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I now have a whole new box of Earl Grey. Life is good. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Is there a link, please?

And I did discover the Reharmonized Ponies arc a while back; an old project I just might get off the back burner now is writing ominous Latin chanting for Applejack's vision in the Well of Infinity. I'll have to redo the chanting for Derpy and Dinky in light of "Keep Calm and Flutter On", though:

"Oculītrānsversī/Paruam ōderat/morere*, Discordia!" (Derpy/Hated Dinky/Die, Discord!)

* In Hobbitus Ille, Harrius Potter, and the Latin Asterix volumes I have, sentences only start with capital letters when they start with proper nouns.

The thing is, I've used asterisks for actions as long as I can remember. I even wrote it on paper when I was in the third grade. And that was long before I actually was active online. It was after we got broadband, though (when I was really young, I remember my dad refusing to allow my brother to use the internet because he eas expecting phone calls. And the computer system ran OS9. It is so weird to me that I can remember that...).

So I guess my question to myself is this: where the heck did I get it from?

I've always felt a bit bad that one of the oldest oldbies never really saw the full scope of what Jay and Acy created, so it's great to finally have you in the circle (so to speak). Kaitlyn tells me the Manual's precis of your Ordeal makes for great reading. ^~

I like to offer new wizards a gift when they make their way here, so if you put up your birthdate (year and month is okay, day is better obviously, just year is acceptable), favourite colour, and what you think your specialism in wizardry is likely to be (I know, it's early days yet), I can draw you up a signet. It's... you know how the Manual talks about shorthand names? It's basically that, or your signature (for if you ever get a spell in the Manual named for you - not that I think any of us ever have!); other wizards can plug it into simple spells that you're a participant in but not enacting. You'll want to make your own for actual use, but... well, I enjoy Speech calligraphy.

(Anyone else, the offer's open for you too! I've finally got those JD-trees looking good, rather than just functional, so I'm happy to do new versions for anyone who wants them.)

hS, or rather:



On Errantry, 14 years

((In A Wizard of Mars, Nita asks Carmela for her birthday and favourite colour to generate her shorthand name. I've added a third item for balance. I've also made Kaitlyn's:



((Though she doesn't know that yet. ^^ ~hS))

Now you're also a Disney ride!

-Evil.
-A small bug.
-Made with eggs.
-A Dark Lord.
-A dinosaur.

I'm pretty sure I could put any three of those into one image, but all five is pushing it...

hS

The sky outside the window of the Group Dynamic was warm and clear and inviting, with only the merest wisps of cloud far away. It was also an electric orange colour, as if the whole world was a street light. It hung serenely above an enormous plain, full of rich purple grasses and stubby, thick-trunked trees like fat acacias. There was one close by, and Siobhan could see a bright white fruit hanging from its boughs. Without really understanding how, she knew it was delicious, some distant bit of human ancestry screaming at her to eat it and find more.

The distinct lack of Norwich only made it more enticing.

The three Nigerian wizards from the next table over were the first to investigate, creaking open the door of the Group Dynamic as they cast a few spells to enable them to breathe. As intoxicating as the view out there was, Siobhan's head was still turned by wizardry, even - perhaps especially - when put to such casual use. She was watching closely as they stepped outside, but didn't quite see them leave. A blink at the wrong moment. She never was much cop at staring contests.

Seeing them out of the window, though, they seemed... happy. Much happier than they had in the pub. A few more wizards joined them, fascinated by the country they saw outside. And more. And more. And more. The hubbub was gone, now. Siobhan, Purple, and Wombat were alone.

"Why," said Wombat after a long moment, "are the bar staff still here?"

One of them made a strangled hissing noise that the two wizards understood as "More than my job's worth, guv."

Siobhan shrugged and looked at her blue Coke. "Does this... does this normally happen?"

"Eh, sometimes. But they put a sign up when they're going anywhere, and I've not seen it. Going off-planet like this unannounced? Screws up the coordinates for a claudication. Maybe I missed the memo or something, but I normally go, and Gary the Gasworks is usually pretty good about letting people on the mailing list know."

"So, you're saying that the landlord of this place takes the entire pub on a bloody interplanetary booze cruise?"

"No!"

Siobhan sagged a bit. "Let me guess. Gary the Gasworks isn't the landlord."

"Skree, chick, no flies on you, are there? How would he even fit? This gaff's not that big." Purple pecked at his pint of nuts. "Nah, Gary's just the bloke who sorts out the invites. He doesn't get offworld much, on account of how he can't move, so a bunch of local wizards help him get around."

"Wait." Wombat's voice was slow and incredulous. "Is he actually-"

"The St. Martin's gasworks, yeah. Nice bloke. He planned my stag do."

Siobhan stared into her drink for a while as she tried to process that. It felt a bit like her brain was starting to dribble out of her ears.

---

"Okay, time for another blue soft drink." Siobhan stood up. "Want anything, you two?"

"I'm alright, ta," said Purple. "Do you fancy something stronger?"

"Christ yes."

"Tough."

Siobhan came back with a tray a few minutes later to find Purple staring wistfully out of the window.

"Reminds me of Akosho Gul," he said. "I think it's the fruit trees. Probably the sky, too. You never forget your first new sky."

"Yeah," said Siobhan. "I don't think I'll ever forget this. It's so... so different."

"I just... I've got to go out and give it a try. Just one of those fruits. Don't worry, I'll ask first, I'm not a gannet."

"Okay. Just, you know. Be careful out there, alright?"

"Will do, chick. I'll save you some. Not a lot, but some." Purple took off from the pint glass and flew towards the door. "I mean, it's in my name, after all!"

Siobhan's eyes widened and her breath caught the her throat and she nearly knocked the table over as she scrambled to her feet but it

was too late

and Purple was out of the door and gone.

---

Siobhan dragged her Manual out of a pocket, brushed bits of grimy sand and desiccated crisp fragments off the cover, and slammed the book open on the table so hard that Wombat briefly became airborne. As with all uses of a Manual, it opened at the page she needed. As with all uses of her Manual, the information was couched in bone-dry academic prose and tangential examples from history, with spell diagrams beaten into bronze plaques or painted on cave walls.

"Are you okay, Siobhan?" Wombat's voice was shot through with veins of black worry like a marble statue.

"Emics and etics," Siobhan replied.

"Eh?"

"In-group and out-group analysis," she mumbled, along with more stuff Wombat couldn't hear.

"... Eh?"

"I'm an idiot. A massive, massive idiot. I got so caught up in magic and everyone else's magic that I forgot what was going to happen."

---

Purple soared through the door, dimly noticing the flash behind him, and he danced through the air until he collided bodily with the voluminous bum of an extremely confused elephant.

Once he shook the stars out of his vision, he looked around at the array of wizards...

Crammed into the Colman's mustard museum.

"... Oh, SKREE!"

---

"The fruit tree outside. I saw white, which is weird because fruit isn't white, it's brightly coloured to attract people to it. But Purple saw a purple fruit, because I want answers and he wanted... I dunno, lunch? The point is, what did you see?"

"... I thought we were floating in deep space or something."

"Because you don't really want anything, at least not that can be shown outside a window."

---

"You don't understand, Patience, she's not on errantry, she's on ORDEAL!"

---

"So, the question is: If something is so strange, so tempting that nearly every wizard in the building ran out to investigate, why didn't the snakes? No job's that vital, even bar work. Especially not bloody bar work."

"Okay..." Wombat looked even more frightened.

"So we've got snakes, we've got temptation, we've got a weird fruit. You see where I'm going with this, right?"

"Oh."

---

"I can't get into the pub," one of the orbs shrieked. "Something's blocked it off from me!"

---

"Took you long enough, didn't it, lad?"

Siobhan spun around to see one of the tree snakes glaring at her, a look of pure loathing in its eyes.

"I - I'm not-"

"Why are you so intent on denying who you are? Why do you think people can't tell? You love answers so much, answer that one, boy."

Siobhan felt the tears trickle down the curve of her face. Inside, she felt nothing at all.

"I'd like to speak to the manager, please."

"And what are you gonna say, boy?"

"The only thing."

---

Purple spun in mad, electric circles above the Princes Arcade, trying to cast a spell, any spell.

"SIOBHAN!"

---

The manager came down, and she was androgynous and dressed well and as beautiful as a dying star. "Now then, little wizard, how can I help you?"

"Fairest and fallen," Siobhan said, her voice thick with the effort of not stammering, not giving in, not letting everything win, "greetings and defiance."

I'll put that down to bad description, because I think the ideas of the Codex can't quite exist mutually—the Codex can't be both a timeless tactical doctrine and an overly-rigid guide to all the things you need to know. Depending on the author, the Codex is The Art of War, or it's The Space Marine's Guide To Everything. To be fair, the Codex has elements about logistical organization, but the Tactical Doctrine people will say that that's in the form of a toolkit, and the Rigid Guide people will say it's a precise specification. Or I could be wrong!

And yeah, the canon's full of stuff like that. So if I'm wrong about the codex, there are plenty of opposing events I can find.

And yeah, of course Thoth's reading Dragonflight. Derik's been working hard: putting some effort into learning what he's teaching is the least Thoth can do.

because Harry Potter is a series world-famous specifically for its writing, and is an already established franchise with a well-developed world that people are already interested in exploring.

Whereas Fallen London had to actively introduce new people to this world, draw them in, et al.

It just goes to show how mishandled this particular Harry Potter game was, doesn't it? It seems they tried forcing the Harry Potter concept into a vaguely themed mobile game, arbitrarily abandoning its interesting writing or worldbuilding or so on, all ignoring the fact that you can have that kind of stuff in this kind of game.

It's a bit of a dream, but picture, if you will, a Fallen London style Harry Potter game, written by Rowling and, I dunno, some assistants who write much like her. Where it does the same stuff as Fallen London - allows the player to be immersed into this fun, interesting world but instead, of course, into the world of Harry Potter.

I was letting her know about the OFUM movie trailer we* put together. She was quite pleased with it! But it was still terrifying.

(*The trailer was written and drawn by me, with voice talent from me and six other Boarders.)

Now, crazy theories... hmm. My interpretation of the Ilvermorny houses turned out to be different from JRK's... the one Fantastic Beasts film so far hasn't explored any of the background stuff there... um, Tolkien isn't writing much these days... actually, come to think of it, when The Children of Hurin came out I speculated on whether it meant we were going to get all three of the Great Tales. Well, Beren and Luthien came out last year, and The Fall of Gondolin is due in August, so that happened!

Yeah, most of my theorising is reinterpretations of things that have already happened, not predictions for the future. And my Doctor Who theories have all been wildly off-base.

hS

Sorry about all of this. I'll see you then.

Dunno why! Actually, yes I do- it was underscores for italics in Google Talk for quite a while.

(You should, of course, ignore everything I say- I use the light interface for Discord, I am clearly not to be trusted. :P )

If it makes you feel better, I'm still pretty new at this wizarding thing, too—I discovered it years back and... forgot about it until recently. Glad to welcome you into the fold. ^-^

So. Um. There's no graceful way to say this so I'm just going to blurt it out: I picked up a Manual last week. I swore the Oath. I just (plus or minus healing) got back from Ordeal. And what do you mean you're all wizards?

Julia changed tabs, looked back up and down the Board again. There, interspersed between writing prompts and newbie posts, were conversations tagged (Errantry). She hadn't seen them, the last time she'd looked at the Board. She hadn't been a wizard, the last time she'd looked at the Board.

It wasn't everyone. It was a lot, though. hS, on Errantry since–she winced as muscles protested counting on her fingers–four years before either of them had arrived on the Board in the first place. Nesh, same. Kaitlyn, same. They'd been wizarding since Julia was eleven. Even newbies had little "on Errantry: three years" tags in their signatures. Or five years. Or more.

Julia had been on the Board (okay, mostly off the board, lately,) for twelve years, and suddenly felt like the newest newbie to be seen.

It's a long story and my arm is still cramping, so I'll tell it briefly...

In retrospect, it made sense. Ix's ability to spin emotions into their stories. Scape's love of technicalities and way with bouncy prose. Tomash's easy fluency with code. All were experts in languages, beyond just the Speech. All were happily talking shop on the Board, hidden behind an "(Errantry)" tag and a very old spell woven into the Board's style code.

Suddenly, certain Gatherings and the very vague reports afterwards made a lot more sense.

Julia still didn't know who she was- two days of being Julia had made it more clear, but not by much. Julia still didn't know what she was doing- she had listened to the trees, she had listened to her local Advisory, and beyond that she still felt rather lost. Julia did, however, have friends she hadn't expected. And that counted for a lot.

-Delta Juliette
On Errantry, 2 days

----

(An itty bitty epilogue to Second Circles, in case it wasn't obvious.)

I like literally everything about this piece... except that I don't think the interpretations you've got of the Codex Astartes are actually in competition. ^^;

On the one hand, with "a tactical and logistical doctrine," you're talking about what the Codex is.

On the other hand, with "some sort of Space Marine ‘bible’, an absurd text followed to the very letter," you're talking about how it's viewed, and that only by some.

Why not Zoidberg both?

There's always the interpretation of canon that says anything that doesn't make sense is propaganda, too. "Oh, the Codex Astartes, it is so wonderful, oooh, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheArtofWar">Sun Tzu eat your heart out!" Yeah, totally not reviews submitted by friends of the author, no sirree. *wonk*

Anyway, to fix it, I think you probably have to look for variations on what the Codex actually is. How it's viewed and used is subjective; the contents shouldn't be. Discrepancies about that would be plotholes. I don't actually know all that much about it, though, so I don't have any specific suggestions. {= (

Or, perhaps, another example entirely. The timeline is FULL of plotholes. Like, remember I told you that, in one of the HH books, Magnus gatecrashes the Golden Throne after the Dropsite Massacre? Another book tried to explain that one: Magnus totally showed up on Terra two years before the Massacre, but the shielding around the Golden Throne and the Hollow Mountain and whatnot is so good that it took two years for the backlash to escape, so that's why Terra in general felt it two years later. (Rings about as true as the Liberty Bell, IMO.) But that's just the biggest thing I can think of offhand, because I'm rather familiar with those events. I'm sure there are others that would suit the purpose.

I am, of course, unduly tickled about Thoth reading Dragonflight on-screen. I look forward to writing conversations following this occurrence. ^_^

~Neshomeh

...now I want to make cookies. And eat cookie dough. *shakes fist* I blame you for this!

I make little things usually. I've made a couple of child sized chairs (don't look too closely at the cut ends of the boards. It, uh, is supposed to be crooked and uneven.) I've also done some simple wall shelves and very simple bookshelves. My mom reclaimed her power tools a while ago, so that has slowed me down. I mean seriously, you leave your junk at my house for a decade I think that's a legit claim I have. I've got to knuckle down and buy some of my own. I cannot use a hand saw much.

The Hoppit Hole there were no plans anywhere, I had to do a lot of thinking. I actually found a hand made wooden box for the base at a thrift shop for cheap. Then I found a piece of wood, did some actual math to figure out the circumference of a half circle of the size of those materials. Used that to figure out how much cover board I needed given that 1x2's are actually .75 inches wide. I was proud of getting all that right! Then I bought indoor/outdoor carpeting to cover it in green. I wish I could show you a picture. It really turned out good.

I sometimes use the Ana White site for free woodworking plans. It has to be very simple for me to do it. Anything more complicated I have to get my dad to do with his woodshop type tools.

For learning, I'd say start very small. Use some hand tools if you can for the feel of it, and be proud of that first crooked whatever you make. Then just keep making stuff. I've made a lot of mistakes as I've gone along. I like Pinterest and just find ideas for things there.

For equipment I have a powered drill, tape measure, screwdrivers, hammer, hand saw, and sandpaper. None of that is very expensive. I need to get a jigsaw and a skill saw. If you are buying the cheap pine boards then best to go inside and check each one for knots, splinters, and being warped. Some of them are really no good for anything. Also, most places will cut large pieces like plywood in the store as long as you don't want anything too complicated.

The Aviator was lying on the sofa, his legs draped over its back as he read. Well, tried to read; he kept checking the console's clock every thirty seconds, anxiety building by the minute.

When a portal spun open, the Aviator nearly fell off the couch in excitement, tripping over his feet before jumping up and catching his daughter in a hug. "Elanor!" he cried.

"Mummy!" Elanor yelped when he picked her clean off the ground, swinging her around. "I missed you!"

The Aviator hugged her tight, burying his face in her hair. "I missed you too, kiddo," he said, his voice thick. Elanor's small arms wound their way around his neck, and he readjusted his grip so she wouldn't slide down. "Might just have to sneak away to Gallifrey to say hello next year, won't I?"

Elanor pulled back, frowning at him. "Mummy, you can't get in trouble with the Flowers, you know that," she scolded.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," the Aviator said, and grinned. "But I won't get in trouble if they never find out, will I?"

Elanor giggled and shook her head. "Where's Uncle Zeb?"

"He's visiting Jacques," the Aviator said, setting Elanor down. "You want anything to eat, kiddo? I could make your favorite pasta—or—"

"Cookies!" Elanor said, her eyes lighting up. "Human cookies, with real chocolate!"

The Aviator grinned and sloped towards the kitchen area, Elanor trotting at his heels. "Cookies it is!" he declared, and stage-whispered, "I won't tell Uncle Zeb if you want to eat the raw dough."

"You mean you don't want me to tell him if you do," Elanor said, laughing.

"Well, yes, that too." The Aviator ruffled her hair. "Why don't you get the eggs out and I'll get the mixer, and you can tell me all about how your finals went."