At level 40, anyway.

We've got a lot of alts and lower characters making the run up to 50 in a big hurry - I'm consistently impressed by how fast 'you people' level
for a group of _non_ powergamers.

Anyway - please stop levelling at 40. Why?

The Abandoned Sewers Trial

I was under the impression, due to P-Wiki, that we could 'cheat', and use 50s with one level 39 to round-robin exemplar to to get the weapons -
Vyperpunk informs me that this will not work.

So, instead, we need 'some' (Pwiki says 'one', see earlier statement on Pwiki reliability), Red Tomax doesn't have much to say -

But it appears that only heroes of level 40 and below can get the temp power for hitting the Hydra, regardless of SK status.

So. Save your 40s! I'd like to run this trial a few times, get everyone who's interested in it covered. It's a goofy trial, as it's _not_ in TF
mode. So getting the group together is easy - anyone can come, who's 36+ for the abandoned sewers.

Roy will be hitting 40 soon, and I'm gonna stop him there until we can get this trial knocked down! I'd like the badge on Mag and Pooky as well,
though, so..

Save your Forties!
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

So, I'm working on something as an intellectual exercise/junk writing project and find myself vexed.

I'm writing a crossover that will feature five series. It will also feature five main characters, one from each series. However there is a catch. These
characters must be people who don't have superpowers/special abilites in action/adventure series which heavily feature people who do. So far I have picked
out five of the main characters: Winry Rockbell (Full Metal Alchemist), Sokka (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Tatsuki Arisawa (Bleach) and Rakki (Claymore). I
need a fifth character (and thus series). I am looking for a character to fulfill my "spiritual person" role. That is I need a character from a
series that could reasonably be called the kind of person who could serve as the spiritual center of the group above.

Barring that if one could make a good argument for a character to shift roles from the above group to the "spiritual center" role. At the moment I
have a fighter (Tatsuki), a faceman (Sokka), a thief/rogue (Rakki) and a brainy type (Winry). Other people could fill one of those roles if I could move
somebody out of their role to the spiritual center one.

I never realised how hard it is to find a spiritual person who has no superpowers in such series.

Caveat: No, I'm not using Xander. Nor do I want to use characters from any series which I've already hevaily worked with in, say, Hybrid Theory.

----------------

Epsilon

Anyone game for a Strikeforce tonight at 7 Eastern? I have villains in available ranges for every SF/Respec, with a heavy weighting on Tarikoss and Silver
Mantis.

Nogi's good for everything, Chiyuki Inari is good through Ice Mistral, and I have Bizarre Mouse, Arbmu, and Mother Meyai for Tarikoss and Silver Mantis.
Additionally, I have a Fire/therm corr, Happy Grin, for Tarikoss...
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Today is the 75th anniversary of FDR signing the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition. Salud!

So, a few of us did the Terra Nova Respec TF tonight. It all goes well, the usual overwhelming firepower strategy serving us well, until we got into the
reactor room. In there, you get a random number of Sky Raider waves spawning for a while as you defend the reactor core. Pretty easy, but frustrating as there
was close to a five minute gap between spawns for some reason... Then there was the last wave. We cleared it out, sat back, waited... and waited... Eventually,
we concluded that the Sky Raiders were being let out on bail, getting new gear, and flying back to try again. (Except poor Bob, who'd suffered at the teeth
of Farming Roys Imps). As we come up on 15 minutes, getting ready to find a GM, because what the hell man, Gamma suddenly runs off. A moment later, there's
a cry of 'Found a Porter!' and the mission ends.

Yet again, heroes are put through grief because of freaking teleporters that run away and hide! Knight has bad sunburn, Gen must have Cancer after sitting in
the reactor for an hour with no shielding, and Gamma and co... well, they got their powers from radiation in the first place, they'll be fine

A few random thoughts (which may or may not work their way into stories), and a request for input and related tangents...

Of course there's a Hacker Underground Underspace in The Black. Like most pseudo-factions, it's even (vaugely) organized.

Who's in the Hacker Underspace? Going by character writeups, Lebia Maverick would be, and Perry Doper might. It wouldn't be too big a stretch for Yuki Nagato to be part of the group as well. (Ghu knows the poor girl needs something in the way of background other than "she's part of the SOS-dan"...) And anybody who's looked at my discussion page over on the wiki knows about Takami Sakuragi appearing in 2014; she'd be a member, too. Anybody else?

It's a bit more difficult to hack a system protected by an AI, but that just means bigger bragging rights. The penalties for hacking a system protected by an AI are bigger, too - the AI can fight back.

Would anybody go beyond hacking a system protected by an AI and actually try hacking an AI? Most of the ethical hackers wouldn't... but there's always a chance of a boskonian "cracker" being out there somewhere.

Hacking at lightspeed would be a challenge - would it even be possible, or would hackers need to be either reasonably close to on-site or using the Interwave?
--
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

Okay, it's http://www.simondale.net/house/]A Low Impact Woodland Home... but it sure seems like a hobbit-hole.
--
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

Context: Over on Usenet, somebody decided to rant about what he thought copyright law was, and I posted a rebuttal based on what copyright law actually is. At the start of said rebuttal, I said "I see it's time to play "MythBuster" again, on the off-chance somebody actually believes what (name redacted) has posted."

To which, Derek Janssen replied:

Quote:And, in the spirit of Mythbusters:

"Whaddya say, Jamie?"
"Let's take him out to the junkyard, and strap some dynamite to him."
"Good to go. "

Derek Janssen ("Myth #1: CAN you really punch someone into orbit?")

The Quibbler (http://www.quibbler.co.fen/)
Saturday, 7 August 2077

BREAKING NEWS - FENSPACE HISTORY MUSEUM ROBBED
Priceless Artifact Stolen

KANDOR CITY, Luna (QP) - Police in Kandor City are puzzling over the overnight theft of the USSR Ptichka, the largest exhibit at the Kandor Museum of Fenspace.

Ptichka disappeared from the central exhibit hall sometime between midnight and dawn Kandor local time, said Daniell County Sherrif spokeswoman Madhumitra Lundgaard.

Authorities are still trying to determine the exact mechanism of how the shuttle was removed from the exhibit hall without alerting museum security or residents of the neighboring Byrne Hill district.

The thieves left a note attached to the exhibit plaque consisting of six lines from the Alfred Tennyson poem "Ulysses." Lundgaard refused to comment on the significance of the note, saying only that the investigation was still in an early phase.

The theft comes less than a month after retired Soviet leader S. Malaclypse Fnord disappeared from his home in Schuster Springs. Fnord, 100, was one of the key leaders during the Boskone conflict and a noted interstellar explorer. Authorities refused to comment on whether or not the two incidents were related.

Ptichka, a converted Buran-class space shuttle, was one of the first large spacecraft in Fenspace and flew as the flagship of the Soviet Air Force from 2008 until its formal retirement to the Museum of Fenspace in 2074.

Soviet Generalissimo Sora Hasegawa refused to comment directly, and at press time the Soviet Air Force had not released a statement regarding the theft.

----

QUIBBLER EXCLUSIVE!
The complete text of the note left by the thieves:

Dear Fenspace,

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

We'll see you when we see you.

--M & P

----

(c)2077 Lovegood Media, Inc.

What has the existence of handwavium and the things it can do done to psychology and other fields which are predicated on a firm grasp of what is allegedly
"real"? When almost any thing that might once have been deemed the hallucinatory product of a disturbed mind can now possibly exist, especially if
said mind got its hands on some 'wavium, how do those areas that rely upon or assume an invariant consensual reality cope?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.