Subject: So what servants - er, staff - do I need?
Author:
Posted on: 2015-04-28 09:09:00 UTC
Kaitlyn is insisting we pay them all a living wage, which is cutting alarmingly deep into my personal finances. I guess I'm lucky Vaekew and former El-Jheycom (somehow...) make her enough money to run that free hospital of hers.
But I have enough Infrastructure agents to probably name my entire household, so now I'm curious. ^_^
hS
Because it's almost always empty-ish.
Best times are probably evenings America time - that's when I see most people on.
... what sort of numbers are 'most people'? And how does that compare to, say, three-four years ago?
("But hS, you'd never set foot in the IRC, why are you asking?" Partly sheer curiosity, partly because seeing even a part of the PPC community I dislike fade away saddens me, and partly because Plort. The usual.)
hS
Anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen, depending on the evening. Down from multiple years ago, where more than 20 was a fairly usual occurrence.
(As far as Plort is concerned, recent discussions have trended very much towards the arcane. With the usual bickering that arises when sourcerers of varying practice converse, of course (we spent an hour or so today debating the various advantages of Python and C-likes), but more alarmist barons might find it concerning. Because additional plot elements for Plort are always fun.)
"You're only calling me that because you have something to hide!" -Baron Huinesoron, roughly every six weeks.
Ta for the info.
hS
Is it weird that because my Plort avatar's a beggar-queen, my agent-avatars aren't weapons and equipment but the dispossessed, downtrodden, weird-smelling, and generally dalit of bent?
And that Ix is slowly killing the entire economic structure of Plort with her wee babby Venice in much the same way that RL Venice and the Netherlands did?
(because that's kind of a thing and she did it by accident)
I ask because this has been nagging at me for a while. What do you guys think?
I guess it would depend on how medieval you'd want to go. My guess would be puberty at the earliest, something like 15-16 in the middle, or 18 if Plort would be closer to a modern society.
I mean, are we a very young and incredibly unstable nation - one which has burned through three or four civil wars and no less than six secessions in 14 years? Are we an ancient realm whose barons are immortal courtesy of arcane magics? Or are baronies hereditary, with successors using the original regnal name, and carrying hereditary grudges with a vengeance, such as Baron Huinesoron's against the Republic of Iric, for kicking 'him' out?
Against that backdrop, I'm not sure the details of whether you inherit at 12 or 18 are even able to BE determined.
hS
Perhaps it's one of those things we ought to handwave, along with the whole "do Plorters' ages correspond to the Boarders' ages" thing. Because if they did, we'd have fourteen year-old knights such as Knight Ion and seventeen year-old barons like Iximaz. But then again, you lot put me in charge of a barony in the first place, so you're obviously nutters.
barring Dungeons and Dragons, of course
Basically, it's the PPC (the community, not the fictional organisation) as a medieval AU. Permission Givers are Barons, people with Permission are Knights, and everyone else is a civilian. They live on the island of Konti-Nyuum and conduct raids against the barbarians of Weab known as the Marizu.
Since I can't link at the moment, allow me to instruct you to go to the Wiki and search "Plort". Should be one page that pops up. Follow the links there and all will (hopefully) be explained.
Terriby sorry about that.
That emotiocon looks dumb.
Whether this is a bad joke (in which case: not funny, dude) or you actually mean it (in which case: that's incredibly rude and condescending and you ought to apologise).
It was referring to the whole "Ix forgot to close her strikethrough tags" thing, rather than anything she actually said not being valid. Because, y'know, that makes sense if you stop to think about it for a second.
A flogging for everyone involved in the subthread. I'll fetch the whips.
(Or we could just drop it and move on, if we want to be boring about things. brb, fetching cat o'nine tails.)
hS
It was a stupid joke.
It's not like the whole concept's particularly rigorously defined, so, y'know... y'know?
And, um, erk? It occurs to me (rather too late) that handing over our newest economic port and our main Primary Industry region to brand-new barons may have been a mistake. Particularly with the other trade-ports at Tumblar and La Wunj basically inactive.
Does this imply that you've actually constructed an economic structure for Plort? Because I'd be interested to hear it.
hS
Other new baron, Thanasius, is in charge of the sky ship port of Skypcht.
Man, Eagleshadow, you're slipping up in your old age. :P
I totally didn't know Skypcht was even there! My surveyors must have missed it. Possibly because the entire town flies, y'know what I'm saying?
So the western half of the island is going wild with trade, is it? I suppose that makes sense. Long-distance skyships out of Skypcht, and sailing ships out of Critta-Kalthin. I know Critta' had a lot of riverside farming, and I have noticed increased trade profits from the farms between the Wep and Friwep. Then Baron PC has the mines... I suppose Thanasius is shipping to Weab from Skypcht?
Looking at the map of Weab... given the people involved, I assume the Are-Pea Alliance is your main trading partner. Tivit of course has been close to Plort for quite some time. And I know Baron Thanasius has always been eager to keep ties with the lands beyond the Mistwall, though I understand skyships can't pass through it.
Hmm.
Just as long as you're not dealing with So Shall Medea. In the age of skyships, even the cliffs and mountains of Ozerbord aren't protection against those Vikings.
~Baron Huinesoron, etc etc etc
Which implied that the more established (i.e. big) baronies worked under a manorial system, i.e. peasants everywhere, tied to the land, the local minor nobles and knights keeping them safe from bandit depredations and occasionally mustering them for raids upon the Marizu. Y'know, boggo late-medieval economic structure.
However, because the barony Iximaz has is very land-poor, and she's got raids to conduct, all that money's gotta come from somewhere. What we're seeing is rapid urbanization around Critta-Kalthin as peasants flock to her banner - because why wouldn't they? She's a war hero, and wealthy with it. CK's the place for a young man to seek his fortune, joining the new guilds of merchants and becoming a seafarer, or hell, even becoming one of her privateers and raiding Marizu vessels to protect the trade coming in through the great port. So there are less peasants about the borders, which makes life harder for the remaining peasants, which means more of them leave, which means the local nobles start hoovering up peasants, which means more can see the riches of CK, which means more leave, and here we are again. Urbanization. It happens. Critta-Kalthin's not been around long and it's already a major trading port, easily the equal of Venice or Amsterdam in scope. And that finances the Baroness's wars, so she has a vested interest in improving her cash flow.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more the Amsterdam comparison makes sense. It's a tiny, soggy, coastal outpost of a much larger empire (Borrd itself being analogous to Spain in this regard, though Phobos might be a better comparison), recently independent, land poor, dependent on wealth from afar and its trade fleets to survive. Add in someone being assassinated with an early pistol and you've basically got the Netherlands under William the Silent.
I'm just waiting for Critta to start bodging together some polders and big up the tulip trade. =]
Actually, the main assumption is that the big baronies count as 'more established'. ;) Barony hS is practically empty, Barony Phobos has no population centres other than the remnants of Odolotos, Barony Araeph is mostly sheep, and Barony Cassie is mostly cows.
But yes, you're probably along the right lines, at least in Borrd - including the influence of CK. Wechi... is probably along the same lines, except (due to being a Commonwealth) rather kinder to the peasants. The Republic of Iric is... mostly just La Wunj (and I have a massive proposal for when June comes round), so is basically living off trade. Ozerbord, again, is probably along the same rough lines, with the twin quirks that the population is really low, and the whole place has a bit of a military bent.
(Also, Iximaz has privateers now? Yikes. I didn't know the Marizu were even seafaring...)
hS
France has an extraordinarily low population density and survived on a similar system until 1789, during which certain events took place with which you may be familiar. =]
You're looking at this from a modern economic perspective, and that's... not the way to do it, frankly. You don't need a lot of population centres to work under manorial economics, just villages interspersed with market towns. Big cities around a palace take a lot of money, so of course there's going to be trade. Also, don't knock cattle and sheep. Livestock's one of the biggest and most powerful trade exports in medieval Europe, which I admit to basing this off. As for sheep, well, the history of the Woolsack should be enough reason why they're important, but England wasn't the only place where this was true; broadcloth trade was huge in medieval Europe, centred around Flanders and Leiden. Sheep are also good because they can be grazed in places where arable farming ain't viable, which is why rural Wales has a, er, reputation in that regard.
(also fyi in 1938 they rebuilt the woolsack with wool from all over the commonwealth and brushed under the carpet the fact that previously it'd been stuffed with horsehair and avoid a national scandal)
Also, Commonwealth or not, Wechi's still more than likely going to be operating on a manorial basis, simply because they're land rich. Mei'n Payj is probably going to support some trade, but a lot of it? Farmable. Hence the manorial system.
Iric, well, again, look at France. Vast tracts of land, haha, and most of it good for farming, especially near La Wunj. River landscapes often are. France is a good analogy, actually, because La Wunj is like Paris - wide rivers suitable for trade barges and it's on the Nechsiv route to the sea. If there was a better port at the mouth of the Nechsiv, it'd be the main city, but it's not. It's obvious that La Wunj, while possibly a little faded, is still an incredibly wealthy city with trade effectively by appointment. Therefore, it's being supported by the rest of the Barony Dann and other bits in the Republic.
Ozerborrd, I can't really tell that much about except that if Skypcht wasn't a thing, you'd be a lot poorer than everyone else in Konti-nyuum. Hill farming's the order of the day here, which means more sheep, but you don't have any water links to the rest of the island, which means no river trade for you - and that means you have to rely on mountain passes for trade, which must be a barrel of laughs.
I accept that this is total conjecture on my part, but it's at least reasonably informed conjecture. And you still get urbanization in areas where there's a low population density - look at Paris. Last time, I promise. The surrounding countryside is, er, countryside. French peasant folk, their livestock, and, er, not much of anything else. You've got the land. You've got people working it. You've got towns and villages and hamlets and everything else you covered in Geography class. Yes, they're probably small, but they're there, and they deserve more than just being to be ignored while the nobles plot their latest raid.
I also admit that I'm basing this on the real world, and you've got a clockpunk Laputa hanging over Des's little enclave, so I might be barking up the wrong tree a bit. =]
I think it'd be great if you'd write up Cyclopaedia articles on the economics of Plort, actually - having the system at least sketched out in concrete form would be brilliant.
Some purely random comments:
-By 'mostly cows' (Barony Cassie) I meant it literally. The only knight to set up shop in the area was Sir Ekyl, and he's rarely in his castle; there's very, very few people in the area. Sheep, though, absolutely, and Barony Araeph is doing well with them.
-My comments on Wechi and Iric are more to do with politics/ideology than economics. They're both democracies who've enshrined the idea of (apparently) universal sufferage: Iric votes for its Ops and Dars, while Wechi is a democracy on the Greek style: everyone (can) vote on everything.
And yes, I know that neither of those political systems would hold up in a rural/agricultural/medieval society - but this is an adaptation of the PPC community, where they certainly do. ;) The economics has to fit around the politics in this case.
-Also, remember that magic exists. ^_^
-I'm sure you're right that Ozerbord is cripplingly poor. The Pass of the Five is a horrible route, and the tunnel (yes, it's a tunnel) in the south is at minimum far our of the way. On the positive side, our population is also terrifyingly low - no-one really lived there until the entire population of Konti-Nyuum fled there during the invasion. There used to be trade up the Copperway from what's now Barony PC (because both routes out involve mountain passes, but the Iron Highway used to be illegal), but that's dying down now. Um... don't ask where I got the money to start Critta-Kalthin from. ;)
-Scale! For some reason that I can't quite remember - oh, yes, arbitrarily scaling Weab to match Australia - Konti-Nyuum is only 80 miles long. That means a lot of the distances may be shorter than you think; you can easily see Vaekew from Borrd, for instance. (With that in mind, I'd be fascinated to see a population estimate for the island as a whole...)
You're right that there's a whole bunch of people in Plort who aren't being mentioned - and should be! Everyone is officially either a Knight or a Civilian (or a Baron, I guess), and officially there's no distinction between the two except militarily... but all that means is that you can have 'peasant knights', not that everyone is fabulously wealthy.
hS
Re: "rarely in his castle". And the town of Godreve itself is supposed to be reasonably well populated.
Haven't seen you around in a while! Take this plate of freshly-made SPaGhetti and don't ask questions. ;)
...not-Sir Ekyl is rarely here. ;) So clearly he's one of our growing cohort of absentee nobles.
hS
Once this wall of schoolwork I have to do this week blows over I plan to actually do some writing again, including PPC stuff. Maybe even Plort things!
People have all manner of reasons for being quiet on the Board, and I'm not making judgement calls about any of them. But the fact remains that absence from the Board == absence from Borrd.
(Why, I don't hear you ask? Simple: change. The history of Plort is one of dramatic change, and if all that stops because it's 'gone live', that would suck. So I've got a rule that barons who don't post for two years get their baronies shut down, for instance. More generally, anyone who doesn't say much - which includes at least five of our barons! - is presumed to not be in Plort very often. It's storytelling by fiat.)
hS
I must stress, I'm not having a go at you. I'm merely trying to flesh stuff out a bit in a reasonably realistic way. That said, my mum's a medieval historian. You pick stuff up.
Whether you want to or not, really. =]
A robust economic simulation wasn't really on my mind when I invented Plort; I was too busy coming up with all the puns, and didn't really expect it to be, well, this popular. If people are actually role-playing in it, then I think it's a darned good idea to have the most realistic interpretation possible. It's the ultimate in applied history: given these starting conditions (the geography, ideologies, and so on), what is the best model for a sustainable society?
(Also: how many 'nobles' can the population support? I seem to vaguely recall that there's equations for this - so many square miles of farmland per thousand city-dwellers, so many people per farm, etc. Hmm...)
hS
Especially a medieval-themed one to boot. :3
News to me, I'll tell ya that.
... you let the beggar-queen into your castle, didn't you? Come on, you know she's a master of deception; don't you remember the rumours about her alter-ego being a clown?
-Baron hS
Master of deception, he do say! Master! I'll be takin' it for the compliment it be, milord, for findin' the truth amidst the deceit of men be what milady pays me for. An' she pays a lot more'n you ever could. Yer will insist on talkin' finance near yer under-bootboy, who be a sharp lad as'll do owt yer please fer the feel of a coin.
Milady needs a spymaster. Milady needs a John to 'er Richard, to use a story from them ol' books o' tales. Milady needs me so that she can be a hero o' the people, an' if that means I work on makin' 'er rich from Critta's guilds, then so be it. I works from the shadows an' greases the wheels, an' milady do bring down the wrath an' retribution of a god upon the foes that both you share.
'Tis an arrangement that do please both beggar an' baron, good sir. An' her coffers overflowin' with the gold of Marizu? Why, it do please us too.
"Um, sir, I've got a message for you... I think... from Lady Iximaz's, uh... beggar.
"I, uh.
"I couldn't understand a word she said! I think she's... foreign or something?"
^_^ hS
(PS: I have bootboys?)
((You're a major player, despite not having much in the way of capital - mostly because you blew a lot on Critta-Kalthin, which then wound up in the hands of someone else. Whoops. There's plenty about. Cooks, cleaners, house-servants, bootboys, stablehands, gardeners, and the staff a castle needs. You have less than the other Barons, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.))
((Also I love writing The Scape-Grace's strange Borsetshire ca. The Black Death kind of accent. It's so much fun! =] ))
Kaitlyn is insisting we pay them all a living wage, which is cutting alarmingly deep into my personal finances. I guess I'm lucky Vaekew and former El-Jheycom (somehow...) make her enough money to run that free hospital of hers.
But I have enough Infrastructure agents to probably name my entire household, so now I'm curious. ^_^
hS
(And spin it like this: you're a job creator for the elderly or otherwise infirm, providing a living in a hard time for the Barony and doing what you can for your people. No promises on it working, though.)
As a baron, your most important member of staff is your butler. He's in charge below stairs and sees to it that the quality of life you expect and deserve as a leader of the people is delivered to you without too many problems. Since this is a M/EM setting, you'll probably require a squire as well, who'd basically be your personal man and fulfill the role of a valet during times of peace - which is going to be most of the time, since yo ass 2 broke to wage war or raid people.
General cleaning staff are the order of the day as well, though you can probably scare up some skivvies from among the local villagers if you need to get the castle in order before a major social event, so that's one less expense. You can probably make do with two on a permanent basis.
The largest amount of personnel are in the kitchen, though. The cook rules the kitchen, and she will have her own subordinates - sous-chefs, in modern parlance - though probably just a few. Again, big social events will require more hands on deck, so you can dredge a few up from the villages if you're hosting people. And you will be.
The last major expense is in your stables, which you have because it's like a garage. You're going to need a coachmaster (a generic title for the poor unfortunate in charge of the place) and sufficient stable-hands to make sure your horses are in prime condition. Usually, they'll also be working as your gardeners and suchlike, so that's another thing for you to save money on.
If you're wondering why I keep bringing up social events, well, you're a major political figure. Balls and so forth are a way for you to directly influence your fellow barons outside of the baronial council, and to do so when they're more amenable to your presence. Feast days also help your standing with the people under your command - it makes them feel closer to you, and you to them. You are a power-broker, and your home is where you broker it. =]
Now I'm wondering what my castle's actually like. Wechi is sort of like Scotland, at least geographically speaking. Did the Scots do things differently at all?
I do know that Baron Neshomeh is a fairly absentminded ruler, being frequently out and about on research expeditions, archaeological digs, and humanitarian missions after natural disasters such as the earthquakes that recently struck the Wep and Friwep region, not to mention the normal oversight of the Great Libraries. She does throw the Festival of Filk at her castle every midwinter, though. I have no idea how anyone gets to Arkive through the mountains in winter, but apparently they do.
I suppose my FicPsych crew would be my castle staff...
~Neshomeh
Though the Scots castles were actually more sturdily-built because of all the inter-clan warfare. Trufax: this was actually where noted Walt Whitman impersonator George R.R. Martin nabbed the idea for the Red Wedding, mostly focusing on the much less evocatively named Black Dinner. Although the Red Wedding does sound like faintly Communist. "Join in marital union for the good of Mother Russia" kinda thing. =]
Not as much to manage. More time to focus on Marizu. :D
It's even smaller and the monk(s) do all the work.
And I'm the person who keeps things ticking over nicely and sees you get what's yours by right. A servant of the barony as well as the Baroness. A civil servant, if you will...
balls.
No-one came. :(
Also, re: war - this is Plort. Captain Boshay mal Orn is always willing to give me a ride down to Weab when I want to go a'raiding. I'm pretty sure 'knights are always to be given priority access to the Marizu League' is in the constitution, actually. And come to think of it, the Driftwood raids were probably my way of recouping the money I spent on Critta-Kalthin; I might not be as poverty-stricken as I thought. (Yeah, I totally am, though.)
And thanks for the info! I'll go talk to my agents and see who wants which job. ^_^ Note that I also already have a pair of messengers (who may double-up as stable-hands), a hunter (because Ozerbord is lacking in population, so being able to at least partly supply the castle = good), and a warden... whatever that means! (One of real!Kaitlyn's ancestors was Warden of Oxford Castle under William the Conqueror, is why I have one.) I think she's probably filling the 'squire' position, since she's acting something like a secretary. Given my usual style of warfare is to sneak in alone, rather than joining one of the crusade-like expeditions, she's probably in charge of the castle when I'm away.
So... I need someone to buttle, someone to cook, and someone to run the stables. The rest I can probably create on the fly. Hmm... I shall ponder this.
hS
"I butle, sir."
I would have loved to come, but DarkLordAakmal decided I was apparently throwing a feast and I just ran with it... So that was kind of my fault, actually. :/
I was merely blown here/By... being elected against my own better judgement
I never saw myself/As a... apparently oppressor of the poor across a small country
I knew who I was/Until Scapegrace came and told me I wasn't.
Now suddenly I'm here/Respected or at least feared
I thought it was the former/But now I'm not so sure
Does it surprise you/That I've completely given up on scansion?
What can I say/Lady Kaitlyn's probably/Going to divorce me when she finds out about the servants what with her hospital for the poor and everythiiiiiiing...
(With sincerest apologies to everyone to do with 'Wicked'. Srsly.)
hS
"Huinesoron? That's a barony you could spit across! They've got an embassy?"
"More of a letterbox, really."
-- With much grovelling at the feet of Terry Pratchett.
Anyway, er, thanks for that. But you almost certainly do have servants. You're a baron. If nothing else, you have to keep up appearances. =]
And now I am thinking about Des riding an airship up to Skypcht and belting out a Plortified version of Defying Gravity. And now so are you.
(for real tho my thought processes have been predicated on you having more land than, er, Sussex.)
Since I don't think there are any published mentions of scale, I think we can slip this one in under the radar.
The map of Konti-Nyuum hasn't changed a bit - but note that little scale. A mile has been changed from 19px to 6px; the island is therefore now 260 miles long, and 150 'tall' (though that's northernmost-to-southernmost; the actual width at any given point is closer to 100 miles).
The map of Weab has also been slightly rescaled, upping Weab to 2500 miles across. It's also been slightly redesigned... see if you can spot it. ;)
hS
The world map.
Or most of it, at least. That map is about six and a half thousand miles across. Some notes:
-I have no idea who the unfortunate souls sharing a continent with So Shall Medea are. (SSM of course = social media, which I have cast as manipulative Vikings, because I'm biased. ^_^)
-The unshaded parts of the North-East Continent could be anything, really. The Scholars' Empire is made of canons/fandoms (and paired with the Marizu League of badfic writers), and the Federation of Academia is made of university subjects; the other areas should probably be similarly document-based. Well, they're there if anyone needs them.
-The Mistwall separates Weab etc from countries based on the Real World. Ydyff, Nusantara, Arell are all up there. I've left it unmapped for now. Whether the Mistwall is a magical route to another world, or simply an annoying navigational hazard, is currently undefined. It would not be inappropriate to map the lands north of it if they become relevant, but for now, I haven't (and they mostly aren't relevant).
-The feel I get from this map is that either the Mistwall is on the equator and we're all south of it, or the equator is somewhere around the bottom of the map... or there is no equator, and the world is flat. But that's purely impression, not a dictated truth.
hS
This is really cool. The scale both does and does not surprise me - I'm not entirely sure which. What I do know is that I too did not expect it to be in the south; I'll have to change some headcanon ideas now!
... the map has had arrows pointing to the North-East Continent and the Original Homeland of SSM for a while now, and both of them point northish. The Mistwall has been arrowed directly north, too, and Autor of course has been sitting north of KN for a while. So a lot of stuff is sitting to the north of us (mostly because Weab is south, so, y'know, it kind of gets in the way).
But that scale... 6000 miles isn't very big, really. Pulling up a random equal-area map, the Plortworld map probably covers around the area of Asia. It's big, sure - but Konti-Nyuum could still easily be temperate northern hemisphere.
I'm also willing to modify the map if people have suggestions to do so.
hS
I guess when I saw 'northern continent', my brain translated that to mean 'something like Greenland, but bigger'. ^^;
It's entirely possible the two northerly continents are inside the arctic circle, and the Mistwall is practically at the north pole. That would make the map one of those awful projections - the ones that show Greenland larger than Africa.
Until someone tells us what the landscape of the Federation is like, who can say?
hS
The altered map.
Yes, it turns out Plort is roughly of a latitude with England. Either it's cold there, or they have a warm ocean current like we do. ^_^
The Mistwall is now, I'm afraid, quite clearly magical: Dark Civilian Aakmal crossed it to get from a tropical country to Plort, which is impossible without magic. For that matter, I doubt Des has been imagining Ydyff as being totally ice-bound!
Rumours that the Mistwall occasionally drifts far enough south to encompass part of the landmass of SSM's continent, and that the SSM originally came through from the other side, are of course just that: rumours.
hS
Hee. ^^;
And maybe the Mistwall is just where people from outside the world of Plort (which could use a name, come to think of it... shame Weab's already been taken by that continent) are spat out. Kind of like how (if I'm remembering correctly) people who come to Narnia usually seem to past the lamp post on their way in.
... Thanasius has two-way communication with Ydyff, implying routes through the Mistwall are reversible. So yes, it's probably either matched on the other side by a similar Mistwall, or connects to different places depending on where you go in.
A name, a name... how about something based on 'Online'? Anline might be too obvious, but most others, the pronunciation gets obscured. Anlene? I think that's a Yorkshire accent there.
Or based on 'Net'; simply Neht is possible, but I'm not too big a fan of the -eh- spelling. It could be Ternet - so when you pass through the Mistwall, you're in Ternet. ;)
(Heck, for that matter, the other two continents don't have names yet...!)
hS
North-south distances are constant; east-west are shown as larger than they should be, and more so the further north you get.
hS
Though I will admit, the fact that Konti-Nyuum is actually in the south kind of surprised me, since I'd been imagining it as an England expy for a while. :P
And bah, So Shall Medea. Can't be bothered to go there. Filled with ruffians.
...one hand wrapped around the mast, cloak billowing dramatically in the wind, the other hand holding a cup of tea probably placed over his heart in a dramatic gesture.
Or he could be at the front doing a 'king of the world' pose, Iunno.
Dammit, Scape, I don't need these mental images!
You love 'em really.
Also, in the outtakes, his tea blows off into the wind like a bajillion times. =]
This, not that Wicked thing. Or possibly this. Of course, this is the pose, and logic be damned.
Does anyone else not see Baron hS as the stereotypical fairy tale baron? Lives in a majestic castle, possibly an elf, has a gorgeous and talented wife, probably has a posh accent, employs bootboys...
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm just gonna go hide in the corner. hS, please don't kill me.
I've idled there occasionally but one one ever seem to be there.
I've visited a few times but no one ever appears to be there. I just assumed that everyone has such radically different schedules that the fates were simply conspiring against us.
And Bot. Let's not forget him! What if reaches sentience and realizes we have been neglecting him!
I always assumed they were just IRC-ing away over there like normal...
(Still, guess it explains why the Republic of Iric is so empty...)
hS
If I enter the channel in normal hours (for a GMT +2 person) it's emptier than a Sue's brain.
I don't ever recall the IRC being popular here in Poland, actually.
I peeked in there a few times before joining; mostly people were either busy or asleep due to Time Zone differences. :/ Just something that happens, I guess.
