...and it's a lot of fun, though probably not news to most folks reading this board:
Geek of the Week:  Vin Diesel 
    
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

This is where the story itself will go, both my own and likely main part of it as well as any stories others may wish to make in the same universe. The other thread is for discussion, questions, etc.
Here's a (hopefully) finalized timeline and an in-universe historical entry to serve as a teaser for the prologue/first chapter coming within the next several days.
Edit: Corrected the origin date and emperor name for twelve clans' origin. Omamori Himari Volume 0 states clans originated in Heian Period.
~~~
Antiquity:
While some remain hidden amongst humanity, sapient magical creatures, whether
aggressive or passive towards one another or humanity, begin to form enclaves
separate from both one another and from humans. Over time, methods of magically
hiding these enclaves will be discovered and utilized as humanity begins its
assertion of dominance over the Earth.

~1000 (Shades of Hogwarts): The group that will eventually evolve into the Royal Magic
Society is established. A defensible facility – a castle – is constructed in
northern Scotland to house the group. The castle will eventually become the
Royal Academy for Magic following the Union of the Crowns.

1145 (The Twelve Clans): As a result of the incident involving the kyuubi no kitsune
Tamamo-no-Mae, Konoe, 76th Emperor of Japan, gathers the first of
what will eventually be the Twelve Onikiriyaku Clans, declaring these twelve
families to be “honored guardians of the Our Realm, charged by Us with the
punishment and destruction of those of non-human descent who violate the laws
of Our Realm, possessing the unique abilities necessary for the fulfillment of
their appointed tasks,” and grants them a status of nobility.

1145-Onwards (Pride before Fall): Despite it not being the intent, a hierarchal
structure slowly but surely develops among the Twelve Onikiriyaku Clans. While
some, whether individually or the entire clan, do not become involved, the
majority of the twelve clans see themselves as superior to even other noble
clans due to being personally chosen by the Emperor. They further see
themselves as superior to other members within the twelve based upon the order
in which they were added to the twelve clans, with the Tsuchimikado being
ranked first, and the last to be added to the clans, the Jinguji, being last at
twelfth. This attitude continues through the Tokugawa and Meiji eras and even
survives the end of WWII despite half of the clans themselves not surviving.
Most disturbing, however, are the gradual humanocentric views developed by the
majority of the clans, eventually coming to see their charge of policing
non-human magicals as a mandate of ‘extermination.’

~1300 to 1600:
In many cases around the world – but especially in western civilizations
–humans capable of magic take a page from magical creatures and begin to hide,
not themselves, but their activities from the non-magical majority. Eastern
civilizations follow suite at a much more sedate pace. To enforce the worldview
of the non-existence of magic, families and groups begin to utilize memory
repression, alteration, and outright erasure spells to cover-up magic-related
incidents, including those involving magical creatures. Despite this, even up
to the late 20th/early 21st century many non-mages around
the world know of the existence of magic, but remain hush about the subject to
those they do not know are ‘in the loop.’

Mid 1600s (Deals Most Foul): Thanks to a well-worded clause in a divine-infernal agreement, the
first of several damned souls are granted the mantle of Shinigami by Samael.
Capable of operating only in the Home Island of Japan, these empowered spirits
have the authority to grant small-scale wishes to those on their deathbeds –
for an always heavy price. The most common is a wish for the prosperity of
one’s family, the price is the wisher’s soul and the premature claiming of the
life (but not soul) of each progressive generation at a set age, and the ways
provided out of the deals for the latter generations always only seem easy
enough. The breaking of this type of deal often results in bad fortune falling
upon whoever succeeds in breaking the pact.

Late 1800s:
The events of Gunsmoke and Wild Wild West occur.

1930s (Dark Tidings Begin): A group of magic-users in the Nazi Party known as the Knights of
Faust essentially become the “Magic Division” of the party. They are charged
with the consolidation and utilization of magic in the preservation and
expansion of the Third Reich. Their public face will become known as the Thule
Society.

Early 1945 (A Vanishing Act): Records both official and unofficial regarding the Knights of
Faust and the Thule Society begin to disappear from circulation. Actual members
follow suit.

8 May 1945 (The Reich Falls): Nazi Germany surrenders to the Allies.

16 July 1945 (Destroyer of Worlds): The Manhattan Project achieves its desired
result in the form of the Trinity Test at White Sands Proving Ground in New
Mexico, ushering in the Atomic Age with the detonation of the first
implosion-type plutonium bomb.

6& 9 August 1945 (Children of Trinity): The only atomic weapons used in warfare are
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.

15 August 1945 (The Empire Falls): Imperial Japan surrenders to the Allies.

24 October 1945 (New World Order): The United Nations officially comes into
existence with the ratification of its Charter.

Late 1940s (Heirs of Evil): Military and police behind the Iron Curtain ‘in the know’
regarding magic begin to respond to crimes of various severity throughout the
Eastern Bloc. These cases are connected by the calling card of various forms of
graffiti indicating “Faust Lives!” In cases of attacks and vandalism, targets
are always related to either the Communist Party or those of Jewish descent.

21 August 1951 (Tides of Woe): A disbelieved KGB study indicates the belief that the “Faust
Attacks” are a remnant Nazi group utilizing anti-Party sentiment to recruit and
expand its numbers. This report is not widely circulated and the author later
vanishes without a trace.

31 October 1954 (Ten Years Post-War): The State of Japan creates the Public Peace
Agency, supposedly under the control of the National Public Safety Commission,
and supposedly meant to promote cooperation and understanding between the
public and the police. In reality, it is the cover name for an agency directly
under the Office of the Prime Minister’s control which is meant to handle all
manner of supernatural issues. It has several branches, among them the Defense
Branch for Public Peace (?????4??), which handles such things as the cover-up of
supernatural incidents and acting as intermediaries between the government and
the remnants of the Twelve Onikiriyaku Clans.

17 September 1976 (The Space Shuttle): The prototype for the first reusable space
vehicle, Enterprise, is rolled out of its assembly facility in Southern
California.

1984 (The Next Step): In his State of the Union address, United States President Ronald
Reagan announces the construction of a permanent American space station.

28 January 1986 (The Challenger Disaster): Space Shuttle OV-099 is destroyed; all seven
crew members are killed. An in-depth examination and servicing of the shuttle
fleet delays the construction of the American space station.

13 March 1988 (Connections Most Curious): On Friday, authorities in eastern Ukraine
investigate a large explosion at an industrial warehouse. Seven bodies of local
missing persons are identified, killed via beheading, in a circle composed of
pure sea salt and ground silver shavings. The perpetrators are never
identified. Never connected to the incident, no Faust Attacks occur after this
date.

24 April 1990 (A Far-Seeing Eye): The Hubble Space Telescope is deployed.

10 July 1994 (Ten Years Later): Despite being plagued with financial problems, naysayers, and
continuous redesigns, Freedom Space Station is completed by the United States
of America.

8 August 1995 (The USSR Dissolves): Despite holding out for longer than in other
timelines, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics formally declares its
dissolution in a press conference the world had been predicting for over two
years. The newly organized Russian Federation will absorb the USSR’s nuclear
arsenal, its UN Security Council seat, and its space program.

5 May 1997 (The Luxembourg Conference): Nations of western Europe meet in Luxembourg to
discuss the future of pan-European cooperation in the wake of the collapse of
the USSR.

January to March 1998: Rumors begin to circulate about a “permanent coalition of
governments” being formed in Luxembourg in response to the cross-national
attitudes that began to emerge in the early 90s.

5 May 1998 (The Luxembourg Declaration): One year to the day since the start of the
talks, conference participants confirm the rumors which had been circulating
the past four months. As of the first day of the new millennium, a presidential
republic in the form of the European Federation (EF) will exist, with its
capital in Paris.

8 July 1999 (The Second Peace): The Russian Federation completes its Mir-2 Space Station. Rather
than deorbit her predecessor, she is connected to her successor via the
Generation Module.

1 January 2000 (The Unification Treaty): The nations of France, Germany, Norway, Sweden,
Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg, Andorra, and Liechtenstein sign the Traité d’Unification at the
Palace of Versailles. Over the course of the next year, a unified currency
known as the Euro will come to be, as will the European Council, European
Parliament, the Office of the President of Europe, and a combined military
known as the EF Army, Navy, Air Force, and a special forces/marine hybrid unit
known as the Enforcer Corps.

28 January 2000 (The Next Generation): From seemingly nowhere, NASA declares that the
present fleet of ‘Enterprise-class’ space shuttles will be retired at the end
of the year. A new generation of shuttle will replace them at the same time.
Unlike the previous generation, legislation is passed to have the new shuttles
bear the United States Ship designator.

30 November 2000 (With Honored Memory…): The first of the new generation shuttles, Orbital
/ Space Vehicle USS Challenger (OSV-01), is delivered to NASA at Cape
Canaveral. USS Voyager (OSV-02), USS Pioneer (OSV-03), USS Adventure
(OSV-04), USS Frontier (OSV-05), USS Journey (OSV-06), and USS Resolute
(OSV-07) will follow over the course of the next five years.

11 September 2001: Undercover federal air marshals force a landing of not one, two,
or even three, but four hijacked aircraft. Two crash into New York’s East River
with an 83% loss of life. A Congressional movement to halt the funding of the
air marshal program is quietly withdrawn from the table.

17 May 2002 (The E.F. Expands): The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Finland
sign the Traité d’Unification.

14 June 2002 (Countdown to Moonwalk): The European Federation Space Agency (EFSA) and
China National Space Administration (CNSA) announce an agreement to begin a
joint space station development program, with the goal of eventually
establishing a permanent, international moon base. The cooperative phases of
the program are labeled Project Starbound, Project Starpost, and Project
Starhome. Other nations are invited to participate in the final, lunar phase of
the project.

18 October 2002 (E.F. Expansion Continues): Iceland signs the Traité d’Unification.

7 February 2003 (Project Starbound Commences): The People’s Republic of China purchases the Buran
and the data from its construction from the Russian Federation. They will use
the old would-be space shuttle as a basis for the development of a reusable
space craft, the goal of Project Starbound.

15 April 2004 (Project Starpost Commences): With most of the earlier Soviet/Russian and
American space technology open source after so long, it proves a relatively
simple matter for the joint EFSA/CNSA team to perform the preliminary design
work of the first space station modules, the first part of Project Starpost.

20 July 2007 (Project Starbound Concludes): With the delivery of the first two of the De
Ruyter-Class/Dalian-Class Cislunar Vehicles (EFSA De Ruyter and CNSA Dalian),
Project Starbound is declared a success.

28 February 2008 (Progression of Science): Industrial engineering students at the
University of Moscow develop a radiation resistant alloy of titanium, steel,
zinc, and aluminum while experimenting with excess raw materials. Dubbed murmanskium
after the students’ mutual home town, the exact levels of each metal in the
alloy must be so precise to achieve the desired effect that production of the
metal proves prohibitively expensive for most of its possible uses until the
manufacturing process can be streamlined.

28& 31 July 2011 (Project Starpost Concludes): After delaying production of the station modules
to allow the inclusion of murmanskium in the construction, the Project Starpost
space stations are finished – Reliance Space Station and Penglai Space Station
are respectively declared operational.

10 January 2012 (Needs the Must): A slight economic depression causes the
indefinite halting of Project Starhome, the final and international phase of
the joint EFSA/CNSA space program. Members of the shelved project are assigned
elsewhere and part on good terms, both sides deservingly pleased with the
fruits of their labors.

4 January 2015 (Service Life Extension): The federal government agrees to fund the
construction of a murmanskium ‘shell’ to enclose the Mir-1 portion of the Mir
Space Station. As the price of murmanskium drops further, the construction of a
shell for Mir-1 is expanded to include a shell for Mir-2, as well.

10 August 2016 (Mir’s New Clothes): Sheathing of Mir in her new rad-resistant armor
is completed.

2 December 2016 (Copy-Cat Yankees): With the success of murmanskium shell on Mir,
NASA successfully pesters Congress enough to pay for a similar treatment for
their own space station.

3 July 2018 (Garb of Freedom): Freedom Space Station’s rad-resistant shell successfully applied.

20 September 2020 (Newer World Order): In the first amendment to the U.N. Charter
through the Article 109 process, the United Nations dissolves the General
Assembly. It is replaced by the U.N. Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA).

11 May 2022 (The SSD Plan): In a speech before the UNPA, members of the planets four leading
space programs – CNSA, EFSA, NASA, and RFSA – present the Space Settlement
Development Plan. Citing the reasons of overpopulation of the Earth (presently
at 8.1 billion), a directive to establish a permanent lunar presence, with the
stated staged goals of: Stage I (Site Surveying), Stage II (Initial
Construction), Stage III (Self-Sustainability), Stage IV (Importation of
Foodstuffs back to Earth), and Stage V (Use of Lunar Facilities as Staging
Ground for Future Exploration of the Solar System), with the last two stages
being interchangeable.

1 January 2025 (The Modern Clans): By this point in time, the Twelve Onikiriyaku
Clans have been reduced to seven: Tsuchimikado (1st Rank; Onmyouji),
Kagamimori (3rd Rank; Shinto Magic), Amakawa (6th Rank;
Empowerment of Objects into Weapons, aka ‘Light Ferry,’ and a Partnership with
a Gotokuneko; survived by one heir), Kawahira (7th Rank; Some
Shamanistic Magic and Pacts Formed With Inugami Partners), Jibashiri (8th
Rank; Super-Strength [Derived from Channeling the Planet’s Chi]; survived only
by the Mikari branch family, whose powers are inactive), Yakouin (11th Rank;
Rapid Data Gathering and Interpretation [Near-Precognition; Kills Brain Cells;
Use Drugs to Control Pain and Varied Psychosis]), and Jinguji (12th
Rank; ‘Dark’ Magic; looked down upon by most of the other clans).

~~~

“Contrary to what the Hollywoods would have you believe, at the
time of the Counter-Earth Crossover the magical societies of Earth-Tellus were
not as a whole possessed of the self-superior racial bigotry, archaic
backwardness, or non-magical ignorance of the kind presented in the Harry
Potter series. Unfortunately, that was only true in the majority of cases.
Exceptions always exist. At the time in question, there were several.

Please note that these examples do not include such groups as the
resurgent Knights of Faust. They and their contemporaries are considered
terrorist and criminal organizations rather than actual societies. Please see
Chapter 5: “The Post-Crossover Magical Underworld” for more on their ilk.

All magical societies, be they human or otherwise, had a sort of
willing ignorance in varying degree to certain aspects and knowledge of
non-magical life. This was an unavoidable result of their self-imposed
isolation.

In terms of being archaic, the societies of the near and middle
east reigned. Rare was the magical enclave here that had even so much as
electricity or a telephone. This otherwise unheard of degree of isolation was
the result, of course, of the now well-known Djinn Incursion of 1620. The
result of a botched summoning ritual, while the djinn were eventually all
banished the anger arisen from their actions was directed at spellcasters as a
whole and led to a pogrom of attempted mass genocide of all mages, leading to
their self-imposed withdrawal from society at large. Tragically, the religious
leader who rallied the pogrom was later revealed to be the last of the rogue
djinn, whose plan for revenge could be said to have been a success, if not in
the way it intended. For further information, please see Chapter 2: “The
Islamic World and Magic.”

In terms of bigotry, Japan held the day. This was due to two
primary factors. The first was the nearly millennium old organization
known as the Twelve Onikiriyaku Clans. While opinion among the various
individuals in the families varied and some didn’t follow the line of thinking
in the slightest, the majority of the surviving clans at the time of the
Crossover had long since begun to see themselves as supernatural exterminators
rather than as the hereditary, magical police force they had been chartered to
be. The situation with the clans was only made more sour by the attitude of
superiority many had developed about themselves in regards to both other mages
and metahumans. Many clan members opinions in comparing themselves and
non-magicals actually bordered on the way an ancient samurai might have viewed
burakumin (and led to the infamous incident in which some Fen Wizards performed
a mass air drop of Death Eater cloaks and masks onto the Tsuchimikado clan
compound).

In the second case, the factor was that not quite half but nearly
so of those in supernaturally-aware government service were of a Japanocentric
and thereby humanocentric mentality. This was the legacy of the Public Peace
Agency’s earliest leadership having been imperial era holdovers, rumored to
have even been minor members of the infamous Black Dragon Society. These
leaders naturally adopted a recruitment practice aimed at those of like mind to
themselves and hiring based upon this model was unofficially continued through
to the first part of the 21st Century. This is not to say that those
hired in this manner were of a morally dodgy nature, but it certainly
contributed to the problem

For more on the Japanese side of things, including certain
well-known events following first contact between the Earths, see Chapter 7:
“The Free Mars Coalition and the Japanese Magical Communities”…

-         
Frederick Aino, “Introduction,” A History of the First Hundred Years of
Post-Crossover Magic, Acme University Press, 2191.

Amazon is working on a new service, Kindle Worlds
Here's a pretty good write-up about it.
The big takeaway in the details is that Amazon gets full copyright rights to your work, and no crossovers either.
Well, something is better than nothing and maybe a lawsuit.  

Hey Dartz - here's one that should amuse you. Heh. 
The background is straightforward: Congressional investigators discovered that Apple's been using an unusually complex -- but apparently perfectly legal, and decidedly clever --  cluster of international tax shelters to lower its tax burden. For example, they have a holding company incorporated in Ireland that keeps its bank accounts in the U.S.; because Ireland assesses residency based on where the company's assets are while the U.S. assesses residency based on place of incorporation, the holding company effectively exists nowhere for tax purposes. Apple saved $44 billion since 2009 from tricks like this, which, averaged over four years, means the lost tax revenue last year could have paid for a single day of federal spending. But again -- all perfectly legal. Even if you think it shouldn't be, you run into Paul's point in the second clip, namely, why not just have a Senate debate on tax reform rather than try to shame Apple with hearings for doing what literally anyone else in their position would have done (potentially at the risk of being ousted by shareholders if they didn't)?What's especially bizarre about this is Democrats attempting to make an example of a company that's universally respected for its innovation, even among the lowest of low-information voters. If you want to demagogue corporations for lightening their tax load, politics 101 says to find a company that's far removed from the average joe or, at least, whose product reliably produces grumbles about the cost or quality. Defense contractors and oil companies are always easy marks. Instead they chose the one corp above all others whose products nearly everyone likes, and whose late founder has become a symbol for can-do entrepreneurial success -- a point Paul was shrewd in emphasizing today:

I guess the Dems figured that it'd be better to focus on a household name so that people would pay extra attention to the hearings. I think that's a miscalculation. We'll see.





The fault doesn't lie with Apple and the completely misbegotten sense of patriotism that they are ostensibly supposed to display by pouring as much money as they possibly can into the federal government's coffers; rather, it lies with our wildly burdensome and noncompetitive tax code that gives companies a clear incentive to do otherwise. We are living in an increasingly global economy, and we better man up and deal with it -- and I do not mean by persecuting the individual companies looking to streamline their taxes, because watch them close up shop and move abroad at your own peril.
Ireland is one of the supposed culprits that Apple used to their tax-strategery advantage, and while the country certainly has a heck of a lot of economic and fiscal problems on their hands, there is nothing illicit going on with low rates that make it appealing for multinational companies to do business there. An Irish official today paid the obligatory lip service to the trumped-up need for ‘robust international agreements' to prevent tax-dodging to appease the Euro-bureaucrats, but they are not apologizing for having a tax code that attracts people and companies to their shores -- nor should they. Via the NYT:

Quote:Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore of Ireland told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that his government supported efforts to close "loopholes" in corporate taxation, but said these did not stem from Irish taxation policy. ...
Ireland's corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent, less than half the level in many larger European countries. American companies with their European headquarters in Ireland often pay considerably less than this on their European earnings because of accounting techniques that permit them to shift revenue to subsidiaries in offshore tax havens -- as Apple has been accused of doing in a report prepared by Congressional investigators. ...
While Ireland misses out on some tax revenue, analysts say its economy more than makes up for this in other ways, including the tens of thousands of jobs that American technology companies have created there – and the income taxes that well-paid programmers and executives contribute to the Irish treasury. Apple alone employs more than 4,000 workers in Ireland, while Google employs more than 2,500 there. ...
Discrepancies like this have given rise to growing frustration among European policy makers at a time when governments are cutting budgets and struggling to make ends meet.

It seems that with the launch of Beneath the Raptors Wing (aka season 8, Aka the great Romulan expansion) Enough players are trying their hands at Romulan charecters (or maybe restarting their klingon carreers from Lvl 1) that the servers are FULL!
I've NEVER seen that happen before.  Well, not with STO.  CoX, yeah, we've had that happen...
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

Co-founder of The Doors, and one of the best keyboardists out there...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/ ... -obit.html
--
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

It looks like something's messed up in the stylesheet for the top-level forum page, in a way that only shows up in the Android native (default) browser.
The specific problem is that top-level page don't show up as a table, but instead with the things that should be elements of the table rendered as consecutive lines of text.
Individual forum pages work fine.
This is on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, running Android 4.2.2.
I've attached screenshots showing the problem -- sorry they're big.  In both cases I've zoomed all the way out to show as much of the page as possible, but the problem occurs no matter how I'm zoomed.
The top level:

The individual forum:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php ... 288.0.html

You can't do anything but walk around at the moment, but god it's good to see the old place.

Do you know who I blame for this?..The Supreme Court. The IRS may had ham handedly been trying to determine who has been worthy of tax exempt status, but I would not be calling it a conspiracy.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/ ... right.html
I just got off duty officer this week. I am tired and irritable. Five 10-11 hour days of answering complaints, requests, numerous minor crises and interruptions. So forgive this rant:
I am tired hearing of tales where employers allegedly making employees work in unsafe conditions. I am tired of ex-employees telling me of atrocious working conditions of the places they worked. And then get mad at me when I tell them that I need a complaint letter from a current employee for an inspector to go there. It would have been better if they had made a complaint while they were still working.
I will give a pass to the current employees who called a complaint in, tell me that they will send in a signed complaint letter.   And then it does not show. And this goes on 5-10 times an hour. The only way to keep up is to skip lunch.
Lastly I am tired of people who denigrate government agencies, starve them of funding and personnel. And then rail against them for not doing their job.
Believe it or not, there is a history of U.S doing that. The U.S. army had no funding for a year during the post Civil War when it had its hands full trying to fight off the Indians who are attacking settlers and railroad workers crossing across tribal lands previously guaranteed by treaty. Which Congress allowed the settlers and the railroad to do.
So I will take the long view. We have had our cycle of stupid before. Maybe we can survive this current cycle. God takes care of fools, drunks and the United States after all. Least, I hope so.
__________________
Into terror!,  Into valour!
Charge ahead! No! Never turn
Yes, it's into the fire we fly
And the devil will burn!
- Scarlett Pimpernell

Welp, it is out & having seen a late show at the local Alamo (an experience I highly recommend if there's one nearby btw; instead of the usual dopey trivia cards and adverts they showed a mash-up reel of old fan films and cartoons) here's a quick and dirty capsule review.

* The plot's pretty straightforward; once you get past the big twist (recommend not going into this one spoiled fwiw) it's not very complicated. But it moves fast and doesn't waste a lot of time on explaining shit. Think of it like an expanded TOS storyline.
* And like a TOS story, it's got a Message and it's about as subtle as a bag of hammers with it. Be prepared to roll with it.
* Acting's stepped up a couple notches from the last movie. God's honest truth, Chris Pine has a couple scenes that I didn't think he was capable of pulling off period, let alone as well as he did.
* Into Darkness does a surprisingly good job of making the future look like a place where people live in, not just starships and the occasional alien.
* That said, the Enterprise is a sexy beast and Abrams knows it, considering how many (glorious!) fanservice shots there are of her.

All in all, I would recommend it. How much you'll enjoy it probably depends on how much you like Trek '09 or how tightly you cling to the original canon.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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