Part of it, anyway. The Player's Handbook for the fourth edition of a certain fantasy role-playing game.

While there are some quite good parts, I'm honestly not sure if they outweigh the really ungood parts. I've submitted a review to RPG.net that goes
over my feelings on the matter in a lot more detail; if they don't publish it, I'll post it here.

Chris Davies.

Eh, not much, I know. Was strapped for attention since I just made her.

Riot Force 6.1/Sabres of Paragon

She slowly wiped down the plating of her Armor, the smell of oil and grease heavy in the air of the maintenace bay.

It was a rather new addition to the Riot Force base, much like herself. With seven Sabres, and the number growing nearly every time a raid on Crey took place,
the small bay had been setup for maintenance, storage, and upgrades to their hardsuits.

She hadn't met any of the other Sabres, besides Net Sabre, yet. She was rather fearful of what they would think of her, if her still fragmented memories
were accurate. She did have several processes trying to sort them all out, but Crey had bungled her core systems enough that she was nearly inoperable anyway.

She shook her head, and started to change into her skinsuit. There was enough stalling. Fighting crime, here, was enough to survive.

She'd figure out if she wanted to live, later.

Warning: This gets a bit angsty, but I've been feeling that about Reyshal, anyway.

Tales of the Legendary: Alone among Friends

I sit here in the Admin office, waiting.

Or, more like, brooding. The book that I picked out rests on the small table, but I've turned my chair about to face the globe, watching it restlessly.

Two and a half years.

It's been two and a half years since I was propelled to this world by magics unknown. Two and a half years of fighting, resting, singing, hoping... that
someone that I have spoken to could find some small link back to my homeworld. Even now, that I've just started to curry favor with the people at Portal
Corp, have I entreated them to find my home.

"Perhaps," I whisper in my native Karudo, "I've just burnt out again?"

I'd spent some nine months stuck at Security Level 32, occasionally going out to help the citizens of the City, but mostly brooding my way around the base,
and my small apartment. Then, some two months ago, I had exploded back into heroing, shooting straight through the much dreaded 'Dead Zone' of the
later 30's, and arriving where I was now, just having been awarded my 41st Clearance Level.

My thoughts turned to others, my companions in arms, the members of The Legendary. They I had claimed as my teammates in battle, for they had broken through my
rectitude and befriended me, as those others I had joined could not. However, even then I was distant, perhaps because, even after nigh three years, I was
still too used to being a sole authority? I do not complain of Evangelia, and indeed, believe that she has grown into her place quite suitably. But do I still
see myself in the position of Capitan of my ship? Above all those I work with, unable to fraternize with them?

I sigh, and lean forward, placing my finger upon the globe. North America, United States thereof, Rhode Island, Paragon City. I close my eyes, and with a soft
push and a whisper of Song, I spin the globe on its axis. Even among all the friends I had in The Legendary, all those who tried so hard to include and aid me,
I still felt so alone. I was the only one of my kind on this world, and even free of the Omniscient, I still thought of all those enslaved by them, as I had
once been.

"Yo, Rey."

The interruption to my thoughts springs me to my feet, and I reflexively nod my head to my intruder. "Terrence, how may this One aid you?" I ask,
instinctively reverting to the formal way of speaking I tried so hard to drop around my companions in The Legendary.

Terrence Knight looks at me up and down, then behind me, at the table. "You weren't answering any messages, so I'd thought I'd come down and
see what was up. You okay, Rey?"

I winced guiltily, and looked at the table where my communicator sat, blinking with the light of unheard communique. "My apologies, Terrence. I was...
thinking."

He nods. "'Sokay. Just was wondering if you wanted to help me take out some BP?"

I smile slightly. Everyone in The Legendary knew of Terrence's Banished Pantheon world. And everyone knew that he ran it solo more often than not. "I
shall be pleased to assist you, Terrence." I said, accepting the outreach from my new mentor. "Shall we, then?"

Author's Note: I blame you all. The altitis. It BURNS!

***

The lab was rather silent at the moment. While new Scimitars continued their growth cycles in tubes lining the walls, waiting for programming and arming
sequences the next day, the human employees had long since gone home, grateful to survive another day in what was beginning to be the Countess's primary
love/hate project.

It really wasn't their fault, you see. The code stolen from the extra-dimensional GENOM was something Crey might've made. Triple-encrypted, riddled
with anti-hacker programs, and occasionally having the tendency to literally seize control of the computer analyzing and altering it in a violent attempt to
cause as much property damage as possible to the interlopers. Furthermore, at least three of the Scimitars that had been brought online had gone rogue, taking
with them valuable combat data on their experimental systems. Worse, Crey's intelligence placed them as working alongside the original four rogues to boot.

Further excursions to what had been dubbed "Earth-2B-03G-2C" had secured a variety of technical sources, however. While not really caring if they
made an enemy of this "GENOM", teams sent had been uniformly female and outfitted with armor resembling that of these....Knight Sabers, so as to
avoid any real blame being placed on Crey. Entire mainframes had been copied without any real processing, and this led to a huge bulk of information for Crey
technicians to go through now that it was safely in Crey facilities, away from retribution.

However, on that night, none of that data was really being processed....or shouldn't have been.

A single screen lit up near an assembly line, flickering on and off as the computer's intrusion algorhythms struggled in vain to fight off the viral code
inside it slowly taking over. However, in a moment the blue computer screen turned a deep black, highlighted with bright green letters.

GENOM Systems


Type 481-A-S


Serial Number: J-2073-D-2670-S-1871




Backup files fully recovered.


Host system co-opted


Commencing reconstruction.


The nearby assembly line began to move, but certainly not in its standard configuration. The armatures began working on one another as well, rebuilding their
tools into objects infinitely more precise than what Crey had been using, before the entire structure resembled some bizarre sort of Frankenstein's lab,
with the armatures working at lightning speed around a humanoid figure in the center.

***

The next morning, the large flaming wreckage where the assembly line had been, along with the smashed tubes that had contained various Scimitar armors in
varying stages of completion suggested yet another breakout. The Crey technicians would've sighed and gone on with their work if not for a rather specific
message carved into a nearby wall, looking as if it'd been smashed into it with blunt force wielded like a giant hammer, which got them to resolve to
contact the principal office at once.

YOU CAN'T KILL THE MESSIAH!




***


* Bubblegum Crisis *


"The Ultimate Boomer"


Red Eyes
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

...to add tags to them. That's why a lot of the older threads have bubbled to the top of the queue.

Sorry about that...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

ThePlanet, the webhosting company that hosts Schlock Mercenary, among others, suffered a major power system failure recently.

And they are acting in an _exemplary_ manner regarding it. I only have two links, but some googling should reveal more.

http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=90185

http://community.livejournal.com/schlocktroops

I am very impressed by ThePlanet's actions during this. Updates have been fast, consistent, and remarkably buzzword free. ThePlanet has already commented
that customers will be receiving credit for downtime.

three cheers to ThePlanet!

Edit: More descriptive title.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

Tales Snippets of the Legendary: Salvage and Refuse

(Note: This 'loosely' clips in Mag's origin as somewhat earlier than Terrence's Tenchi Apotheosis. This is subject to change at any need)

I bent, at the waist, to pull open a drawer labelled 'radioactive salvage'. The drawer was lockable, but my armor's security transponder had
already unlocked it. It slid open smoothly on heavy-duty bearings, and I raised an eyebrow at it's stout construction and thick walls.

Oh, radioactive. Right.

Inside were several banker's box sized cartons of a heavy plastic, tagged and wired shut. The first carton was labelled 'possible salvage - CC Nokia
rep on any developments, reference Legendary contract #5107-B'. I raised the other eyebrow at that, then put them both back in place. The wire was merely
twisted closed, and opened easily. Inside the box was a pile of cellphone batteries, emanating the eerie green glow characteristic of most of the radiation
abilities I'd seen.

I looked around, curious. I heard a rustling and doors opening and closing from the Arcane side of the workroom, indicating someone else in the salvage area
there.

"Oi!" I called across the intervening rack of shelves. A 'thump' and some muffled cursing answered me, and a shock of unruly dark hair poked
up above the Arcane workbench, identifying the 'thump'er as Terrence.

"T, why, exactly, do we have a mess of radioactive _cell phone batteries_?" I asked. Terrence stood up, revealing a high blush and an open mouth.

"Ahhh, uh.. ah." He said, then bent, slammed shut the cupboards he'd apparently been acessing. "Ahh. *ahem* HRM." He finished, then
turned, and walked out of the work area towards the base portal.

"Ok, then." I replied to his departing form. I retied the box shut, and put it in the radioactives drawer. Shaking my head, I pulled out the next box
of salvage.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2008 ... ey-bo.html]Rock 'n' roll icon Bo Diddley dies, earlier today, of heart failure. (Considering he had a stroke and a heart attack last year, he managed to beat the odds...)

Don't pass up the supplemental story, http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2008 ... -riff.html]The riff that keeps on giving.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Stone fists the size of a Virginia ham smashed through the wrecked War Hulk's cockpit. The wetsuited pilot could only struggle feebly as those mighty
hands dragged him out of the insulator gel and into the stinking hot summer air of Crey's Folly.

"I have a message for Eisenstadt," the statue told him in a thunderous tone. "Tell him that he must soon face the justice that he has delayed
for too long, and that I will give him only this choice: to receive it from the authorities of this world... or of the next."

-----

...Yeah, Lincoln's finally on the trail of Nemesis. Shouldn't've sold cavalrybots to the Confederacy, old man.

--Sam

"And so he says, 'I don't like the cut of your jib.' And I go I says, IT'S THE ONLY JIB I GOT, BABY!"

A couple of my coworkers play CoX, based on Freedom. They were discussing Cimerora today and I happened to be nearby at *just* the right time. One of them
had just complained about the number of people in the zone messing everything up. The other replied, "... so what you're saying is, the number of
tourists is upsetting the delicate Greekosystem?"

I swear I nearly dropped my drink, laughing so hard. I am mightily amused.

Anyone else heard any great lines lately?

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs