Thursday, July 9, 2009

What The Fuck? Wednesdays

Yesterday was my second day off this week and I am somewhat astounded by my level of productivity. I did some banking type stuff and some dish washing related type stuff which is I suppose productive, but mostly I spent the day bumming around the house watching shows and playing with my hobbies. I managed to finally finish up my squad of Iron Warriors. Seven chaos marines, one aspiring champion, one icon bearer, a flamer guy, and a meltagun guy. I also cleaned up a sergeant, missile launcher guy, and flamer guy for my Lamenters. What cleaned up means is that I took my files and exacto knife to the models and removed all the mold lines and imperfections in them. Its tedious as Hell and really the thing I dislike the most about the hobby, but it needs to be done and I'm starting to get the hang of it. Its really something you have to concentrate on because it is real easy to inadvertently hack off a bit or shave a chunk out of the plastic with the files. Someday I hope to develop a bit of proficiency in the use of greenstuff so I can fill in all the cracks and whatnot. I had a total idiot moment and glued the business end of the missile launcher onto the body of it wrong, twice. Then I slopped some Gesso on the three models and they are awaiting paint, which I will possibly start on tonight or Friday after laundry. Playing with Gesso has got to be my favorite part of painting, its just a lot of fun to slop the goop on and come back an hour later and see how cleanly it dries to show details. Paint adheres to it very nicely as well, which is the point of the whole process. Once I get into some orks, I will likely switch back to black spray primer because there are a lot more orks in ork armies than there are marines in marine armies (basic ork costs 6 points, whereas a basic chaos or loyalist marine costs 15 points). My eventual ork army will consist of a lot of bikes and trukks, which could limit the number of models and might make the use of Gesso not a total pain in the ass time consuming event. We'll see.

I did some work on the Nel, mostly names and a little bit of history. The document I'm writing up is basically a companion to any game material I produce for them and also kind of a prologue type story. Its kind of a history of their origins I guess you could say. Some spots of it are spoken of and described during The Last Blade (now referred to as Keroen's story and not Cromm's) but a large chunk of it is only referred to or hinted at. Mostly I'm writing this out to get used to the names and the typing of them and to kind of give any future stories I write about the Nel a sort of starting point, or at least a concrete past. That was something of a problem when writing Keroen's (pronounced Care-oh-en) story, there were only certain past events that I could talk about or refer to because I had no real clue what the beginnings of the people were. The picture of their creation and rise to power developed as I wrote, but a lot of time was spent staring at a blinking cursor trying to figure out what was what. This thing I'm writing now will come in handy in the future I am sure.

Josh raised an issue today that I am aware of. His problem was that Glamour (no name for it yet) was too powerful. The Nel just did shit with it whenever they wanted. That is the point. When I conceived of Glamour in game and story terms (and not in terms of illusionary magic wielded by Earth faeries) I decided it would be a way for Nel, if they had the power and will for it, to alter reality around them. It was designed to be the classic "magic did it" mechanic that changes rules or provides a way out of impossible situations. Need a way through a wall? Glamour makes a door. Although, if Josh was referring to the door I think he was, it was not really Keroen just punching a hole through a wall with a door shaped bit of Glamour. It was more like his Glamour called a door that existed in that spot into existence from a hidden place deep in the hill. The door is always there, someplace in the hill, its just that Keroen knows precisely where it is at all times and can bring it to where it is supposed to be whenever he wants. Or he just created a door, which is not a big deal for him at that point. He can fling himself around through space (and technically time because he does not spend any time crossing those distances when he teleports) fairly regularly, breaking down the matter of a stone wall and converting it into wood and metal hinges and a doorknob is not a big deal in terms of energy usage. Anyway, I expressed my agreement with Josh that yes, Glamour is fucking ridiculously powerful and is always the thing the Nel fall back on when they can't get their way. Which is why part of the point of the story is Keroen's distaste for the Young Courts and their lack of spine (as he sees it), and also how he forces them to rely on themselves and not their magic so much. Read it, you'll see, or you won't, which seems to be the more common occurrence. Kudos to Josh for making it to chapter five (there are only twelve chapters) though.

Work on DnD was done as well yesterday, not a lot though. I have a rough outline made up for the fourth scenario I will run and I just put down specifics for an encounter that would occur at some point during that scenario. That's how Kusseth City is going to play out, some cool descriptions and some encounters that happen depending on when the PCs want them to. If they're walking through the city and following Spineplate home and they want to see if there is a shop to buy weapons in POOF! around the next corner they'll find a mall or some equivalent. If they want to check out a tavern for info POOF! I'll basically break down all the components of the scenario and plug them in as needed. I've never run a scenario like that, so we'll see how it works out. Hopefully well.

Music: Freya - The Sword

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