I would like to congratulate Bob Schroeck and Christopher Angel in completing Book V of Drunkard's Walk and, at long last, adding a second complete DW book to the compendium.  Doug is that much closer home now. 

By B. Ganders
For Sherry and Mei, who I should have come up to the stars for a lot sooner.
___________
Fen.
This is the name given to those who have left the planet using the power of handwavium. Over the years, tens of thousands of people from all around the world have come up to what used to be called outer space and made it their home. Each one taking a little bit of their own culture with them, along with their hopes and dreams. But you don't hear about groups of eurpeans putting together a martial arts style for cyborgs. You don't hear about a bunch of american girls making a fantasy kingdom on the moon. You DO hear about how the Fen fought a war in space, colonized a planet outside the solar system, and are terraforming Venus.
As an American I couldn't help but draw certain nostalgic paralells, even though like a great many people on the ground I thought most Fen were a little nuts.
Then I came up and realized two things.
The first, is that while on Earth you tend to hear about the Fen as a whole, they're actually splintered into dozens and dozens of factions. And each one has it's own quirks, values, and ideas about how the universe should work. People still hold onto parts of their earth heritage, but they also tend to gain a whole new nationality in Fenspace that has nothing to with where they were born.
The second thing, is that the Fen aren't a little nuts. They are, and I say this in the most respectful way possible, completely insane.
These are the people that left the planet on flying vehicles made with a dangerous substance that, to this day, no one has any idea whatsoever on how it functions, where it came from and is considered fairly unpredictable at best. They then decided to build space-craft, cities and entire societies based on comic books, scifi novels, and TV shows. In some cases, they even change their own bodies to better fit with their ideals on how things should be.
And, against all odds, they make this work for them. Fenspace is a melting pot of cultures and rivalries that manages to flourish in the unforgiving expanse of space.
It's no utopia, of course. The Boskone War wreaked havoc across the solar system, destroying entire cities and hundreds of lives. Crime still exists, and accidents still happen.
But the Fen continue to build the society of their dreams. In orbit around Earth, a hotel mogul plans yet another expansion to his business empire, while on Mars a cyborg teaches those still new to their wings how to fly. It's easy to get caught up in the impossible things that happen everyday.
This book is meant to be a more in depth guide to the city of Crystal Tokyo in Fenspace. Partly because covering all of Fenspace in one book would be problematic at best, and partly because while you can find lots of facts and figures about various factions and cities, presuming you know where to look, you don't hear a lot about their day to day life. I chose Crystal Tokyo as the starting point for this little venture, partialy because I happen to live there and partialy because it's the headquarters of the Crystal Millenium, one of the six major factions of Fenspace.
Whether you've never been up to Fenspace, or were one of the first ones up here, I hope you enjoy this book and find it informative.
A/N: Thus, I begin yet another project when I really should be working on something else.
The Cultural Guide is basically meant as a more interesting way of fleshing out the various factions and locations of Fenspace. It's going to be a composition of interviews, city walkthroughs, little anecdotes, commentary, and whatever the hell else I can think of to make things more lifelike.
The lens I'm doing this all through is Benjamin Ganders, from Legacy Project. Who's writing this as a book for Fen and Dane alike, from the perspective of a guy who's making the transition from Dane to Fen. So, he/I will be making the effort to lampshade the hell out of how ridiculous some of this stuff is, while pointing out just how amazing it is at the same time. Expect a more complimentary explanation of the insanity of Fenspace by him/me later.
Anyway, the next segment is supposed to be about the physical layout of the city. I'm going be taking a lot of info from the Legacy Project thread and the wiki, but a couple of quick questions: Someone said there wasn't a tether anchoring the city to the surface, but the wiki says there is. If the tether is there, are there any facilities at the base of it?
And does anyone have any idea how much the terraforming project is tied into the cities? I realize most of it's probably automated, but I don't know how many people are tied into it. For that matter, how is the terraforming being done? I can see on the wiki that the Crystal cities are organized into clusters, but how close are they together?
Also, where does the food come from? Is it all imported, or is one of the Crystal cities a farm too?
And before I forget, it's an open project. If anyone wants submit stuff about Crystal Tokyo or write articles about it, that'd be cool.

Sho'nuff - the shogun of Harlem, he isn't the master.
Bruce Leroy, he isn't the master.
Neil!
Oedipal gerund
deGrasse Tyson
Is the Master!

So last night, I was just messing around idly when most of the SD Paragon crew came online. Seems late Sunday night-early Monday morning is their usual RP get-together. But a couple of significant people were not online that they needed for an ongoing RP plot and they were kinda stuck for something to do until they showed up. 

So we were chatting and the topic turned to the Trials, and I mentioned that C8 had never once been on a successful Keyes Trial. This astonished them to the point of using the core of their group to start a Keyes Trial. I was kinda surprised at the sheer speed with which they all just kinda decided at once to do it and railroad me along with them. ^.^  We didn't have enough in the Coalition to put together a full league, so we attracted some PUG-ers to fill in. (In fact I was kinda surprised at midnight we were still able to fill out a full league (4 teams worth))

Ok - intellectually I knew this -should- work, especially since Cappy (Deathwidow) is a seriously good Trial organizer. Mainly by exercising an almost R.Lee. Ermey Drill sergeant attitude that would actually herd CATS in real life as well as having a damn near encyclopedic knowledge of the trials etc. DW is really good at this. But... damn if I still wasn't all paranoid. But I kept it mostly to myself. Just thinking all the time I was in Murphy's crosshairs, like always, and that something just had to go wrong. 

It didn't. Even with half the League being random people who joined up in DA, we BLEW through it and STOMPED Keyes flat in under 20 minutes. 

I think my quote when I saw the Trial end notice (and the BADGE) pop up on my screen was something like - 

"We won. We WON? No team wipe? No Boom?" 

DW was kinda smug about it, "I -told- you Keyes was easy."  

"...Best tasting plate of Crow I ever had. Thank you."  

So yeah. C8 has his Keyes badge at long last. All hail DW and the SD Paragon crew! We should run trials with that group more often.

Anyway - we did so well that the rest of the League was chomping at the bit for more. 

Somehow TPN was mentioned. And I JUMPED on it and called for the anti-telepath strategy and would anyone join me on that sub-group? Got Vhaillor (Dex) and another scrapper (Dark/Dark apparently) to join me initially, and halfway though, we got another couple of people including Battle Girl Mio (who was one of the ones who should've been on initially for the RP but had some kind of ISP problem) join the Trial in-progress and they joined the Telepath suppression squad. 

IT. WAS. GLORIOUS!!!

(Not least of which because C8 and Dex are both MA/SR and we have almost identical attack chains, as well as use Superspeed as our main travel power, so not only do we often wind up fighting side by side, but we often synchronize! It is almost indescribably awesome when Dex and C8 both leap up to do Eagles Claw kick and then Crane Kick simultaneously and on opposite sides of a mob. We did that at least 3 times during our team-up on the telepaths. Boot to the Head x 2!!! Battle Girl Mio is also MA, and if you have the THREE of us doing that...)

And apparently the number of times you have to do the whole "beat the guards, then beat the technicians, activate the 4 terminals" routine is dependent on how well you're doing. And we were stomping things so hard, I think we only had to do it the bare minimum of times - once for each building. 

We got ALL the badges. 

Yes - that means Cyberman 8 is now the proud owner not only of the Keyes Trial Badge, but all the TPN Badges. 

"Master of TPN"

Oooh.. shiny...

Anti-Telepath Squad on TPN. Not only worth it. But essential for a smooth, short run! We blew through that one in under 30 minutes as well!

It's not even that hard to do! I was afraid that the Seers would be inside the crowd. Turns out they spawn NEXT to each small crowd of protesters. On the side closest to the building. There are about 6 spawn points. The protesters gather there, then Seers will start to teleport in. They appear right next to the group, but between them and the campuses. So it's possible to run up, hit your key for "Nearest Enemy" and lock on that way rather than use your tab. 

Let me see if I can illustrate it - 

[Campus 1 [Campus 2 [Campus 3

T T T T T T
PP PP PP PP PP PP
PPP PPP PPP PPP PPP PPP
PPPP PPPP PPPP PPPP PPPP PPPP

(T for the Telepaths/Seers
P for the Protestors.)

And without that damn Pacification debuff going, everything goes SO much more smoothly.

So what about Maelstrom and his Teleporting around in that one stage? Not even a problem. We just flat out ignored him and kept up the pressure on the Seers. He couldn't stop us. Apparently a big part of why he's so stupidly powerful in that stage that we've seen on other runs? It's dependent largely on the Seer Pacification Debuff. Without it, he's just a standard Boss/AV. 

Mind you - most of our Anti-Seer sub-team was MA/SR. That might've had something to do with the ability to ignore him. A squishy like a blaster might have more trouble. But just maintain some distance (or run if he ports close to you) and it should work out.

Oh - one other minor observation. When a Seer ports in and starts trying to mindwash a crowd, there's a vague transparent sphere that centers on them and is very diffuse and very large. It makes it easy to track where they are. The "bubble" is wide enough to cover nearly a third of the field. The effect is subtle. You know what a Force Field wide bubble looks like? Well imagine that, but -much- larger, and dimmer/not as glowy. You have to be looking for it. But once you see it and realize what it is, it makes tracking active seers even at long range a piece of cake. Though you still have to be careful with your targeting. 

So... (buffs Master of TPN Badge) anybody want to do another run on TPN soon? ^_^

Well, I've never thought of a power for it.  But for whatever reason, this song has struck me as a passable overall theme for Doug's entire involuntary walkabout.  Unfortunately, I've never been able to find lyrics for it, so I'll have to settle for a YT video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNdKYbohCE

Okay, here's another one for the "handy but too quirky to use often" stack:

Glass Tiger, "I Will Be There"

A fight for king or country
Can liven any heart
To sleep beneath the open skies
A love affair can start
Echoes in the valley
As embers cross "red skies"
I'm calling from the mountain
Echoes of no reply
CHORUS:
I will be there
Oh! When you call my name
[- From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/g/glass-tig ... yrics.html -]
I will be there
Oh! If you call my name ...
I will be there
Listen to the silence
As shadows dance with me
A ticking clock of endless time
Clouds my memory
I'm calling from the mountains
Echoes of no reply.


Power:  Lets Doug give a "summon hook" on someone -- after setting the hook, he will be summoned to their presence if/when they speak his name.  Whether that has to be his True Name, or can be one of his nicknames, is up for debate -- it may depend on how the person doing the summons thinks of him.
Limitations (potential):
1.  Requires playing the entire song in order to set the hook.  No shortcuts.
2.  Once the hook is set, Doug cannot use another song before being summoned without cutting the connection.
3.  Even avoiding #2, the hook's lifetime is not indefinite.  

Or giving them something to do.

It's a rough thought. And because for every one of the big mass producers of hardware, there're the smaller people


While there are several groups capable of mass production of self-designed hardware, the prior investment required is beyond many of the garagiste Gearheads. After the success of the licensing agreement covering the OV-200 project and the Gagarin class, WireGeek realised that these Garagistes were a large potential market, which could fill up some of Hepheastus' unused capability, while opening a new revenue stream.

The Hepheastus Affiliate Program allows the smaller gearheads to sell equipment to the mass market, with Hepheastus taking a ten-percent cut of the profit once the cost of manufacture is covered. HAP products are sold and promoted by the original designer, with Hepheastus themselves handling the construction and ultimate delivery of the product.

Affiliates are naturally required to share full technical details of their designs with Hepheastus, though such information is treated as highly confidential. Some of the garagistes however, still prefer to go it alone however, especially if they feel they have the Next Big Thing, or feel they may make more money selling their trade secrets directly to one of the larger concerns

In the 2020's, 77 Frigga sell Havocs, Hokum and JF-21 series through the Hepheastus Affiliate Program and are typical of the smaller groups catering to smaller markets, or the more individualistic Fen. They may sell in a year what the larger groups sell in a month, but it's still some money that's useful for other things.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

I really hate posting anything here in the politics forums these days. But I consider this to be too important not to. This story is not being told by the "mainstream media". In fact it is being actively ignored. But you truly need to hear about this  -   here’s Erick Erickson of Red State.org on Friday:

Quote:Ever hear of swatting? It’s a tactic used by left-wing activists and others these days to spoof phone calls in order to get SWAT Teams to show up at houses. It has happened to several conservative activists.
Consider this your must read of the day. It is LA County Prosecutor John Patrick Frey, who blogs as Patterico, describing just what harassment he and his family were subjected to by the online left.
The mainstream media, which has greater sympathies with the left than
the right, would prefer not to cover stories like this. But it is
getting to the point where they ignore the ongoing, sustained harassment
of conservatives because they are conservatives.

Quote:Sunday night as my family and sister’s family were around
the dinner table and playing outside, sheriff’s deputies pulled into my
driveway responding to an accidental shooting at my home.

One deputy was in the driveway. Another blocked the end of the
driveway with his car. A neighbor tells me another was up the hill from
the house.

There was no shooting at my home. Someone called 911, claimed to be at my home, and claimed to witness a shooting at my home.

As the one deputy and I spoke, the other deputy walked up the
driveway, positioned himself behind the car in the driveway, and kept
his eyes on me and his hand on his gun. My three year old ran between us
all thinking it was so cool to have a police car in the driveway with
its blue lights flashing.

Luckily, after I had starting writing about Kimberlin, I advised the Sheriff’s Department to be aware this could happen.

It was a prank, but not just any prank. This is a prank left-wing
activists are increasingly deploying against those who dissent from
their political views. When Barack Obama told his supporters in 2008 to
bring guns to knife fights, some of his supporters took him more
literally than I assume he intended.

The stories of what is happening are not getting much traction
outside of right-of-center blogs and the occasional opinion column at
the Wall Street Journal, D.C. Examiner, and Washington Times.

Quote:At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front
door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and
come out with my hands up.

When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to
put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately,
they did not mistake it for a gun.

They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They
handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE
HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?

I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.

Deputies led me down the street to a patrol car parked about 2-3
houses away. At least one neighbor was watching out of her window as I
was placed, handcuffed, in the back of the patrol car. I saw numerous
patrol cars on my quiet street. There was a police helicopter flying
overhead, shining a spotlight down on us as I walked towards the patrol
car. Several neighbors later told us the helicopter woke them up. I saw a
fire engine and an ambulance. A neighbor later told me they had a
HazMat vehicle out on the street as well.

Meanwhile, police rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her
downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the
children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with
her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to
make sure they were alive.

The call that sent deputies to my home was a hoax. Someone had
pretended to be me. They called the police to say I had shot my wife.
The sheriff’s deputies who arrived at my front door believed they were
about to confront an armed man who had just shot his wife. I don’t blame
the police for any of their actions. But I blame the person who made
the call.

Because I could have been killed.

The weirdest part of the whole thing was that I halfway expected this
might happen. Because I was not the first one it had happened to.

Quote:Although I am an L.A. County Deputy D.A., it is certain that I was
“swatted” because of my blog and not because of my job. As Andrew
Breitbart noted, this happened to two people within the course of a
single week: a man in New Jersey and myself. Both of us had had contact
with Andrew Breitbart. Both of us were writing about the same story. And
both of us received email threats days before we were swatted. The
threat to me said, in part: “Please think about your family. This story is not worth it. I can assure you that.”

Simply put, in the final episode of Season Five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the villain created a giant portal that, if unchecked, would fuse every universe into one giant conglomeration. Buffy stops it by killing herself before it can do so, but before she does, a dragon escapes. In this timeline, that dragon is Nicol Bolas, and he plans on using the portal to gain Infinite Power from the multiversal collapse and in so doing regain his former status as a godlike energy being, like he was before the Mending nerfed the power of the Planeswalker Spark. So, he teleports Buffy into the ocean with a glance (to prevent her death from closing the portal), and sets about absorbing the Infinite Power.

Then Q, Oma Desala, the Wizard Marshall Zelretch (from the Nasuverse), and Luna (from the RPG Exalted) show up, having sensed the dimensional disturbance, and promptly get into a scuffle before the first two escort him to higher planes of existence to discuss things with other nigh-omnipotent beings, while Luna and Zelretch try to contain the dimensional damage and more and more entities show up to help them. Primus, from Transformers; Ed Greenwood, Elminster, Raistlin, and Mordenkainen from ADnD (there was a story in an old Dragon magazine about them all regularly meeting for tea at Ed Greenwood's house); Princess Celestia from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and so on and so forth. Nyarlthotep showed up to troll everybody, but didn't actually help overly much.

They find that while the merging is too far gone to entirely reverse, they can prevent the more ludicrously powerful universes from merging (like Gurren Lagann, Dragonball Z, Asura's Wrath, the Culture, the Xeelee, and so on and so forth), and destabilizing things too much. They also find that they can prevent the universe from imploding into a point of infinite under the weight of all of the infinite variations of every person ever simultaneously existing by selecting the "stongest" (which is to say, most canonical) timeline from those of the universes merging into it, and in the case of those with no real dominant timeline (like Mass Effect or Fate/Stay Night), it selects from the best ending for each character (which was a contribution by Princess Celestia, and resulted in the occasional bit of strangeness like both Paragon mShep and Renegade fShep simultaneously existing). Additionally, they prevented the merging from wreaking massive geological destruction by causing those worlds with divergent geography (like most fantasy worlds) to integrate based on thematic similarities and available landspace; for instance, Rokugan wound up in China since Japan is too small, and Khorvaire wound up in North America, while Xendrick fused with South America.

In orbit, things are simpler; Luna had already eaten or seduced and absorbed every possible Lunar god in the entire possibility of Lunar gods, and that cut down on alternate moons, though the Earth still wound up getting a dozen extra moons and a planetary ring from Khorvaire, along with the Mi-Go's hiveship from Cthulhutech. Settlements were rather more confused, as the Fen suddenly found themselves sharing the moon with people from a bunch of different Gundam Franchises, Transhuman Space, and Eclipse Phase (along with Luna's assorted subservient lunar spirits); the folks on Mars suddenly find themselves an extreme minority as they suddenly find themselves amongst over three hundred million people, most of which come from Eclipse Phase and Star Trek. Those inhabiting relatively minor asteroids do better, though some degree of fiction is likely on more major asteroids like Pallas, which is pretty much a colony of Transhuman Space's Chinese, and liable to be rather confused about why the surface of their asteroid suddenly has an atmosphere.

And amidst all this chaos, the Fen are alternating between "Oh fuck, an alien invasion, and at least three different varieties of killer robot hordes", "OMIGOD I COULD ACTUALLY MEET PICARD", and "With all these different transfictional Earth governments around, we need to take action to prevent war from breaking out over who is really in charge".