Kobold King

And where Obliteration reads Bible stories to kids in Sunday School?

And is a woman, apparently.

So... Cody taught you spanish?

Way more than my employer would prefer. I spend a lot of time on my computer, and I pretty much always have the 17th Shard open in a tab somewhere. The Aztecs are simultaneously my favorite because they invented cocoa, and my least favorite because of the whole human sacrifice thing. But I nevertheless found myself cheering them on in the history books where they're up against Cortes; they may have been a twisted, corrupted excuse for a civilization, but the conquistadors were a bunch of slontzes and I'd of liked for them to lose a round against the natives they were exterminating. Actually, can I put down a new least favorite? The Tlaxcalan people, because they allied with Cortes to bring down the Aztecs. They basically made a deal with a devil to bring down another devil, and they helped the conquistadors get a foothold in Mesoamerica where they proceeded to enslave and pillage all the native peoples. Thanks a lot, Tlaxcalans. Isn't it implied that any thread I start is the property of the Reckoners RPG? We're like a cult. We have no personal property; it all belongs to the insane community we joined. I think pandas are fascinating and adorable creatures, but I fear their overspecialization may ultimately result in their extinction. Historically an animal that depends on a single food source is on precarious footing as a species, and when you couple their limited diet with habitat loss and the illegal poaching industry, I fear there may not be any left for my grandchildren to see. This might seem blasphemous to some, but I haven't eaten cereal in years. I seem to remember putting the cereal in first when I did eat it, though. Yes, actually. I ultimately concluded that even if this is the case, our souls will still be real even if our bodies never have been. But who knows? Maybe all the Aztecs and conquistadors and holocausts in our history will make this entity's dream so terrible, we'll be a nightmare that he or she will never forget. Through traumatizing an innocent demigod we will have attained immortality.

You say we "know the drill," but I don't think I do. What is this drill of which you speak, and is it available at my local Home Depot?

You should do it. That's what we of the Reckoners RPG started doing, and we've gotten excellent results out of it.

... Yeesh. They should call you TwiLyght the Hammer, because your logic is heavy, swift, and unstoppable. You're absolutely right--while I have a tendency to chalk up biases to Unreliable Narrators, there's a lot of objective evidence that J. K. Rowling sees Slytherin as inherently evil and Gryffindor as the best House. Which raises the question: is J. K. Rowling wrong in her assessment, or are we attempting to justify the existence of a House that actively corrupts the youth? Does Slytherin actually possess the admirable characteristics some fans have assigned to it, or did Ms. Rowling conceive of it as a House that has encouraged the nastiest of attitudes since its very beginning? I guess what I'm trying to say is: Slytherins as people aren't inherently bad, but is the Slytherin House an organization that deliberately fosters thugs and racists? Or is it merely an unfortunate coincidence that we as the readers see the House only in its darkest hour, with J. K. Rowling describing it accordingly?

How is that a bad day? You sound like you have the coolest teacher in the history of teachers.

Perhaps this is wrong of me... but when authors who aren't Brandon Sanderson release out-of-narrative information, I refuse to accept it as canon unless it fits with my headcanon.

I think that's just because most of the characters are young, intensely loyalist Gryffindors, and thus see their House as the best. It's the same basic principle as kids declaring their sports team the best, or happy schoolchildren declaring that their school is the best there's ever been. The more childish tendencies of the protagonists color the worldview of the books. The books are also set at a time in wizarding history during which Slytherin House is facing an influx of pureblood fanatics, whose values are twisted but align with the harsher aspects of the House. The representatives of Slytherin we're shown reflect this. It's not necessarily indicative of what the House is under its best qualities; for comparison, imagine taking a random sampling of Christians from the Middle Ages and getting a bunch of Spanish Inquisitors. Christianity isn't predicated upon burning heretics at the stake, but looking at the world of medieval Europe you might very well get the idea that Christians were an inherently "evil" group. By the way, I'm totally imagining Starlight Glimmer as a Hufflepuff with a Slytherin Secondary now.

SWEET CELESTIA I'd never heard "Galaxies" before now, but it's my new favorite song now. :D EDIT: Darn, forgot to ask a question again. Um, who is best pony?

I'm still looking for a good interactive star map, if anyone wants to be a knight in shining armor and link me to one. But why would evil aliens destroy landmark buildings of Spokane? Unless... space taxes. Space taxes are the only possible motivation for such atrocities.

Double post because I'm excited, just can't hide it, yada yada yada. I've finally started assigning some of the fictional planets I've created to real-world stars, and SolStation.com has been a godsend. It's packed with easily usable tables that describe all the sun-like stars in order of their proximity to Earth, and gives metric tons of information about them. Their size, known planets in orbit around them, their brightness, their metallicity... this site is a sci-fi worldbuilder's dream come true. I'm the only person I know who gets excited about this sort of thing, but I thought I'd share regardless. See Twi? I have obscure worldbuilding-related interests too. Now if we can find a way to combine historical Spokane with alien planets, we can create the ultimate factually sound novel.

No, that's not sulfuric acid rain. It's liquid love. You'll be quite happy in it, I'm sure.

This is the Question. The ultimate Question. I have waited my whole life for this Question. The Answer is simple: It is if you want it to be.

You know, I don't think we ever decided what would happen if Lightwards tried to animate one of Big Al's McMuffins. Can it be a shamrock-green cowboy hat, somehow?

"Master of Burgers" he is, then. Now we just need to let him animate a burger in the actual RP, so Sam can realistically come up with it and start calling him that. Also, am I the only one who kind of wants to see a fight between Edgerunner and a cow-riding, gun-toting Lightwards?

Yes. What's your favorite movie? What's your favorite book? Do you like dinosaurs? If you were locked in a grocery store with a velociraptor for one whole night, how would you survive?

Motion to make this Lightwards' new fanon nickname?

That was awesome in every possible way. I hope you don't mind, but I wrote a quick sequel to show that Autumn shouldn't have been quite as confident as she was.

The redheaded vanilla turned away, striding down the hall and disappearing into the shadows. In her place came new guards, new lives to be bent before the Emperor of Light. A heavyset guard unchained his chair from the wall and began wheeling him down the corridors. He was moving again! The Empire was on wheels, and he was moving once more. This was only the first step before total conquest of the planet! They continued to roll him down the halls and towards his cell, him laughing all the while. One of them finally became fed up enough to snap at him--"Would you just shut up, your majesty? You've got nothing to laugh at." "Oh, but I do," Lightwards whispered softly, "Oh I have so much to laugh at! Because I cannot be contained!" "Yes, you rather can," the guard sighed. Lightwards only giggled in response, eyes flitting down the man's uniform. "I cannot be contained," he pressed, barely constraining his mirth, "because you're sloppy! You're all so sloppy!" "Now you're sounding like Arsenal," the guard grumbled. They stopped outside his cell, one guard opening the door while the other bent to unshackle the chained emperor. "Don't try anything funny," the guard growled. "You've got no weapons or anywhere to go. You try to escape, we'll put a few rounds in that wacko brain of yours and toss you in the cell anyway." "Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," Lightwards crooned. But the moment his right hand was released, he seized his opportunity. His hand shot out, clutching the guard on the pants leg. The guard immediately stiffened, pulling out his gun and pressing it to the emperor's head. As if a bullet could kill him! Ha! "I'm warning you," the soldier growled, thoroughly annoyed now. "Let go of my pants or you will be terminated." "You ate in uniform," Lightwards giggled quietly. Then louder, in a frenzied laugh that echoed through the entire chamber. "YOU ATE IN UNIFORM!" "For Calamity's sake!" the guard snapped, pressing the gun deeper into THE EMPEROR OF LIGHT'S forehead. He looked awkwardly at the other guard, who was giving him a look of disapproval that suggested eating in uniform was frowned upon in the city. "What are you, my mother? I had a burger on the job. I've gotta have something in my stomach if I'm gonna deal with these clowns all day." He gave Lightwards an icy glare. "Don't know what you care about it, but you'd best let go and stop scolding me before I--" "I CARE," Lightwards suddenly shrieked, "BECAUSE I, DEAR CHILD, AM THE MASTER OF BURGERS!" "Let go of me, you crazy--" A crescendo of beautiful sounds erupted through the chamber. A gunshot, spraying Lightwards' beautiful face all over the stone wall. The scream of a startled soldier, falling backwards as an enormous weight crushed his leg. And the moo of a beautiful new Warrior of Light springing into being, animated from the tiny, imperceptible streak of grease on the guard's pant leg. Emma Runes groaned, rolling over in bed to clutch at the radio blaring beside her. "What is it?" she asked groggily. "I'm trying to get my beauty sleep." "We need you at town central!" Arsenal's voice raged over the crackle of static. "We have an emergency!" "I'm on it," Emma yawned. "What's the details?" "Lightwards," Arsenal growled dangerously, "has escaped." That made Emma sit up in bed, now thoroughly surprised. "What? You mean the kooky dinosaur guy? I thought we had him locked up!" "We did. Now, however, he's rampaging down the street on the back of a cow, spraying an AK-47 everywhere because YOU'RE NOT HERE TO STOP HIM." "I'll be there right away," she promised seriously. "Over and out." She sprung from bed, now fully awake as she threw on her clothes and headed for the door. It's gonna be one of those days, I can tell.

Those definitely seem to work... ...though I'm inclined to ask why the giant wolf in the Dark Souls video is swinging a Shardblade around.

What can I say? I made him in need of a lot of psychological help.

* cough, the Financier, the Panda, multipledeaths!Lightwards... *