The past few months of dealing with people in construction has taught me something I probably could’ve learned from my mother, if only I’d listened.

You know the biggest difference between the harrassed contractor guy who’s one serious injury away from bankruptcy and is struggling to make ends meet out of his van, and the contractors with a store-front who are building a substantial, resilient business?

The store-front guys aren’t doing their own books.

Nobody wants to do bookkeeping. Everyone knows that the value they can add is in their own trade. But the ones who have actually hired a single person to handle the books and the phone have taken the first critical step toward being able to do what they’re good at all the time. They don’t let payments slip. They pay their subcontractors on time. Most importantly from my perspective as a customer, they can price stuff out in detail so I can decide whether to use their services or not before we begin.

They don’t lose time because they just couldn’t get around to it.

Originally shared by Alex Scrivener

Bitters & Smoke Cocktail

1 oz. tequila

1 oz. Cynar

½ oz. Fernet Branca

½ oz. mezcal

Tools: barspoon, strainer

Glass: cocktail

Garnish: grapefruit peel

Add ingredients to a mixing glass and stir with ice to chill. Strain into a chilled glass; garnish.

http://imbibemagazine.com/bitters-smoke-cocktail///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

via John Salomon

if you ever expect to be marooned on a desert island, bring along a shaker of gin and vermouth, and an olive. The moment you’re shipwrecked, start mixing it up, and immediately 50 people will come down from the trees and tell you, that’s not the right way to mix a martini.

truth.

Originally shared by bogumil pierunek

La Turquie fait partie de l’histoire de l’Europe, il faut qu’elle devienne membre de l’UE au plus tôt pour contrer la folie des dirigeants de la Tatarie du Nord.

http://aujourdhuilaturquie.com/fr/rencontre-ue-turquie-laccord-tant-annonce-en-voie-de-finalisation///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

“oh that’s what I should do – write 19th century Parliamentary comedies.”

Shut up, stray thought.

this actually seems like positive publicity for vtech. I’d previously assumed their mchines weren’t sophisticated or reliable enough to hack!

Originally shared by Graham Cluley

VTech toymaker hacked – millions of families have their personal info exposed

Read more in my article on the Bitdefender blog:

http://www.hotforsecurity.com/blog/vtech-toymaker-hacked-millions-of-families-have-their-personal-info-exposed-13061.html

http://www.hotforsecurity.com/blog/vtech-toymaker-hacked-millions-of-families-have-their-personal-info-exposed-13061.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Einstein is said to have commented that imagination is greater than knowledge. I wondered today what a country would look like that took this dictum absolutely seriously and at face value.

Then I realised: it’s the US.

soul of Tiki, right here

It turns out Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter can make a really quite good Sazerac.

But they can’t make a Vieux Carre because no Benedictine. Sigh.

just seen a bunch of fucking mall walkers going around disneyworld, chins and elbows up.

Rather than go the typical route of class/race editions, where you hang your hat on being a Halfling Sewer Assassin or Dwarf Poisonmage or Elf Tree Idiot, the way one distinguishes oneself in [a race-as-class game] is to play the Best Damn Halfing Ever, The Most Memorable Dwarf We Ever Encountered, That One Elf Who Didn’t Suck, etc.

That’s why I love to read Jeff Rients.

Running a 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there game for my son. It took him exactly 2 minutes to figure out his character was a gelatinous cube.

Monkeys have broken into the Owners’ base. Also while he was asleep, plants grew everywhere. Now there’s a monkey monkeying around in the control room. He’s mostly worried about it releasing the Hunters (shoggoths).

Has killed 2 monkeys accidentally and one on purpose so far. Although I’m approximating all numbers to powers of 2 and trying to run alien measurements, I confess the Owners’ base has elevators that go ding just before the doors open. I figure you can have a totally alien environment or alien ways of interacting with it. The no hands thing is giving him trouble, even though most doors work on pressure switches.

Originally shared by Brendan S

People talking about (lack of) event and hangout integration in the new G+:

https://calendar.google.com/

Create (do stuff like add event name and time)

Checkbox “Add video call”

Add people by email (all G+ contacts are there and will autocomplete)

(I haven’t actually done an end to end test of this, but it looks like it will work.)

Note: not a value judgment in either direction regarding the new design decision, just a procedure that might be useful to people that want to get something done.

Originally shared by Chris P.

G+ *mass exodus/sky-falling preventative measures- relevant posts

How to return to classic mode on PC

https://plus.google.com/116391870388568555243/posts/KaKdVdtUheA

How to return to classic mode on Iphone or other mobile devices:

https://plus.google.com/116391870388568555243/posts/YtMU57R7qKq

An alternative within Google in case Events goes away.

https://plus.google.com/106896777766399569820/posts/6f8SV7utMhZ

Where to go to make new hangouts: https://hangouts.google.com/

I apologise for the politics, but I have a question I’d like your opinion on.

Let us assume for a moment that the recent terrorist attacks had some goal. What could it be?

It seems to me the Syrian civil war has been stalled for a while. In 2013 Obama pretty much promised to remove Assad, but has not done so (I am not blaming him, just setting up the question).

The attacks seem to be calculated to provoke as many Western countries as possible to get involved in the war. Those Western countries definitely don’t want to help ISIS but they also don’t want to leave Assad in power. Of the two, Assad is the easier target – if the goal is first to end the war that fuels terrorism, then taking Assad out is the obvious first step.

Iraq has shown that Western governments are indeed very effective at decapitating nation states, but much less effective at deracinating headless movements. ISIS, in fact, was produced by exactly these conditions.

So are the attacks actually a pretty smart way to get Western states to remove Assad?

Why am I wrong in thinking this?

(please don’t say “because they’re not that smart”)

Posting’s light because I’m in Cornwall. Which is looking pretty good for November!

Rainy as ever, mind.

This RPG about Rio street culture ca. 1889 looks so cool because:

1. it’s about malandros – mountebanks, pimps, trickster chancers in the mold of Top Cat, Cugel or GURPS Goblins – and in Rio those form a real, well-known cultural archetype with a history and a problem space to be explored, so there’s some chance it actually will be;

2. Rio at the turn of the century is really cool – at the forefront of technology with the first telephones and some of the first aeroplanes, but with reactionary nobles, a legendary demimonde and a jungle hinterland full of god-knows-what right next door;

3. it’s not lily fucking white Conans again;

it’s South America but not Aztecs or Incas again;

it’s the tail end of slavery and the shock of the new but not in the southern US again.

It’s an American frontier of gold-diggers and morality plays but not the old Western desert again.

4. the mula sem cabeca

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_Mule

and candomble (not your granddad’s voodoo)

and dolphin seducers

and jerk forest spirits

and apparently a bunch of alternate settings for the same bunch of ingredients

and art by Claytonian JP

Yeah it’s for Drama System but system doesn’t matter. Imma prolly run it in BRP.

And the kickstarter closes in 2 days.

Originally shared by Tom McGrenery

Other Borders by As If is now funded!

Next stretch goal: Gangs of Titan by Stras Acimovic

Then… Kingsport Shore by Steve Dempsey

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1690011586/malandros-tales-from-the-streets-of-old-rio//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Originally shared by Dan Thompson

Cute drawings of kids and their D&D monsters

My favorite was “M is for Mind-flayer”.

http://imgur.com/gallery/OhJm7//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

This is what I have for today.

It seems to me the best way we can remember and honour those who have died or been maimed in wars is by refusing to participate in any new ones unless they’re absolutely, absolutely unavoidable.

The message is important enough that I’ll even ignore spelling mistakes.

Originally shared by null

I figured you’d be interested in this.

I just filled out an application for a minor fee-paying school that asked not only race and religion but stuff like whether your kids were adopted or not. I’m pretty convinced that we won’t be sending our sonthere just on that basis – it bothers me that somebody thinks they need to know that in order to make decisions.

Originally shared by Kee Hinckley

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/04/every-term-the-census-has-used-to-describe-americas-racial-groups-since-1790///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

A friend got me this tiny 2.5 liter barrel for aging whatever. Apparently it’s good for several uses and really hits its stride at refilling #3 or so. Starting with Brokers Gin. Any suggestions for subsequent rounds?

out of ice, tired, back aching.

No mixology tonight, just cooking and serving and smiling at guests occasionally.

Man, our regular chef has a totally different experience of these evenings. I’ll take better care of him in future.

…also, keep the youngest from telling him what to do. That gets old fast.

You have found a mysterious device. It might be some sort of magic wand. Or a means of transport. Or… an astral projector?

Anyway it’s clearly of ancient or alien origin.

Does Google Image Search tailor its results to your known interests?

I wasn’t even searching for this stuff, but up it comes…

Ming headdress? Full, red lips? Why it’s the Khan of Khiva!

Children fascinated by a cactus in a corset? Paging Leonora Carrington.

so it’s becoming kinda traditional for me to write something about November 5th and the gunpowder plot.

So… this is the day we celebrate failure and thank the powers of constitutional democracy that the Parliament was not blown up because otherwise we’d all be talking Catholic and afraid of getting burned. And somehow there’s a clear connection between, like, Cecil’s spy network and universal suffrage. And it’s best to ignore the whole Civil War thing and the Glorious Compromise that followed it with the restoration of the monarchy and anyway thank god we’re free and aren’t frozen in servile Popery like the French.

It’s a charming little nationalist story. The winners won and the losers lost and here we are so it must all have been for the best. And nobody can quite explain how we wound up with democracy (at least not quickly or simply) or even, really, what it means but there was a threat against the patriot state and the bad guys were thwarted, so hurrah for hearts of oak!

Yeah. Out of all of this, the bit that appeals to me most is the celebration of failure. So British.

If we’re going to hold anyone up as a positive figure for democracy, I nominate Richard Cromwell. Historians tend to dismiss him as merely weak but consider: he signed the proclamation that dissolved his father’s dictatorship – one of the nastiest entities in British political history. Where he could’ve fought a bloody rearguard campaign, maybe even strengthened Ollie’s state apparatus, instead he opened the way for the constitutional monarchy we more or less have today. Having been the head of state and child of revolution, he somehow managed to retire peacefully and politely. And be largely forgotten.

Were there many slips between 1658 and the present? Was Richard’s role in fostering democracy questionable at best?

Well, at least he wasn’t followed by Oliver Cromwell. And maybe, one could claim, he began a tradition of peaceful abdication and withdrawal, which should constitute (although it doesn’t) an odd proud moment in British history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cromwell//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Hey – because I don’t even have time to write a blog post and I still have CORSICA hanging out in the breeze, what do you say to a copyright-tweaking MONSTERS SPELLS AND ADVENTURES supplement based entirely on Tom Waits lyrics?

Write ups for the hole in the sky that the Black Crow snuck through, just the right bullets and their salesman/enchanter, rope of sand, coloured wind, spells that allow you to drink a thousand shipwrecks and their after effects, the Phantom 309 and what happens if you steal it from Big Joe.

‘taint no sin (dipsomancer, 2)

The caster can take off their skin and dance around (or perform other acts) in their bones. Aside from being remarkably painful, this spell carries a number of dangers: the shucked skin and organs will start to decay while the caster is absent (a process that can be slowed by keeping them just above freezing). Also the caster is treated mechanically as a standard 1HD skeleton while skinless and for each hour spent outside their skin, they may lose their connection with it, becoming a standard undead monster in 1d10+WIS hours unless the charm is reversed. On the plus side, while in skeletal state the caster does not need to eat, drink or breathe, may pass among other undead without arousing suspicion, and is immune to scrying or other interpellative spells (summoning, geas) having shed their identity.

…who else would be interested in this project?

https://bunkercomplex.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/the-street-tom-waits-grew-up-on///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

did Leonardo learn from the Chinese?

MAYBE.

Should I write a massive essay about how hard it would be to prove, based on the evidence we actually have?

(rhetorical question: I absolutely won’t have time this year)

With his aim of uniting the druidic and bardic traditions in a rural hippy setting, Ed Williams seems like he was trolling Zak Smith from the 19th century.

Does anyone know where Gygax got his druids? It seems like he pretty much always embraced mainstream Christianity and dodgy 19th century speculative history, so my guess is his druids were probably based on some hybrid of St. Francis and William Blake as translated through Morganwg (and probably subsequently retranslated through pulp fantasy).

One day I’d like to write them up as Bob Marley’s African Herbman.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolo_Morganwg//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

a classic Cornish tale, somewhere on the boundary of folklore and history, for once not by Daphne du Maurier. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_Coppinger//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

how can Small Change be so much better than Nighthawks at the Diner when they’re released in the same year? It’s like Nighthawks is Tom Waits’s sketchbook and Small Change his finished artworks, maybe. A necessary part of the process but thin on gold.

I have to learn to swear less while helping my son with his homework.

I’m trying to shock him into giving a fuck, I guess, so he doesn’t turn in a steaming pile of shit that basically tells the teacher to go fuck herself.

There’s probably a better way.

this is genius. Tempted to post it on any discussion forum I wind up hosting.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

The “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” put out by the OSS (the CIA’s predecessor) in 1944, is a wonderful source of tips and techniques for anti-management. What’s particularly brilliant is that revealing these methods can be even more destructive than concealing them: consider what happens when every time someone does something stupid and inefficient, the response is for people to wonder if that person is actually a saboteur. (The answer, by the way, is “The Joys of Stalin,” and is why Russia almost lost WWII: he had spent the 1930’s purging everyone that he didn’t trust, which is to say, basically everyone who knew anything)

But if you’re willing to accept that the people around you might just be idiots, and not actively planning your overthrow, then the pamphlet is a short and surprisingly amusing read. You can see the whole thing at https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/simple-sabotage.html .

h/t Neha Narula 

Watching Dark Matter over the kids’ shoulders, 2 discovers she’s a replicant. “But who made me and why? I can’t trust my thoughts, my emotions, because they were constructed by someone else, some mysterious external entity!”

….yeah, I guess you space cowboys have never read Sartre or Baudrillard. It is so much worse than you imagine. Being a literal construct is pretty much irrelevant.

My wife just got back from Russia, where sanctions are significantly affecting the products available to the richer class, and it’s hard to get simple things like salad because the local production/distribution system isn’t set up to supply it domestically.

So. I know the history here, that the East India Companies first fostered globalized tastes and demands in Europe and that the creation of a mass middle class through industrialization spread these global tastes into big colonial-industrial networks and stifled local variety and so on. And on the Russian side, that local production was bloodily suppressed in favour of centralized, controllable industry. Fine. Here’s my question:

How did France manage to surf this whole thing so cleverly and get it so right, such that the world demands French exports of local variety production?

Aside from vodka, name one product of local character that you ever wanted from Russia (ie not oil or steel that you could get from anywhere else). Is it just that we don’t remember those great products from the valley of the Don or Vltava, or is there something basically different about France?

Moon spiders for your Halloween.

These are the real alien invaders.

Originally shared by Mindy Weisberger

I love that NASA has an entire Flickr album devoted to telescope-squatting spiders and birds.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/albums/72157658223607853/with/22583005166///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Mateo Diaz Torres did you ever track down that Ian Johnson starting adventure?

Patrick Stuart you didn’t tell me Jurassic World was also about disciplining women back to being mothers. What a refreshing message!

Has anyone ever done a bunch of Tolkien illustrations assuming a cultural background other than northern Europe?

I’ve seen the Russian Hobbit woodcuts and Tove Jansson’s work – they’re great and very different from Howe or JRRT himself, but I’m looking for an alternative take on worldbuilding more than art style.

The Emperor’s New Clothes, an economic reading.

Self-censorship is directly correlated with the costs pre-paid by individuals to reach their social positions. The investment of time, money and self-respect, possibly including criminal vulnerabilities, required to make anyone a minister is a powerful disincentive to that person whistleblowing or contradicting the authority in which they are implicated.

Authority figures may test their subordinates’ fear-of-loss-of-investment by engaging in trivial acts of absurdity. In the event that anybody does speak out about the absurdity, the authority figure will face pressure to reward the speaker, but may not want to live with the consequences of such a reward (increased vocal criticism, grandstanding by subordinates with low investment seeking to leapfrog their competitors, etc).

This is certainly why the Emperor appointed the fool Special Advisor, a role with obscure responsibilities, in which he was seldom invited to meetings. It may also have some bearing on the fool’s later indictment for gross misconduct (involving children and animals) and his subsequent suicide while awaiting trial.

The Emperor’s subsequent reputation among the people for generosity and honesty has served him well, as has his fame for duplicity and cruelty among foreign ambassadors. Ministers speak of his “vision” and “steady hand.”

Chargen with the kids – I tell them they can roll up a main character and a retainer.

Youngest goes with a pair of clerics – one of “the god of thieves” (Cugel), the other “the god of healing” (Advil). Both roll on Jeff Rients “What Went Wrong” – they turn out as an Orange Roman legionnaire and a stripy Purple and White Logan’s Run refugee with a polyester jumpsuit and raygun.

Eldest rolls a Thark with distinctly average stats but the best possible results on the Tartary starting equipment tables (jezzail, oil, actual food!, guard ape), and a magic user who has some mysterious old man as a disciple.

He promptly realizes that the Thark is basically Bertie Wooster.

At this stage I’m not sure I need an adventure.

Originally shared by Rob Bush

I laughed way too long at this. 

accurately reflects my current state of mind

planning to run first ever dungeon for the kids. What free (or cheap downloadable) OSR product should I run?

Monkey 47 makes a superb and forcefully-flavoured martini.

Which is good news because it’s roughly twice the price of Old Raj, which is also superb but different.

holy shit, Target, you’re not that much better than Walmart.

I was already questioning the life decisions that brought me in here.

Schlocktober Questionnaire #22:

have you ever run a game with terrible special effects?

Please tell me about it/them.

(I mean in-game effects – not props or make-up at the table. Although that could be interesting too)

(asking because I suddenly remembered that low budget can (theoretically) be an aesthetic choice)

Paolo Greco what sorrow?

obvious CIA front.

I mean really, guys. How long did you spend on that logo?

ok fine rogue thought #4473 I will say you even though you are stupid just leave me alone.

My space-smuggler’s quarterly zine would be called The Dapper Nerfherder.

rogue thought file #4474:

the comment “they finally made a 4th Star Wars film” made me think: it’s what, 30 years since the original trilogy?

The Three Musketeers have a break like that, between their first famous adventures and the painful business of getting the band back together. And you know what finally makes them go out for another adventure?

The Man In The Iron Mask.

holy wat?

Originally shared by Andreas Schou

EXQUISITE ZORKS, ROUND IV

It is dark here. You might be eaten by a grue.

> be eaten by grue

Good news! The darkness is, as always, grue-infested. Orienting yourself by sound, you jog in the direction of the slavering noises, roll yourself into a ball, and cannonball in the direction you assume its maw to be in. 

Surprisingly, you dive straight past the mandibles, avoid the teeth, pass through the Archimedes Lantern, barely escape the grinding of the the gastric mill, kick-flip off of the crop, and wind up neck-deep in a pile of half-digested adventurers. It smells precisely as you would expect a pile of digesting barbarians to smell.

Near your feet — down through a morass of bits roughly the texture of chunky salsa — there is a pile of adventuring gear. 

> listen left

You hear the irregular thub-thub of the grue’s leftmost heart.

> light staff

Unfortunately, due to the sequester, the gullet of this grue is presently unstaffed. 

 

> I chuckled at the sequester bit.

I’m sorry, I don’t know how to “chuckle.”

> HELP

Welcome to Exquisite Zorks!  Comments on this post will be interpreted as commands. If I’m not around (I am, after all, at work today), then the parser can be picked up by anyone after at least two commands have been entered.

> xyzzy

Well, now that you’re down here, you may as well utter a word of power. After all, there’s probably no consequences to irresponsibly using magic — how much worse could it make things? You are, after all, neck-deep in a pile of digesting compatriots, inside a grue, in a darkness which is probably lousy with other grues, in a cave  (or dungeon? or… attic?) which the parser has failed to even define.

You’re in luck, though.

A necromancer with poor password security practices seems to have locked his Orb of Ineffable Evil with the third-most common password in Middle Earth. From somewhere beneath the grue-gullet salsa, you see the warm glow of an ostentatiously evil orb.

Really brightens up the place.  

 

> realize you’re playing twitch grue

Briefly, you are seized by the conclusion that your consciousness is fragmentary: you are driven not by a consistent set of impulses, but by the barely coherent whims of a mass of strangers. This quickly passes.

No, you conclude. This cannot be the case. Free will is not a lie: you are not a random assortment of chemicals, mechanically propelled along a single path by a universe that neither knows nor cares that you have deluded yourself into consciousness. You are a real and independent person, not some puppet subject to mad and inscrutable gods.

You never question your free will again.

> rummage in grue guts

You reach down almost into the grue’s intestines (a twisty maze of passages, all alike) and pull up an Orb of Ineffable Evil, a 14-karat Genuine Imitation Mithril Shortsword, and a half-digested Viking helmet.

> a hollow voice says “plugh.”

You wouldn’t necessarily call your voice “hollow.” Resonant, perhaps. But not hollow.

> compose sonnet

You make a desultory attempt at beginning a sonnet, but quickly conclude that it is impossible to write a sonnet about being devoured by a grue without starting it with “when I consider how my light is spent,” the unwise spending of light being the reason that most people end up inside grues.

> feed hasselhoff to the grue

The particular mechanics of feeding a grue from inside a grue escape you. 

> plover #

This is a terrific idea! Summoning up your most magical utterance, you shout down at the Orb of Ineffable Evil. A moment later, dripping in grue fluids, you are standing in an attic. A grue — something like a maggot the size of a subway train — blinks at you with tiny, coal-black eyes, trying to evade the hellish light erupting from your orb.

A moment later, the grue crashes out the far window (this being a relatively large attic) and surges away, leaving a thick trail of mucus across the moonlit fields outside the manor.

 

> fashion orb and helmet into jaunty orb-lofting rig

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of an evil orb impaled on a hat. Between that and the fact that you’re presently soaked in the remains of a half-dozen other adventurers, you cut a strikingly Chaotic Evil figure. 

You briefly admire yourself in a nearby mirror, proud of your sartorial innovation. 

 

> replace leftmost heart with orb of evil

This is a good idea, you conclude. I should cut out my own heart and replace it with an evil orb. So you set about the process of doing so, taking off your evil-orb hat and readying your Imitation Mithril sword.

Unfortunately, your competence at haberdashery exceeds your competence at surgery. You can no longer dislodge your orb from your hat, and unless you intend to replace your heart with an orb and half a helmet, your plan has begun to fall apart.

> take no tea

[Did you mean no oolong tea, no green tea, or no Earl Gray?]

  

> take orb of ineffable evil

You have taken the hell out of that orb. It is attached to a hat and the hat is attached to your head. Considering that the previous owner is dead (and necromancers are not known for being on good terms with their heirs) you’re probably even the uncontested owner of the title of the orb.

 

> recite oaths of malicious intention

“BY THE BLOOD OF QAAT’XUL, I SWEAR THAT I WILL DEVOUR THE CHILDREN OF…”

— no, that’s overblown. You feel faintly ridiculous even saying it.

“THIS I SWEAR: I WILL STAND ATOP A TOWER OF THE SKULLS OF MY ENEMIES, AND SURVEY THE RUIN I HAVE WROUGHT –“

— and by the end of it, you’re already wondering about the actual strength of skulls as a building material. I mean, how high could you really stack them up before they start collapsing? I mean, I guess you could reinforce them, but if you did, could anyone tell they were skulls?

“I THINK I SHOULD PROBABLY VOTE LIBERTARIAN THIS CYCLE,” you declare.

Yes. 

Yes.

That one feels right.

> rummage in attic

Sure. I mean, you’ve already got an Orb of Ineffable Evil which you looted out of a pile of corpses. Why not commit burglary, while you’re at it? 

You find a clean shirt, a mirror, and a bunch of Christmas decorations.

Show less

 

> announce adverse possession of orb

Having attended the Frobozz Upstairs Backdoor School of Thaumaturgy and Law, you vaguely remember something about adverse possession requiring open, hostile, and actual possession.

Covered in blood, viking helmet, possession of evil orb? Well. You’ve got hostility down, certainly. And now for openness:

“HEY, I OWN THIS ORB,” you announce to the world at large. There. That should cover openness.

Unfortunately, as your law school wasn’t that good, you’re unaware that adverse possession of chattels in Middle Earth is governed by the law of estray, not the laws for adverse possession of land.

 

> put on clean shirt

You are now wearing a clean shirt. Ten seconds later, you are wearing a clean shirt soaked with blood and grue fluids.

> take no Bigelow Constant Comment, hand-picked black tea flavored with orange rinds and sweet spice

You see no no Bigelow Constant Comment here.

> consult man page of orb

$ man orb

ORB OF INEFFABLE EVIL

COPYRIGHT 2014 BAXTOR THE MALIGN

pretty evil, good for evil stuff

BLAH BLAH more documentation goes here do later once features finalized

This is what you get, trusting developers to do documentation for you. You bet the incantations are just as poorly commented.

> go downstairs

There are no stairs in the attic, merely a flimsy hatch (without ladder) and the window the grue left through. 

> take no no tea

You stuff the loose black leaves and fragrant orange peel into the grue juice soaked breast pocket of your clean shirt. It bulges, making your rather out of place fashionable shirt look more in keeping with things, this pleases you.

> **Plugh++

Segmentation Fault.

Core dumped.

# Subscribe to comments

No mailbox associated with user root.

# once you surpass a certain amount of popularity, you can literally say anything and get a shitload of attention

Your attention span has suddenly run out, you reach out to catch it and fall over. You no longer remember what you intended to do.

# loft orb

The orb is presently located in the loft.

# seek minions

A small mouse appears to your side. He understands your aims and agrees to support them.

# Look

You can see yourself from about a meter behind and above, you are standing in a dark attic, wearing a recently ironed white shirt- now covered in grue juice and jodhpurs. There is a mirror in front of you, but there is no reflection of your current view point, you guess this has something to do with the floating glowing hash symbol. There are Christmas decorations to your right.  The roof is obviously made from bullrushes and looks quite flammable. You have never seen bullrushes, and have scant experience (for someone of your trade) with fire. Or roofs.

 

# craft evil Christmas orb

Your heart shrinks three sizes as you build a macrame orb out of spare grue entrails you find in your shirt pocket and endow it with a portrait of Whoville.  With the amount of grue juice currently staining your recently ironed white shirt, you wouldn’t touch yourself with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole.

 

# Evilly declare, “#sudo rm -rf *!”

The shell cruelly ignores your declaration, no matter how evilly you declaim.

 

# bash archmage

MAGITEX ARCHMAGE V.0.1

What this program is and what it does. What this program is and what it does. Magitex sucks.

Developers.

! INVOKE translocation WITH orb

Opening connection to orb.

Connection successful

Warning. 1: Destination unspecifie

You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can’t.

It is pitch black.

Photos from Carcosa