are drunk or high.

The game is not the flashiest; if you have an older computer, you should be able to run this without issue. That said, it looks better than any Xbox original or PS2 era game of the same type, except perhaps for Resident Evil 4.

In any case, if you consider yourself a survival horror fan, I strongly reccommend Cursed Mountain.

Dead Island: Bad People Make Good Survivors?

I snagged Dead Island for PC on day of release, thanks to a too-good-to-pass sale that worked with a voucher at Green Man Gaming. It tied to my Steam account, which was awesome....I'm not a fan of Green Man's "Capsule" downloader, so this worked well for me.

Anyway, Dead Island is this almost magical blend of zombies, open-world exploration, amazingly well done first-person melee combat and minimalist (yet effective) MMO-inspired quest-hub story telling. It's the kind of experience that you will enjoy immensely if you like the following:

• Immersive environments that really bring you "into the game" setting
• Zombies everywhere; post-apocalypse with the living dead at its finest
• Rough, unpleasant individuals who in the mundane world are on the fringe of society, but in the midst of a zombie apocalypse they are the true survivors on whom everyone else now depends
• Flagrant use of exotic melee weapons in a manner that amazingly provide smooth and efficient gameplay
• Excellent multi-player co-op features, but does not punish you for running solo

Dead Island has been criticized for it's day-one bug issues; there was a quick patch that fixed some, added more, and then more or less invalidated all the existing saves. I loaded my save up to see if I was somehow exempt (I was only just at the light house, so not far in) but found a large number of random vehicles stacked haphazardly in the courtyard, mysteriously....and the exit gates would open, only to reveal yet another exit gate. For that sorry survivor, her tale ended apparently trapped in some sort of Escher painting with Zombies. Or maybe she was really trapped on The Quiet Earth and just didn't know it...



Anyway, it's a good game. I'm still plowing through it, but it quickly made its way onto my list of favorites. It's not a hardcore role playing game by any means, but it definitely has a more sophisticated tale to tell than, say, Borderlands. It's not as sandboxy as Fallout 3, but it does a convincing job of confusing you into feeling like it does. It's not as frenetic as Left4Dead with its "AI director" but manages to puncuate quiet moments with nail-biting craziness extremely efficiently nonetheless.

If there is only one feature of the game I could point out as being troublesome, it would be the MMO-like qualities: the quest hub characters stand around politely waiting for you to do everything for them; how any of these unmoving stiffs survived long enough to pay you to find their personal jewlery or teddy bear is beyond me. Some people complain that the human models look a bit glossy and stiff; I haven't noticed that, but they really should have some random behavior animations to make them look like they are doing something more than loafing around while you fix all their problems for them. Likewise, although there are plenty of story elements in the game of interest, there are just as many peculiar fetch quests that exist entirely because the medium of computer games have somehow taught us that it's okay to run around fulfilling mindless secondary goals. I really wish that my tough-as-nails hardass lady character (the one who hates men apparently...and with good reason, I'd say based on her introduction) could get a few dialogue options, such as,

"Look lady, grow up and stop pining for your damned teddy bear,"

or "Hey jerk-face, why don't you go find your own damn car to haul gasoline so you can burn up these corpses? I got news for you: there's an entire Island full of walking corpses out there. These five here stinking up the place are the least of your problems."

Other than that, amazing game. It bodes well for the future of Zombie Island Apocalypse titles, and I am eager to see what Deep Silver coughs up next...

Books and on Looting Borders' Smoldering Corpse

I've been reading some good books lately, thought I'd take a bit of time to share. I'm one of those biblioholics out there, so naturally I am deeply concerned about the future of print media, trees be damned, but sooner or later I guess I'll have to adopt some sort of reading tablet and get up with the times. In the meantime, I've taken full advantage of Borders' corpse and looted it for all it was worth; I have about 100 new books* on my shelf now demanding attention, and I'm already wondering if the baby is going to object to me reading him things like The Seal of Karga Kul or Zombie CSU. I figure I'm good, at least until the poor little guy starts developing real language and comprehension skills, and is suddenly mortified to discover that his parents are a couple of uncool geeks...!

Anyway, some books I would strongly recommend:


The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamay is a great read, a chapter-by-chapter journey in which Anil travels to various remote corners of the world where physicists, astronomers and sundry other researchers are relying on the unique conditions of specific locales to do their research. It's a great read, with a fair amount of insight on how and why these remote institutes come into being and the trials and tribulations involved in doing the research in such exotic locations.



Tom Zoellner wrote Uranium which I am in the middle of and absolutely loving it. It's an engaging read (unlike Rhodes, who may know his stuff but I found tedious to plow through) and provides a great variety of interesting history and data on the discovery, development, research and seedy hidden details of the history of uranium. Well worth reading, and very engaging.



In fantasy, I finished Tim Waggoner's Thieves of Blood, the first volume of the Blade of the Flame trilogy set in the world of Eberron. It was a good read, with some very distinct characters, and a plot and pacing in style for the pulp fantasy world of Eberron. I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in the series now. My only gripe really was that clearly Wizards of the Coast was employing some lazy editors back in 2006 when this book came out, as there were a fair number of typographical errors best attributed to someone who was spell-checking with Office Word 2003 rather than properly proofing the manuscript by hand. That doesn't detract from the author's work, though.



Aside from the above mentioned books I'm plowing once again through Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels, which I read many years ago, around 1999-2000, getting up to around book 10 before I ran out of steam and took a break, never finding the time to return. Well thanks to the Looting of Borders I have all of the Salvatore Forgotten Realms novels to date, and plan to work my way through them, restarting with Homeland (in the can) and moving on from there. I'm sure everyone's familiar with these books, but I'll only comment to say that I am consistently impressed at how engaging and simple Salvatore's writing is, and how evocative his books are; I really do consider the first Drizzt trilogy to be among the best fantasy I have ever read.



Aside from all the fantasy, I'm also finally picking up Larry Niven's Known Space prequel series (co-written with Edward Lerner), and just finished Fleet of Worlds a few weeks ago. I haven't started Juggler of Worlds yet, but I will soon; I've also been catching up on his other collections such as N-Space and Crashlander. I really love Niven's Known Space universe, and its fun to read new books in the setting, revisit the classic Known Space tales, and watch how the authors try to reconcile the inconsistencies and evolving science of a series written over nearly five decades!

My wife says this is common among imminent first-time fathers, who try desperately to get all that last-minute living in before B-Day and the Loss of All Personal Freedom arrives. I guess I'll save my staggering video game exploits in recent months for another column...

*if you're following my blog and have noted my lamentation at not getting the Tome of Horrors Complete, I will admit that the 100 odd books I bought at Borders in its closing days probably had more to do with that than all the money I've spent on baby gear....sigh, such is the life of a biblioholic, sacrifices must be made and all that noise....!

SaReGaMa

If you love world music, electronica and indie music in general, then you probably know about Jamendo. If not, you should check it out. I just noticed they have a way of sharing links to some of the better (and best) music on Jamendo, so I thought I'd try it out with the impressive SaReGaMa and his soundtrack from Ocean of an Old Man:

Royalty free music for professional licensing

Tome of Horrors Complete - Second Printing! Excellent

A spot of good news for those who have limited funds, money tied up in more important (albeit less fun) things, or babies on the way, thus preventing you from dropping $100 on a pre-order limited print book: The Tome of Horrors Complete will get a second print run of 2,000 copies in the "unlimited" edition, as a direct result of Paizo's virtual fire sale of the tome on their own main page, ripping through 1,000 copies and demonstrating to Frog God Games that More Must be Made. So, I may indeed end up with a copy of my own, eventually! And one I will have no problem using and abusing, too.

My only regret now is that I did not manage to pre-order a copy of the S&W edition, but with any luck maybe I'll snag the PDF, or spot one on Ebay sometime in the future. As morbid as it may seem, perhaps some aging grognard will perish in a cheeto and beer accident, and his well-meaning aunt will mistake the book for a phone book or doorstop and put it on "Auntie Emma's Carebear Collectibles and Other Fine Things" on Ebay for $1 starting bid or $10 buy-it-now. Ahhhh that would be nice.



Because I wonder if there's a blog out there with an old crazy woman and Orcus on the same page. Well damnit, now there is!

Superluminal Neutrinos

I have been away for a bit, thanks to a busy work schedule and the need to prepare for the imminent B-Day arrival of Marcus Torbin in early November (I'm guessing November 9th, the doctor thinks November 17th, and Jody's hoping for October 31st because...well...we could have a proper Witching Hour Baby!) but I have lots of stuff I want to post, so maybe I'll take some time to schedule some more posts this weekend.

Some interesting news has prompted me to get posting again. This article was posted over on Slash Dot, along with the accompanying link to the actual experiment here. The short version: after approximately 16,000 tests, the scientists broadcasting particles from the particle accelerator at CERN to Gran Sasso Labs in Italy approximately 732 km away have found that there is a 60 nanosecond discrepancy between the arrival of detected neutrinos and light broadcast at the same instant. The neutrinos have been consistently arriving ahead of the light, which is either suggesting an undiscovered anomaly with the test itself (that has not been accounted for or discovered in the course of the 16,000 tests) or...much, much bigger, the neutrinos are gaining marginally faster superluminal speeds. Reading about reactions and speculation to this is proving fascinating. If there really is something here, it could cause an unbelievable upheaval of the Standard Model. If there isn't, then it could be a valuable lesson in how proper science is vetted and analyzed (as by all accounts the researchers behind this test are being very careful not to make any extraordinary claims).

Worth noting in the course of sifting through all this information is that this phenomenon has been detected (albeit regarded as indicative of a flaw in the testing process) at Fermilabs before. This article talks about it here.

Finally, for fun, one of the links I found is from the Anderson Institute, talking about what superlimunal travel would mean in terms of our current understanding of physics.

And now for something completely different!

Because I haven't provided you with enough cat pictures this year, I offer up Ayel Cat, our youngest feline in the house, and the most photogenic, sitting upon his Throne of Power:

Zozobra day today -- time to burn down Old Man Gloom

I'll be heading out to Santa Fe later today...still recovering from some sort of flu like illness, but I think I'll be up to seeing the Original Burning Man once again!

Zozobra was created by regional artist Will Shuster, an interesting and important local figure, historically. For my family its something of a tradition, and I've been going since I was about 4 or 5 years old.