A thought for Mister Sandman, by The Chordettes (lyrics)
Each person in the area of effect has a pleasant dream the next time he or she falls asleep. If the person thinks an erotic dream is "pleasant", that's a definite possibility, thanks to the lyrics.
As for why Doug would do this... well, if people in the AoE had just witnessed a disaster or an atrocity, they might need the help in sleeping...

-Rob Kelk
--
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

By request... Cliff's notes for the ending of I'm Here to Help.
- Previously, Emerald had discovered that Sailor Moon was Serentiy.
- He takes her to a Strange Place in order to try to convince her to not Do That Cleansing Thing.
- Her ghost mom steals her away before he can finish with the convincing, and convinces her to ignore his arguments. Meanwhile, Beryl is attacking. Mom sends the Senshi to fight and die.
- Mom and Pluto deliberately push Emerald's buttons, so that he'll go after them. Pluto is the one who suggested this.
- Emerald descends on the waiting youma and does Bad Bad Things to them. Meanwhile, the Senshi all die. This makes Emerald unhappy.
- Pluto shows up to mock Emerald. Emerald encourages her to keep mocking. Eventually, Pluto realizes that he's draining her. By that point, it is Far Too Late.
- Emerald sucks almost (but not quite all) of the energy out of Pluto. Emerald then uses this to Revolutionize The World in his own special way. That done, he dies from overchanneling.
- Somewhere in here, the Senshi all reincarnate. They're Senshi like that.
- Pluto hops forward briefly into the future she was from, now ending. She reveals that this was all, in fact deliberate on her part. Specifically, once she *had* Crystal Tokyo, she had realized that lobotomizing everyone really wasn't the happy plan after all. The current storylineis the result of her tweaking the timeline over and over and over again, exhaustively, desperately trying to figure out a way to make the Great Cleansing not happen, without destroying the chance of a reasonably happy, functional future. There is a suggestion that at least two of her previous attempts led to Emerald winning - one by going into exile and connecting to the planet Nemesis and one by sticking around and inspiring the invading Nemesians. Regardless, that future ends, taking that Pluto with it.
- Back in present day, the kid who was going to grow up to be Emerald gets a taste of his poiwer a bit ahead of schedule.
- Jump a couple of years forward. Classic slap slap kiss kiss moment between Young Emerald and Reincarnated Mars.

www.warcry.com/news/view/67851-City-of- ... s-Revealed
City of Heroes: Issue #9 Details Revealed
Dana Massey posted on 19 Jan 2007, 11:45 AM
The folks at NCSoft and Cryptic Studios have released some details on Issue #9: "Breakthrough". The official fact sheet made the rounds earlier today. Here are the details.

Issue 9: "Breakthrough"
SUMMARY:
Issue 9: Breakthrough, the ninth free expansion to the City of Heroes universe, introduces an entirely new level of depth and gameplay to the franchise. Players acquire and invent new "loot," and have the option to buy and sell it using the new hero and villain auction houses. Along with Issue 9's other great features, this brand new system results in a wealth of new gameplay for players.
FEATURES
Invention System (Heroes and Villains)
Using the highly anticipated Invention system, players acquire and collect "loot" in the form of Salvage and Invention Recipes. These will be used together to invent uber-enhancements, costume pieces, new powers, gadgets, and more. This creates a world of new activities, rewards and character evolution!
Auction Houses (Heroes and Villains)
Where better to buy and sell all of these new items than in the new auction houses! Wentworth's Fine Consignments have sprung up throughout Paragon City while the villains prefer to do their bidding alongside "black-market" trucks placed throughout the Rogue Isles.
Statesman's Task Force (Heroes only)
This high-level PvE content allows eight heroes to team up in order to face and defeat Paragon's greatest enemies! Completing this difficult challenge results in some of the game's rarest loot!
New Hamidon Encounter (Heroes and Villains)
Not only do villains get their own end-game raid encounter with the "Hamidon," but the new experience is also brought to the Heroes side where players must use new tactics to bring down one of the "City of"s greatest threats

Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

I've got some serious story-writing planned for Fenspace, but I probably won't be able to do it until RL stops kicking my ass. I expect to be offline for a couple weeks or so. e_e
In the meantime, though, I've posted a few bits of information about my character, his space station, and supporting cast. I requested a reality-check for my preliminary estimates on how big his station should be in Kokuten's Land Size thread...
But I figure I should ask for opinions on some of the other stuff I've stuck in the Ship Registry and Character Profile sections:- the writeups for The Floating Island and Eric Zhu.
Potentially, er, problematic are a couple claims there. The writeup states the Island was the first Fenspace ship/station of its kind. The first to boost chunks of land into orbit. Y'know, making a building and the surrounding real estate spaceworthy, yeah?
That's there because...well, I suggested that notion in the original thread. I think. >_>; The Island also launched early in the timeline, and it's comparatively primitive (initially, only pressurised buildings and basements), as opposed to, say, what Bob's got, or what other flying houseowners have done... the only tricky thing Eric and his crew did was prove you could handwave soil with enough digging. So the assertion makes sense, but I dunno...
The other thing is Eric's biomod. It verges on the superpower side...but it does come from physical alteration to his body. He's basically, er, wireless networked. To any 'waved systems on his station.
There's also a lot of assorted weirdness about the Island, evident in its writeup. But I have reasonable explanations for most of them. Mostly revolving around the strangeness of its 'waved service droid army. They move things when people aren't looking, see.
-- Acyl

GENRE DIRECTIVE:
This is not a dystopia.
Fenspace is intended to be an optimistic near-future space opera. What this means is that neither the Earth nor the rest of the solar system are wracked by wars, corruption, crime, environmental collapse, peak oil, etc. At least, no more so than as of where we stood on New Year's Day, 2007. There are potential rough patches ahead, but the bulk of humanity is looking forward and has better than even odds of making it through with civilization still intact. There are still Big Bads, a shadowy conspiracy or two and plenty of mooks for the heroes to smack around of course, but they are defeatable.
In this light, those who wish to write stories involving catastrophic Mundane wars using handwavium-enhanced weaponry, the total corruption & greed of earthbound politics, the general apathy and/or suckiness of the human race, etc. are kindly invited to do their own thing elsewhere.
(Any attempt to argue that the world must suck because it's "realistic" will fall on deaf ears. As a wiser man than the Management once said, "Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism.")
THE RULES:
Rule #0: This is a collaborative writing project, which means there's a whole bunch of people adding their ideas to the pot. As a contributor, you're expected to behave like the adults that you are (or at least are pretending to be on the internet) when participating. As the man said, "Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean."
a) Offering constructive criticism (why don't you do this?) is good. Saying 'you can't do that' is not constructive.
b) Since this is a collaborative writing project, no one writer can hog all the Good Stuff without upsetting the other writers. Don't step on anyone else's toes - don't consume too much Cool at once, don't try to be better than the already-established "best in Fenspace" at something, and talk with people before you do things that No One Else Can Do.
c) When Rule #0 conflicts with any other rule, Rule #0 trumps the other rule. As Mustrum Ridcully would put it, they're "more of a guideline".
Rule #1: Handwavium is like a cat; it doesn't go where you tell it to, it goes where it wants to. If you're trying to get a random device with no plan in mind, then that's exactly what you'll get. If you have a specific device or set of devices in mind, you will get something close but not exactly identical to your specifications within these limits:
a) You can't show handwavium a picture of your desired genre vehicle and have it build one for you.
b) Handwavium has to be combined with existing hardware in order to accomplish anything. For best results the device should have some tangental relationship to the desired end goal: a car's engine becomes a spacedrive, a fence becomes a collapsible air dome, a laptop becomes an AI-capable supercomputer, etc.
c) Handwavium has quirks. The more complex and interesting the device you're trying to build is, the quirkier it will be on average.
i) Some strains of handwavium are quirkier than others.
ii) Quirks don't apply to critical life-support systems - air, water, food, sewer. Power systems can be quirky, but never to a life-threatening extent.
d) If handwavium is like a cat, then using it to create weapons is like giving a cat a bath; difficult and full of extreme pain. To wit:
i) Any attempt to use handwavium to create advanced genre weapons (phasers, antimatter bombs, any type of anime death ray, etc.) will fail without reservation.
ii) Handwavium is not naturally explosive, either chemically or nuclear. Adding handwavium to an explosive device will just destroy the handwavium.
iii) Handwavium can be used to enhance simple weaponry (swords, knives, staves, clubs, etc.) but the enhancement will not increase the total effectiveness as a weapon - a waved sword may not need further sharpening, but it won't become a Hackmaster +12.
iv) Weapons designed and built using no or effectively no (=
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Shared world fictional superheroic sort of thing follows.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

It took us two minutes with a 'waved scalpel to cut the remains of his space suit free. Sal and I were both sure he was a goner. No respiration, almost no pulse, and blood everywhere. No cuts, though. No open wounds. Just blood, around his mouth and down his front and covering the inside of his suit. We both figured the poor guy had major internal hemorraging from his suit rupture, massive internal bleeding, that kind of thing.
Crewing the first ambulance in space, we'd both seen this kind of thing before. Today, we'd seen it far too often. With the battle between the Reavers and the SOS-dan still in progress, wed probably be seeing it all day.
Sally hopped into the front to set our course while I tried to keep our two passengers alive. The one on the right would live. Steady breathing, wearing an oxy mask. He probably had a concussion. He was the lucky one.
The other guys on the ship hadnt had suits when their hull had been holed. One of them had been badly cut up, probably by shrapnel. Two more had died from exposure. The other guy through
The last one was the mystery. He had a suit, but it was badly holed. Hed managed to tie it off with a dead mans belt, but it had apparently been leaking slowly. When we got to him, the pressure in the suit was almost as low as Mars surface. And the internal bleeding. But for no good reason we could tell, he wasnt dead.
Fighting off an urge to procrastinate further, I go over and check him. Not breathing. Pulse, but weak as hell. Blood pressure well below normal. That, at least, is something that can be addressed. Hoping that it won't cause more internal bleeding, I hook him up to an IV and sit back to watch my patients.
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84

Yes, as you can see, I'm bored, and I'm stalking Fenspace. Think of me as a lassiez-faire hippy Scirroco. He'll help keep the universe together, I just want you in it.
I challenge anyone who's been lurking Fenspace to man up and throw up a ship descriptor/origin story.
I pledge to have a constructive critique on any additional ship or people posts done before 9pm tonight, done before 9pm tonight.
There's at least one person who's sitting here waiting, and would love to see any additional content.
Write!Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Grover's Corners is VERY well estimated as to size in acres vs. dimensions, Bob.
www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app19...ndarea.jsp
gives a radius of 1862', giving a diameter of 3724', for a 250 acre circle. That's close enough that I'm not going to quibble - I'm going to thumbs up and cheer.
The stated 3900' diameter, radius of 1950', gives a 274 acre chunk, which is fine too.
Hephaestus, at ten acres of Alaska, is 700' x 622', for an exact ten acre chunk. I have to admit, though, I stoled the chunk of land that forms the 'prow', so my measurements are a bit off.
S. Hoffswalsh Field, being a residential parcel, doesn't seem unlikely at 155' x 270', giving a .96 acre postage stamp - this is what you would get if you horked my current home out of the ground, land and all, only smaller. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

I've been driving myself bonkers today, punching down cat5 and juggling Fenspace tech, and here are the results. Pending societal disapproval, here is the basic tech Hephaestus and the Boys are based on, and a couple of our products.
Please be gentle on any shoot-downs, it's midnight or thereabouts, and I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep.. stupid Muse.
Any designs are 'copyright' to Hephaestus - we need a term for this, since Copyright has legal implications in the real world, and I think we would be wise to have a way to indicate intellectual property that is for sale, as opposed to open source, in the Fenspace. I suggest 'Commercial design' versus 'Open design'.
Open Design
Carbon Fiberweed
The original fireweed plant was staked to and around a carbon fiber rod, dusted with carbon fiber, and painted with base strain 'wavium. We ended up with a plant that grows signifigantly more and signifigantly higher than a 'normal' fireweed, is much darker (dark DAARK green leaves, near-black green stalk, and gloss black flowers) than normal, and is capable of doing 30 feet of height in an Earth environment. First-gen Carbon Fiberweed cannot survive unprotected in space.
Environmental Plants
These Devil's Club plants were a 'lucky shot' handwave. The original smells very pleasant and grows anywhere, on anything. It is the devil. The waving process began with 'shaving' a Devil's Club, removing the hurty parts from the stem. The plant was jacketted in a thin plushy layer of velour, dark green in color, and subjected to a 2-week tape loop of environmental propaganda on the role of green plants in restoring oxygen to the environment. Watching right along with it was a can of base 'wavium. At the end of the time period, we repotted the Devil's Club in the 'wavium, and we ended up with a low-slung plant that has no thorns, grows swiftly, produces oxygen like gangbusters, and, indeed, _requires_ carbon monoxide or dioxide in fairly good quantities to thrive. The environmental bay on Hephaestus is equipped with smudge pots for this very reason.
Quirks: Environmental Plants require lounge music, the schlockier and more '70s the better. Research into this has indicated that the velour fabric intended to make a more 'cuddly' plant was from a late 70s manufactured pair of pants. When asked further, Raven indicated that yes, the pants were 'very funky'.
With _too_ clean of an atmosphere, Environmental Plants will stop growing and shed leaves to minimize themselves.
Cuttings of these are available from Hephaestus.
EzCode Parsing Error: size=5]Commercial Des
Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor[/b]
The Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor is a design based in part off of the Firefly engine seen in Serenity. in the Hephaestian version, the rotating shell contains a stationary crankshaft, with a strange handwaved material in its lobes. The shell contains control electronics and a similar and complimentary handwaved emitter, which repels the material in the lobe of the crankshaft.
The rotor can be made in a myriad of shapes and output levels, with no upper or lower limit in sight. So far, the control system has been built into the shell, and we've no plans to move it out.
An astute reader may have noticed that the rotor itself just.. rotates. This is true, and the second part of the Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor is the Motivator. The Motivator is an ingot of the same strange handwaved metal used in the rotor, with similar emitters either static mounted or on armatures surrounding the ingot. While the _material_ is the same between the Rotor and the Ingot, the emitters have a totally different purpose. In the Rotor, the emitters push, and the static crankshaft is the 'reactionless newton-cheating sumbitch', to quote my father on the subject. In the Ingot, the emitters are the fulcrum, the electricity is the lever, and the Ingot actually transmits the force of movement to the vehicle.
For instance, the rotor in any of the Suburbans is inside the engine compartment, where one would normally expect it. In the initial buildup, the propulsion ingot was placed where the transfer case was. This ended up being too cramped and too far forward for the appropriate 'center of movement', and it was moved backwards, making room for a larger generator plugged into the back end of the rotor.
In cars like V and Millie, again the rotor replaces the engine, and a 'propulsion ingot' replaces the transmission or is mounted into the car's frame at an appropriate location.
In conclusion - the Rotor develops, through reactionless repulsion, rotational force, which is used to turn an electric generator. The available electricity is pushed through 'waved emitters and generates reactionless repulsion via the Ingot. When a 'pure' road style is needed, all Hephaestian vehicles can use in-wheel electric motors to crank right along, and keep a few high-grade resistance coils in the design for 'generative-wastative braking'.
Functionally speaking, the rotor/ingot combo provides a single-point vector introduction capability. On a single-ingot rig like the Suburban, the force generation is nowhere near as efficient in 'rotation' as it is linearily. This is due to the single-point factor, and one of the reasons V is so agile. With a smallish Ingot replacing each of her differentials, she can push her front end and back end at different vectors.
'Clean Queen'
The airlocks in the shuttles and shops of Hephaestus are composed of 'waved Visqueen. We setup a spooler that rolled the visqueen through a trough of liquidized 'wavium, and it came out signifigantly tougher, better insulating, and nearly optically clear. The stuff is not very strong against piercing or cutting attacks, however, and even a hardtech small handgun could penetrate it.
Airlocks
The airlocking system used by Hephaestus are based off of a 'queen sheeting, and the fasteners are 3-inch wide strips of velcro, with a central zipper. The Velcro/zipper is glued on with a 'waved adhesive, which appears to now bond on a molecular level. The velcro has been painted with liquidized 'wavium, as well as the zippers. They hold well, pressure testing would pop the visqueen sheeting before the seal would leak.
The Really Right Stuff
The glue used to assemble the airlocks is a mix of liquid 'wavium and 'right stuff' RTV rubber gasketting adhesive. The resultant stuff is less gooey and more liquid than the original RTV, but can still be applied from a 'squirt gun' with care, or brushed on. On non-metal surfaces, it produces a molecular bond. On metal surfaces, it's a powerful adhesive, but fails under any force harder than 'signifigant'.
Battle Steel
Hephaestus is setup to produce steel, among other finished metals. The steel bar stock is sometimes melted back down, and a specific stain of 'wavium is mixed in, and vaccum-cooled. The resultant product is slightly lighter than conventional steel, resists corrosion, and so long as there are active 'personell' (as opposed to just people)maintaining it, maintains it's strength. Battle Steel is _signifigantly_ stronger than conventional steel plate, resists corrosion per stainless steel, and has to be cut with either overwhelming force or special tooling/drill bits/saw blades. Laser cutting requires either overwhelming force or a 'wave collimated focussing system.
Quirks: When confronted with 'overwhelming' force, Battle Steel tends to shatter, due to the sheer amount of energy imparted to _cause_ a rupture. A Reaver 'impact breacher' would bounce if on anything but an exact perpendicular, but if it does get that perfect angle, it stands a good chance of either cracking the panel or sending a 'spall' shard bouncing across the space inside the violated panel.
Silver Handwavium
Silver Handwavium was a conventional strain mixed with silicon and graphite dust, automatic transmission fluid, wd-40, and fed several hours of infomercials on the benefits of high-grade lubricants. The resulting thick-oil-paint type liquid can be aerosol sprayed, painted from a can, or squirtgunned onto a bearing surface. On a non-frictionized surface, this strain merely flakes up and powders away. On a surface that requires lubrication (bearings, hinges, latches, locks), the 'wavium soaks in and provides a near-perfect interface. The interface is not frictionless, but it's as close as can be obtained by solid work.
Quirks: The strain requires occasional Exuberant Appreciation! of it's Amazing Effectiveness! and Economical Pricing! to maintain its lubricity. Thankfully, you'll notice it stop working nearly as well before it 'goes away' and requires a new application.
Black Handwavium
Black handwavium was produced from several 'high performance' classic car mags, a can of base strain, and a tape-loop of documentaries on internal combustion and nascar race engine design. The 'wavium _knows_ what makes internal combustion tick, and likes the idea. Application of this can be as simple as an oil change, or as in depth as a teardown and parts soak. Naturally, the more effort you put into it, the more benefit you will get out of it.
An engine exposed to an 'oil change' level of Black Handwavium will reseal it's cylinders, stop clattering, run somewhat better than factory (depending on level of damage/neglect), and fill several oil filters with gunge in short order.
A full 'teardown/parts soak' will result in an engine that is signifigantly structurally stronger than stock, with all that implies. If an ECM or carbeuration setup is adjusted properly, higher RPM range, more boost, higher compression, more agressive timing, all can be sustained. A stock engine given this treatment will not run that much better than stock - even if everything under the lid is right, the programming/design is aiming for a particular performance level.
Ultimate performance gain from 'Wavium black is in the high performance internal combustion engine, where treatments will cause oil to flow smoother, fuel to burn better, and motors to last longer. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979