Arcadia Est Imperare Orbi Universo

A fantastical weekend.

To LLL's for an afternoon BBQ Saturday.

Yesterday, it hit 91° in Tacoma, so Francine and I scrambled around looking of ways to keep cool.

Now I lived in Tucson for six years, and it frequently topped 100° in March. This didn't seem quite so bad since most every building has air-conditioning. Here, not so much.

At some point after church, Sunday became Geekday.

So we met up with singingbarista and her fiancé J and saw "The Expendables".

Here was Stallone's pitch for making this movie: "Remember the 80's? Let's do an action movie like we did back in the day. We'll totally take it over the top and add exploding heads, whaddaya say?"

It was gloriously terrible. I laughed. A lot.

Then we checked out the new location of our local comic book store. The new location seems much larger than the old - you could roller skate in there with no trouble. And it's air-conditioned.

Then off to our friendly local game store where I confess I bought issue 150 of KODT, which includes "Dawg: the RPG".

Today it looks to hit 90° again, so I'll be heading for the local Tulley's to write and look for work.

The Cruenti Dei land grab is over.

Additional players will be able to choose from the remaining open positions on a first-come, first-served basis.

The list of players will be posted tomorrow evening.

And yes, one Kiwi slid in just under the wire.

Day Two of the great Cruenti Dei land grab dawns!

We currently have enough players to fill roughly half the available positions, and we've yet to hear from any British or Kiwi contingents!

Let's get on the stick people! Queen and country! Tea and crumpets! Picts and Maori!

Both the rules and the maps are now available at the Sardarthion store.

Instructions for the Turn Zero land grab are also up. Postage being what it is, rules and maps aren't required for the land grab, though they may be helpful.

I'm happy to answer any questions anybody might have.

I'm also interested in knowing how many folks out there in LJ-land are going to play, or are at all interested in playing.

The rule book files have been uploaded to the printer.

I expect to have a proof copy in my hands by the end of the week. Once that occurs (barring any issues) the Rule book will be available for purchase.

The book weighs in at 170 pages and includes a campaign guide and gazetteer and numerous illustrations.

Of particular note are the illustrations by amphigori, an example of which you can find below.

We're in the home stretch, now. I'm waiting on two illustrations for the Rule Book. The maps are nearly done, and the stat sheets are falling into place.

I've started writing the Turn 0 Newsletter, which will be included in the Rules as well as being posted here in PDF when they're done.

As a bit of a treat, I've posted the Turn 0 Map, which shows which Realms own what. It will also give you an idea of the scale of the game.

http://www.sardarthion.com/cruentidei/1450.pdf

This, combined with the previously posted Description of initial player positions (http://www.sardarthion.com/cruentidei/Preview_2.pdf) will give you a pretty good idea of what the game looks like to start.

So tell your friends! We need to get this game full pretty quickly.

Watch this space for an announcement about the Position Lottery before Thanksgiving.

First, your meme of the day, courtesy of literary_equine :


Am-I-Dumb.com - Intelligence Test

That's 24 out of 25 correct. I wonder which question I got wrong?

We'll move on now to the geeky Church news portion of today's entertainment. Never mind Catholic / Orthodox rapprochement (a thousand years of schism can't be wrong!), it seems the Russians are upset with Constantinople (that's Istanbul, for you young Turks out there). I blame Estonia. If they'd only converted to Unitarianism, none of this would have happened.

And as I've long suspected, the Pope really is crazy like a fox. I won't bore you with his other chess moves (they're mostly liturgical), but for those who thought this would be a transitional Papacy, Benedict is increasingly making Pope John Paul II look like he was the transition.

And when did BBC stop capitalizing God?

On a more personal note, my schedule has really screwed up my praying of the Hours. I'm trying to fix that, but it's been a struggle.

Meanwhile, wedding plans are the chaos that wedding plans apparently always are. Still, we've finally got another planning session put together, so that's a good thing.

My plans for continued employment with Catholic schools in Tacoma is collapsing like a startled soufflé.

Plan A is proving a difficult sell - a month I've been on-and-off working on a presentation to the Principals and Pastors, and it only started coming together yesterday in any meaningful way. Trouble is, the plan only makes financial sense if you assume that the goal is to (eventually) open several more schools. It's rather difficult to get these folks to that view, when their paradigm is built on "can we afford to stay open for another year?"

The demographics support twelve or more schools where we currently have seven, but I don't think I can get them to look that far ahead.

Plan B is increasingly looking unlikely. The Archdiocese just hasn't budgeted for the position I'd fill.

Plan C involves sending out résumés. This, I started yesterday. Looks like Frank Russell is looking for a FrameMaker guru. Why not?

Oh, and my laptop finally died. There went my savings account.

Cruenti Dei continues to stumble on towards the starting line. I'm very pleased with amphigori's illustrations. I still haven't seen anything from badhairs , which doesn't surprise me given his life situation, nor from starkad67 , which is quite worrying.

I'm still trying to get up to speed on Campaign Cartographer 2 - I'm was hoping to have these maps done pretty quickly, but it's proving more difficult than I thought. I may have to go with hand-drawn maps. Not my first choice, but I'm trying to work to deadline, here.

I did get the Preview PDF put together, complete with a couple of illustrations and a silly little sketch map. amphigori's Wenemet sketch makes the whole thing worth downloading, though for the final masterpiece, you'll have to purchase the rulebook when it's available.

Speaking of which, the rulebook is pretty much done, except for the tables and the illustration inserts. So that's something.

Did I mention I've been really busy?

I've also not been sleeping very well for the last few weeks, something that I seem to share with a number of people on my friendslist. I suspect that R'lyeh may be poking its wee head above the waves. I've also been having quite the surreal nightmares. Interestingly, I've not been to Carcosa in a while.

TTFN!

In PDF!

Sketch map coming shortly. Well, in a couple of days or so.

I have two artists (you know who you are) that I'm very excited about for the new Cruenti Dei: Sahûl rule book and campaign guide.

If there's anybody else out there interested in doing 15th century woodcuts of Wombats with halberds, please let me know soonest.

Or parasaurolophus. Or really big bugs. Large Renassance-era battle or siege scenes are OK too.

Pay is minimal, sadly, though if I accept your pieces for publication in the rule book, you do play for free...

Not a good Monday yesterday. This, however, raised my spirits today.

Order from Amazon


Also - I'm looking for pen-and-ink artists for some interior work on a a project, so if you (or anyone you know) is interested in drawing some wombats or parasaurolophus or insects in 15th century garb or armour, let me know soonest. Pay will, frankly, suck.

It may suck slightly less, depending on your skill.


(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

There's a draft list of the Cruenti Dei initial openings here.

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

This is my first weekend since July 21, and I think I might actually be starting to relax.

I just posted the latest progress report to the Cruenti Dei forum. Work is humming along!

Today's plan is more work on CD, a nice long walk, some quick edits on a book project, cleaning up the kitchen, perhaps some weed-whacking in the front.

I think Francine might go grocery shopping.

Ah, the bucolic life!

Tomorrow, we've got to tackle some wedding projects. And laundry.

I'd like to share something I read recently:

In King Lear (III:vii) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely "First Servant." All the characters around him -- Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund -- have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it. His sword is out and pointed at his master's breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted. (C.S. Lewis, "The World's Last Night")

I've been ruminating over this for a couple of days now, and the idea appeals to me as a framing device for a story of this servant's life. Of course, if you buy the argument that Shakespeare was an underground Catholic, the life and death of the "First Servant" takes on a whole other light.

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)

Does anybody out there have a copy of the last full rule book for Cruenti Dei that I could borrow have?

(And I'm not asking about that CD: Kaldor disaster that was totally derailed by a pair of funerals last summer.)

I ask for no particular reason. I am almost certainly not going to start up a new campaign in the near future on the continent of Sahûl during the early renaissance in the Second Empire period.

Nope. Not me.

But if you've got a copy I could have, it would be extremely helpful, and I'd be grateful.

Startup and five Turns grateful.

Thanks.

(... and therefore I believe the President and Vice President of the United States must be impeached.)