Volos: Meeting the Storyteller

The Trilling Stone: The large rock at the center of Ellomyr that would sometimes let out a loud vibrating sound.

Upon arrival in Ellomyr, it was the first place that I decided to look in my search. It would be the most obvious place-a thing that had been looked at by many others before me. Nonetheless, it was the best starting point that I had.

I looked at the floating stone carefully. I tried to analyze if I could determine the source of its floating energy-or if I could sense anything about it's sound. It did not sing while I stood in observation, but I hope that in my stay in Ellomyr it might do so at a time that I can observe. I want to know if the sound originates in another dimension-someplace that I can get to that most others can't. After all, movement between worlds is my specialty.

Volos: Introduction (an Exiled Nano who Steps Into the Outside)

Iadace, stranger.

In my journey to Ellomyr, I met a man named Aravind. He could tell that I was running, and he asked if I was running towards something or away from something. The answer, of course, is both.

I am running from many different things. In my old life, I had ties to some disreputable folks-namely the Convergence. I'm not proud of it. But I tried to turn over a new leaf...when the people of the town I was staying in found out my past and set the constables on me. So, I'm a bit hunted by the lawmen of Draolis, and a lot hunted by former Convergence members.

On the way out of service to the Convergence, I borrowed some of their books-among them an ancient record that they were still working to decipher. I deciphered it-well, some of it, and it has led me here, to Ellomyr. From the looks of it, I am not the only one looking to uncover the secrets that await here. So I have to run if I want to find them first.

I am not dead, Nor am I dying

Rather than spending a lot of time talking about health problems, being temporarily displaced from my house for several months, computer problems, depression, it pouring when it rains, or anything else, I'm just going to say it simply: I am not dead, nor am I dying.


With that, I'm going to jump right back into this update.

Announcement: Sufficiently Advanced Dragons

This will not be the real final cover.

Sufficiently Advanced Dragons

In talking to people, I decided that the idea I liked the most of the ones I'd proposed in my last update was the "Sufficiently Advanced Magic" one. So, I'm starting work on the book which I am tentatively titling "Sufficiently Advanced Dragons."

I'll be attempting to jumpstart a lot of it through Camp NaNoWriMo. You can follow the effort here: http://campnanowrimo.org/campers/goal-entertainment/projects/sufficiently-advanced-dragons

That said, I've never been very successful at Camp NaNoWriMo, and I am not sure how much time I'll be able to focus on novel writing.

Dragons...in SPACE!?

Credit to Lori Howe

I've been talking lately with fellow writer and publishing partner (I'm not really sure if that's the proper term.), Kit Bradley, about preawareness and some thoughts on what I'd like to write next. (Don't worry, I'm not abandoning Heroism and Other Lies, although there will be at least a gap after the end of season 1.)

Preawareness

Property of 20th Century Fox

If you check out Kit's blog, preawareness is a topic that comes up there a fair bit. The simple idea is that people are more likely to buy a product if there is something about it that they are familiar with-particularly if that thing is a prominent element of the thing that people are buying.

Maps and Minis

I read a lot of webcomics. One of them is called "Up to 4 Players" and is about a group of tabletop gamers. Their current series focuses on a campaign playing Savage Worlds.

With today's post, their blog entry that accompanied the comic talked about tabletop maps and use of minis. It's an issue that I've considered for a while, with differing thoughts on it. Here's the part that stood out to me:

"The group is using an erasable play mat (I personally use this one, from Paizo), with some meeple-like things to indicate who’s who. That’s not very high-tech, but that’s intentional – I find that if I use maps of specific settings or miniatures of specific creatures, the players’ imagination is fixed on these forms and go back to them even if I say “this orc-like mini represents the one-armed bandit”. If there’s no mini, but just a red token, their brains know it’s a representation of something, not an example of it, and so they can imagine whatever it needs to be."

Episode 109: The Champions Eight

The Toybox crew come out of the shadowpaths and explore a mysterious facility. In doing so, they find an extremely powerful entity built by the ancients. Is it a force for good, or a threat?

What follows is an account of the events during a session of my Toybox Campaign. This summary is written out in a prose format which may, for the sake of telling a story to a wider audience, take liberties with the events.