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Kasimir

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  1. Kasimir
    I hereby apologise to those who don't play Sanderson Elimination. As may or may not be obvious, I tend to RP a little more heavily than most, and the recent death of one of my characters depressed me, as I was really enjoying writing his RPs. Well, due to some recent life-related stress (which may or may not include NaNoWriMo), I found myself writing more, and Sonder popped in again. So here you go: a piece which categorically demonstrates that Kas is a few crayons short of a colouring-box, a few cans short of a six-pack, etcetera P.S. I don't claim any guilt for this, as Gamma pioneered this category first. Also, I am capable of crack, even if it occasionally turns serious. For the confused, a quick glance at my About Me page will list the key aspects of these characters.
  2. Kasimir
    I think I would prefer to keep converted levels small, for the reason that converts can easily overwhelm a game, so it seems to me that while a doc-breaking thing might be appropriate in an MR or larger, it is a bad idea in a QF. Consequently, I would prefer not to give them a choice, or really, to simply not involve a doc, as the doc still gives Evil the advantage I've worried about: notice that your suggestion still involves the broken mechanic by default. I would also prefer not to simply convert the Sergeant into a Seeker; the whole point of the set-up is to create one in which inactives play a different kind of role for the Crew instead of being the usual pain in the pula they tend to be. It is, you might or might not have noticed, an adaptation of Joe's puppet-master idea. I am generally against the use of PMs because I think they just detract from thread-discussion, so I'm more interested in innovating in directions that don't just involve reprising the same few standard roles over and over again. (I have many games that build off the Seeker-PM-Protection-Vigilante set-up. I would prefer to be able to use the flavour to push the game and roles in directions that you don't normally get rather than to instantiate the same game and roles within a different setting.)
  3. Kasimir
    At one point, he did it in conjunction with Guy Gavriel Kay. I approve of the fact that one of my favourite authors helped edit the work of another of my favourite authors for publication. (This would be for the Silmarillion.)
  4. Kasimir
    There's a perfect word to describe what you're doing: akrasia Also, I am disappoint: Maili's GMing and you join? How's he gonna kill you now?
  5. Kasimir
    Apparently, it's worse for children, but that was years ago when I was in primary school, so the public health education might've changed in the intervening years. We definitely have both kinds here. It's more or less picking and choosing your poison. Especially if you're male, since compulsory military service is done near the jungle, so you got to get all your shots at once. Bright side is, everyone is suffering together, so if you're terrified of needles, well, try not to show it... Edit: Should note that the malaria shot itself is a recent development; I'm hearing rumours that they're looking into that to replace the pill after a serviceman died because of complications with the pill. Otherwise, you're just doing the usual tetanus-type stuff.
  6. Kasimir
    Try here. Got a mosquito bite? Oh oops, it could be malaria or dengue fever. If it's the latter, you could be dead. Congratulations and try not to be too worried! Mosquitoes are a major disease-spreading vector here, unfortunately. Even if you don't get dengue fever developing into dengue hemorrhagic fever, you're not out of the woods, because a second infection could complicate things and then you die of the second one. (For context, we actually have government officers whose job it is to go into people's houses and to make sure people aren't leaving breeding spaces for mosquitoes. That's how problematic dengue fever is.) Welcome to life in the tropics.
  7. Kasimir
    Eru knows, Fëanor would try even the patience of Elbereth
  8. Kasimir
    If Tigana will leave your heart in pieces, Lions will. It is my absolute favourite of GGK's books, but it will rip your heart into shreds and feed those to you, piece by piece. I would not like to recommend Lions over Powder Mage or vice versa as I enjoy both books, but in different ways. I will say this: if you can't give Lions the emotional engagement it deserves, save it for another time. It should not be missed, and it's one of those books that deserves your full attention. (GGK is one of my favourite writers, as is apparent...) Currently debating reading Looking For A Ship or Joseph Conrad's The Mirror of the Sea. Or even Levinson's book on the history of container shipping. Very non-fiction at the moment. (More horror-inducing: I still haven't read Shadows of Self because no time :/ )
  9. Kasimir
    Bother! I suppose I'll have to call Lúthien then (Although my favourite characters include Faramir, Samwise, and Eärendil...)
  10. Kasimir
    Haha, whoops. I've been looking up diagrams, myself, trying to find out how they work, but they're not very informative. It depends on the version of twist-lock, for one. They're more or less like clamps, rather than anything: so you have to align the holes at the corner of containers with the twist-lock and then clamp. This causes the knob of the twist-lock to 'twist'/turn about, so what you get is that the knob is *now* no longer perfectly aligned with the container hole. So now it's secured. I've seen one that involves just pulling and pushing on a protuding cable, and another which has a lever you need to shift from LOCKED position to UNLOCKED position. Similarly, I've also seen automatic ones, which have to somehow be disengaged by the use of a special wire tool--that one, I also have to do more research on. I actually have already plotted out this story, so I know what's going to go wrong anyway But in pure theoretical speculation: In theory, it's easier to stowaway, even given crew complicity, because cargo ship crews are small. But because the Captain (and company) bear liability for any stowaways and have to pay fines if they accidentally bring any in, you can imagine that if crew complicity is discovered, they'd be in big, big crem. Normally, stowaways simply try to hide in compartments of the ship (although sometimes they're smuggled in cargo containers, which instead requires foreman/longshoreman complicity, because the crew don't have the time to open containers and generally will not do so, so all you have is a list of what the container is 'Said To Contain'. So ships have had cases where they go out to sea, and only when they smell this huge stink, realise that someone's been living in a container for days/weeks.) In the compartments case, it's not always easy to avoid the people standing watch, but since there's more or less just two of them, and with longshoremen and everyone going up and down the ship, these things do happen. But for this reason, before heading off, most ships try to run a compartments search to get rid of stowaways: when you discover them when at sea, you're in trouble already. If you discover them and shoo them off at port, you're not liable to be fined. So you can see the clear incentive. With regard to cargo, possibly, I'd say. It's one of those things that already happens: improperly secured/stowed cargo causing more problems. And then again, the listing would only happen once cargo started slipping/tumbling, and lots of it, and that could already kill/be a problem. Of course, you'd have to deal with the fact that it's a good way for everyone to die, as well. And that I'm assuming that a lot of people would be checking on that cargo, particularly the moment listing happens, meaning someone would order a bunch of AB down to resecure...Seems to me to be one of those 'theoretically yes, but there's procedures and people who would have to fail for this to happen'-type cases.
  11. Kasimir
    I think I would prefer to keep this a QF. If I had to trade off against a sense of urgency (which 24 hours would generate more than 48 hours), I'd rather handwave flavour and permit an evil doc than go to an MR. The reason why I'm having qualms about the evil doc though is I'm actually wondering if evil docs unbalance things too much in QFs: in LGs or MRs, unrestricted comm on the evil side is fine, but I've noticed that the Village seems to have a lot of difficulty getting its act together otherwise... Well, here are some other considerations I'm dealing with: 1. Given no PMs and a typically (in my experience; if anyone has had a different game, feel free to point me there) low level of cooperation and discussion in QFs for the Crew, I am more inclined to also limit Eliminator communication, in order to ensure that their advantage does not cripple the Crew. While I'm happy to tweak the character limit, I do think that unlimited Eliminator conversation can be rather problematic in QF + no Crew communication circumstances. 2. I think the Sergeant is currently too strong as he is formulated. The reason being that if I allow him control of the Lor Pelek, then all he has to do is to just make the Lor Pelek vote for someone who doesn't have any votes on them. Boom. Insta-reveal. Yet I think the same goes for any role, really: because if I allow him control of role actions and votes, then a clever Sergeant would just play the same way they would with the Lor Pelek: it's a quick way of role-scanning that makes the Engineer redundant. So, there are several possibilities, IMO. They are not all mutually exclusive. A. Turn the Sergeant into the indirect role-scanner. Remove the Engineer's role-scanning ability and turn them into something else: perhaps a limited PM role, or enable them to scan for allegiance/actions taken. B. Allow the Sergeant to control votes only when the player's role is that of a Clone Trooper. Otherwise, he only controls abilities. (In addition, I think this would make it a bit riskier to just whip out those abilities, because if he vote-changes, it would immediately reveal a player as a Regular.) So the Sergeant could really mess around with the Lor Pelek's abilities, but not in a way that would reveal the Lor Pelek. He could, for instance, simply mandate that the Lor Pelek does nothing, or that they convert a known roleless who can then be lynched the next day. (The question, of course, arises as to whether the Sergeant can control the Eliminator kill. My temptation is to rule that since only one action can be sent in, if the Sergeant controls an Eliminator role and orders them to use an action, the killer cannot make the kill.) C. Simply make the Lor Pelek immune to the Sergeant's ability. I don't like this option as much because I think it still allows the Sergeant to role-scan too strongly by using the vote trick. Thoughts?
  12. Kasimir
    Jeskeri cultists? Asim hid his annoyance beneath the mask of a travel-weary courier, as he eavesdropped on the hushed conversations. The man, whatever his name was, had been killed in a brutal way, for certain, but all Asim could think about was how much more dangerous it was making his journey, being trapped in an inn with a group of bloodthirsty people, and another group of people running around like headless chickens. The people of Sycla, it seemed, were completely and utterly kayana, as the Dula would say, and he wasn’t opposed to wringing Gaelena’s neck for making him take the seldom-used pass to Teod, and then get on a creaky old ship from Teoras all the way down to Iald, and then by horse to this Duladel trading outpost in the mountains, at which point, he’d promptly gotten snowed-in. And trapped with a group of crazy, murdering maniacs. Not that Asim quite had anything against murderers; some of them were rather pleasant to work with, and if you wanted to get anywhere in the Imperial Seat these days, it was always wise to have a good assassin on your payroll. On the contrary, however, it was the principle of the matter: he preferred it when he was the one with the hand on the knife—or crossbow, as it were—and the idea of a group of people doing it with such excess—flaying, by the thousand Suns!—rather offended any principle of professionalism he might’ve possessed. In addition, he preferred to kill as a last resort. Disabling, Asim had found, was simply a better option: there were no inconvenient corpses to dispose of, and people asked less questions, which meant you didn’t wind up having to get rid of them as well. After all, his business was secrets: the more integral to a state, the better—his trade was spycraft, not execution, and if he could avoid leaving a trail of bodies behind him from Duladel all the way to the Imperial Seat, so much the better. At the moment, he was headed for the embassy in Duladel, which meant he was once again Asim the courier, delivering important messages from the embassy in Arelon. Most of those were encrypted, of course. One could not play the game without taking a certain pride in careful authenticity. The real information was buried among the pages of a book he was carrying with him, and decipherable only with reference to the appropriate pages. Still, the murders would be causing him considerable inconvenience. Asim shook his head at the folly of the world, went back into the inn, paid off the innkeeper with a handful of coins, grabbed his saddlebags, went down to the stable, slung them over his horse and mounted up. Katien was a shaggy mountain horse; a study breed, the sort they used to get around in the cold and ice in the highlands of the Rose Empire. He had been surprised—well, just a little—to find them available in this region as well, though he supposed it made sense. Considering the present company, he would take his chances with the snow. Just like in QF1, Asim the 'Courier' will not be playing I have a final exam to study for and a thesis that won't write itself, alas >> I'm sure you'll get on just fine without me. I would, however, like to be added to the spec doc.
  13. Kasimir
    Vode An Water drips from the sky. Everything about Haruun Kal is hostile; from the native Korunnai populace, to the Separatists occupying the only habitable city on the planet: Pelek Baw. Ahead of you, your brother curses and pulls out a long knife. With the tool, he begins hacking at the vines blocking your path. You long to remove your helmet, but it probably wouldn’t be any cooler without it. The torrid, lush jungle you can see through the lenses isn’t a welcoming place: it’s deadly. You’ve heard about it during the rushed indoc before you and your brothers were shipped here: Haruun Kal, the world where everything tries to kill you. More airborne pathogens that they’ve got innoculations for, and where a change in the prevailing winds during the winter can cause the heavier-than-air toxic gases from the cloudsea to swamp most of the highlands, killing all oxygen-breathing life in a matter of hours. The thakiz baw’kal, the Korunnai call it. You shrug and forge on, grimly. The Halleck was supposed to be on station in the Ventran system, ready for a VIP extraction from Haruun Kal. Things got hot fast, though, and General Windu called for support. Between the DSAFs and DOKAWs defending Haruun Kal airspace, your lander took too much fire, and you’ve crash-landed deep in the gas-saturated lowlands. Within hours, the notorious fungi of the Haruun Kal jungle has eaten away at the circuitry of your comms. Under the leadership of the acting I/C CT-017/258 or “Kas”, you will have to make your way across the hostile jungle, and to the rendezvous point in Pelek Baw, alive. Welcome to the 187th Legion, brother. And remember: Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur. In a bit of procrastination from thesis celebration at finishing my phil piracy paper, I've attempted to come up with a QF based around Star Wars. Would appreciate feedback and comments. Kas's Qualms:
  14. Kasimir
    W00t w00t, aced my history of piracy paper (even though I'm still not sure how the philosophy of piracy one turned out...) All the same, I'm definitely happy now Hail to the pirate king, people!
  15. Kasimir
    Just realised the final rusting link I needed to make my argument truly deadly... ...the day after paper submission. Really, brain?! Really? Haven't we been over this before?!
  16. Kasimir
    Love this idea. Well, let's see. Given my NaNoWriMo's been set on a container ship (of all things!), I'm current looking up things like cargo-handling procedures, which somehow ballooned into learning about twistlocks and the more automatic types and lashing rods. Some of the interesting things that never quite occurred to me: -Statistics say that about 90% of everything travels by ship. -Correct stowing of cargo is extremely important because improperly stowed cargo will lead to a list and the ship taking on water and possibly sinking once it gets into the open seas. -Twistlocks are really, really essential and generally have to be accounted for. -Cargo holding is generally the responsibility of the Chief Mate/First Officer, and seems to be more or less eyeballed; they have to keep going out and checking the draft and then using that to determine exactly how much cargo has been loaded. Draft also matters because if you load too much and the ship is too low in the water, you may have difficulty entering some ports. -Another reason why loading matters is that the more heavily you load a ship, the lower your freeboard is. (Freeboard = the distance between the upper deck and the water.) A low freeboard is problematic because it facilitates boarding by pirates. -In a number of accounts, there's often a bit of tension between the Deck and Engineering departments. -Typically, there are three Departments: Deck, Engineering, and Catering. On a merchant cargo ship, Catering's likely to be made of just 2-3 people. -Loading used to take up to about a week, but can now be done within 24 hours due to the use of machinery (cranes). Longshoremen are the people who do the loading, and the Chief Mate's often scuttling between the cargo holds and the foreman to make sure everything's done just right. More research required into exact procedures.
  17. Kasimir
    Thales Heron #7: Moraine Thales Heron #8: Annan Waters Thales Heron #9: ripae ulterioris amore Thales Heron #10: Many Waters
  18. Kasimir
    Quite frustrated. So that argument I spent 1.5 weeks working on and discovered it was flawed yesterday? Well, I had to cobble together a replacement argument and I think it's pretty much rust. Well done, Kas. Inb4 that paper comes back with a giant red C...
  19. Kasimir
    ...Just realised this argument I've been working on over the past few days doesn't work. The paper is due at midnight tonight, Stormfather help me... :/
  20. Kasimir
    Point taken, but I'll just clarify/add the typical 'Anglosphere' settings generally seem to bore me a bit. (So: America, Australia, UK...) Also, not the biggest fan of the superhero genre I more or less read Reckoners because it was by Sanderson, sorry! #shamelessKasisshameless
  21. Kasimir
    I have something quasi-blasphemous to admit The Reckoners RPG section does look pretty interesting, and I've considered it once or twice. But ultimately, for some reason, the setting just doesn't really appeal to me as much as some of Sanderson's other settings. Which is a pity, I suppose as I am that blasphemous person who spends most of Sanderson Elimination and HttFE RPing instead of killing people do find RP interesting. I don't really know how to articulate this, but I guess it's just that dystopian settings, particularly those in America, no matter how creative, don't really interest me. I'm kind of saturated by now. (I've been looking for more interesting ones, like Eastern Europe. There's a reason I enjoyed Dragonfall as well...) :/
  22. Kasimir
    But you're also glorying in it. That smirk...
  23. Kasimir
    What did it mean to receive your spikes? It meant dying; it meant lying spread-eagled on the obsidian platform, perfectly still, a martyr, as the spikes were pounded through you, as the Inquisitors watched serenely if you twitched and cried. Everyone did, they said, eventually. The first spike was the most painful of all: it was meant to prepare you for the true initiation. That would come later. It was like dying, a little, Koschei thought. The pain…the way the world receded and turned black and stars danced behind your eyes… He forced himself to meet the spike-heads protruding from Grim’s eyes with a disinterested attentiveness. Every fibre of his being screamed that he was dealing with a dangerous man; one, if he knew what Koschei was, would utterly obliterate him with about the thought one gave to swatting a fly. There was no sign Grim knew, he told himself. The man was an Inquisitor, but he was not a god. He could not read minds: if he’d survived as a bastard son of Zadeth Jerzy for years in the Steel Ministry, there was no reason Grim could tell. Still, he felt the nervousness; the tingling down his spine. Finally, Grim spoke; his voice rough and raspy, as if calculated to induce more fear. “You have been found wanting.” “Oh?” Abruptly, he found himself kneeling, flattened against the cavern floor by the raw, primal force of Grim’s Soothing. Grim moved, slowly. Koschei struggled to breathe, to flare copper, to counter the Soothe. Gravel pressed into his palms. He could not so much as twitch. Grim paced, languidly, around him; perfectly in control. “You see?” the Inquisitor whispered, in the cavernous darkness, his breath tickling Koschei’s ear. “Weak.” “If I am weak, then what am I doing here?” Koschei forced himself to demand. “Why did your Canton send me an invitation?” Grim did not blink. He could not, Koschei thought. Not with the spikes driven through his eyes. He felt the pain, once again, of the hemalurgic bronze spike pounded through his ribs. Finally, the Soothing let up. Koschei crawled, painfully, to his feet. He did not ask for help. He locked his trembling legs and ground his teeth together. Grim, he sensed, was the sort of creature to which showing any trace of weakness would be fatal. He shut off his copper and met Grim’s gaze again. “I’m still waiting,” he said. Almost laughed at his own boldness: was he tired of life? Perhaps. Perhaps he was tired of dying a little, each time they pounded a new spike through him. And perhaps he saw nothing to live for; not after he’d been torn away from the Canton of Finance, and with it, any hopes of alleviating the woes of House Jerzy. No. He didn’t believe that last part. As long as he lived and breathed, there was hope. The pain from the spike was a reminder of that. He clung on to it and fought, determined to find a way. Determined to survive. Eventually, Grim stated, “Mistakes happen. An Inquisitor was punished.” He eyed Koschei, his disdain clear, even despite his lack of expression. “We do not like to punish our own.” “You’re saying this was a mistake.” Grim nodded. “An invitation was meant for a Kendrick Erikell.” His lip curled. “Who is now a High Prelan in the Steel Ministry. The Canton of Finance is…displeased.” “And me?” Grim closed in on him and yanked. The spike ground against his ribs, and Koschei could not help screaming in pain. Grim laughed and licked his lips. “Weak,” he said, again. Koschei could almost feel it: metal slipping against bone, blood welling at the insertion site, until the spike gave way before Grim’s preternatural strength and came free. Grim licked a drop off blood off the slickened spike, casually. Koschei found himself kneeling, despite his promise not to; each breath coming out in a heavy gasp. “You?” Grim said. “You are an experiment.” His mouth twisted with distaste as he went on. “An experiment in inter-Canton cooperation. Why those pen-pushers felt you were so important, I’ll never know.” “What happens, then?” He was still bleeding; part of Koschei wondered if he shouldn’t staunch the wound. Sod it, he decided. He ripped off his shirt and started wadding it contain the bleeding. In a lightning-fast motion, Grim grabbed him by the shoulders; the other hand whipped around; Koschei saw something glittering in it. He barely had the time to scream as the spike slammed through his heart. Just like dying, Koschei thought, dimly, as the world faded to a ragged scream at the edges of his senses. He realised he was the one screaming; he wondered what the others would think. The others: he thought of Wyrm Heron, of Ashbringer Fadraux, of Kellam Lyre. Willed himself to say nothing. “You?” Grim said. “The Inquisition does not release its own. Not willingly.” He laughed, and licked the blood off his fingers, casually. “Like it or not, you’re ours now, and you’re going to do what we tell you.” Abruptly, Koschei realised the pain was fading; he was still breathing, somehow, still living, despite a spike rammed straight through his heart. Each heartbeat came; strong, and steady. The pain from the wound his ripped-out spike had caused was gone; his probing fingers found sealing flesh, as if the wound was several days old rather than freshly-inflicted. How? he wondered. He did not ask. Grim loomed over him. “Try not to die,” Grim said, dismissively. “Go back to the Ministry, tell them we didn’t want you. Eventually, we’ll speak again.” “You want me to be your spy?” Grim tapped the blunt head of the spike with a single finger. “This comes out, you die,” he said, bluntly. “I can kill you at any time I desire. Remember that. Go.” Koschei went. There was nothing more to be said. I wrote the above segment as a challenge to myself, and for when Gamma mentioned to me he'd let Koschei live in the write-up so I could recycle him in future, for which I thank him Just thought I'd post it, at the end of the game. Anyway. M'Hael, Great Lord, thank you for running this! Fellow Skaa, sorry for bailing :/ Exams went relatively okay; I acquitted myself later on, so that's fine. I def. had fun!
  24. Kasimir
    It's news that makes me feel really sad. I heard about it as I was preparing to hit the sack. At the same time, I want to carefully say it gives me a sense of perspective. I agree with the people who've been reminding us to keep perspective: what happened in Paris is horrible. It is a tragedy. And a similar tragedy went off in Beirut, with 40 killed and 200 injured. Another bomb went off in Thailand. I think it's just a reminder to myself: if I am to be horrified, to feel sympathy, it should not just be for Paris. If we consider this an attack on humanity, then there are very many attacks on humanity that happened on this same day. And they should all be causes for horror. Heart definitely goes out to those in these places and their families :/
  25. Kasimir
    Sorry man, I tend to be more cheeky when submitting my orders. As I hadn't planned on this being my public order, I forgot to sanitise this one! P.S. You're free to let me know what you're doing with Sofia Also, since I'm already making this post: I'm considering asking publicly as a rough overture, if we could talk about how we are planning to deal with the skaa rebellion as such, or at least, if we know who is contributing troops, since not everyone who has publicly declared may be contributing. I'll add that I'm not contributing for this Turn, as I don't have enough actions and need to get something else done first, but plan to do so next Turn.
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