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Good lord.
I have to imagine the first Europeans to show up, not knowing the ins and outs of the fauna, poisonous or not, dangerous or not, must have had a lot of sleepless nights.
Do people keep them as pets?
I personally am a pro-spider person and go out of my way to try and preserve webs and leave spiders alone and safe. I feel horrible because they love to build webs between my side view mirrors and windows on my car, they then live behind the mirror in the housing. I’ll be driving along, not realizing the web had been there and find a poor spider hanging on to his/her web for dear life. I have even pulled over to let them get inside/behind the mirror.
In the southwest US, we have scorpions which are often about the same size, and they really hurt. I almost always ran into them in the toilet, around water pipes etc.
Hi,
I have released Beta 0, tonight, Beta 1 is probably tomorrow night.
What is the difference?
The final scenes/chapter, and Lacuna’s 1 and 2 (of course they are missing by definition–but I am withholding them for now)
I’ve purposefully cut Lacuna 1 and 2 which are really hooks for going forward for the moment.
But Optional Beta 0 is not Beta 1 because it is missing the last part(s) of the last chapter (or two)
The big thing is the battle is being extended/improved. It’s a tricky sort of new thing we will want to discuss, but I can’t do justice to the last scenes/chapter by my self imposed deadline tonight. So, working on it tomorrow, hope to have it tomorrow night, worst case Tuesday night.
The big point is that I have to ensure it is a satisfying climax, so to speak. I think you will understand when you read what is there.
I thus call this an optional Beta in case you want to wait for real Beta 1. in 24 to 48 hours.
We are about at 260K words. Beta 1, I think will be 265K or so, before you guys tell me to add/chop. Of which i expect we will be doing.
T-A-G
PS I have bolded and REDed the super index of the PDF and have comments. I have actually included some changes that happened earlier in bold red that people may have missed.
Ooh…losing it on that last bit. Might want to reword so my brain gets….
In my current thinking (and I say thinking meaning understanding–remember I am not “writing” this so much as transcribing my visions, so there is some degree of interpretation going on here, this is all–real and happening–I’m just like Brian Williams reporting the news and maybe exaggerating a few parts…_
wait where was I? starting to feel like Tizzy.
In my current thinking, there is but one Abyss and anyone who ‘goes there’ is collapsed to that reality. When they leave, they remultiply and integrate with their old timeline. So in terms of ultimate worlds of maybe, if you go to the Abyss in one timeline, you have a near death experience in all the others. All of them experience the same “hell” or “heavenly” reality (assume same thing for Outer Planes).
I gotta say, I feel I have to incorporate other timelines to be complete in my “picture of reality” but am not really thrilled/on topic with dealing with them in detail. I prefer dealing with larger swaths/planes/degrees of separation. I am trying to avoid multiple timelines, but feel I have to allow for them for a complete picture. If you know what I mean.
I suspect that Tizzy has no such luxury. He can see a lot of different timeline possibilities. This is what Seers do. They see plausible timelines and try to direct the current/observable/conscious reality stream in that direction.
I need to explore your filtering idea more tomorrow. I like the theories, not sure, at this moment, I grasp the implications. Interesting though.
NP on answer,
Video is blocked in the US by the Sony avatars…they seem to have put up a flaming wall of Galaxy Note 7’s to block me from viewing it. :d/
quote=Iume;4829]motion to activate her wizard [color=red]site[/color]. –> [color=red]sight[/color]
Alfar or Alvar? Which is used when?
[/quote]Having terrible time with site and sight. Sheesh.
Alfar and alvar work exactly like elf and elven, or they are supposed to. Note that you also sometimes see elfen.
[quote=Iume;4829]
[color=red]un-orc like[/color] –> [color=red]un-orc-like[/color]except it gets burnt up with the stuff [color=red]in side[/color].” –> [color=red]inside[/color]
comes with the territory [color=red]a[/color] fear.” –> [color=red]I[/color] fear
his [color=red]bloody[/color] supply. –> [color=red]blood[/color]
were not [color=red]infections[/color] –> [color=red]infectious[/color]
“Be [color=red]quite[/color]!” Talarius suddenly shouted –>[color=red] quiet[/color]
rapidly approaching [color=red]visor-ed[/color] knight. –>[color=red] visored[/color] (actual word)
twiddled his eyebrows –> how do you twiddle eyebrows?
[/quote]Fixed down through visored, a real word that Word does not think is real.
Hmm, does that not make sense? It’s a comic gesture made be vaudevillian commedians. Groucho Marx with his cigar, for example.
Quiclkly alternating raising and lowering one eyebrow and then the other. One goes up, the other goes down, reverse, repeat.Is there a better word for it? Searching on Google.
[quote=Iume;4829]
“OK, if you know that what is your question.” –> OK, if you know that [color=red]then[/color] what is your question[color=red]?[/color]
rather [color=red]blatent[/color]. –> [color=red]blatant[/color]
evolutionary effect, –> evolutionary benefit
Citadel [color=red]of[/color] Lord Tommus agrees.” –> Citadel [color=red]if[/color] Lord Tommus agrees.
That was the moment Orcus had realized they were cut off from Doom and all the Doomalogues. –> That was the moment [color=red]when[/color] Orcus had realized they were cut off from Doom and all the Doomalogues.
decent kid, most of the [color=red]tie[/color]. –> [color=red]time[/color][/quote]
Fixed! Othere than twiddling which I am researching.
Thanks
[quote=Iume;5928]They still possess a godpool, so presumably yes they do have an outer plane.Given who they are I suspect each of them belongs to multiple pantheons so they have a personal godpool and outerplane somwhere even if it isn’t the shared Nyjyr Ennead pantheon outer plane.[/quote]
That would be a pretty safe bet. Pretty sure gods don’t talk much about their personal godpools.
We do know, however–I think–that the Nyjyr Ennead Pantheon Pool has been reproduced in Astlan due to advanced wizardry. They’ve somehow figured out how to move most of their operations to the local operations. They may still have some “utility” outer planes for things they can’t transfer though.
Ahh, but you see, there is the trick with this “book”
As I’ve often said. “Demons of Astlan” is one really really huge book simply broken down into smaller chunks.
So the question for each “book” or volume is what part of this really huge story gets presented in this particular volume, which is presented later, which is never told and which is spun off to side books?
In other words, it’s all those books! ](*,) So yes, it’s all those things, it’s just what shall we see in this “window” or installment.
I would honestly argue that it was probably too big of a scope to start out with; and that’s also probably why it sat in limbo for a very long time.
I follow a similar motivations, I tend to focus on what my clients can manage effectively.
Most of them are small to mid-sized financial services firms, they have money to spend on IT, they just don’t have the inhouse knowledge they need (at the manager level) to do much, and they have no interest in a huge IT department.
Historically, that meant Windows as the solution most affordable to them, because it was so much easier (in the 90’s) to find reasonably priced windows system admins and developers, and you didn’t have to be super techy to screen these people, no arcane *nix info.
Linux was for the big guys, and of course, their DB options were limited to Sybase, Oracle and a few other ridiculously expensive options (assuming they wanted support) MS SQL Server 6.5 came along, it was cheap, had a GUI, anyone with a PC background, even a lay person could work with it and learn it pretty easily. (used to work for a person who thought every financial analyst needed to know SQL and have SQL Management Studio installed)
And it was Sybase in a end-user friendly form. And I gotta say, it was so much easier to manage quickly/out of the box compared to running Sybase on Suns, which I had been doing. Sybase at the time wanted dedicated partitions etc etc. and all sorts of contortions.
When I moved from academia, the business world was mostly Sun (in academia, SunOS/Solaris etc was only deemed suitable for file servers, for real servers you wanted SGI, IBM, HP, DEC (both unix and VMS) and I don’t remember the others ). However, buying Sun servers with Sybase, or Oracle and finding people that could manage it was very hard/expensive for a company with <50 employees.
Now, I've been doing PC's since the introduction of the IBM AT, before which I was mainframe/teletype or Apple II. Real computing started with Sun workstations, I laughed at the first Macs because they were so primitive compared to my Sun workstation or my X-terminal and the graphics were horrible.
I then moved into all real work on VAX, Amdahl, SGI, IBM and got serious about Big Data (such as it was circa 90-95). Linux 0.9x and BSD were fun toys that you could use as a workstation if you were adventurous (but because my team had really big budgets for building supercolliders, we got the good stuff, the expensive and fast stuff)
Then went to business, and no one had my old budget and linux was not yet ready for Prime Time. So Windows took off.
Nowdays, yes Linux is ready for my client base, for servers. Lots of nice/tested OS apps/platforms with well tested scripts, it's never been easier to have a Linux box. I'd argue this is at least as important as the price feature. Ease of use for the low to mid-tech people is critical. This wasn't there until within the last ten years.
But application development? The programming overhead is still a problem. It is still much easier/cheaper to get C# or VC++ people. Unless you are just doing web development.
Don't know if you've noticed, but every other job opening seems to want a Java Developer. Far more expensive to get good ones than C# developers. Same with C++; a truly good C++ developer is hard to find, but there are a lot of so so ones that end up costing you money in lost time, poor design. C# is extremely forgiving compared to every other major language, so even a mediocre developer can be productive in it for relatively low money.
Same reason Ruby/Rails and other prepackaged platforms are great for basic websites. Very easy to use..
Long diatribe....my goal is always to get something that my client can support.
Which is why I am one of the few people that goes in and talks people down off the MVC ledge. I've found a lot of peopled get talked into MVC by consultants, but they don't have the tech budget for long term support of MVC applications. There aren't enough MVC developers out there and it requires a much larger development team. Anyone can bang their way through webforms, Ruby, PHP, etc.
Now, all that being said. MS SQL is getting too big for its britches. PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc work reasonable on Windows, but better yet, download a custom tailored VPS to run any/all of those and be done with it. Nowdays there are great windows/macOS client tools, web tools etc for managing them.
I do think this is the future, it's just about how do we walk people there? MS has served it's purpose, [color=red](in particular to beat the crap out of even bigger vendors trying to lock you into even more expensive platforms: IBM, Sun, HP Sun, Oracle, SAP)[/color] but I think costs and end user quality will split the workstation market to Windows, macOS, maybe ChromeOS (???) and non-premium servers will be clusters of VPS or container servers, probably containers long run.
I think the high end will most continue to be high performance supported Open Source based products leveraging java for HADOOP and it's crazy bestiary. But that is still to be seen as to how exactly it will play out.
Etterdam, True, for now.
As a note, there is only 1 Abyss.
And as far as anyone in Astlan is concerned, there is only one Etterdam, Nysegard, Astlan, etc all the worlds of the localverse.
Depending on who you are talking to, this is because they are too close together in frequency to be able to travel to alternate versions etc.
And there is truth to that, but the big reason is that the localverse is all the same universe, these worlds orbit different stars in different universe.
Now, the fact that the gods and demons talk the same way…yeah, that’s an overarching problem that I have yet to resolve to my own satisfaction.
But it does tie out to Time Travel and the entire reason people are very leery to do it.
Yeah there is a lot of cleaning up around this and the whole Grove vs Doom (and Nysegard)
Here is what I’ve change things to
“The Grove?” Talarius asked. “The bizarre mountain region in Astlan?”
“And in other worlds. It is a mountain hedged grove and an extra dimensional space that resides on multiple worlds of the localverse simultaneously.” Stainsberry told him.
“It resides on multiple worlds at once?” Talarius frowned. “How is that even possible?”
“Really good magineering, I’d suspect.” Thrinarv said bringing his mug up for a drink. After drinking, he lowered and tilted the mug, eyeballing the inside skeptically, “should have ordered sooner, getting pretty dry in here.”
“It acts as sort of diplomatic refuge for our localverse.” Stainsberry said. “They have also been very active on Nysegard, however, due to their very close relations with the alvar, and the alvaran royalty, they do not work that much with Doom. Certainly not since Orcus was slain. Prince Ariel of Astlan, who alternates with his sister as one of their Elders is a close ally of Prince Elyas of Etterdam, who was key in the whole Etterdam situation.”
I know….
It just drives me nuts…that’s why everyone (character) is not doing it…I really need to do it more…it’s just so painful to write….
You are the first to “complain”
Honestly, everyone should complain, much to my frustration. It is surprisingly hard. But very satisfying.
The funny thing is that even though I had a century to write book 1, the Oorstemothians at the time came very naturally.
Today, not so much. I think its because I am so much older and more curmudgeonly. Any day now I am likely to start talking to empty chairs–however, I loved Sully.
I am assuming it is the Storm Lords.
He is or has been in contact with them. At least that is what should be implied in these conversations with Aodh and Lilith.
:-k Sounds like a plan. Just don’t think this particular one will work.
This actually sounds like a Trump construction project! Certainly the facts about its safety and usability are on par with Trumps claims. I’d want a lot more concrete, and I’d bury it really deep in the backyard, not just under a house with a wood floor.
The best thing to do, however, is move to one of the few locations on Earth where fallout will not actually come down, short of direct strike.
I actually used to live in one such place, Socorro NM. Because of the landscape, weather patterns were such that fallout from Albuquerque or elsewhere in the state would not fall there.
Which is interesting because they had a very large explosives program there that used White Sands missile range, nearby, to test explosives.
I remember getting rocked when they were simulating A-bomb explosions using TNT and other conventional explosives. They were studying physical blast effects.
