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  Dragonforce.
Posted by: ECSNorway - 03-07-2008, 06:21 AM - Forum: The Game Everyone Loves To Play - Replies (5)

All of it. Just be careful in Dragonlance and/or Slayers worlds with a few of their songs.

A sample:

Quote: We are riding for the battle field in force tonight


Fury of the darkest evil cry for war


Far beyond the boundaries of hell and starlight


On the road to lands unknown forever more




Through the caverns far below our quest will lead us


Onwards through the ice and snow forever more


Standing fighting full of hate the time has come now


Stand and sound the guns of glory cry for war




On wings of glory we will carry on


Far across the forgotten lands toward the distant sun


And in the darkness shining far beyond the starlight


Lightning is striking from the dark dawning shadows


And in the kingdom of the everlasting sun


When the glory of the master's time has come




Into the fires of forever we will fly through the heavens


With the power of the universe we stand strong together


Through the force of power, it will soon reach the hour


For victory we ride, Fury of the Storm!




We are the chosen ones we cannot fail now


Spilling all the blood on the fires below


Smashing through the boundaries with the fire and fury


Killing all the mortals down the winding road




Hell fires are raging the storm growing strong


On the path to victory towards the distant sun


And in the darkness shining far beyond the starlight


Lightning is striking from the dark dawning shadows


And in the kingdom of the everlasting sun


When the glory of the master's time has come




Into the fires of forever we will fly through the heavens


With the power of the universe we stand strong together


Trough the forced of power, it will soon reach the hour


For victory we ride, Fury of the Storm!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

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  [Story-ish] One From the Vaults
Posted by: M Fnord - 03-07-2008, 05:14 AM - Forum: Fiction - Replies (3)

A bit of usenet hilarity for your enjoyment. This one came to me while in the shower, and the mental image was too cute to not post:


From: "Col. Mal Fnord, USSRAF" (23@globalfrequency.fen)
To: nttp://fen.tech.disc
Subj: One From the Vaults
Date Posted: May 10, 2014

I swear, man, the stuff you find when you go on a database trawl.

So I managed to ninja myself access[1] to the bigassed digtal records database Stellvia picked up when they bought out NASA's manned space operations, and I was going through some of the more recent stuff - just to see what was happening in the gap - when I came across some rather interesting Project Constellation dox.

For those of you who've got short memories, Constellation was the plan NASA had for replacing the Shuttle back before the wave hit. Basically it was a scaled-up Apollo capsule with some newer tricks in the cockpit and lifted on a modified Shuttle SRB. Yeah, the whole idea sounds a little nutty now, and it didn't sound much better *then* either, but with two Shuttles down and the other three approaching their sell-by dates a nutty idea was better than nothing, right?

Anyway, the Constellation stuff (Orion capsule, Ares rockets) got sidelined when the wave hit & fenships started plying the spacelanes like demented passenger pigeons. For a long time we thought that was it, that NASA abandoned manned spaceflight after STS-133 and didn't pick up the mantle until Artemis. It turns out that this isn't the case.

Buried in the records from around 2009 is a rather interesting engineering proposal from the Ames Research Center (the same people who specced out the Shuttle, fwiw) called "Orion Handwavium Upgrade." The idea being, apparently, that the Orion program could continue into the fenship era with a judicious redesign of the Orion spacecraft and the application of some wave. They used the baseline DRM Orion capsule as the centerpoint of the spacecraft, complete with the ISS-compatible airlock on the nose, then rebuilt the thing completely along the perimiter. All the stuff that was in the service module ended up distributed around the crew module, with added landing legs and a pretty novel antigravity engine system. The proposed design looks (I swear to Xenu) just like it popped out of a 1950s B-movie. Pure 100% American Flying Saucer; add a heat-ray turret to the belly and I would have no problem taking it on a UFO rampage.

The specifications were pretty limited, but then it was basically designed to take over for the original Orion spec so there wasn't a huge abiding *need* for a do-everything ship at that point. In all honesty the Orion upgrade isn't much more than a glorified shuttlecraft, designed to move 7-10 people from point A to point B. But the spec *could* handle crew transfers very well, along with basic resupply and other small jobs. Not a Shuttle maybe (he said with some small pride) but then what is?

So if NASA had this design sitting around in '09, why didn't they try and put it together? The answer is one acronym: TSAB. The zoomies were busy consolidating their hold on handwavium *and* Ameridane spaceflight around the time the design was produced, and any NASA-only design that required use of TSAB resources was a big, *big* no-no. Reading the dox, it looks like TSAB pretty much cut off access to the wave by anybody not directly working for them, and they waved a big fat contract for outfitting Franklin Station in front of Lockheed-Martin (the guys contracted to build Orion), *just* to make sure nobody returned NASA's calls. With NASA getting blacklisted, the design was tossed into Archive Hell and that was that.

Thankfully, this tale of sordid politics has a happy ending. With Stellvia now owning all the data, and since it seems they're looking towards an expansion project the Orion design might see the light of day again. The design is sound - I'd say it's easily as good or better than some of the stuff the Feddies have done at Utopia, the Warsies have at Kuat, the Senshi at Marginis or our efforts at Gagarin Crater - and it'd be ideal for work that doesn't require a Shuttle. Hell, maybe NASA could manage to outfit SR-01 properly now.

-- Not Nathan Fillion

[1] Okay, so I just had Sora make puppy-dog eyes at Noah until he broke and gave her the password. That still qualifies, even if it makes me a horrible person.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The Soviet Air Force is now hiring Pilot-Cosmonauts and other qualified individuals!
http://www.sovietairforce.fen/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

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  First Look At Watchmen Costumes
Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 03-07-2008, 04:54 AM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (10)

Here. Some -- Comedian, Rorschach -- look very good. Others, well, acceptable. The guy they cast as Ozymandias, though, just does not do it for me at all, at least in his photo.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

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  Mini Review - Santana - Ultimate Santana
Posted by: Kokuten - 03-06-2008, 04:51 AM - Forum: General Chatter - No Replies

It's a Santana album. If you're not a guitar aficionado. well, buy the album anyway. I haven't completed listening, yet, but the album has Oye Coma
Va, Evil Ways, Black Magic Woman, and Smooth - all worthwhile additions to a music collection. The Game of Love is present, as well as Put Your Lights On,
which is pretty much a 'greatest hits' album right there.

New stuff is the wonderful Into The Night - Chad Kroeger (Hero) vocals with Santana guitars. WOW.

Also good on the first run is Interplanetary Party, and Europa.

Tons of different styles. If you buy CDs, buy this one.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

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  GaryCon
Posted by: robkelk - 03-06-2008, 04:06 AM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (1)

Copying from http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=37211]a thread on the SJ Games forums:

Quote:By now most of you have seen the news about Gary Gygax.

I suggest that as a way of honoring Gary Gaygax we have a "GaryCon" across the globe this Friday and Saturday night.

By "We" - I mean every gamer possible who plays RPGs. Everywhere, everyone.

All of us play either Dungeons & Dragons this Friday and Saturday night

-OR-

We play the RPG rules system of our choice - but we do a typical D&D-type dungeon crawl. ...either Friday or Saturday night.

- Ed Charlton

I've just e-mailed the guys in my game group, offering to pull one of EGG's modules out of my AD&D collection for Friday.

 
--
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

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  [Draft/RFC] - The ISS
Posted by: robkelk - 03-06-2008, 03:16 AM - Forum: Fenspace - Replies (4)

I just put an image of the ISS into the Wiki's database, so I thought taking a run at the accompanying article might be a good idea...

====== International Space Station ======

===== History =====

The **International Space Station** (ISS) is the last operational piece of unenhanced manned space hardware left in the solar system. Completed in 2010, it is administered by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs on behalf of its member space agencies, and maintained by Project Artemis.

//early history, up to 2007 - lift and abstract from Wikipedia//

//history 2007-2013 - the collective needs to make up something//

The International Space Station was always seen as "one of NASA's projects" in the US space community. When TSAB eclipsed NASA in the early 2010s, support for American involvement in the ISS waned, purely for political reasons. Finally, TSAB used the near-miss of the station by the //[[ships:Calling Port]// in January 2013 as a pretext to pull out of the ISS altogether, and the CSA quickly followed their lead. The ESA, the FKA, JAXA, and the other space agencies did their best to take up the slack, but apathy about continued hardtech space exploration in their home nations' governments meant they were unable to secure enough funds to properly maintain the station. In early 2014, they turned to the Fen, hoping to find a "white knight".

They found one in the [[gazetteer:companies:Stellvia Corporation]. When Project Artemis took over NASA's space operations and facilities, they also took responsibility for maintaining the ISS. Artemis respects the unique nature of the station's technology and uses absolutely no handwavium in this maintenance.

===== Structure =====

The International Space Station is unique in being the only space station constructed purely with mundane materials and techniques. Hard Science has no room for handwaving.

//lift and abstract details from Wikipedia//

While a very few tourists visited the International Space Station before the 'wave, they were always underfoot. The station is neither equipped nor intended for tourism, and even the most bare-bones Fen station is more luxurious than the ISS anyway.

===== Activities =====

//lift and abstract list from Wikipedia//



Edit: For those not up on their alphabet soup:
  • NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  • CSA: Canadian Space Agency
  • ESA: European Space Agency
  • FKA: ??????????? ??????????? ?????????
  • JAXA: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
  •  

 
--
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

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  Macro Post! (Image Heavy)
Posted by: Kokuten - 03-06-2008, 01:57 AM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (1)

[Image: nom.jpg]

Post some Macros!Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

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  Positron's Task Force -- Friday
Posted by: Render - 03-06-2008, 01:23 AM - Forum: The Legendary - Replies (26)

Task Force Friday is on. First up, Positron. (March 7)

Badb will be waiting in Steel Canyon at 6pm Pacific. (Yes, that's earlier than I originally planned. Not sure this will be the 'usual time' or
not.)

We will not finish the TF in one night. We're going to get through the hard missions at the beginning and much of the boring stuff in the middle
as we have time for--honestly, I can solo the stupid errands during the week if needed. We'll tackle the harder missions at the end a week from Friday.
(March 14)

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  XP Smoothing and Real Numbers
Posted by: Sofaspud - 03-05-2008, 10:01 PM - Forum: The Legendary - Replies (10)

(At first, when I saw the post about "XP Smoothing" on the CoH website, I thought it was something to do with making the game run better on Windows.
Doh.)

So, anyway, has anyone noticed any difference in CoH due to the smoothing? I haven't had time to play in the past couple weeks... I'm hoping it'll
help me get past the hump I seem to be stuck at, but who knows.

And then the Real Numbers. Anyone used this? Is it handy? I've always liked the abstraction that CoH had -- Low, High, Very High, etc -- but I admit the
numbers geek in me finds the concept of true data compelling. At the same time, I can't help but feel that this is what I came to CoH to get away from --
the number-crunching munchkin. I know it's only been a couple weeks, but has anyone noticed Real Numbers making a difference?

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

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  NEW!!! Iron Man trailer!!
Posted by: Logan Darklighter - 03-05-2008, 06:18 PM - Forum: General Chatter - Replies (7)

(Cross posted to the Legendary)

Oh... this looks like it's gonna be SO SWEET!!!!!!!!

Scuze me - I feel a need to go play Stalnoy Volk a little bit. ^_^

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