The CHALLENGE chugs on!

[Icewalker]

Writing sent! that's about 1780 words, with about 200 of them extra that I've submitted before. Been doing lots of editing back through the book, too, and still gotta do more.

Of course despite picking the theme, I don't manage to include it: Smoke is going to come up in the next few thousand words.

[jseah]

Before I forget again:

~3k

Spoiler: Hero's War

Show

Dear Cato,
I am sure you have heard of my presence by now, I doubt anyone in Inath has not. I am Morey, the Hero of Inath summoned by Queen Amarante to win the war against the Enemy. I am also sure that you know of my efforts to free the slaves of Illastein as trade ships from Duport have been selling large quantities of food.
I have in my hand copies of the books you have written and published through the University of Minmay, the knowledge they contain is great and I have to admit that you have done more than I ever could. The Federation owes you a great debt, whether they admit it or not.
We may not have come from the same Earth, who knows how this summoning magic works, but the industrial revolution is something you are clearly familiar with. To confirm such, I have attached the names of country leaders, names and dates of significant events that I remember. Do the terms internet, blog, meme, mean anything to you? Are they recent entries into public awareness? If so, then we at least share a common cultural background.
Since you have avoided contact and clearly avoided letting the Queen know of your status as a person from Earth, I sincerely apologize. I told her that these books must have been written by someone from Earth so she knows now. I don't know why you would conceal your status but I will not press for further contact if you do not reply to this letter.
If you do however, we should meet at some point in the future when our tasks are resolved, as the only two people from Earth to my knowledge, we ought to work together to find a way home, if you still want to leave. The Legendary Sword as Amarante calls it, is a First artifact that I am tasked to find to end this War. It is claimed to have the power to send me home to Earth, and it may do the same for you. I am also curious to know your story and what you have done and experienced so far in this world.

Morey
Dated 4th day of 6th month of year 631
16 months and 6 days after my summoning



Dear Morey,
I have known of your presence for some months now but I did avoid contact with the noble society and you because you are a Hero. From what I've heard they ask you to do, I think I can work better here where I am. I think you understand what I mean when I say they are using you. Still, your letter is very reassuring, I needed to know that you can still act on your own.
Yes, we share much of our history, I think we come from the same Earth. All of the history you wrote are the same in mine, the minor errors are perhaps just misremembering or differing sources. I have included some more points in this letter for you to verify, you must have left the date of the second atomic bomb blank for this reason. I have been in this world for the same length of time as you, given the times you have attached. Almost certainly not a coincidence, my appearance is linked to your summoning. There may be more people from Earth in this world, I shall see about spreading the word in hopes of finding them, if they exist and are in Inath territory.
You must have noticed by now that our language has been modified. This is not English, nor your native language if you don't speak English. I would appreciate any information on this matter, clearly also related to your Summoning, and if anything else about us has been changed.
We should work together, as you say. Tell me more about this Sword you are trying to find. Are there any descriptions, clues or mention of its abilities? Are you sure this is not just a legend the Inath people have created about their past civilization? The common person on the street has no idea the Sword even exists. I can help find the Sword too, even if it doesn't exist, any First artifact is likely to have something we can learn from.
I will support your effort to free the slaves. The descriptions are horrifying, I had not known this atrocity existed until now. Arrange a place on the shores of Illastein to meet the barges in security and I will do my best to smuggle you some support. The political situation where I am does not allow me to divert too much resources but I shall help you where I can. Money, food and weapons will move at your request. Enclosed within this message is two sets of magic circle threads and instructions on how to use them, as well as details on how to make spellcannons, shields and bowguns. This is the most I can provide through these letters.
I have written down everything I remember of Earth's science and mathematics and am working on rediscovering more. An index is enclosed, although obviously I can't send you a bookcase in a letter. If anything would help your war effort, I will provide a copy. I must ask you to keep these a secret until the time is right to release these books however, I am trying to build an industrial base for mass production in Inath and releasing everything would result in everyone trying to leap too far ahead without the industry to back them up. Of course, if you can remember anything to add to them, I will welcome any contribution.
Additionally, I have a strange condition where my lifeforce appears to be defective and not able to use magic and I don't feel magical damage. Full list of observations enclosed. If you know anyone who might have an answer to this mystery, I suspect that will greatly help understand what happened at your summoning.

Cato
Dated 19th day of 8th month of year 631



Dear Cato,
Your offer of support is encouraging. I accept your help! Illastein is currently undergoing a mana crystal rush after news of your find arrived, luckily your letter let the ISL pre-empt it and by my estimate, we are a little ahead of the Rawi's forces in mana stockpiles. Magic circles are harder to work with than your letter suggested, but we have figured it out, suggestions to improve the text attached. You clearly aren't fit for writing textbooks, ha.
One weapon you appear to have overlooked I can tell you immediately. Magically propelling an object appears to exert a constant force, lighter objects fly much faster than heavier ones. Lighter objects also benefit more from Resist enchantments, which appear to increase the 'weight' of an object by a quantity proportional only to the magic spent. So guns that substitute gunpowder with magic are nearly as efficient as guns in our world. The only drawback is the need for a magical power source and it's portability. If you have any improvements, please communicate them.
I propose we swap our communications to an encrypted form. I doubt you know how to work public key and neither do I so we will have to rely on codebooks or one time pads, you appear to have greater resources so you should propose how to make this work. Send the reply by secure channels.
Never heard of anything like your lifeforce problem. However, Inath is in possession of a Tsarian laboratory ruin that I explored some months ago, there may be clues there since they appeared to be working on lifeforce. From what I understood, the night cryers were made by them through a method called lifeshaping. I don't know the details but the location is near the Erushen special region, please find a rough map enclosed.

Morey,
Dated 3rd day of the 11th month of year 631


Amarante scowled as she read through the copies of letters her informant in the ISL had sent her. Both sides had sent more than one letter to make sure at least one arrived at the recipient, which also made them less than secure. More difficult than obtaining them was that after that last letter, all the next ones were in code, unreadable jumbles of letters.
Cato's attempts to send the letters via coastal barge from Duport hadn't been secure when the leak was at the other end, but the code was frustating when only one codebook had been provided in a magically sealed box with a ludicrously complicated and certainly unforgeable seal that would self-destruct when the box was opened, to be compared to the seal described by the accompanying letter. Not to mention the wax and paper seals around the box too, in case that was defeated. There had been no way to steal or copy the book without letting Morey know the book was compromised. And after arrival, Morey had kept the book close to himself and destroyed all deciphered letters after reading them. In private.
The best spies in the country couldn't work out what the code was or even how it worked without the book. Which was something of a first, some of them expressed interest in knowing how the cipher worked in order to use the principle themselves. A cipher that could defeat the best letter counting and text analysis would teach them a lot.
It was not pleasant to know that Cato came from the same world as Morey, and was able to recreate some of the more fantastic things Morey had described. Nal's description of the history of Earth told to her by Morey sounded eerily like the history of the First and the Tsar, only their world hadn't destroyed themselves yet.
It was even more unpleasant to know that Cato was providing an outsider's view to Morey of his own actions. To Amarante's knowledge, Morey hadn't even attempted to set up any kind of information network since he arrived, now he was getting one for free. The thought of the two of them joining forces in Minmay after Illastein had collapsed seemed to spell disaster for the Federation.
How would she handle this? How could she convince Morey to stabilize the Federation instead of destroying it? And how to do the same for Cato?
At any rate, she wouldn't find answers to this quickly. She would just have to handle the other little problem first.

The door guard blinked. The street had been empty just now and now there was a short cloaked figure...
The last thing he saw was a huge twisted staff that was as tall as him. He barely had time to register its twisted shape and countless jagged edges and it's incredible magical strength.
Then the guard, the door to the compound and most of the wall around it suddenly caved in as if hit by a giant's fist. With a ear splitting noise of tearing stone and wood, pieces of the outer wall broke into large chunks of stone that landed in the garden and hit the manor with great shuddering thumps.
Shouts and screams rose into the night air as the hired knights rushed forwards to face a single lone woman. Her short stature and hooded face was unidentifiable, the slight slouch and relaxed pose as she stepped over the destruction was unnerving. Towering almost two heads above her was a magical staff.
Small rings of metal hung off it randomly, tiny gems dotted the surface here and there, strange and inexplicable protrusions jutted out at odd angles. Every now and then, a pulse of magic arose from the surface to wisp out into the night air. It was not a beautiful decoration like those used by mage nobles in court nor the spartan elegance of the steel staffs. This was a mess of incomprehensible alchemy and accessories that was simply chaotic.
There was only one person who owned a staff like that in all of the Federation.
"Selna! It's First Staff!" exclaimed one of the knights.
One of the younger knights, perhaps rasher or bolder than the rest, lashed out with a firebolt. The pulse of magic began to break up the moment it left the man's hands and had completely fallen apart more than three meters away from the woman. She looked at the man once and a massive forcebolt lashed out, smashing through his hastily raised barrier and squashing him into a red smear on the grass and wreckage of bushes. None of the others tried anything after that.
She continued to walk forwards without a word. The knights edged around warily, unsure what sort of opponent they were facing. As she approached, they noticed something faint in the air, a hint of magic that spread out from the woman's small form. No, from the staff. The field was weak and almost intangible, but it sparked and danced with magic, slightly brighter lines of activity coiling around them and their own wards.
There was activity from inside the manor, shouts of warning and hasty scrambling. Too late however, she raised her staff at the door and it blew away like a wet rag. Then the figure was gone inside the building.
"There goes our pay," said one of the battlemages outside.
"Better to live poor than to die," said his colleague, "and still be poor. We can't stop her. "
They carefully did not look at the bloody stain.
"That was First Staff? I didn't think we'd survive that," said someone from the spellstorm party, "that staff must weigh a ton! Who even carries a solid steel staff around?! And a fully charged one! That thing was stronger than a Ritual Summon!"
"Well, she wouldn't be called that if she wasn't so crazy about her staff," said another spellstorm, "we'd better get out of here before she destroys the entire place. "

The woman known as First Staff walked down the hallway. There were disruption walls and even the occasional magic bolt trap that had been hastily created to stall her. She sniffed.
The field around her danced whenever it encountered another spell and a flick of disruption magic broke the offending spell down. She flicked one of the rings to disable the automatic forcebolt reaction. If she destroyed the house, it would get annoying to confirm her kill.
The weak magic arrayed in front of her posed little threat. No more than toys compared to her staff. How could these crude tools be compared to the staff she had worked on ever since she learned alchemy! It was almost insulting, the way they expected to slow her down.
She simply continued walking down the carpeted floor, ignoring the stone walls, magic and arrows placed in her way. The ten meter wide deflection zone could handle anything these knights could throw at her and judicious use of forcebolts made obstacles simply... go away. She stepped over the last body draped over the wreckage of the wall and found herself at the back of the manor.
The fat man was hurriedly running out towards the back gate, six knights jogging beside him in a defensive circle. Tsk. They were getting away.
The First Staff rose in the red moonlight and then lowered.
She squinted at the men and women lying on the ground, and looked up at the black clothed man standing in front of them.
"Thank you for the distraction," the man bowed elegantly, a broad smile on his face.
"Silent Night," she named him.
"The one and only. You must be First Staff, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance," he bowed again. "Truly, you made it really easy to ambush them. "
His smile was starting to look disgusting. Together with the all black outfit of tight fitting cloth, he certainly looked like the assassin he was. Not like Light's Edge, who was legendary for his unkempt clothing and wild hair. At least that man was honest and fun, like a big shaggy dog. This Silent Night felt slimy to her. Untrustworthy.
"I'm enough," the staff wiggled, as if making a point.
"Living up to your name I see," Silent Night's smile only grew wider. She wondered how he managed it without splitting his face in half. "How crude though. To smash everything with that raw power. "
She narrowed her eyes, her staff inclining ever so slightly. "Do not insult the complexity of my work," she warned him.
"Woah there, I'm not here to fight you," the man held up his hands, "that detection field of yours is based off the Summoning Stones I see. Truly, I cannot think of a worse match up for my skills. "
Good that he wasn't going to be stupid. "Mm," she nodded and walked up to the crumpled forms. She kept a haze of unformed magical power between her and the assassin though, ready to turn into a shield the moment he did anything hostile. To understand the field for what it was, even if he didn't get all its functions, this man was dangerous. She didn't want to fight him either.
The knights and the chancellor had only been knocked out, she saw. Some kind of dart had hit them, probably delivering a magical shock. Strange that she hadn't sensed it but she supposed that this man's magical shielding must be better than her own technique she used for her staff. He was called Silent Night after all. He probably had more darts on his body but she felt no magic from him at all. Probing him with the field would be impolite.
"Kill or capture?" she asked the man. Clearly he had received the same commission. Duport had been stirring up trouble trying to raise forces to take back his cities. Vorril wanted him gone one way or another.
"We have him already, so let's capture. Vorril'll have a dungeon or two to keep him in," Silent Night said. He bent down to pick up the limp body. "It's been a pleasant night to meet you, allow me to take my leave. "
He bowed deeply to her and took three steps back, still carrying the unconscious chancellor over his shoulder. The moment the man touched the wall's shadow, he seemed to completely vanish into the darkness. And despite being less than ten meters away, she felt no magic at all.
The woman known as First Staff shivered in the night air. If she had to fight that man, she suspected it wouldn't be as easy as the man had implied.
She sheathed her staff in its shielding, stepped over the fallen knights and walked away.
The peacekeeping Knights arrived half an hour later, unusually slow for the noble district.

[Artman77]

stressful weekend O_o almost forgot!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...0#post20835690

[5a Violista]

This week's theme (May 23 - 29), chosen by Icewalker, is Smoke.

Next week's theme is chosen by Mahonri Violist - let me know in PM or this thread, and I'll include it in the next status.

Oh, no! I was supposed to do that.
I just got too busy with research and so (knowing I was going to fail anyway) I stopped checking the thread...

The week's more than half over, so it's probably too late to give a theme anyway. That makes me so frustrated, that I stopped looking. Maybe that should be the theme. Frustration. It's easy to draw pictures of non-physical things, right?

[Glass Mouse]

Late again, sorry. On the upside, I have four days left before I’m back for good. For now, status for the week May 23 - 29!


Glass Mouse did not upload anything.

Lycunadari passes with seven pretty nature photos.

LeSwordfish passes with a huge 40k model.

jseah passes with 3k words of Hero’s War.

Some Android passes with 44 eye and torso studies.

Artman77 passes with three portraits, a silver surfer, a collage, and a superhero girl.

Icewalker passes with 1780 words of novel writing.

Mahonri Violist did not upload/send me anything.


Thus, Glass Mouse and Mahonri Violist FAIL this round!

Lycunadari, LeSwordfish, Lycunadari, jseah, Some Android, Artman77, and Icewalker PASS this round!


Current standing:

Spoiler

Show

Glass Mouse
Current run: -
Longest run: 290 weeks
Themes: -

Lycunadari
Current run: 177 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

LeSwordfish
Current run: 1 week
Longest run: 24 weeks
Themes: -

jseah
Current Run: 16 weeks
Longest Run: 33 weeks
Themes: -

Some Android
Current run: 22 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

Artman77
Current run: 4 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Icewalker
Current run: 6 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Mahonri Violist
Current run: -
Longest run: 6 weeks
Themes: -

Due to the lateness of the status post, this week (May 30 - June 5) does not have a theme.

Next week's theme is chosen by Mahonri Violist and has already been announced.

---

Hello! I'm back, sort of! Technically it's only one model this week... but its a pretty big one. For reference, one of the single models that represents a single day is by the side of it - I hope you'll agree its worth six days (if not, I can do some writing over the weekend).

Welcome back!

Also, your thesis sounds super interesting, linguistics and comp sci are great. What language are you working in, up in The Icy North?

Danish. Not a super rare language by any means, but small enough that it still drowns in the volume of English research. You in comp sci, too?

Nah it's cool. Sorry you schedule has been so hectic recently. Hope things return to normal soon so you can get back to creating.

Oh, no! I was supposed to do that.
I just got too busy with research and so (knowing I was going to fail anyway) I stopped checking the thread...

The week's more than half over, so it's probably too late to give a theme anyway. That makes me so frustrated, that I stopped looking. Maybe that should be the theme. Frustration. It's easy to draw pictures of non-physical things, right?

No worries, the lateness of the status post overtakes that. We’ll do your theme next week!

Does this mean that you’re back? Or still on hiatus? It’s totally okay to just hang out and check in if life doesn’t afford you the kind of time to take up the mantle for real.

[Icewalker]

Danish. Not a super rare language by any means, but small enough that it still drowns in the volume of English research. You in comp sci, too?

Neuroscience, myself. I've looked at a little computational neuroscience kind of stuff, and I love language, so I've seen some of that kind of thing in the past though! Mostly I tend to do a lot of learning of various subjects, so I pick up bits and pieces from everywhere.

[Some Android]

Got my art up.

Is that a reference to something because I don't get it.

[Icewalker]

I wrote a short story! I'm super happy with it, and will post it here, but I'm going to wait until I post it online myself, given that I'm starting a tumblr as a consequence of its writing. So, I'll copy the text or even just link to it here once I put it up, for now, PMing it to you Glass Mouse to confirm it exists.

[LeSwordfish]

This week I mostly worked on my Portfolio website at https://leswordfish.wordpress.com. I'm not sure how you'd want to count it - it's 700 words (that weren't already written) but five seperate pages.

[jseah]

~1259 for A Hero's War

Spoiler

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Cato rubbed his forehead as the craftsmen started to argue again. The smoky sideroom of the Ironworkers experimental smithy held six master craftsmen, the best men and women at working iron in all of the Minmay and Duport territories.
And they weren't happy about each other's work.
"Clearly you made the ring too small, my axle is the correct size," said the woman. She took a ring from her own workshop and placed it over her axle by way of demonstration. It fit perfectly of course.
"Well, my ring fits my axle, so of course yours is wrong," said the male blacksmith.
These two were the most outspoken among all the masters that the Ironworkers had sent to the University to learn this concept called interchangeable parts.
Apparently the term 'made to measure' was completely foreign to Inath, even when Cato was sure the First were capable of it. Well, it clearly wasn't story material, who wanted to read about a bunch of iron smiths trying to make sure their parts were built to a tolerance of a handful of micrometers.
Painstaking, and expensive, experiments had determined that for a wagon axle to fit, they had to be built to within tiny tolerances. Or accept that the axles would rattle around in their mountings. To the naked eye, the shafts and mounting rings the blacksmiths had built here looked completely identical. A major achievement in Inath's society, but it still wasn't good enough.
Cato really had to appreciate the amazing patience those three brothers had paid to his demands, of which Cato was beginning to understand just how unreasonable they were. The bag of rimes might have something to do with that.
Of course, to even make those three interchangeable shafts, they had had to file the shafts down, checking every step of the way against the fixed gauges built specifically for the task. Of course, it didn't matter that the gauge couldn't even be calibrated against any standard since they only needed it for those three demonstration pieces. The Ironworkers were treating those three axles as if they were priceless artifacts.
Unfortunately for Inath, Cato was clueless about this part. His studies so far had been on the properties of materials and alloys, and general high school knowledge. He knew about the existence of industrial machines like lathes and milling machines but apart from the computer controlled one the tools shop had in another department, Cato didn't even know all their names. But it was clear that however skilled the Inath smiths were, manual methods weren't going to work. No one was going to pay a hundred rimes for wagon axles or screws. In fact, the idea of nuts and bolts was also foreign, people made do with wooden parts and nails if something absolutely had to fit.
Cato stood up, interrupting the argument heating up above him. "I think by now it is clear that smithing and filing cannot achieve the tolerance required," Cato said, "without working in the same workshop with the same gauges and serious work at hand filing. "
They looked at him and frowned worriedly.
"No, please give us one more chance," the woman said, "I am sure I can do better than the Jacks brothers. "
"We, you mean. We can do better," the man nodded.
Cato frowned. They were just now at loggerheads and now they were all willing to work with each other? Or was it just pride speaking again?
"No, you've convinced me the last three times and all three times you've failed. One axle and ring pair that just happen to fit is not success when all the others don't," he shook his head, "no, your craftsmanship cannot achieve what is needed. And I doubt any Ironworker in all of Inath can do it. Your tools work by human hands, that is simply not good enough. "
They looked skeptical. The woman even mumbled something about the capital branch in Izalice, the center of the entire Federation. She didn't sound very confident however.
Cato sighed, "I don't know why you are so resistant to the suggestion we should build new tools. Surely any Ironworker would jump at the chance to have better working tools. "
They looked at each other and joined in his sigh. The man slammed the table in frustration, causing the demonstration parts to clatter to the ground. Were they only just now starting to give up? Cato shook his head, these master Ironworkers sure had been stubborn.
"Your tools don't even have designs," muttered the man, "and we don't even understand some of them. The planer is impossible I tell you. You can't cut metal with a sword, what makes you think you can shave an iron block? Besides, all you have there is theory and guesswork. The only one I understand is the milling stone, but nothing can make it spin fast enough. "
"The steam engine can," Cato said flatly. That answer was always obvious. But their retort was as well.
"Bah, it hammers with strength but not with skill. You want to make it do precision work?" the ironworker shook his head, "a crude device can't do the work of masters. Besides, whoever heard of a spinning grindstone. "
Those arguments weren't even making sense anymore, but Cato could see the woman nodding along with him.
"Look, either we design those tools or you succeed," Cato said, "and without the week long hand filing. I'm saying those tools in my world could make a square axle like this in hours. Not to mention all other other things like cutting identical gauge blocks to micrometer precision. I'm not saying we need that level but what we have here, millimeters with a week of work, is not acceptable. "
He got up, leaving the papers of their plans and the speculative notes on what the machines might look like on the table. They looked at him curiously, wondering why he was leaving his personal copy with them.
Cato smiled, "I'm joining this trade delegation of Minmay's. I probably won't be back for weeks, but we can be in contact by courier. "
The look on their faces was like children seeing their parent leaving the house and knowing they would have time to themselves. Cato shook his head.
"I'll post a formal request with the Minmay branch leader. I know he likes the idea of tools more than you do. I'm sorry it had to be this way, but your attempts have not worked out," and with that, he bowed out of the meeting.
Darn it, these master craftsmen were supposed to be the best at their job. Getting them to do a proof of concept for interchangeable parts was supposed to be a simple matter, not herding cats!

The journey to the Central Territories was rather uneventful. It was almost like his expedition to the Snow Wall, only no magical science was allowed by Minmay. They didn't want to risk things exploding, so Cato had to confine himself to drawing more complex magic circles.
It was at least occupying. Landar was starting to come around to the idea of doing computation with magic and some of the most complex circles they had drawn were starting to look a little bit like baby Turing machines with magic threads for tape. At least they would once the fragility problem of the memory storage was solved.

865 for A Hero's War (a future chapter that I wrote out of order)

Spoiler

Show

Yana crouched down, sifting through the sandy soil. She thought she had seen some green. There!
Her thin fingers scraped the soil weakly and the root revealed itself, two tiny nodules clinging barely to life in the dry sand. It was yama! With desperation in her hands, Yana plucked the nodules from the exposed roots. This was good! The sweetness would make the soup much better.
She looked up at the sky, almost to Little Night now. No more time. The few herbs and edible grasses was all she had but it was better than nothing.
She half ran and half stumbled back to the village. The Little Night had started and the shadows hid rocks that scraped her feet but she felt it not at all. In another few minutes, Yana ran into her house through the doorway. The caked mud and straw bricks were flaking already. She would have to get papa to fix them, later of course. Yana nodded to herself.
"Papa! Papa!" she shouted weakly, "I have some food! I have yama!"
There was no reply from the deserted kitchen. Yana put her rickety basket on the clay floor beside the stove, gently. A small sound attracted her attention to the main room that her family slept and worked in.
Yana crept around the door and saw her mother crouching over the place where her father had laid sick for the past week. Her older brother was beside her. Her father still lay there, unmoving.
"Mama?" she asked timidly.
Her mother just sat there, softly crying. Yana looked at her father sleeping on the straw and back at her mother in confusion.
"I even found some yama," Yana said, even more softly.
Her brother got up and hugged her silently, a pale face and shivering arms hiding her father from view.

The hole in the ground looked too small for what Yana remembered of her father's size. Her mother knelt over the sandy pit, throwing clods of dirt over her father, still crying all the while. Strangely, despite her brother's cold arms around her shoulder, Yana didn't feel anything other than a slight sense of shock. Shouldn't she be crying? Or even a little bit sad?
Yana recalled the last words her father had said, just the morning before he had died. "You should live to eat, not eat to live," he had said.
Yana didn't understand that, but she understood that food was important. Everyone knew that, everyone wanted to eat after all. That must have been what her father wanted to tell her. It wasn't that he was hungry and wanted to eat like she had assumed.
Her brother hugged her as the grave was covered up with the last of the dirt, leaving only a single mound. Yana felt his tears staining her hair and let him hold her. It lifted the numbness a little.
As they walked back to the village, the commotion ahead of them made her look up.
Amongst the mud houses and slowly growing fields was a band of men. Their armour creaked, dark brown leather over faded green cloth. The man in front was wearing a frock over his set, painted with a red moon surrounded with three stars. The emblem of the Rawi.
"... between ages ten and thirty here, right now!" he finished shouting at the villagers huddling in the central clearing.
The leader glared at them as the villagers looked at each other in confusion.
"Hurry up!" he shouted, "this is the express order of the Alawi Zain's draft! You will have the honour to respond to his call!"
Yana immediately disliked the grin on the man's face. Nor did the woman behind his shoulder look friendly.
"You over there! " One of the group shouted at them. Yana felt her brother flinch and squeeze her tighter. There was a crunching in the sand as two of the knights came to her. Two women in thin leather armour and swords that seemed to pulse with an unseen glow.
"Take the boy," said the woman.
Yana had no strength to even resist. No power came to her limbs and despite all her strong older brother did, screaming, crying and thrashing, the other woman knight simply peeled him off her and dragged him back to the center of the village by his arm.
The same was happening to the other villagers now, the knights fanning out through the village and dragging more of them out of houses amidst cries and protests. A few of the older boys made a dash to escape but the leader man waved a hand and a single bolt of magic burned them into twisted charred corpses. There were no more escapees after that.
She and her mother sat where they were placed, on the doorstep of their house. Her brother squatted in the central clearing and looked at them sadly. Her mother was crying again beside her.
Yana still felt nothing at all.
After almost thirty boys and girls had been collected, the knights seemed to be satisfied. They were joking and laughing at each other, the words slave was mentioned.

[Artman77]

art on my thread:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...6#post20861126

[Glass Mouse]

The very last of the late status posts, as I'm FREE FREEEEEE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Status for the week May 29 - June 5!


Glass Mouse did not upload anything.

Lycunadari passes with five pretty flower photos, and two cute elf drawings.

LeSwordfish passes with a new website’s design and writing.

jseah passes with 1259 of regular writing and 865 words of future chapter, both for A Hero's War.

Some Android passes with 38 sheets of anatomy drawings.

Artman77 passes with a WIP portrait, a logo, a Spiderman, a muscle dude, a baby, and a rose.

Icewalker passes with 2031 words of short story.

Mahonri Violist did not upload/send me anything (again).


Thus, Glass Mouse and Mahonri Violist FAIL this round!

Lycunadari, LeSwordfish, Lycunadari, jseah, Some Android, Artman77, and Icewalker PASS this round!


Current standing:

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Glass Mouse
Current run: -
Longest run: 290 weeks
Themes: -

Lycunadari
Current run: 178 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

LeSwordfish
Current run: 2 weeks
Longest run: 24 weeks
Themes: -

jseah
Current Run: 17 weeks
Longest Run: 33 weeks
Themes: -

Some Android
Current run: 23 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

Artman77
Current run: 5 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Icewalker
Current run: 7 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Mahonri Violist
Current run: -
Longest run: 6 weeks
Themes: -

This week's theme (June 6 - 12), chosen by Mahonri Violist, is Frustration.

Next week's theme is chosen by me.

---

Neuroscience, myself. I've looked at a little computational neuroscience kind of stuff, and I love language, so I've seen some of that kind of thing in the past though! Mostly I tend to do a lot of learning of various subjects, so I pick up bits and pieces from everywhere.

Neat!

Is that a reference to something because I don't get it.

Uh, no. I’m just easily amused by stupid memes.

This week I mostly worked on my Portfolio website at https://leswordfish.wordpress.com. I'm not sure how you'd want to count it - it's 700 words (that weren't already written) but five seperate pages.

I’m not quite sure either. Did you set everything up this week? If it’s just 700 new words, I wouldn’t call that passed, but if it includes web design and everything, that is reasonable. I’m gonna assume the latter, but please speak up to clarify.

[Icewalker]

Almost exactly 1500 words (1506). Very piecemeal, from a lot of editing and little additions. PMing it again because it's material I'd rather not publicize as much.

However, I did put up my story from last week! Got some of the language bits checked, did a little more editing, and decided it was ready to go.

So for anybody interested: Full House.

[Some Android]

Got my art up.

And it turns out I somehow broke 50 anatomy studies - a new record.

[LeSwordfish]

I’m not quite sure either. Did you set everything up this week? If it’s just 700 new words, I wouldn’t call that passed, but if it includes web design and everything, that is reasonable. I’m gonna assume the latter, but please speak up to clarify.

I used - and modified - a template for the basic site, took screenshots, and wrote and uploaded those 700 words. I think it's an edge case - if you call it as a "no" then thats fine - i've not got much of a streak to lose!

1318 words of my work this week is a review of the game "Episodes."

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Episodes is a cartoonish visual-novel library, famous for the sheer strangeness of its adverts on social media. Instead of the promised surreal stories, it acts as a valuable outlet for creativity and storytelling, marred by simplistic animation design and obnoxious “freemium” locking of content.
You'll most likely recognise Episodes from its advertisements on Tumblr, which are so weird they've gone memetic and been shared far more widely: usually two handsome young people at a life-changing decision, with the promise that You, the reader, can choose what happens next. Over time, these adverts have been getting markedly stranger: early ones suggested a sort of all-American soap opera, while the latest have included the Titanic, two astronauts ("You never told me you were married!" one says, with her hand on the "eject" lever) and Adam and Eve. This last one was the one that spurred me, while scrolling through Tumblr, to download Episodes and try it out.
What’s not obvious from the adverts is that, as well as a handful of “official” stories, Episodes hosts a sort of open interactive-fiction framework: anyone on the internet can put together and host their own story in the database, meaning that there are thousands out there, mostly made by and for teenage girls. Its excellent that such a notable platform exists to draw teenagers – particularly young women – into interactive storytelling and creation, and the standard curmudgeonly responses to anything teenage girls like will only push them away. As best I can tell, player characters can only be female (and only a few body types exist), though considerable racial diversity exists, and both the adverts and some of the flagship stories include high-profile same-sex relationships, both of which are important to keep front-and-centre for an increasingly politicised target audience.
Having been enticed by the strangeness of the advertisments, I focussed on the professionally-made stories: Campus Crush, Mean Girls: Senior Year, and the unquestioned titan of the medium: Demi Lovato: Path To Fame. You pick a story, create a character, and progress through the stories in the standard visual-novel manner, choosing dialog and watching the story play out through the medium of clumsy, prebuilt animations.
The choices are where any visual novel or similar game stands or falls, and the standard Episodes stories do so little. There’s very little opportunity to truly drive the story in a different direction, with responses typically being limited to reactions to the events around your character. Major decisions (proposals, etc) can happen without the player’s knowledge, and sometimes even your ability to display a reaction is limited – three options to giggle and agree to the unwanted advances of a deeply creepy older man?
In some cases the plots are uninteresting (Campus Crush merely drags you from “hottie” to “hottie” while mumbling about a dark secret until you give up) though some are not – I found myself particularly enjoying Demi Lovato: Path To Fame, in which my character became a teenage youtuber propelled to stardom through a singing contest, world tour, and the unexpectedly sage advice of Ms Lovato. In that case the writing is vapid but occasionally quite funny, and the plotting hangs together well enough – supported by the additional features of “Friends”, “Fans”, and “Loves”, three numerical trackers your priorities in life. Scoring well in any of these unlocks additional features – outfits, side stories, and the plot of much of the first series hangs on your ability to gain enough “Fans” before a deadline. This makes all of your choices – down to individual dialog lines – at least a little meaningful, making some unexpectedly tense even if the plot itself will be unaffected. It’s an interesting feature: many players choose to play this sort of narrative game as a character, and few games materially reward this kind of consistency. It is, presumably, also considerably easier for the creators than full interactivity.
Some choices, gallingly, are locked off by your supply of Gems, Episode's currency: if you haven't purchased thirty gems with real money you can't buy a VIP ticket and have to break in, for example. (The geniuses behind DL:PtF however, have mostly limited these choices to purely aesthetic ones.) This isn’t the only freemium disappointment: stories are broken into episodes (between two and thirty minutes depending on how generous the writer is) and you have to buy episodes with tickets. You get a new ticket every four hours or so, or you can buy more for around 20p each. It’s an effective way of making money perhaps, but encourages only short periods of play at a time, and can prevent deeper interaction with the stories. Despite it being in the name, the episodic format can let down some stories – Campus Crush in particular had a feeling reminiscent of the Hardy Boys, where each chapter ended with a dramatic cliffhanger, resolved with no effect within a few sentences of the start of the next. (“Oh no, my roommate’s not home! What could have happened to her?” (CHAPTER BREAK) “Oh, there she is.”)
Graphically it’s unimpressive with a cartoonish style that reminds me of nothing so much as the “two guys sit on a sofa and play videogames” genre of webcomic. Reasonable scope for customisation seems to exist (both for creators and players: there’s a wide array of (presumably stylish) clothing on offer frequently, which left me cold but could allow the target audience hours of fun playing dress-up.) The animation is largely atrocious, with ridiculous canned animations regularly stretching the characters in anatomically improbable ways. It gets rather endearing after a while: seeing a character move slowly off the screen sideways while their arms and legs frantically pump at sprinting screen has, for me at least, remained entertaining for a long time. One thing I suspect episodes could do with is a custom animation builder - it's a little silly to see the DL:PtF team try and build a grand finale choreographed performance out of three canned "dance" animations, even if all three of them (wave arms, sway hips, jump and shout) are worthy entrances to a wedding-dance repertoire.
The music tends to be five-second snippets of chirpy generic pop (DL:PtF plays the same five-second snippets of three Demi songs over and over instead,) and the soundtrack, such as it is, is universally freestocksounds.ru quality. A little more background music would be nice – it has a tendency to fade out early into long scenes, leaving characters talking in complete silence (none of it is voiced, except, strangely, Ms Lovato’s lines early on) until a glass breaks or the doorbell chimes and the player is jolted awake by the first google search result for, say, “telephone ringing free”.
Technically it’s acceptable, though marred by occasional crashes. My own iPad is very elderly so I can’t speak entirely impartially, but I found that I was having long load times, particularly for the adverts that play between episodes. Occasionally it would play me the advertisments, crash, and then force me to watch them again before reaching the episode, which is a particularly galling time for technical difficulties.
Episodes is laser-focussed on its target audience, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Interactive fiction has been taking a bad rap recently, and a program that makes it accessible to more people is, in my opinion, very welcome. Episodes is a gateway directly to Twine, to Telltale’s recent games, and to storytelling given higher priority in the games of the future. I couldn't give it a wholehearted recommendation thanks to the limited choices and the intrusive free-to-play, but as mindless commute games go it's often very endearing. I'd rather see this be the next wave of mobile games than the current rising tide of Game Of War reskins, and the advertisements don't ask me to watch James Corden pretend to be a six-year-old, which is frankly far stranger than anything Episodes does... though if anyone finds the story with the astronauts, please let me know.

And i'll add an extra 250 words before midnight. Been bogged down with Masters applications.

EDIT: Here we go! The first 742 words of an Overwatch... review... thing.

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Things I have done in overwatch
• Divebombed a crowded point, hit the detonators, and immediately found myself snared. All I could do was watch as my own mech exploded, killing me, along with half the enemy team.
Overwatch is a class-based multiplayer shooter, distinguished by the diversity of the powers the classes can call upon. D.Va is a teenage streamer in a giant pink mech, and her most powerful ability ejects from the mech and detonates it for massive damage over a large area. If you’re quick, you can take out entire teams and dive into cover to survive. I am not quick: I never survive.
• Teamed up with a turret and a medic to throw up a slow, desperate defence of the point. When my shield dropped, I charged forward and started breaking heads with a twelve-foot hammer, trusting in the medic to keep me alive to get back to the turret and start defending.
My favourite class at the moment is Reinhardt, who carries no ranged weapons, but a massive hammer and an energy shield large enough to protect other players. The shield can only take so much damage before collapsing, and then there’s a few seconds before it begins to slowly recharge, leading to electrically tense moments, standing with one’s defences lowered as the incoming fire starts to thicken, trying to see how far the shield can recharge before whoever you’re defending takes serious damage and you’re forced to bring it up again.
• Punted three players off the top of a building, and then tried to figure out how to taunt. Later, this was Play of The Game, and everyone saw me stand still for ten seconds before shouting “Need healing” instead.
Play Of The Game shows a replay of the “most impressive” thing that happened in any particular round. Sometimes that’s a great push or killstreak, but whatever algorithms are used seem to misfire on occasion – I’ve seen Play Of The Game earned for a single mid-range shot, or, commonly, for a turret automatically cutting down a couple of charging enemies, while the player getting the credit sat around with his thumb up his arse.
• Used my “Sound Barrier” ultimate to boost my team’s shields, seconds before a rocket barrage: the extra shields saved us from the barrage, and we pushed forwards onto the point.
“Ultimates”, the most powerful abilities each character has, vary a lot. Some are truly game-changing (D.Va’s explosion, Mercy’s ability to resurrect her team) whereas some are fairly weak (Sound Barrier only lasts a few seconds, meaning it needs pitch-perfect timing and positioning.) Others are just boring – Mei and Tracer are both overstuffed with unique abilities, but their ultimates are simply high-powered grenades. Symmetra’s defining feature is her teleporter, and she’s forced to painstakingly charge her ultimate to build it, placing weedy little lasers and taking potshots with her pistols until it’s ready.

They put so much effort into making the characters distinctive, but a lot of it is lost in the Skins and Upgrades system. You can equip emotes to your character to taunt, laught, dance, etc – but you can only get these from Loot Boxes, which are random. Want a better chance of a good emote? Best pay for more loot boxes. Irritating, the basic emotes are all dull and characterless – usually “standing proud” or something. Comparing Overwatch to Team Fortress 2 is gauche at this point, but next to the Pyro’s ululations or the medic’s glove-snap, the colourful DJ Lucio resting his gun on his shoulder is a real disappointment.

The “Legendary skins” one can unlock are also disappointing to me – so many are born of lazy design choices. There’s the strangely arbitrary (“eh, **** it. Lets make junkrat a clown and call it a day”), the barely different (Tracer in a slightly changed skintight outfit) and the Actually Kinda Racist (the Hispanic reaper becomes a Mariachi singer, the indian Symmetra gets a midriff-baring “indian goddess” outfit.) This same sense of lazy arbitrariness runs through the other unlockable animations too – Blizzard cheerfully changed one of Tracer’s victory poses because it wasn’t in keeping with her character, to a chorus of cries of “censorship” from people who don’t know what censorship is. Others are just as bad though – lazily “sexy” poses for the shy Symmetra, and three kinds of flexing for the musclebound Reinhardt: its easy to see that the controversial Tracer pose came from nothing more than a lack of imagination.

[jseah]

2861 words for Hero's War

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"Come in Landar," her mother nodded at her.
Landar shuffled into the room and sat at the end of the low table warily. Her mother brushed back her dark hair and poured a cup of tea for Landar. The woven straw mat under her tried to get her comfortable, but she would have none of it.
"Have you met your father?"
She nodded mutely, not touching the cup of tea. Her mother gestured for her to take a sip, but she refused to budge.
"Are you getting enough to eat?" her mother asked her gently, "you look thinner than last time. You are taking care of yourself?"
"I have more than enough to eat," Landar frowned at the cup of tea, wondering where her mother was going with this.
"Then do you need money?" her mother asked, giving up on getting Landar to drink. She poured a cup for herself.
Landar shook her head, "I have more than enough money. Both from my own work and from the University. "
"I suppose Cato is responsible for most of it?"
Landar nodded. While building magical art pieces with her alchemy was fruitful, Landar knew that Cato's work had them commanding far more money than any single alchemist could, no matter how talented. Sure, most of it was in terms of bank loans and consultations with guilds and companies, but more money had passed through the CaLa Consultancy's hands or at its words than she had ever seen.
Her mother sighed, "clearly you are wondering what your father is thinking. The University of Minmay is getting powerful, and I believe he wishes to secure ties with it. From what I understand, you wouldn't object too strongly. "
Ties? Landar must have let some of her confusion leak onto her face as her mother started to giggle. "What is he planning now?" Landar said sharply.
"Ho ho," her mother smiled and took an annoyingly long sip of her tea. Then she dropped the bombshell. "I believe he will offer your ring to Cato. "
Landar could feel her eyes trying to pop off their sockets. Her father was going to try to marry her off to Cato?! Of all people?! But... but... wasn't he irritated at Cato? And Cato wasn't even an Iris! Anyone from the sixth branch and up never married out; and offering her as subordinate in the relationship?! Landar ran out of words to describe how unthinkable that was.
"Why didn't he say anything?" Landar asked. Never mind how absurd the notion was, her father could at least have asked her first! She brushed aside her uncertainty with the fire of anger. If her father wanted this, it was going to be for some dastardly reason. "And don't think I'm just going to accept it without a fight!" she left a warning for good measure.
Her mother shuffled her way around the table and sat right in front of Landar, looking seriously into her eyes. The black eyes and black hair that so mirrored her own were filled with a gentleness that ate at the fire in her chest like waves destroyed a sandcastle.
"Landar, my daughter. You look so much like me but the inside is so much like him," her mother sighed, brushing the stray strands of hair from Landar's face, "the two of you are really father and daughter. "
What? "Can you explain more clearly?"
"Proud, willful, you always want to have your own way. And you can't accept anyone deciding your life," her mother raised a hand at her obvious retort, "but for those you really care for, you can sacrifice many things to help them. Even the chance at understanding each other. "
Landar felt her eye twitch. So her mother was saying that her father was just misunderstood? That all he wanted was to help her? She felt her anger rise again. "How stupid do you think I am?" Landar snarled, "all he has done is try to tie me to Iris every step of the way! He never understands what I want and always always tries to make me into some kind of magical doll so that he can make me dance in family politics. Even you have to live in his shadow all the time, I hardly even see you do anything-"
"Landar," her mother interrupted her, "I have seen you two attack each other for years. I always hoped you might see past each other's differences some day but it seems that nothing will change if I do not make a move. "
"What move?" Landar eyed her mother suspiciously. Her mother? Actually doing something? Since when did her father ever give her mother enough lee way to act on her own?
"Ho ho ho, I've already made it," her mother's eyes were twinkling above her smile, "and you underestimate your mother if you think she's just a doll for your father to move. "
Landar gulped, not knowing whether to be afraid of this unknown side of her mother she had never seen.
"Come," her mother patted the straw mat for Landar to come closer, "let me tell you the story of a lonely girl from the second branch family and a plucky young boy from the sixth. "
"Is this going to get sappy?" Landar asked warily.
"Since it ends with you being born, yes, it does," her mother smiled.

Cato sat in front of the cup of tea nervously. Being called away from the war of words between Minmay and Ektal, Cato had expected the worst. And he got it.
He had been shown into a compound outside of the guest zone. It was obvious how the architecture changed, from stone to aged wood, and the sliding wooden doors set into the carved pillars were in fully Tsarian style instead of the odd fusion with Inath outside. He had also been directed to change his shoes into a floppy cloth so thin that he could feel the grain of the wood flooring through it.
The place felt even more isolated than usual. The immaculately pruned gardens and spotless wooden floors of the corridors held the same maze like quality that seemed to stretch on forever. Cato had even spotted, or smelled in some cases, kitchens and toilets that would have been placed outside in Inath style.
Inside the Iris clan, Cato had been brought to a room as well decorated as any of the others. Across from him sat Yan, Landar's father, quietly sipping his tea.
"Why did you want to see me?" Cato asked, finally breaking the silence.
"What do you think of Landar?" Yan asked in return.
Cato sighed, "what answer do you want?"
Yan merely raised an eyebrow, "an honest answer. "
"She loves ideas. More than alchemy and magic, Landar wants to make her ideas come to life. I respect her for that," Cato explained. He tactfully didn't comment on what sort of ideas a certain mad alchemist was known for.
"I have heard worse from others," Yan muttered.
Cato smiled a little, "I'm sure. She can be a little over enthusiastic in applying them before the ideas are workable. But I do not deny that her help has been extremely valuable. Your daughter is an excellent alchemist. "
Yan nodded and sipped his tea. Was he a little happy about the praise? Well, Cato had never subscribed to Landar's world view that her father was out to get her.
"Tell me, is she more than just a helper or a friend to you?"
Cato blinked and kept his hands carefully still. Answer wrong and you'll have one angry father searching for a shotgun, Cato thought to himself. He took a few breaths to compose his reply. From what he could see, Landar's sour relationship with her father stemmed from a lack of communication. On both ends. Best not to make the same mistake.
"If you are asking whether we have a relationship like lovers, the answer is no," Cato said, "but I admit that our goals align and our personalities are similar. We may share a little more intimacy than just friends, but there is nothing more than that. "
Now it was Yan's turn to take his time thinking. He sipped his tea slowly, letting the silence drag on. The stony face was impassioned, not letting Cato read even a trace of the man's intentions.
After his cup ran dry, Yan was out of excuses to delay talking. He finally started to speak. "Landar is headstrong and untraditional," Yan sighed, "a most unfavourable personality. Within the Iris clan, it would be impossible for her to find a suitable partner. Much less happiness. "
Cato was holding his breath now. If this was what he was thinking of...
"And you are the leader of an organization of some power, even if it's new. You have helped the Iris indirectly by asking us to keep the books you wrote. So there is some merit after all," Yan continued to talk, "therefore, I would like to propose that you take her ring. "
"Is that an Iris way of asking me to marry her?" Cato asked. It would not do to misunderstand this point. Even if Cato thought it was fairly clear.
Yan nodded solemnly.
Cato looked at the man pouring out another cup of tea. Characters in stories, when this sort of surprise was sprung on them, tended to get flustered or panicked. Somehow, Cato didn't feel any of that.
"I shall think of it as earning your approval for any prospective relationship between us," Cato said slowly and carefully, "but I should emphasize the point that we do not have any relations of the romantic nature right now. Furthermore, I will not tolerate any such relationship without both of us wanting it. I will not ask, nor expect, her to enter one just because you say so. And if you do somehow coerce her into trying to start one with me, I will not accept. Please keep this in mind. "
There was a short pause before Yan nodded his assent. Landar's father sighed and added, "I know her well enough that such things will not work. In fact, you should keep this talk secret from her or she will reject you just to spite me. "
From what Cato had heard here, the harsh remarks out in the garden was probably just her father putting on a strong face in front of her. He certainly didn't hate her, quite the opposite it seemed. But did Landar hate her father that much? Cato thought back to her antics whenever her father was mentioned. Okay, maybe she did.
It was Cato's turn to sigh, "I will keep your advice in mind. But even though I am an outsider, allow me to say this. Perhaps your daughter is hostile due to poor communication. I will not presume to know what your disagreements are, but if you will not explain anything to her, she will never understand. I am not saying the fault lies entirely with you, but I do not think your actions so far have helped bridge the gap. "
"I hear your words," Yan said, giving no indication whatsoever that he agreed or disagreed. Cato studied his face but that yielded no clues either.
Drat this stubborn man.

Cato scribbled another equation across the pages, trying to coerce the numbers into making sense. Some simplification and substitution later, he ended up with a positive number equals to zero. It didn't require calculating the number out of the constants to know something had gone wrong.
"Bah," Cato threw down his pen.
That caused Landar to look up and wiggle over from where she was lying down to peer at the sheets of algebra. She recoiled faster than a wound spring. "What happened?" she asked, putting away her algebra practice exercises.
"The Ironworkers sent me the results of the latest experiments on the steam engine," Cato explained, "lifting force, fuel consumption and heat measurements. I've been trying to calculate the conversion rate between heat energy and magical energy and therefore the energy content of magic. And it's not making any sense. "
Landar raised an eyebrow, "so what went wrong?"
"Well, when I tried to factor in the back pressure the compressing magic exerted on the enchanted walls, then based on the heating value of magical power units, the equations get all messed up," Cato ran over the series of equations checking them for errors. But they were unlikely to happen after three separate calculations on different days with different starting points. And they all ended up in the same contradictory result.
Landar shrugged, "I'm still learning algebra, so I'm not even going to pretend to understand your thermodynamics. "
Well, he wouldn't expect any help from her anyway. Not yet.
Cato rolled over on the straw mat flooring. He had been skeptical of it at first, but the packed straw had been woven tightly and didn't have the same prickly feel. Plus, the mats were soft and warm, compared to wood or stone floors. It wasn't quite like a carpet but Cato supposed this was Inath's equivalent.
That was why Landar and him were lazing on the floor in one of the smaller buildings of the guest wing that had been allocated to them. The gentle rays of the sun shining past the doorway and gentle breezes going through the room would have lulled many people to sleep, the quiet chirping of birds in the garden accompanied by the bubbling of the artificial streams only added to the peaceful atmosphere. Cato could almost understand why the Iris were so crazy about these indoor gardens.
Cato was having none of it however. This last problem provoked by the Ironworkers' letter was causing him to almost tear his hair out. The environment had muted that to vague grumblings and lazy rolling back and forth.
"You know," Landar said after he threw away the fourth attempt, "from what I understand, these equations are the same as logical statements, yes? So if the equations don't work and you haven't made mistakes, then clearly the problem is in your assumptions. "
She put away her practice book and faced him directly.
"Yes, but which assumption is wrong? That's the key question," Cato said, "one of the equations here is wrong but I don't know which. "
"Anything you know based on experiment cannot be wrong," Landar pointed out, "that's what you wrote on empiricism. Are there any assumptions of yours that aren't based on experiment?"
"You mean, I can place as much confidence into my measured results as I have confidence in my experimental setup," Cato clarified, "but even taking it from that direction doesn't help. How do I know..."
He trailed off as he mentally examined all the equations again. There was one that he hadn't run an experiment on actually, he had inherited it from his high school textbooks after all. delta U equals Q plus W. It was just too hard to run an accurate calorimetry experiment without proper tools.
"Thought of something?" Landar said, seeing the twitch under his eye.
"Yes," Cato sighed, "I never quite thought of it that way, but perhaps magic doesn't conserve energy. "
He started to work backwards across the equations, starting from what he knew about magical power and the steam engine, and meeting in the middle where the equation would have existed. The same error popped up of course.
That equation was a description of the first law. But if that equation didn't hold, then... then the only thing preventing the Ironworkers from generating free energy was the fact that their steam engine was rather inefficient. Atmospheric engines tended to be that way, but neither Cato nor the Ironworkers wanted to risk using high pressure boilers without sufficient hardened steel. They were building one, carefully in an isolated site far away from Minmay city, but the last Cato had heard, they were still trying to get it to work.
Free energy was tempting but Cato had better make sure it was really free before he started to abuse it. After all, if one didn't know where oil came from, fossil fuels were like free energy until they ran out. He didn't want the world to 'run out' of magic. For that matter, the same thing applied to his hole in the ground.
Hm, by Noether's theorems, the first law of thermodynamics was related to the time symmetry of the system. So either the system was open and energy was coming from somewhere else he hadn't considered, or magic really contained a non-time reversible process. Well, if he could find a non-time reversible process, then that answered the question.
"Excellent, I have another test for them to perform now," Cato grinned, "or at least, once they have a high pressure boiler efficient enough to actually generate infinite energy. "

[Artman77]

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[Glass Mouse]

Status for the week June 6 - June 12!


Glass Mouse did not upload anything.

Lycunadari passes with 429 words of elf story, and seven rainy day photos.

LeSwordfish passes with 1318 words of Episodes review, and 742 words of Overwatch review.

jseah passes with 2861 words for Hero's War.

Some Android passes with an impressive 50 anatomy studies.

Artman77 passes with crouching sketches, an action girl, a Spidey, a silver surfer, a portrait, and a wolf person.

Icewalker passes with 1506 words of Reliquary story.

Mahonri Violist is out due to disappearance.


Thus, Glass Mouse FAILS this round!

Lycunadari, LeSwordfish, Lycunadari, jseah, Some Android, Artman77, and Icewalker PASS this round!


Current standing:

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Glass Mouse
Current run: -
Longest run: 290 weeks
Themes: -

Lycunadari
Current run: 179 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

LeSwordfish
Current run: 1 week
Longest run: 24 weeks
Themes: -

jseah
Current Run: 18 weeks
Longest Run: 33 weeks
Themes: -

Some Android
Current run: 24 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

Artman77
Current run: 6 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Icewalker
Current run: 8 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Mahonri Violist
Current run: -
Longest run: 6 weeks
Themes: -

This week's theme (June 13 - 19), chosen by me, is On the run.

Next week's theme is chosen by LeSwordfish - let me know in PM or this thread, and I'll include it in the next status.

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I restarted writing today, and geez, it was like pulling teeth. I am really out of the habit. It took me almost an hour to get into any kind of groove, but I did end up with a full scene written. Next up: a theme-relevant part of the plot. I'm officially back in the game from this week onwards!

I used - and modified - a template for the basic site, took screenshots, and wrote and uploaded those 700 words. I think it's an edge case - if you call it as a "no" then thats fine - i've not got much of a streak to lose!

I don't really see a way to count it that totals six pieces. Looking at words, number of pages created, etc., all seem to turn up less, and frankly, when I'm turning every stone to find a way to pass someone, the spirit of the Challenge has not been met. Gonna call that one a fail.

Good luck on your Masters applications, though! I hope you get accepted at all the good places!

[LeSwordfish]

I don't really see a way to count it that totals six pieces. Looking at words, number of pages created, etc., all seem to turn up less, and frankly, when I'm turning every stone to find a way to pass someone, the spirit of the Challenge has not been met. Gonna call that one a fail.

Good luck on your Masters applications, though! I hope you get accepted at all the good places!

Thats fair enough - sounds like a good way of adjudicating. And thanks - I turned down a high-paying job to study game design, so I really hope I get accepted too!

For next week's theme... is one allowed to choose a theme that is nakedly relevant to their own plans for the week? I choose Fixing.

Meanwhile, for the first few days worth of this week, I continued with my Overwatch article. It was 742 words last week, its now 1355 words, for 613 words this week.

Spoiler

Show

Things I have done in overwatch
• Divebombed a crowded point, hit the detonators, and immediately found myself snared. All I could do was watch as my own mech exploded, killing me, along with half the enemy team.
Overwatch is a class-based multiplayer shooter, distinguished by the diversity of the powers the classes can call upon. D.Va is a teenage youtuber in a giant pink mech, and her most powerful ability ejects from the mech and detonates it for massive damage over a large area. If you’re quick, you can take out entire teams and dive into cover to survive. I am not quick: I never survive.
• Teamed up with a turret and a medic to throw up a slow, desperate defence of the point. When my shield dropped, I charged forward and started breaking heads with a twelve-foot hammer, trusting in the medic to keep me alive to get back to the turret and start defending.
My favourite class at the moment is Reinhardt, who carries no ranged weapons, but a massive hammer and an energy shield large enough to protect other players. The shield can only take so much damage before collapsing, and then there’s a few seconds before it begins to slowly recharge, leading to electrically tense moments, standing with one’s defences lowered as the incoming fire starts to thicken, trying to see how far the shield can recharge before whoever you’re defending takes serious damage and you’re forced to bring it up again.
The best round i've ever had, I was pocketed by a Mercy (Overwatch’s seraphic healer) for most of the time, giving me an extra tactic to use - when my shield broke, charge! Even if i didn't hit anything it was tremendous - it broke up an enemy assault beautifully, allowing the turret and it’s owner to murder several of them. I died within seconds, of course - only for mercy to hit her Ultimate ability and return me to life in the middle of them, with full shield. At that time, there was very little they could do - still under turret fire - to prevent me retreating back to our little turret nook and setting up again. It was some of the most fun i've had in a game in ages.
• Punted three players off the top of a building, and then tried to figure out how to taunt. Later, this was Play of The Game, and everyone saw me stand still for ten seconds before shouting “Need healing!” instead.
Play Of The Game shows a replay of the “most impressive” thing that happened in any particular round. Sometimes that’s a great push or killstreak, but whatever algorithms are used seem to misfire on occasion – I’ve seen Play Of The Game earned for a single mid-range shot, or, commonly, for a turret automatically cutting down a couple of charging enemies, while the player getting the credit sat around with his thumb up his arse. Determining which events are “Plays Of The Game” sounds like a fascinating puzzle to solve, so maybe expect a separate post on that soon.
• Played D.Va as a rocket-powered scout, leaping over rooftops to drop into groups of enemies, scatterguns blazing. Her guns are short-ranged but devastating, so it’s a good way to break up enemy pushes and take out key opponents: then hit the jump jets and fly away before the big guns turn round and start fighting back.
D.Va is classified as a Tank, which feels wrong to me: she’s a roamer, best used sweeping in from the side or behind. Her shield feels almost tacked-on in that regard: it can protect against individual devastating attacks, or cover her in a dive across an open area, but doesn’t last long enough to cover a full-scale push. It also took me a while to get used to: one of the general issues I have with Overwatch is that some of the more sci-fi abilities - Zarya's gun, Symmetra's orbs, etc - are unintuitive, and its difficult to get an instinctive feel of how much damage they'll do, what shields they'll go through - as compared to, say, a minigun. I'm still not clear what the rules for Reinhardt's shields are, and i've no idea what i'm blocking with Defense Matrix.
Once her mech is killed, she’s speedy and fragile, and forced to hang back and take potshots to build her Ultimate to summon the mech again. I've started to be able to reliably land shots with her pistol, which makes her actually viable, but it’s a slightly jarring change of pace: the wildly different situations her and her mech are good in mean that I find I’m often killed before I can retreat to a safe distance.
• Used my “Sound Barrier” ultimate to boost my team’s shields, seconds before a rocket barrage: the extra shields saved us from the barrage, and we pushed forwards onto the point.
“Ultimates”, the most powerful abilities each character has, vary a lot. Some are truly game-changing (D.Va’s explosion, Mercy’s ability to resurrect her team) whereas some are fairly weak (Sound Barrier only lasts a few seconds, meaning it needs pitch-perfect timing and positioning.) Others are just boring – Mei and Tracer are both overstuffed with unique abilities, but their ultimates are simply high-powered grenades. Symmetra’s defining feature is her teleporter, and she’s forced to painstakingly charge her ultimate to build it, placing weedy little lasers and taking potshots with her pistols until it’s ready.
Lucio, who’s Sound Barrier I’m referring to, is tremendously fun: his general persona reminds me a little of Poochie (“I’m the kung fu hippie from gangster city”) but he throws out buffs in a wide area, making him a viable support even if you feel like blasting with his dubstep gun instead. I'm not great with his ludicrous wall-running yet, but i'm getting the hang of when to switch his abilities about - it's certainly not a case of "healing in combat, speed outside." When you're already well-protected - or simply more skilled - speed can allow your team a much greater ability to pick their battles. On less-co-ordinated teams, you can boost speed to reach a critical teammate, then boost health and use your E ability – a few seconds of mega-healing - to get them fighting again.
• Levelled up enough to open nearly thirty loot boxes, and not got a single legendary or animation for any class I play.
They put so much effort into making the characters distinctive, but a lot of it is lost in the Skins and Upgrades system. You can equip emotes to your character to taunt, laugh, dance, etc – but you can only get these from Loot Boxes, which are random. Want a better chance of a good emote? Best pay for more loot boxes. Irritating, the basic emotes are all dull and characterless – usually “standing proud” or something. Comparing Overwatch to Team Fortress 2 is gauche at this point, but next to the Pyro’s ululations or the medic’s glove-snap, the colourful DJ Lucio resting his gun on his shoulder is a real disappointment.
The “Legendary skins” one can unlock are also disappointing to me – so many are born of lazy design choices. There’s the strangely arbitrary (“eh, **** it. Lets make junkrat a clown and call it a day”), the barely different (Tracer in a slightly changed skintight outfit) and the Actually Kinda Racist (the Hispanic reaper becomes a Mariachi singer, the indian Symmetra gets a midriff-baring “indian goddess” outfit.) This same sense of lazy arbitrariness runs through the other unlockable animations too – Blizzard cheerfully changed one of Tracer’s victory poses because it wasn’t in keeping with her character, to a chorus of cries of “censorship” from people who don’t know what censorship is. Others are just as bad though – lazily “sexy” poses for the shy Symmetra, and three kinds of flexing for the musclebound Reinhardt: its easy to see that the controversial Tracer pose came from nothing more than a lack of imagination. This would be disappointing from any company or in any game, but when Overwatch normally shows such imaginative thinking? It’s downright shameful.

Am I right in thinking that I can count editing as a piece? I thought I remembered this before- one page for one "day" - but perhaps i'm mistaken. That article above is two "pages", so I was planning on editing it for a further two, and my Episodes review for the final two, and upload final versions of both by the weekend.

[Some Android]

Got my art up.

And in other news I somehow broke 50 again.

[LeSwordfish]

Turns out, I managed to edit about 400 words in anyway, and then wrote the start of a second post for another 600 and... look, quoted below is 2349 words, which is 1607 when you remove the 742 I had last week. It works out. Apologies for the dodgy formatting, but I assume nobody's truly reading what I write - and it'll all be up on my site as soon as i've taken (/stolen) some good images.

Spoiler

Show

Things I have done in overwatch
• Dived onto a crowded control point, hit the “self-destruct” button, and ejected. I landed directly in a bear trap, and all I could do was watch as my own mech exploded, killing me and half the enemy team.
Overwatch is a class-based multiplayer shooter, distinguished by the diversity of the abilities the classes use. It’s most often compared to Team Fortress 2, but that’s not quite right – here, the focus is on the special abilities each class has available, rather than their weaponry.
D.Va is a teenage youtuber in a giant pink mech, and her “Ultimate” – her rarest, most powerful ability- ejects from the mech and detonates it for massive damage over a large area. If you’re quick, you can take out entire teams and dive into cover to survive. I am not quick: I never survive.
• Teamed up with a turret and a medic to throw up a slow, desperate defence of the point. When my shield broke, I charged forward and started breaking heads with a twelve-foot hammer, trusting in the medic to keep me alive to get back to the turret and rekindle my shield.
My favourite class at the moment is Reinhardt, who carries no ranged weapons, but a massive hammer and an energy shield large enough to protect other players. The shield can only take so much damage before collapsing, and then there’s a few seconds before it begins to slowly recharge. It only charges when deactivated, leading to electrically tense moments: standing with one’s defences lowered as the incoming fire starts to thicken, trying to see how far the shield can build before whoever you’re protecting takes serious damage and you’re forced to activate it again.
The best round I’ve ever had, I was accompanied by Overwatch’s seraphic healer Mercy for most of the time, giving me an extra tactic to use - when my shield broke, charge! One of Reinhardt’s abilities is a head-down, rocket-powered charge that allows him to grab enemies and slam them into walls or off cliffs. Even if I didn't hit anything it was tremendous - it broke up an enemy assault beautifully, leaving them as easy prey for the turret for a few seconds. I died almost immediately, of course - only for Mercy to hit her Ultimate ability and return me to life in the midst of them, shield fully recharged. At that time, there was very little they could do - still under turret fire - to prevent me retreating back to our little turret nook and setting up again. It was some of the most fun i've had in a game in ages.
• Played D.Va as a jump-jet scout, leaping over rooftops to drop into groups of enemies, scatterguns blazing. Her guns are short-ranged but devastating, so it’s a good way to break up enemy pushes and take out key opponents: then hit the jump jets and fly away before the big guns turn round and start fighting back.
D.Va is classified as a Tank, which feels wrong to me: she’s a roamer, best used sweeping in from the side or above. Her shield – one of her secondary abilities - feels almost tacked-on in that regard: it can protect against individual devastating attacks, or cover her in a dive across an open area, but doesn’t last long enough to cover a full-scale push. It also took me a while to get used to: one of the general issues I have with Overwatch is that some of the more sci-fi abilities - Zarya's laser gun, Symmetra's orbs, etc - are weightless and unintuitive. It’s difficult to get an instinctive feel of how much damage they'll do and what shields they'll go through - as compared to, say, a minigun. I'm still not clear what the rules for Reinhardt's shields are, and i've no idea what i'm blocking with Defense Matrix. Friends have clarified for me: each different kind of shield seems to have its own quasi-arbitrary list of exceptions.
Once D.Va’s mech is killed, she’s speedy and fragile, and forced to hang back and take potshots until her Ultimate builds and she can summon the mech again. I've started to be able to reliably land shots with her pistol, which makes her actually viable in this state, but it’s a slightly jarring change of pace: the wildly different situations her and her mech are good in mean that I find I’m often killed before I can retreat to a safe distance. Some people are fantastic with her, though, swooping away from combat to ping away with the pistol until her mech is recharged, and then diving back in, never dying. I’m jealous, but confused: well over half the time the mech is destroyed, whoever killed it has followed up and murdered me within seconds.
• Used my “Sound Barrier” ultimate to boost my team’s shields, seconds before a rocket barrage: the extra shields saved us from the attack, and we pushed forwards onto the point.
“Ultimates”, the most powerful abilities each character has, vary a lot. Some are truly game-changing (D.Va’s explosion, Mercy’s ability to resurrect her team) whereas some are fairly weak (Sound Barrier only lasts a few seconds, meaning it needs pitch-perfect timing and positioning.) Others are just boring – Mei and Tracer are both overstuffed with unique abilities, but their Ultimates are simply high-powered grenades. Symmetra’s defining feature is her teleporter, and she’s forced to painstakingly charge her ultimate to build it, placing weedy little lasers and taking potshots with her pistols until it’s ready. (More on Symmetra in an upcoming post. I know, I’m excited too.)
Lucio, who’s Sound Barrier I’m referring to, is tremendously fun: his general persona reminds me a little of Poochie (“I’m the kung fu hippie from gangster city”) but he throws out buffs in a wide area, making him a viable support even if you feel like blasting with his dubstep gun instead. (Overwatch has gone to real efforts to include classes that are viable even for less skilled players - Winston and Symmetra don’t require you to aim, Soldier 76 doesn’t require you to play tactically, Torbjorn doesn’t require you to play at all, har har har.) I'm not great with his ludicrous wall-running yet, but i'm getting the hang of when to switch his abilities about - it's certainly not a case of "healing in combat, speed outside." When you're already well-protected - or simply more skilled - speed can allow your team a much greater ability to pick their battles. On less-co-ordinated teams, you can boost speed to reach a critical teammate, then switch to health and use the boost– a few seconds of mega-healing - to get them fighting again.
• Used Lucio’s sonic blast to punt three players off the top of a building, and then tried to figure out how to taunt. Later, this was Play of The Game, and everyone saw me stand still for ten seconds before shouting “Need healing!” instead.
Play Of The Game shows a replay of the “most impressive” thing that happened in any particular round. Sometimes that’s a great push or killstreak, but whatever algorithms are used seem to misfire on occasion – I’ve seen Play Of The Game earned for a single mid-range shot, or, commonly, for a turret automatically cutting down a couple of charging enemies, while the player getting the credit sat around with his thumb up his arse. Determining which events are “POTG” sounds like a fascinating puzzle to solve, so maybe expect a separate post on that soon.
They put so much effort into making the characters distinctive, but a lot of it is lost in the Loot Box system. You can equip emotes to your character to taunt, laugh, dance, etc – but you can only get these from Loot Boxes, which are random. Want a better chance of a good emote? Best pay for more loot boxes. Irritatingly, the basic emotes are all dull and characterless – usually “standing proud” or something. Comparing Overwatch to Team Fortress 2 is gauche at this point, but next to the Pyro’s ululations or the medic’s glove-snap, it’s a disappointment to see Lucio – colourful, characterful DJ Lucio – rest his gun on his shoulder and grin. That’s… just rubbish.
• Levelled up enough to open nearly thirty loot boxes, and not got a single legendary or animation for any class I play.
The “Legendary skins” one can unlock are also disappointing to me – so many are born of lazy design choices. There’s
o The strangely arbitrary (“eh, **** it. Lets make junkrat a clown and call it a day”, plus several characters who dress in traditional cultural dress of a seemingly randomly-picked culture),
o The barely different (Tracer in a slightly changed skintight outfit)
o And the Actually Fairly Racist (the Hispanic reaper becomes a Mariachi singer, the Indian Symmetra gets a midriff-baring “hindu goddess” outfit.)
This same sense of lazy arbitrariness runs through the other unlockable animations too – Blizzard cheerfully changed one of Tracer’s victory poses because it wasn’t in keeping with her character, to a chorus of cries of “censorship” from people who don’t know what censorship is. Others are just as bad though – lazily “sexy” poses for the shy Symmetra, and three kinds of flexing for the musclebound Reinhardt: its easy to see that the controversial Tracer pose came from nothing more than a lack of imagination. The Male Gaze is also clearly visible in many: it’s honestly surprising they considered the Tracer pose a problem at all. This would be disappointing from any company or in any game, but when Overwatch normally shows such imaginative thinking? It’s downright shameful.
Whoops, that was a grumpy note to end on, wasn’t it? In case it’s not clear from this post, I’m enjoying Overwatch a lot. If you want to join me in playing it sometime, I can be found at LeSwordfish#2954, and as always at @leswordfish on twitter.
To sign off, let me show you this fantastic overwatch music video by haveluckgoodfun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGrM...ature=youtu.be

To me, Symmetra has several big flaws in her design: big enough that i'm sure i'm missing something key about her:
Her defining feature - and best way of helping her team - is her ultimate. I'm not sure if there's any character who has so much riding on their ultimate.
Her teleporter is useful only at a few spots - early on Control Point maps, and when attacking.
In one of those times, she probably can't build the teleporter before the point is lost.
In the other, her other main ability - her turrets - are nearly useless.
That's a bit disingenuous maybe - you can certainly set them up around corners to block counter-pushes. However, she has to dedicate lots of time and energy to getting that set up - you can't play battle-symmetra in the same way you can play battle-engineer in tf2.
To cover an area with her turrets as effectively as Torbjorn, you need to put a lot of time and energy into it, while not doing much else. Torbjorn can set up a turret, and then move on to some actual fighting.
So if you don't mind, i'm going to spitball some ideas for improving her.
Firstly, her teleporter shouldn't be an Ult. Make it a super-slow recharge, fine, but let her throw up teleporters quickly and reliably. This alone should make her much more viable.
One could take that a step further, though. We've got a defensive builder - lets make her an offensive builder. Whether one combines this with the teleporter or not, I think she should get something similar to a Dispenser - perhaps it gives a temporary shield boost to players who move nearby it. It should be fairly quick and easy to set up - she follows behind big pushes, and throws out a dispenser. Players can retreat to it to get healed/shielded, and move back into the fight again - thus there's an automatic trade-off - do you put it nearby, where it's most useful? Or further away, where it's less likely to be hunted down? She could put the shield and teleporter in the same place so everyone gets shielded as they arrive, or could build it further away, so a single roaming D.Va can't take them both out. She can stay and defend the point, sure, but she's fairly feeble in a fight.
So, to go through the problems we suggested:
She's now useful without her ultimate.
Teleporter is still only useful at a few points. But, she's got the Dispenser for those times.
Early when defending CP maps, she can have the teleporter up immediately (and set up a good defensive position with it.)
When attacking, she provides an additional set of buffs to her team, and can keep building the teleporter again and again as the frontline moves.
This leaves her turrets. I'm going even further out on a limb here, but what if her turrets were her ultimate? Perhaps her Ult allows her to place, say, ten small turrets - less damage, slightly smaller range, but instant-build (they build as soon as they hit, firing at about the speed Zenyatta shoots) and about as much stamina. It's useful defensively - set up those turrets on or around the point very quickly - and offensively - cover an enemy defensive position with mini-turrets, and force them to waste time smashing them or take bee-sting damage. You can spread them around a wide area, or just plonk them all down in one point to create a small bubble of high damage. It synchs well with Zarya and Mei, balances out Lucio, and acts as a pretty good counter to Reinhardt in general.

So for the other two problems:
She needs to build her ultimate to do it, but she's actually playing and contributing all that time, and once that's done, covering a point/cart with turrets only takes her away from the fight for a few seconds.
This can be used on attack - just chuck them at an enemy's feet - or defense.

[Icewalker]

Assorted things this round! A little Reliquary (650 words) sent to Glass Mouse. A short (485 words) set in a setting not of my own creation, Partition City, a wonderful neon cyberpunk utopia made by one J. Dragon, a friend of mine. Then, a letter (340 words) for my dnd campaign (If you're in it, Seturou, Elendithas, Lyaera, and Dharmos, go away and don't read that thing! Though I don't think you all are on here.) That only totals to 1475, so here's another 100 words of an opening for a short story for which I have no idea yet what the plot actually is.

Spoiler: Partition City: Bioluminescent

Show

........Zeta wrapped her arms around the heavy branch, hugging her body to the trunk of the old tree. The ground was about fifteen feet below, a neat and aesthetically pleasing diamond of dirt surrounded by the smooth, clean polymer concrete of the sidewalk. She tilted her hips, reaching around to find another place to set her feet, gaining another couple of feet of height as she climbed. She settled into a fork between two heavy branches like it was a large comfortable chair, propping her legs up against the mossy wood. Faint pulses of pink and green, Lightspinners probably, were visible down the road. The light was hidden behind the canopy of leaves surrounding her, mottled patches of color sneaking between the cracks to play in patterns on the wooden trunk. Sometimes, mixing darkness with the colors made them all the more compelling. At least, she thought so.
........But the Bacchus Creed wanted light.
........Zeta took her Recombiner, a device of her own invention. “Sorry, old one. This will sting a bit,” she whispered to the tree, one hand on its rough bark. She pushed the spike of the Recombiner into the trunk, and set it to signal straight to her AR contact lenses. She mentally paused to appreciate the technology made available to researchers during the Day, giving a nod to Selene. Her art wouldn’t be the same without it.
........Leaning back into the crook of the tree, the colors began to wash into her vision. The science, the genetic cutting and recombining, was all automated: She had designed the device to handle all that by itself. The calculations and analysis were finished. Now she got to use her instincts.
........She got lost in the light.

Contentment. Burgundy. Suffusing. Blue light veins, no pain, but the prick of a prick who thinks she’s mother nature’s daughter, water, deep green and blue oceans the motions of waves and wind, turns the turbines, blows the leaves. Discord: redshift. Blue sinks pink color coordinate, too inordinate: blueshift, keep the chaos reap the payoff, greedy, genetic light graffiti, greens are underutilized, Kaede’s eyes, natural guise but glowing, Night Life nightlight never seen by Sommies, spiral of satisfaction with a stamping of Bacchus’ soul.

........Zeta blinked the color out of her eyes, confirming her design. The Recombiner began designing its viral vector, distributing the genetics into the tree. Within a week or so, some of the leaves would start displaying her pattern at night, a deep soft red shot through with a dissonant blue. The machine finished its work, and she detached it and began climbing down from the tree. She’d almost gotten rid of the blue, but keeping it had been the right choice, especially together with the touch of green she’d added back in. She smiled. A good night’s work. She looked forward to seeing it blossom in the spring.

Spoiler: The Prisons of Thieves, a letter

Show

........Why do you still insist on using your ridiculous code in your letters? Unweaving it every time is such a headache. I know Vazh’tulei agrees with me, and it prevents you from communicating with Khan Kular and with Tiras, when he was still with us. You should simply do as I do if you are concerned with security, and acquire messengers whose loyalty is guaranteed, and who you can ensure will never speak of the message after it is delivered. With your mind it would be no challenge to accomplish I am certain, and you said there were people nearby your lab, so you shouldn’t run out of bodies to send any time soon.
........But I digress. The latest experiments with the Flood have been progressing well: Your recommendations for taking a druid to apply its powers for flesh growth worked perfectly. The experiment is alive and stable, though feeding it now requires more blood than I can easily acquire from fish and sea life. I may have to once again tap into the city as a resource, and perhaps seek outside assistance in its supply. The druid I found has dried up as well, so I may be in the market for another, if you know of any local to Silver Wake that I could acquire.
........Khan Kular has been pursuing more artifacts, as per usual. He and Vazh’tulei have been digging into demonology and Crusade history of late, and I figured you might take an interest. Khan Kular has dug up some of Tiras’ old research from before he joined us, and our Gith colleague has of course been looking into the now lost advancements in inter-planar travel the Crusade developed. As you have some firsthand experience with Bloodgate Keys I’m sure your involvement in the project would be welcome, even though I know you haven’t collaborated on research with the rest of us in the Circle for some decades. They’ve even convinced me to send along some bodies to help. It’ll be just like old times.
-W

Spoiler: Welcome to the Future?

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Are we alone in the universe?
"Yep."
"What!? Just yes? That's one of the most significant, meaningful...most dramatic questions in human history? And all you have to say is yep!?"
"Yep."
"How can you be sure, anyway?"
She shrugged. "I dunno, I'm not a scientist. It's just common knowledge. There's some equation about alien life or something-"
"Drake's Equation?"
"Yeah something like that. Turns out it's a lot less likely for life to generate naturally than they thought or something."
"Wait, are you telling me that we've solved the mystery of life? The first spark of creation?"
"Yep."
"Stop doing that!"

[Glass Mouse]

For next week's theme... is one allowed to choose a theme that is nakedly relevant to their own plans for the week? I choose Fixing.

Isn't that what themes are for?

Am I right in thinking that I can count editing as a piece? I thought I remembered this before- one page for one "day" - but perhaps i'm mistaken. That article above is two "pages", so I was planning on editing it for a further two, and my Episodes review for the final two, and upload final versions of both by the weekend.

Sorry for the late answer, though it's kinda moot now. I don't remember if we ever settled on anything for editing, but it keeps coming up, so I'm fine with using something like a page, for a suitable definition of "page" (maybe x2 or x3 a regular writing piece?).

[jseah]

Before I forget, 1847 words for Hero's War.

Spoiler

Show

Landar lay face down on the fluffy feather stuffed cloth. Her body was on fire again.
A gentle hand stroked her hair down her back in a way much reminiscent of the same event one year ago. Only this time, she wasn't bitter.
Her mother sighed, "so, are you satisfied now?"
Landar hissed as her mother rubbed a raw spot on her legs. Winning still hurt just as much as losing.
Her mother sighed again, "if you were hurt, you should just have said so. " Her mother unveiled the bottle in her sleeve and dabbed at her wounds with a light cloth.
Landar winced, only partially in response to the stinging alcohol on the back of her ankle. She hadn't seen any medicine when she came in nor had she asked for it. But her mother seemed to know that she wouldn't say anything.
"I won, finally," Landar said.
"He won't count it as a real victory," Cato said, from the corner where he was sitting, "if you say he's concerned about power, a shield penetrating bolt certainly doesn't count. "
"Are you trying to help solve this or not?" her mother snapped at him.
Cato frowned, "I'm just pointing it out. "
Her mother shook her head. Cato shrugged.
"What are you talking about?" Landar asked, "isn't this the first time you've met?"
"He understands," her mother said, rubbing more alcohol on her ankle. Landar bit down a yelp.
"We're both trying to solve this misunderstanding with your father," Cato explained. Good, he knew that keeping things from her just made her annoyed.
But that made no sense. "What misunderstanding?" Landar demanded.
"You have this strange idea that your father is trying to make your life difficult," Cato said.
"It's not a strange idea," Landar snapped, turning her head to face him, "it's the truth. "
"Doesn't look that way to me," Cato said.
"Your father just isn't honest with himself,"


Cato scribbled another equation across the pages, trying to coerce the numbers into making sense. Some simplification and substitution later, he ended up with a positive number equals to zero. It didn't require calculating the number out of the constants to know something had gone wrong.
"Bah," Cato threw down his pen.
That caused Landar to look up and wiggle over from where she was lying down to peer at the sheets of algebra. She recoiled faster than a wound spring. "What happened?" she asked, putting away her algebra practice exercises.
"The Ironworkers sent me the results of the latest experiments on the steam engine," Cato explained, "lifting force, fuel consumption and temperature measurements. I've been trying to calculate the conversion rate between heat energy and magical energy and therefore the energy content of magic. And it's not making any sense. "
Landar raised an eyebrow, "so what went wrong?"
"Well, when I tried to factor in the back pressure the compressing magic exerted on the enchanted walls, then based on the heating value of magical power units, the equations get all messed up," Cato ran over the series of equations checking them for errors. But they were unlikely to happen after three separate calculations on different days with different starting points. And they all ended up in the same contradictory result.
Landar shrugged, "I'm still learning algebra, so I'm not even going to pretend to understand your thermodynamics. "
Well, he wouldn't expect any help from her anyway. Not yet.
Cato rolled over on the straw mat flooring. He had been skeptical of it at first, but the packed straw had been woven tightly and didn't have the same prickly feel. Plus, the mats were soft and warm, compared to wood or stone floors. It wasn't quite like a carpet but Cato supposed this was Inath's equivalent.
That was why Landar and him were lazing on the floor in one of the smaller buildings of the guest wing that had been allocated to them. The gentle rays of the sun shining past the doorway and gentle breezes going through the room would have lulled many people to sleep, the quiet chirping of birds in the garden accompanied by the bubbling of the artificial streams only added to the peaceful atmosphere. Cato could almost understand why the Iris were so crazy about these indoor gardens.
Cato was having none of it however. This last problem provoked by the Ironworkers' letter was causing him to almost tear his hair out. The peaceful environment had muted that to vague grumblings and lazily rolling back and forth on the floor.
"You know," Landar said after he threw away the fourth attempt, "from what I understand, these equations are the same as logical statements, yes? So if the equations don't work and you haven't made mistakes, then clearly the problem is in your assumptions. "
She put away her practice book and faced him directly.
"Yes, but which assumption is wrong? That's the key question," Cato said, "one of the equations here is wrong but I don't know which. "
"Anything you know based on experiment cannot be wrong," Landar pointed out, "that's what you wrote on empiricism. Are there any assumptions of yours that aren't based on experiment?"
"You mean, I can place as much confidence into my measured results as I have confidence in my experimental setup," Cato clarified, "but even taking it from that direction doesn't help. How do I know..."
He trailed off as he mentally examined all the equations again. There was one that he hadn't run an experiment on actually, he had inherited it from his high school textbooks after all. delta U equals Q plus W. It was just too hard to run an accurate calorimetry experiment without proper tools.
"Thought of something?" Landar said, seeing the twitch under his eye.
"Yes," Cato sighed, "I never quite thought of it that way, but perhaps magic doesn't conserve energy. "
He started to work backwards across the equations, starting from what he knew about magical power and the steam engine, and meeting in the middle where the equation would have existed. The same error popped up of course.
That equation was a description of the first law. But if that equation didn't hold, then... then the only thing preventing the Ironworkers from generating free energy was the fact that their steam engine was rather inefficient. Atmospheric engines tended to be that way, but neither Cato nor the Ironworkers wanted to risk using high pressure boilers without sufficient hardened steel. They were building one, carefully in an isolated site far away from Minmay city, but the last Cato had heard, they were still trying to get it to work.
Free energy was a tempting idea but Cato had better make sure it was really free before he started to abuse it. After all, if one didn't know where oil came from, fossil fuels were like free energy until they ran out. He didn't want the world to 'run out' of magic. For that matter, the same thing applied to his hole in the ground.
Hm, by Noether's theorems, the first law of thermodynamics was related to the time symmetry of the system. So either the system was open and energy was coming from somewhere else he hadn't considered, or magic really contained a non-time reversible process. Well, if he could find a non-time reversible process, then that answered the question.
"Excellent, I have another test for them to perform now," Cato grinned, "or at least, once they have a high pressure boiler efficient enough to actually generate infinite energy. "

The gardener looked out the rows of trees and sighed. The unnatural quietness of this experimental field made him uncomfortable. He scratched his head and sighed again before heading out.
The compost he added to the roots of each of the bushes wafted their pungent smell but that was not what was bothering him. The jagged leaves of the bushes were hard and stiff, sticking out from the short central stem in a protective shell of sharp edges.
Leaves wouldn't cut through gloves though, so the group of kids moving their way down the lines reached through the leaves to pluck off the hard tiny globules wedged in the center of the plant. Part of the daily harvest.
It was these pearly droplets that the palace wanted. The gardener wondered it was for, the Queen hadn't said other than that this plant had been mentioned in some of the more obscure and older stories. It had been found from some unknown place and given to him to grow.
Maybe it was for a necklace but why would anyone want so many beads harvested every day was a mystery. Still, the kingly sum of rimes that was his budget bought a very precise number of questions. Zero.

Vorril grunted as he examined the crate of oblong droplets. The magical signature was weak but definitely noticeable when gathered into a large quantity. The milky white balls had been mentioned as mana drops in the ancient recovered texts. Some kind of failed Tsarian experiment to gather natural magic. Vorril hadn't seen how the plant had been a failure but he supposed that such a tiny amount of magic must be a pittance for the Tsar.
It had been a good idea to send out those parties to look for the plant. Finding it growing in the conservatory in an ancient Tsarian ruin was only possible due to the meticulousness of Flowers of Arcia. That party might not be the very best at combat but they wouldn't miss even the tiniest clue. And they were still good enough to take care of themselves. To be frank, they would have done a better job than the Hero at finding the Sword. And not get pulled into slave rebellions.
Amarante was getting rather insufferable though, now that one of her stories had turned out to be useful. Sure, the story had correctly placed the ruin at the Tevan Volcano in zombie territory past the Passage of Kirita. Sure, it was even correct that the plant was magical. But Vorril would rather eat his own sword than admit her stories had done some good.
All the other stories that had send River of Light and Vesant Ball on wild dangerous chases deep in hostile territory weren't mentioned.
Still, they now had a source of magic. Mana crystals were well and good but they were a small and limited resource. This bush wasn't.
Vorril let the handful of pearls fall through his fingers, a grim smile on his face. Magic circles, spell cannons, bowguns and those guns Morey was making. The military applications of these devices were endless and Vorril was quite sure the Academy alchemists could come up with some new ideas.
It was long past time the Order of Knights got their own toys.

[Artman77]

art on tumblr.

[Glass Mouse]

Status for the week June 13 - June 19!


Glass Mouse passes with 1556 words of witch story.

Lycunadari passes with six pretty flower photos.

LeSwordfish passes with 1607 words of Overwatch review.

jseah passes with 1847 words of Hero's War.

Some Android passes with 50ish anatomy studies.

Artman77 passes with three colour practises, and three rpg sketches.

Icewalker passes with 650 words of Reliquary, 485 words of short story, 340 words of DnD campaign letter, and 100 words of short story drabble.


Thus, no oneFAILS this round!

Glass Mouse, Lycunadari, LeSwordfish, Lycunadari, jseah, Some Android, Artman77, and Icewalker PASS this round!


Current standing:

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Glass Mouse
Current run: 1 week
Longest run: 290 weeks
Themes: -

Lycunadari
Current run: 180 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

LeSwordfish
Current run: 2 weeks
Longest run: 24 weeks
Themes: -

jseah
Current Run: 19 weeks
Longest Run: 33 weeks
Themes: -

Some Android
Current run: 25 weeks
Longest run: -
Themes: -

Artman77
Current run: 7 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

Icewalker
Current run: 9 weeks
Longest run: 13 weeks
Themes: -

This week's theme (June 20 - 26), chosen by LeSwordfish, is Fixing.

Next week's theme is chosen by jseah - let me know in PM or this thread, and I'll include it in the next status.

[Icewalker]

Welcome back Glass Mouse! Time to keep writing forever!

[Glass Mouse]

Welcome back Glass Mouse! Time to keep writing forever!

Thanks! Feels good to be back in the saddle! I barely huddled by last week, but writing is starting to feel like less of a struggle already, yay.

[Artman77]

I would like to volunteer my services for a 25 week badge/2D artwork. Which, coincidentally, means that SomeAndroid qualifies! (of course he would, why wouldn't he?)

[Glass Mouse]

I would like to volunteer my services for a 25 week badge/2D artwork. Which, coincidentally, means that SomeAndroid qualifies! (of course he would, why wouldn't he?)

Oh that's awesome! As in, you'll do a single badge that people can then claim, or a personalized badge every time someone passes 25?