So yeah. Glad this guy did the research on them. 

Quote:So, I got some boxes and keys on Live, and proceeded to repeatedly copy characters onto the Test server and move their boxes/keys into the shared stash until I had 1000 keys and boxes. I opened them all. Counting every single item would be an enormous pain in the butt, so I'm just going to give the numbers for the loot that's actually desirable.
2782 Drifter Salvage (100% chance)
You will get, on average, 2.78 Drifter Salvage for every box you open (2, 3, 5, or 10 each)
45 3-Slot Gears (granted via a stack of openable boxes rather than directly) (4.5% chance)
On average, you will need to open 22.2 boxes (spend $20-22) to receive a 3-slot gear.
19 Transforms (1.9% chance)
19 4-Slot Gears (again, as a stack of boxes)
On average, you will need open 52.6 boxes (spend $45-53) to get one of each.
Know these numbers before deciding to buy keys. Cryptic is effectively charging $50 for a $11.50 Become device, a 4-slot item that is barely on-par with the easily-available Silver Champs gear, and a bunch of garbage that you've probably got too many stacks of already. Oh, right, and a few salvage bits so that you can buy the new (and price-boosted) stuff they've put in the Drifter shop.
It seems like the drop rate for the good stuff is much lower than it should be, considering the price. Are these drop rates working as intended?

Since I'm now employed and had the positive cash flow to afford it, I wrote in for Callmepo's latest commission series, memorializing the characters I've enjoyed and am about to lose.

Here are the results.


===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

The first sample chapter of the newest Dresden Files novel is up here.  3 additional chapters will be available, one each Tuesday, until the book's release on the 27th.

A couple of comics are available now which have some material that can be mined for IST inspiration, they are:

Chimera  http://www.soloendeavour.com/ which has a bunch of UN sanctioned mutants employed in a way very similar to the IST's.

Magellan http://magellanverse.com/ which centers around the academy used to train metahumans for use at various embassies around the world.

Good stuff, both.

-Mike
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)

Clinging desperately to the wrong side of the tarted-up, burnished hull of his Alvin-sphere, Van Loan, screaming, careened into the azure loveliness of a cloudless sky.
He did that classic Hollywood sweaty-bolt-upright from bed, gasping : “ ‘Wavium isn’t Cavorite!” “Even while he was in the midst of it the analytical part of his brain was expounding,
‘That only happens in the movies, moron!’
Wandblume, indecorously sprawled next to him on the tousled sheets of the hexagonal Space-Super-King bed, opened one eye cattishly ; purred, “ Tarantino better be directing and writing, or I’m walking.”
Looking only slightly manic, Van Loan grasped one of the many hexagonal pillows strewn about the bed. “How about Hitchcock, darling?” He mock-smothered her with a pillow. 
She turned in a melodramatic death worthy of a Full-Stratford Shatner.
*****Lying next to each other, sharing a candy cigarette--neither actually smoked--they had the usually unusual conversation of a Geek couple,
“ So, if it wasn’t for your pseudo-Argyria presumably caused by a combination of high-altitude hypoxia and accidental ‘Wavium exposure, you’d be Professor Challenger instead of Dr. Drakken?”
“Professor Cavor....”
“...is the whiney wuss of Speculative Fiction!” Wandblume interjected. “I prefer my scientists to be more fun, and” She rolled over on top of him, squeezing a winded huff
out of him, and parked her jade eyes inches from his hazels “...hands on!”
Van Loan grinned the grin reserved only for the very happy and slightly crazy. “Shall we field test my fun & hands-on quotients?” She looked as if she was seriously and judiciously considering it. “For Science?” He put on his best 1950s movie Square-Jawed Man of Science face.
“For Science!” She closed the final intervening distance ;  stopped his mouth with a buss (Pseudo-Shakespeare alert : Forsooth! Forsooth! Forsooth!).  The fourth wall prudishly turned opaque just as the experimentation was beginning.
****
“And to think that I was indifferent to science until I met you!”
“Can I help it if I’m a combination Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, and John Holmes?”
  “Why don’t you add a dash of  Captain Kangaroo to really scar my brain?”
*****
Wandblume admired the profusion of jade green amongst the otherwise typical gothic colour scheme of the common room. Fifty percent of the rumpus room was green ; fifty
percent was black : it was as if her adopted identity’s uniform had extended slick-like over the surface area of the entire room. It was elegant proof of just how much the people who shared the room were now Shegoth.
At the preassigned time the five doors, each one characteristic of its owner, off of the ruckus room opened to discharge a member of the team.
Dies Irae, as befitting her leadership position, was first. The fragment of room visible behind her operatically strutting form revealed some equally theatrical decor. A giant four-poster bed,  designed by the lovechild of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Anne Rice, dominated the room with a Grand Guignol grander. A poster of George Argento Fulci’s all-zombie rendition of Carmen flashed luridly from the reverse side of her iron banded inorganic-oak door before it imperiously banged closed.
Pitchy was next to emerge, gravely skipping. The pink, plastic dungeon door squeaked open on its plastic hinges to reveal an inner effusion of Barbie by way of the Marquis De Sade. Was that a life-sized polymer iron maiden against the back, rosé wall? It certainly looked like one! Surely that wasn’t an equally pink rack on which she slept, was it? There was so much pink that human perceptual capabilities were  sorely taxed.
Umbra shambled forth from behind steel shutters that rumbled and screeched into a ceiling recess. Behind her squatted Lovecraft’s Gym. Nightmarish Nautilus machines, frightening free-weights and a solid-steel, dented hulk of either a sensory deprivation tank or a pressure chamber told something of her story before the utilitarian portcullis slammed down behind her mammoth musculature.
Stygia languidly slinked through a red leather studded door behind which lurked the Sanctum sanctorum of the sophisticated Victorian vampiress. A low central pedestal bore a buffed, bronze handled coffin that Dracula would have been proud to call home. The sumptuous faux-marble octagonal mausoleum, decorated with splays of black roses and funerary fabrics, was as welcoming as the approach of the Grim Reaper.
Nocturne Raven, arguably the baseline of the bunch, Gainaxed in from what looked dangerously like a suburban Japanese teenager’s room wherein the most unusual feature was a Sparkle Vampires: Unending Dusk poster.
The entire team arrayed across the various black and green articles of seating paid close attention to the fifteen minutes of Wandblume’s seemingly carefully prepared speech--it was off the cuff but then her superpower was the ability to appear super capable!
****
Tachikoma wagged his tail vigorously as he watched his video feed of the what he thought was a motivational speech. Wandblume/Shego was a Good Girl! The footage, purely fictional, cannily inserted into the transmission by Van Loan showed a glowing sendoff speech as opposed to the actual speech that was a decided statement of control.
****
At a far removed locale, Togusa and Batou kept wary eyes on the perfectly formed slab of black body material.  Neither looked particularly happy.
****
The hand bearing starred fingernails held up a hard-copy Priority-traffic  “Mikuru, the team is ready for delivery!”
“Indeed, Yayoi! Send the acknowledgment code ; and prepare to receive our retirement package!”

...the US military is fighting a zombie apocalypse off San Diego right now.

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

All,

I have a few questions regarding setting specific issues for IST, if you will indulge me:

1. Where is the IST Training Academy mentioned in Bob's 1990-1999 timeline established? If there was no specific location in mind, does anyone have any suggestions?

2. The 90's timeline seems to suggest that the U.S. will/has pulled out of the U.N., is this a hollow threat on Buchanan's part or is it (depending on the results of the Y2K event) destined to happen? If so, what happens to the IST Embassies in the U.S.? Would they close? Would they remain open? If the latter, under what circumstances could they continue operation?

3. Which nation replaced China on the permanent Security Council?

4. Is there any objection to me posting snippings from the development of my campaign here on the forums for feedback and sanity-checking? Such snippings would be anything from back story, setting details, characters, templates, equipment, etc.?

Cheers and thanks,

-Mike
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)

We're getting links munged by viglink again... only since I'm on Opera, the content blocker is basically preventing me from following links now. The pop-ups show fine, but once I hit the link, viglink has it's way with the link before the browser gets it, so I have to reconstruct it manually. ("http://" stripped off the link to ensure that they don't render it as an actual link.)

Quote:api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&key=d2f6dc3d61fd72ef48d01980d6bfec29&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fdrunkardswalkforums.yuku.com%2Freply%2F106242%23reply-106242&v=1&libid=1351734349787&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.daz3d.com%2Fforums%2Fviewthread%2F10791%2F&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fdrunkardswalkforums.yuku.com%2Fforums%2F1%2FGeneral-Chatter&title=3D%20modeling%20resources%20thread%20in%20General%20Chatter%20Forum&txt=My%20very%20first%20Freebie%20Challenge%20as%20a%20host.&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13517344286503

Quote:www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/10791/

http://www.thestreet.com/...quire-lucasfilm-ltd.html
So, this is a thing.
Edit:
Grab some popcorn, we can watch the internet explode.  It'll be a blast. 
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Greetings,

I am in need of a list of twenty-two cities, worldwide, that have IST embassies to serve as the focal points of an alien invasion that corresponds with Y2K in the timeline I am working on.

My timeline is using a modified version of the classic IST timeline, Bob's additional material, stuff from GURPS Timeline, GURPS Aliens and GURPS Atomic Horror as well as a few smatterings from Ken Hite's Transmission 200 timeline.

I already have IST New York at the top of the list.

Thanks,

-Mike
Michael R. Smith (lastfreehuman@gmail.com)
GURPS IST Aleph Wordpress (http://istaleph.wordpress.com/)
GURPS IST Aleph Twitter (http://twitter.com/IstAleph/)
Trek This! Wordpress (http://dthiller.wordpress.com/)
My Blog (http://lastfreehuman.wordpress.com/)