N is for Neighborhoods of Porto Liure

Like most cities of sufficient size, Porto Liure is frequently broken up into informal chunks for easy reference.  The Watch has formalized these to some extent; each of these neighborhoods has a Watch barracks, and most Watchmen have a regular patrol that is limited to just one neighborhood.  These are the districts of Porto Liure.

• Academy: Named for the Academy which takes up most of this area; a rather staid (for Porto Liure) university district, which strives to be taken as seriously as the Universitat in Razina, or the Grand Academie in Terrasa, but which has a long way to go still in terms of gaining prestige, longevity and funding.  Still, the Academy at Porto Liure is a popular one for wealthier students around the Mezzovian area who are more interested in the experience than necessarily their education--it's widely seen as a "party school" compared to its competitors.  Young sons of minor nobles and merchants make up the majority of the student body.  In addition to the halls of the Academy itself, this district has the dormitories of the students, staff and faculty, and a number of small shops that cater to the students, staff and faculty, and other hangers-on.
• Castello: Named for the large "castles" that fill the district, this is a wealthy one, where the summer homes of nobility from around the area, as well as the local nobility and wealthier merchants, are found.  With private docks, opera houses, and high class accomodations and services, this is a fairly quiet and peaceful neighborhood, and the Watch's relationship with various private security forces is sometimes somewhat tense.
• Cherskii Quarter: More broadly a middle class neighborhood, but Rue des Hamazins, which is renowned for its hamazi restaurants and small ethnic neighborhood is responsible for the name of the entire district.  Infamous as a hold-out of the Cherskii Mafia--the Watch here is suspected of being thoroughly corrupt.
• Ciutat Veixa: Jacobo Bernat's original keep, and a great deal of the old money and old power of Porto Liure make their homes here.  In reality, few people actually "live" here, though--this is a busy quarter during the day, with the running of the business and administration of the city-state's government, but goes very quiet at night.  The Watch presence is strong and implacable, by reputation.
• Foghorn Park: A lower-class neighborhood far from the waterfront and nestled in the arms of the foothills at the edge of town, many of the people who live here are laborers in the farms outside of town, or hunters in the mountains, or otherwise have occupations that keep them busy away from the commerce of the city.  Overland smugglers are said to thrive here, and people walk relatively carefully due to suspicion of gang activity.  Much of the changeling population of the city lives here; even so-called "urban changelings" are consumed with enough wanderlust that they feel more comfortable being able to leave the city quietly, unobtrusively, and relatively frequently.
• Little North: Little North is actually on the south end of town, but because it gained character as a balshatoi ethnic neighborhood, it became known as Little North.  Curiously, it's not particularly settled by Northerners anymore--it's a low class laborer neighborhood, and a hotbed of gang warfare; a crossroads of various gang's territory, as it were.  The Union of the Snake headquarters are located here, near the docks.
• Los Corts: The origin of the name is lost to history, but no Courts hold sway in this neighborhood anymore.  Both the Watch and private security don't wait for sentencing to mete out punishment to anyone who violates the peace here, as Los Corts is primarily a warehouse district, and goods worth a king's ransom move through this district almost routinely.
• Qazmir Park: The last neighborhood named for an ethnic component, this one lives up to its name, and Rue des Sultains is famous for its al-Qazmiri architecture, signage, cuisine and more.  The neighborhood in general, though, has become a slum for all kinds of expatriates living in Porto Liure, and it could as easily be named for any of them.  Gang violence (and other violence, for that matter) is not unusual here, and the Watch seargents who work this beat are reputed to be unflappable and highly used to all kinds of terrible things.  Kaz's Crew, a gang of northerners, curiously, has much of the district in its grip, but other gangs work the area as well.
• Sént-Vincenç: An almost "anti-ethnic" neighborhood, the residents here are proud of their Terrasan heritage and have little patience for immigrants and the troubles that seem to follow them.  The Watch is firmly in the pocket of the Castiadas crime family here, who maintain a respectable façade.
• Soddens: The poorest slum in the city, Soddens is supposed to be nearly lawless.  In truth, the Watch keeps a strong presence here, but no matter what they do, it's insufficient.  Firmly in the grip of crime families, all of the industry of this district is illicit--smuggling, drug dens, prostitution, slave markets--if it's illegal, or even frowned upon, it happens here.  Life is cheap, and dead bodies in the street are hardly enough to spur the Watch to become concerned.  Named for the thick fogs that roll off the hills and blanket this district, it's also notorious among those who tell these kinds of tales, as a haunted district, and much of the supernatural activity that rumors and ghost-stories love to regale are centered around Black Maria's Square, where old Jacobo Bernat's daughter-in-law was supposedly executed in the early days of the city.
• White Stones: Infamous as the headquarters of the Fuzeta da Ponte crime family, this neighborhood is named for the pale granite flagstones that make up much of its streets.  Boats slip in and out of this neighborhood at all hours, and nobody asks too many questions of their neighbors, which keeps this a relatively peaceful neighborhood most of the time; although one infamous for things happening which are not supposed to.
  

Vermin Lord

One of the most bizarre characters of DARK•HERITAGE is Vermin Lord, a nameless sorcerer billed as a member of the Heresiarchy.  Although he's often considered--by those few who know of him--as unconcerned with mortal affair and either above (or beneath) them, this is a dangerous affectation to hold.  A common conceit of many sorcerers, and almost certainly true of the folks who merit the label of Heresiarchy members, is that the "gods" are merely mortal sorcerers grown beyond the confines of this world, and that their time may yet come, and a new generation of "gods" may yet replace them.  Vermin Lord certainly believes this, and perhaps more than any other of the Heresiarchy, has taken action to ensure that when that time comes, he's at the forefront of the replacement of the current generation of gods.

This is not good news for humanity, since Vermin Lord has no use for them.  Vermin Lord is a scion of numerous other repugnant forms of life--rats and spiders being among his favorite.  Many have wondered at a possible link between Vermin Lord and the giant carnivorous spiders that prowl the Plateau of Leng.  But his most foul creation are the ratlings.  Large varieties of filthy rats, fed on human carrion and blasted with foul magicks, have--over generations of shepherding at Vermin Lord's hand, become vaguely anthropomorphic.  Walking on two legs and using their front paws as hands, the ratlings are as intelligent as humans, and as inventive, but they know nothing but filth, hatred, and cruelty.  Vermin Lord has clearly set them up to replace humanity when the time is right.  In the meantime, they spread in small groups from their home in Leng, feeding on carrion and rotting flesh--human when they can get it--and hiding in the sewers and midden heaps of humanities cities, poised to spread their plagues and diseases like the rats from which they were engineered by this mad sorcerer.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the ratlings, however, is the extent to which their exposure to foul magicks has made them surprising mutile, or subject to mutation.  Most of these revolting mutants are unfit for even the ghastly life that the ratlings currently live, but some are actually quite fearsome.  Gigantic, pustule-swollen rats larger than horses, long-legged "wolfrats"--capable of pack hunting over long distances, "aperats" that are much larger than a man--weighing up to 1,000 lbs. of muscle and mangy fur, with claws and teeth of hardened enamel.  Thankfully, these mutants rarely are intelligent, but their fearsome strength and constant rage can be harnessed by their more intelligent overseers.

Among the most fearsome are the ratling-spawn that are able to develop some of the features of Vermin Lords' other passion--spiders.  Dog-sized rats with eight-eyes, or ratlings who's bites are laced with venom, or who can scale walls like spiders, or even spin fetid silk are reported by the few who even know of the ratlings or their doings, and it is indeed an ominous development.

Vermin Lord himself has turned into a grotesque, post-human mockery of his previous form, which is now unremembered.  Constant exposure to unclean magical forces have mutated his bones and sloughed off his flesh--he now appears as a monstrous parody of human and ratling features that has died and rotted, yet somehow still moves.  Horns and spines jut from his exposed skull, and his teeth have been replaced by bone spurs directly in his jaw.  He truly is one of the most unsettling of the Heresiarchy to see (worthy of a SAN check, believe you me!)

Depeche Mode retrospective

So... apparently there's a strong link between gamers and metal.  I've never really listened to much metal, other than a brief flirt with Metallica in the 80s, and Anthrax and a few other guys.  I was always an electronic music guy, and really liked the European stuff in particular.  Stuff like Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, etc.  Stuff that today is called synthpop.  Since my audience here tends to be gamers, there's probably a big disconnect when I talk about certain topics--hiking and music being two notable ones.

That said, this is not a monetized blog, or anything.  I'm not looking to build a DARK•HERITAGE brand or anything; this blog is just my little corner to ramble about whatever it is I feel like talking about.  So, here's another DM related post.  I've been listening to enough of Delta Machine now that I feel comfortable commenting on it, but more telling, I've been caught up in a broader DM fever, listening to all kinds of their old stuff, remixes, B-sides, older albums, video documentaries, and more.

I saw a comment from some guy on the Internet--just the commentary page for an actual review of Delta Machine somewhere that had an interesting comment in it--it was something to the effect that Depeche Mode is like the old ex-girlfriend you had from a fun time in your life.  You look back fondly and nostalgically on those times, so you can't help but checking in from time to time to see what she's up to--only to find that she's gone somewhere so different from the direction you've gone that you have nothing in common anymore.  I think he's overstating the case--or at least my relationship with Depeche Mode isn't quite that dramatic.  But he makes a good point.  There's still a lot of that vibe present in my own relationship with Depeche Mode too, and I still see all of their best stuff in the 80s--particularly the material that came out on Some Great Reward in 1984, Black Celebration in 1986 and Music for the Masses in 1987.  After which they took some time off, recorded the best live album ever (101) at the tail end of their Masses tour in 1988, and then came back with Violator in very early 1990, which largely disappointed me, even though it was much more successful financially than anything they'd done previously, and even though it has "Enjoy the Silence" which even I have to admit is gotta be their most iconic song ever.  Violator is, however, a natural enough evolution from Masses, in many ways--it wasn't until Songs of Faith and Devotion where Dave Gahan and others consciously wanted to evolve into much more of a "rock" sound that I felt Depeche Mode really lost me and never quite got me back.  Sure, I have all of their later albums (although I picked them up quite belatedly in most cases) and I still like them well enough--but I don't love their new stuff like I loved (and still love) their older material.  As I've said before, I think some of what I miss is Alan Wilder's influence.  And they've managed to replicate some of Wilder's talent with various hired on producers and session musicians, no doubt, but I still think Wilder was a genius who's talents were--as he himself said--underappreciated in many cases until after he was gone.

And one of the things I most appreciated about the band in the "good old days" was their attention to guarding their privacy.  In the mid-90s, that was no longer possible, after Dave Gahan famously nearly died (more than once) and was arrested for heroin possession (and overdosing).  Frankly, Dave's state was almost a worse crisis for the band than Alan's departure--and when he finally licked it, it's almost like he was using the curiosity of the music press as therapy sessions, talking way too much about what was going on.

I do, actually, appreciate the video documentaries that have come out since--most notably all those that came out with the 2006 remastering and reissuing of all their earlier albums.  Seeing some behind the scenes are interesting, and they've done a good job of keeping their private details private to a surprising degree, talking more about the music and the processes than about their personal lives.  After watching all of them, I'm still not completely sure why Alan left the band, even though he featured very prominantly in the interviews.  Maybe he kept things too private; I'm not 100% sure that the rest of the band really understands even now why he left either.  They seemed to speculate a little bit on that, before admitting that they were speculating and that they should probably quite while they were ahead.  Odd.  I got a better read from Vince Clark in the earliest two documentaries, when he was still around.  They couldn't help but talk about Dave's heroin addiction, since it played such a major role in what was going on during Songs and Ultra.

Now, as part of my own review, I've been hunting down remixes and b-sides that I've been missing from the "golden years"--not that there's a lot I didn't have, because I had a lot of CD singles and even vinyl 12-inches that I'd bought back in the day (and since.)  I also have spent a fair bit of time on youtube watching their old music videos.  The band is adamant that they hated doing music videos until they stumbled across Anton Corbijn who did their last Black Celebration video ("A Question of Time") and almost everything subsequent.  In fact, they're adamant that they felt taken advantage of, seen as a tool for various directors to try out whatever outrageous idea they had and make them look foolish.

Reading a little between the lines, I think what they really mean to say is that Anton was the first director that made them feel comfortable doing something that they fundamentally didn't really like doing.  If that's the case, well, I can hardly fault them for feeling that way, but honestly, most of the older videos weren't that bad (and most of the Corbijn videos weren't really that good either.)  With the exception of "Leave in Silence" and "Get the Balance Right" I actually think most of their older videos are either quite good, or at least par for the course for the period in which they were made.  I even think "It's Called a Heart" may have the best music video Depeche Mode put out (although I'm kinda with the band on the fact that the song itself wasn't anything terribly special.)

Three Brief Book Reviews

Just finished three books recently (not counting several hiking books that I also read--but which it would be silly to review on this site.)  One of them I "read" as an audiobook on CD, checked out from the library, and listened to mostly during my commute to and from work, and occasionally a bit here and there during my lunch hour or other times when I could break away to the car.

Crossed Blades

The last--so far anyway (the next book is already announced and due out this summer) book in the Fallen Blade series that I've been reading is Crossed Blades, and it's an interesting one.  McCullough continues to dazzle me by writing these fast, breezy, somewhat noirish but really more swashbucklery, light tales.  One of the things he does best is continue to add significantly to both the setting, and to the life and secret history of the main character, Aral, in each volume.  Jim Butcher does this, to some extent, as well, but Butcher is much more slow and deliberate--his Dresden Files novels tend to be much more about the villain of the week, and additions to the setting and grander "meta-story" are trickled out slowly, rather than expanded upon significantly in each volume (although the last Dresden Files book which came out late last fall did expand on the setting in very significant ways--I was impressed.)  Then again, I presume that McCullough isn't going to attempt to stretch his series out as long as Butcher.

Anyway, I don't want to get into re-treading things I've already said in earlier reviews--always a problem in series where for the most part the strengths, weaknesses and qualities in general of the books tend to be similar--so I'll probably wrap this one up quickly--but I liked Crossed Blades quite a bit.  Possibly it's my favorite of the series so far, although it's hard to tell.  Considering the short nature of the books, if there doesn't end up being too many of them, maybe they'll be omnibussed together, then I won't have to necessarily think of them as separate entities anyway.

The Ruins of Gorlan
In my last post on the Calçan rangers, I very briefly hit on a micro-review of this book.  This is part one of the Ranger's Apprentice series of YA fantasy novels, and is apparently quite a big hit.  The concept looked pretty cool to me, and since I'm always encouraging (demanding, even) that my kids have something to read, I've been trying to get my middle-schooler to read this series for a couple of years now.  He finally relented and tried to read this, but gave up over halfway into it when the next Percy Jackson book was available from the library--a series that he enjoys much more.  On a whim, I decided to pick this book up as well as a audiobook on CD and listen to it while I commuted.  I do, after all, have fond memories of some other YA fantasy series I read when I was younger, like the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, or of course, the Harry Potter series more recently.

And I can sympathize with his reluctance.  The pacing of the novel is really quite slow.  Not much happens until nearly the end of the book.  Parts of it are, in fact, quite annoying (I admit to being easily annoyed by reading accounts of characters helplessly enduring bullying of any kind--part of the reason why Dolores Umbridge made Harry Potter 5 the worst book in the series--and this book had a fairly strong helping of that.)  The characters also weren't terribly interesting, for the most part, and the plot, like I said, was a non-starter.  The setting also wasn't anything special, being basically an idealized "Merry Olde England" type setting with a YA type dark lord and his YA type orcs but even more caricaturish villains (which only make an incidental appearance, actually.)  So there's nothing yet that really stood out--cardboard characters, cardboards fantasy setting, and weak plot.

In spite of these rather crippling faults, I found myself intriguingly caught up in the book by the end, and when it finished, I almost ran off to the library to pick up the next book on audiobook.  I decided I've got better ways to spend my time, but I dunno--I still want to see what the big deal with this series is.  I may come back to it yet.  Someday.

Fade to Black

I saw this book on the New Book rack at the library and picked it up on a whim.  By Francis Knight, a first-time published author (I believe) this one also had a very noirish tint to it, as a kind of strange fantasy Coruscant type place, where traditional fantasy elements (like magic) are blended in an interesting way with elements that are more at home in noir crime novels or cyberpunk dystopias.  In fact, noir fantasy cyperpunk is a very good description of what this could be called.  A fascinating setting blend.

Sadly, of course, a setting does not a novel make.  The prose and main character(s) were interesting (for a time) but the novel kinda goes off the rails somewhere in about the last third or so.  I'm not terribly fond of making gender-related stereotypical observations, but I've noticed in several novels written by women authors for books that otherwise look like books I would quite like (Amanda Downum's Drowning City being another recentish example) that attention to plot and action kinda fades away while characters sit around emoting and "feeling" and I'm left wondering what exactly happened.  The climax of Fade to Black certainly had a resolution for the emotions of several characters, but in terms of actual events, I'm a little confused.  In fact, the plot resolution seems to be completely missing.  It happens "off-stage" and isn't even described after the fact (a la Bilbo's resolution to The Hobbit)--it just really doesn't happen at all, and I don't even know exactly what even happened.  But I know how the characters feel about it!

This is all well and good if characters and emotions are what brings you do genre fiction, but that's only part of the attraction for me, and not necessarily at the very top of the list.  In fact, this is largely a feature of romance, not fantasy, bringing further anecdotal evidence to Vox Day's assertion that fantasy has largely been completely invaded, metastasized, transformed, and in the process destroyed by romance with only a few superficial fantasy trappings.  I argued that such is not the case, but it's a little disheartening to read a book that basically followed his pattern exactly so shorty after making such an argument.  My argument is, of course, based on the fact that plenty of "good" fantasy still exists, and in fact, much more of it now than ever before.  The fact that so much material that does fit his pattern is out there doesn't invalidate all of the stuff that doesn't.  But, and I said this in other reviews and discussions as well--when you can't tell the difference until after you've already bought the darn book and read it halfway through, that can be quite disappointing.  At least I got this one at the library.

Also; the none too sutble S&M themes running through this book hardly endeared it to me.  Not coincidentally, those themes became much stronger as the book entered the last third as well.

Moving forward, I still have the Abyssal Plague series to finish, but before I do that, I picked up the long-deferred first book in the Nagash trilogy from Warhammer, so that's my current project.

Calçan Rangers

As the "lost province" of Calça undergoes a fair amount of turmoil, the rangers have increased in number and responsibility over the last few years.  For many years, an unofficial corps of volunteers who patrolled the land, the rangers have had to rapidly evolve into a much more professional outfit due to the increased incidents of bandits and refugees streaming in from (respectively) the east and the north.  Many rangers are now full-time, sponsored by wealthy patrons, or by the villages and hamlets that they represent.  Their level of skill and training have also vastly increased; former military scouts from Terrasa and elsewhere having been brought in to develop more rigorous standards.  Most importantly, the senior rangers have been taking on apprentices at a furious pace, and churning out new recruits.  The ranger corps in Calça is now relatively young, but relatively skilled and strong.  It's also offered a more advantageous and realistic outlet for the more adventurous youths than any that the region had before, and for those who can't stand the thought of a lifetime of farming or simple village craftsmanship, it's a somewhat romanticized new occupation.

Within the ranger corps (not yet with capital letters, but if it continues to grow in prominence, importance or size, it may well be soon) there are several roles or specializations that have developed.  The entire outfit is, at most, a few hundred members in size, and many of these specializations only have a dozen or so members who work on them.

Sherrifs

These are rangers that are assigned permanently to a specific county.  For very large or troubled counties, the sherrifs might have one or more deputies to assist them in their duties.  The concern of the sherrifs and their deputies is enforcing the peace and dealing more with local issues.  By far, the majority of the rangers are sherrifs.

Bounders
Bounders are not tied to a specific county for their responsibility, and are free to mobilize and move around the entirety of Calça as needed.  Usually messages are sent to bounders, who often have "day jobs" and do their ranger work as "reserves", when there is a specific need for temporary numbers to deal with a problem.  Some bounders operate beyond the borders of Calça entirely, keeping a wary eye on areas where problems may develop that will spill into the heartland.

Shadows
The smallest branch of the ranger corps are the shadows, highly skilled and experienced hunters of supernatural threats which accompany the immigrants, or which linger from ancient days in the land, long before the arrival Terrasan settlers.  Disquieting and alarming to most of the populace, the shadows are seen as necessary, but nobody likes to be reminded of that fact.

The Calçan rangers are based, in part, on my long-time love of the concept of the Texas rangers, the Dunedain from Lord of the Rings, my love of the ranger class in various editions of D&D, and most recently my brush with some YA fiction that I've tried to get my son to read, The Last Apprentice series (called The Spook's Apprentice in the UK) and The Ranger's Apprentice series.  I tried to listen to both series myself as audiobooks during my commute, since my son seemed to be somewhat reluctant, even though the books seemed to be right up his alley. I had to agree that the execution of both was somewhat lacking--they're slow moving and not terribly interesting; but the idea of them both was solid.

In addition, I'd like the DARK•HERITAGE setting to be expansive enough to allow for different kinds of stories, possibly set in different regions.  Calça is already a kind of cosy, country atmosphere--kind of like the Two Rivers from the Wheel of Time series, or The Shire from the Lord of the Rings--yet one that's threatened by encroaching darkness and problems, ringed about with shadows.  Despite the fact that I want the setting to be expansive, I also want it to be consistent after all, and that means the use of plenty of horror elements lurking in the background.  The cosy backcountry areas of the DARK•HERITAGE setting (at least in Terrasan settings) tend to resemble the Eastern European countryside of Dracula, or the English moors of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and The Wolfman (either the 1941 or the 2010 one--the mood was very much the same.)  Or perhaps the French film The Brotherhood of the Wolf, which gamers seem to be really enamored of, for some reason.  At least once you dig a little bit past the cosy "Shire" take on it.

Baix Pallars is another rural area full of small hamlets and villagers, but that one is more specifically mimicking Arkham Country in fantasy drag.

m20 Dark•Heritage chargen, part 2

Skills.

There are only five skills in m20.  Applications of all of the other skills in d20 are collapsed into this 5-skill system.  Skill checks are made by rolling a d20 and taking that result + the skill bonus, + the applicable Stat bonus, and comparing that to a GM set target (Difficulty Class, or DC.)  Which skills and which stats?  The GM will tell you, but in most cases it should be obvious.  Climbing, for example, would be STR + Athletics.  Dodging would be DEX + Athletics. (Those rolls would also be a stand-in for Fortitude and Reflex saving throws.)  In a few instances, your bonus would be a level check rather than a skill--for example, a Will save in m20 would be done as a MIND + level.

The character's skill bonus is equal to his level bonus + any skill bonus granted by class or race.  For example, a 4th level Human fighter would have an Athletics skill of 4 (because he's 4th level) + 1 to all skills as a human racial trait, and +3 as a Fighter class trait, or +8 total.

The five skills are Athletics, Communication, Knowledge, Subterfuge and Survival.

Sanity.

Characters begin with 60 + (MIND bonus x 10) Sanity points.  Whenever a disturbing  event is experienced by a character, they make a Will save (MIND + level, DC set by GM) to avoid SAN loss.  If the character fails the roll (or sometimes, even if they succeed), Sanity is lost, based on the following criteria: 1d6 SAN loss = seeing a minor monster or reading a Mythos style book. 2d6 SAN loss = seeing a significant monster or learning a powerful ritual spell. 3d6 = meeting a huge tentacle monster face‐to‐face. Any time a character loses more than 5 points of Sanity, the character must make a Will save (DC 20) check or develop a neurosis/psychosis. Characters with 0 or lower SAN are permanently insane.

Equipment.

Equipment lists from d20 can be used if desired for added detail, but I prefer a more "generic" equipment list, certainly when it comes to weapons, armor and the like.  Unwieldy equipment lists, and worrying about things like carrying capacity, etc. strike me more as an exercise in accounting than in gaming, and I'm not in favor of them. 

In this "generic" equipment list mileu, the following is the complete weapon list:

Weapon Type
Unarmed - cost is free, damage is 1d3
Light (daggers, rapiers, etc.) - cost is 5 gp, damage is 1d6
Medium (swords, axes, etc.) - cost is 15 gp, damage is 1d8
Heavy (greatswords, two-handed ax, etc.) - cost is 20 gp, damage is 1d10. Cannot use shield with this size weapon.
Thrown (daggers, tomahawk, etc.) - cost is 1 gp, damage is 1d4.  Range is 30 ft (no incremenets; it's either in range or not.)
Ranged (Bow and arrows, crossbow, etc.) - cost is 40 gp, damage is 1d8.  Range is 100 ft.  Assume unlimited ammunition (as per most action movies!)
Pistol - cost is 150 gp.  Damage is 2d6, range is 50 ft. Must take an entire turn to reload after firing.
Rifle - cost is 200 gp.  Damage is 2d8, range is 150 ft. Must take an entire turn to reload after firing.

Armor Type
Light (padded cloth, leather, etc.) - cost is 10 gp, Armor bonus to AC is +2.
Medium (chainmail or breastplate) - cost is 50 gp, Armor bonus to AC is +4
Heavy (full suit of plate armor) - cost is 250 gp, Armor bonus to AC is +6
Light shield (buckler or wooden shield) - cost is 10 gp, Armor bonus to AC is +1
Heavy shield (kite shield or fully metal shield) - cost is 15 gp, Armor bonus to AC is +2

Non combat equipment is not listed in m20, but should be references from the SRD.

Coming next: GMing and Combat!

m20 Dark•Heritage chargen

The essence of m20 is to preserve the basic "engine" if you will of d20, but reduce the tedium and detail into something that's much more "by-the-seat-of-your-pants" and handwavey.  Something much more conducive to rulings instead of rules.  Not that I don't already run d20 that way, but m20 makes it somewhat easier to do so even if your players are more inclined to be rules lawyery.  In other words, the system itself supports it rather than stands in contrast to that playstyle, unlike in d20.  In this sense, m20 is to be preferred.  But can it actually support the level of detail that I need?  That, of course, is the $100,000,000 question.

So, let's jump into it.  To create a DARK•HERITAGE character in m20, follow the following rules...

Generate Stats.

Instead of six stats, m20 collapses it down to three: STR, DEX, and MIND.  Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest, then assign as desired.  Or, since I always have liked arrays, use 16, 13, and 11.  You can take points from one to give it to another (i.e., voluntarily lowering the 11 to a 9 so you can bump the 16 to an 18.)  However, you cannot take any stat above 18 at this point.

Pick Race.

The following races belong in the DARK•HERITAGE setting:

• Human: +1 to all skill points
• Hellspawn (including hamazin): +1 DEX and Night Vision (can see in darkness as well as in light, exception absolute darkness as in a cave, or in a darkness spell.)
• Jann: +1 DEX and Fire Strike (all of your damage rolls in one battle only per day do an extra 1d6 fire damage. Assuming, of course, that your opponent is not immune to fire damage.)
• Changeling: +3 to Survival skill, plus Wildshape (for one battle per day, you can grow claws and fangs.  These attack as per a light weapon, even if you're unarmed, and do an additional +d6 of damage due to their extreme sharpness.)
• Neanderthal: +1 to STR, +1 to Athletics skill, and +1 to Survival Skill.
• Nephilim: +2 MIND

Pick Class.

The following classes belong in the DARK•HERITAGE setting:

• Fighter: Can wear any type of armor, weapons and use shields.  Fighters add +3 to their Athletics skill, and +1 to all Attack and Damage rolls.  This increases to +2 at 5th level, +3 at 10th level, etc.
• Rogue: Can wear light armor and use light, medium, or ranged weapons.  Rogues add +3 to their Subterfuge skill, and can (usually) make a Sneak Attack by making a successful sub+DEX roll to add their sub bonus to their attack and damage at the beginning of a combat.  This can only be done once, and the DC is set by the GM.  If the rogue is clearly seen before a combat starts, this will obviously be problematic, and the rogue will have to attempt to hide or something and then re-sneak up on the combat to use this ability.
• Outdoorsman: Many folks in the DARK•HERITAGE setting make their living in the wilderness.  Outdoorsman can wear medium armor and use light, medium, or ranged weapons. An outdoorsman gains +3 to his Survival skill, and gains a +1 to hit with ranged weapons.  They can also gain an animal companion of CR 1 or less.  At 4th level, they can upgrade this to an animal companion of CR 2 or less, at 8th level to CR 3, etc.  This animal is not just an extension of the character, and although you can usually have it do what you want, occasionally the GM will intercede if you're attempting to have the animal do something that there's no way in the world it would actually be willing to do.  Note that this doesn't mean that animals can't display loyalty, including risking their lives for their master.  Just... be careful, that's all.
• Scholar: Adventuring scholars are rare breeds.  Many times they are lured to the vocation in the search for forbidden knowledge.  They gain a +1 MIND and +3 Knowledge.  They can use light armor, and light and ranged weapons.  Scholar's also have access to Arcane Spells, and can cast any arcane spell with a spell level equal to or below half their class level, rounded up.  Casting a spell of any kind costs Hit Points.  The cost is 1 + double the level of the spell being cast. 

Calculate hit points.

Hit points for all classes is the STR score plus 1d6/level.  The 1d6 may be rolled twice, and the best result chosen.

Coming next: skills and equipment!

Microlite20 (m20)

So... I claim to not be very drawn to rules and systems.  But, I've tinkered with a ton to represent DARK•HERITAGE over the last few years, including heavily house-ruled d20 D&D, d20 Modern, Pathfinder, DARK•HERITAGE HACK (based on Old School Hack), and my so-called Anti-d20 system that was a kind of hybrid of Savage Worlds lite plus The Window.  All of this, of course, makes my claim about system indifference seem kind of phony.

But I will point out that mostly I like using d20 style games, because they're so easy, familiar, and there's so much material in print for them that it makes it easy to grab whatever I need and have it available without having to go very far into houseruling.

That said, there are some things about d20 that I never really have liked, and other things that are not a problem necessarily for me personally, but which I see commonly brought up and which are only not a problem because I happen to have gamers who accomodate my eccentricities.  This is part of the reason that I'm still tempted frequently by the siren song of another system which I hope will match my tastes better than d20 which, let's face it, is really much more complicated than it ever needs to be.  I'm not really a fan of the OSR style games either, because they tend to cater to an old-school taste vibe.  I could modify an OSR type game into being one that better matched both my tastes and my setting, but... I'm honestly not that familiar with the OSR games to know which one I should bother starting with.  Nor am I curious enough to find out.

But, and this is a big one (I like those, I cannot lie), that doesn't mean that I'm out of alternatives.  I've recently (and belatedly) discovered Microlite20, or m20, a system that dramatically streamlines the d20 ruleset, while maintaining near full compatability with all products released for it!

Sound too good to be true?  Quite frankly, yes, it does.  But I'm extremely intrigued nonetheless.  And clearly it's working for something, because there's a lot of variants of it out there, made by folks who want their m20 applied like a template to d20 type games.  Quite honestly, it sounds right up my alley.  Sufficiently so, in fact, that I'm going to take some time to create my own variant of it, suitable for use with the DARK•HERITAGE setting.  And then, I'll want to try it out to see how well it works.  I'm fairly confident that m20 will work fine as a self-containted unit, but I'm curious about its intersection with d20, and how much of it has to be brought to bear.  That will be, I presume, the real baptism by fire as to its suitability.

Isin

Isin is the most easterly of the successor states to Baal Hamazi.  Cut off from easy access to its nearest neighbors (such as Pnakot to the northwest) by vigorously expanding tribes of nomadic Untash, it maintains a tenuous connection culturally to the former empire through trade routes that skirt the edges of the Lakama jungle, a place that's as dangerous and off ill-repute as dealing with Untash barbarians is.  But Isin isn't known for its isolation nearly as much as it is for its radical and bizarre form of government, and it's strange and wondrous architecture.

Unlike most of the successor states, race (hamazin vs. drylander) is not a significant dynamic in Isin.  Rather, it is a caste-based system, and the highest caste--the rulers of the city-state--are those who can operate some degree of witchcraft.  This is very much the reverse of most places in the civilized world, where witchcraft is highly illegal, heretical, and suspicion of which can be very dangerous to the accused.  Many of the leading class are, in fact, expatriates, or the descendents of such, who come here to practice their craft without interference from the Inquisition, or locals with pitchforks and torches, or what-have-you.

This is not to imply that Isin is a haven and refuge for mages.  Mages, by their very nature, end up paranoid and often completely insane.  Even if they don't, or fight the urges, the culture of the magi in Isin is very cut-throat, Machiavellian and pseudo-anarchic.  Magi live at the top of both the geography and the food-chain, and non-magi have little rights.  Most are, in fact, imprisoned within Isin.  While their lives aren't necessarily directly controlled by the magi, the magi can, at whim, do whatever they please to them.  Their only protection is to get "lost" in the vast herd of imprisoned nobodies--similar to the defense a zebra uses against a lion, by "disappearing" into the herd.  Someone's always the loser, but the majority of individuals can survive by being relatively anonymous, or useful to the magi.

But on paper, Agun Kidinu, a hamazin wizard of no small repute, is the leader of the city.  In theory, if he tired of the anarchy, he could control it.  In reality, it isn't something he's particularly concerned about.  There are persistent rumors that secretly Kidinu is one of the Heresiarchy, or if not, a puppet of one of the Heresiarchy... but these remain only rumors.

Below the magi, Kinnad Harfargr rules the non-magi as a dictator.  He also prefers a more laissez-faire approach to government, but as resources are scarce and the ability to leave Isin is often limited, the reality for most undercity dwellers is that they are governed by a completely unofficial warlord or gang-leader.  Harfargr has access to a powerful force of secret police, he doesn't care to use it except to enforce the will of the magi, or to protect his own power.  Frankly, the doings of the undercity dwellers are below his notice, for the most part.  Rather, he's concerned with protecting his power and protecting the favor of the magi, since if he loses the latter, he can be easily and fatally replaced.

The architecture of Isin is one of its most striking traits, however.  Built inside a vast, vertical sinkhole or ancient lava tube that's nearly a mile across, the city itself clings to the nearly vertical side walls.  The magi and their most trusted cohorts live at the top; the farther down you go, the more dreary and anarchic society becomes, as well as more difficult to survive, as it is blighted by gangs and horrors left over or thrown out by experimentations of the magi.  Both the magi and the non-magical dictator don't much care what happens at the very bottom of the gigantic sinkhole, unless it threatens to disrupt life above.

Around the upper edge of the city is a massive stone wall, pierced by many gates, but jealously protected by the secret police and the administrative talents of Kinnad Harfargr.  The magi are very careful about who they allow to enter Isin, and even more careful about who they allow to leave.

Most of the people living in Isin, as in the rest of the Baal Hamazi lands, are drylanders, but expatriates of various stripes can be found here at all times.  One unusual item of note is that inhabitants of the Forbidden Lands or the Plateau of Leng are more likely to be encountered here than anywhere else, as the magi often send expeditions deep into the Lakama Jungles (and beyond) to find them and grill them for knowledge of their blasted and bizarre landscape, which can be converted (sometimes) into arcana power.  Sometimes these inhabitants become trusted accomplices of the magi--and sometimes they even enter that caste themselves--but many other times they are simply cast below into the undercity, where they frequently wreak horror on the already oppressed inhabitants thereof.

Obsession

By Animotion.

I continue to feel unmotivated to make setting updates (or even talk about gaming at all) in part because I'm so busy that spending the intellectual capital necessary to write the update I want to write seems to be just a little beyond me at the moment.

Plus, one of my other obsessions--hiking and backpacking--which has been so long unserviced--has really captured my attention again, and I can't seem to get it off my mind.

I finally broke down and messaged the guy who took us on some of our trips when I was a teenager and asked him for some details of where we went.  I had correctly divined via memory and research that we had taken the Durango-Silverton narrow-gauge to Needleton, gotten off at the trailhead there, and hiked to the Chicago Basin, which we used as a base camp to summit one of the three 14ers there.  I was sure it was either Eolus or Windom that we had summited, but he tells me that now, it was Sunlight.

I also found out that the desert trip, where I was even more out of my element and only knew that it was in the general vicinity of Lake Powell, started at the Hurricane Wash trailhead, went into Coyote Gulch, through Stevens Arch and into Stevens Canyon, from which we took a difficult (and waterless) route that is unmarked and only known because our guide had personally explored it years earlier, out of Stevens Canyon to Baker Ranch.

I'd like to recreate the San Juans trip, and part of the Coyote Gulch trip... but I'd probably climb up to Stevens Arch, then backtrack back into Coyote Gulch and take another of the routes out.  I don't think I want to mess around with trying to find a route that's unmarked and requires detailed personal information.  Frankly, I'm just a little too out of shape and out of practice to tackle an adventure quite that... adventurous.  Not without a great deal more desert hiking practice, at least.

DM

Well, I never got around to the third post, on the neighborhoods of Porto Liure.  Honestly, that post will take some work, and I haven't had the time or resources available to me to do it easily.  I've also been distracted by what happened in Boston last week--my boss actually ran in the marathon and finished less than half an hour before the first bomb went off.  He was only a block or two away at the time.  I've been spending more time trawling the news than is normal even for me.

Because of this, I'm not really ready to make that post right now either--I've got to spend a fair bit of time actually developing the content of that post.  Maybe I'll get to it tonight, but I'm not promising that--merely hoping so.

Two quick comments instead--one of them off topic and one of them on.  First the off-topic.  In the wake of the release of Delta Machine I've been listening to a lot of the more recent Depeche Mode--particularly that one and Sounds of the Universe, which I never allowed to grow on me when it was new, so I hadn't really liked it or listened to it in a long time.  Delta Machine right now is kinda in the same boat--I haven't heard it much yet, but I'm not exactly loving it.  I'm trying to keep a more open mind, because listening to Sounds now, I don't think it's all that bad.  It's also, however, not that great.  It reminds me greatly of Exciter, when I was really hoping for something that reminded me more of Playing the Angel.  For my money, Depeche Mode really lost their way when Alan Wilder left.  I read a review recently of Delta Machine and one thing that the review said finally clicked with me why Depeche Mode has largely lost me.  It didn't make any reference to their music as synthpop.  I had thought that that was maybe because synthpop is an esoteric indie genre label that the writer was either unfamiliar with, or didn't want to use because his audience would be unfamiliar with it, but the more I think about it, it's because Depeche Mode's music really doesn't resemble synthpop very much at all anymore.  I'm not just talking about the preponderance of guitars (that's been true since at least Violater maybe even Music for the Masses, and didn't fundamentally change the nature of the music too much.)  I'm talking about how Depeche Mode has largely morphed into a bluesy alternative band that uses synthesizers and samplers somewhat as a legacy element of their electronic music past.

Needless to say, I was a huge fan of Depeche Mode as synthpop. To me, they were key in defining the sound of the genre. Depeche Mode as something else is still interesting to me, but I don't like it nearly as much.  The evolution is somewhat gradual, so maybe there's not a lot to be gained by trying to determine a cut-off point, but I see the departure of Alan Wilder as the defining moment when Depeche Mode became a band that I was significantly less interested in than I had been.  This isn't exactly fair, because I thought both Violater and Songs of Faith and Devotion were disappointing.  To say that Ultra and then Exciter were even more disappointing is just evidence of that continued arc, and regardless of the presence or not of Alan Wilder, that arc was probably still happening.

Playing the Angel was kind of the "back to basics" album for Depeche Mode, but it now looks more like an anomoly than a change in direction.  A momentary throwback, or something.  Of all the post-Wilder albums, it's the only one that comes close to matching even the least of the pre-departure albums (and the least of the pre-departure albums is probably A Broken Frame which was made before Wilder was integrated into the band in the first place.  The more I think about it, the more I think Wilder was hugely instrumental in making Depeche Mode into the band that I loved in the 80s and 90s, and his absense is keenly and disappointingly noted.  Repeatedly.

The on-topic comment.  Being older doesn't necessarily make one more mature when it comes to role-playing games.  In our ongoing Star Wars game, in which most of the party is playing jedi knights (newly minted, in fact, as knights), we're still capable of causing comedy of errors type chaos; real Keystone Kops moments.  This weekend, while walking through an open black market of sorts en route to our actual objective, we got distracted by lots of cool loot.  One of the Jedi was smitten with an assassin droid that folded up into a briefcase, a la Iron Man's armor.  Lacking money, he decided on trying to figure out a way to con or cheat the salesman out of his stuff.  Simultaneously, one of the non-Jedi members of our party was smitten by the wares of a weapons salesmen.  He didn't have any money either, but the dealer he was talking to said that finding some way to get rid of his competitor who was flooding the market with stolen thermal detonators would be worth a couple.

The poor GM, at this point, saw the entire affair, which was only meant to be a colorful little description on the way to somewhere else, go completely off the rails.  While my character and another Jedi staged a fake lightsaber fight as a distraction (echoes of the Michael York Three Musketeers running through my mind), someone else set up a spot where he could pick off the corrupt arms dealer with a sniper rifle, and two other Jedi were running a con game in the droid shop.  The distraction proved to be a little too good when the market was flooded with the better part of twenty guards, and the droid guy clamped up and told his existing battle-droids to be on the lookout for potential theft.  Things weren't looking good, so my character, now doing an extremely quick scan of the dead arm's dealer's kiosk/tent made an somewhat impetuous decision that another distraction was needed to extricate ourselves from our dilemma.  Setting a thermal detonator with a short timer on a crate that I presumed was full of stolen thermal detonators and then running, a massive explosion killed six guards, blinded almost everyone in the entire market (including the rest of the guards and three of the PCs--including the one who was skeptical of this entire affair and holding back.)  The jedi I had been fake fighting took that opportunity to loot a jewelry store.  The jedi attempting to con or steal the assassin droid was getting beat up by the combat droids, so he force jumped out of the tent with the briefcase.  Except... he was blind.  And the tent was on fire.  So, he made a big parabolic arc through the air as basically a flaming piece of tarp with a jedi in it, and crashed into another stand.  Me and the sniper looted the arms dealer's kiosk.   Not the one that was dead--his entire kiosk was vaporized--but the one who initially asked us to get rid of his competitor.

The assassin droid, in the end, was not successfully stolen, and the PC who force jumped in the air with it is now blind and in jail.  We're fairly confident he can beat the rap.  We're also fairly confident that his sight will return.

I'm not sure which emotion was more prominent on the GM's face during the evening... complete frustration, or bemusement.  No doubt, he was struggling between the two extremes himself.  We're also hopeful that Master Luke, who championed our would-be Jedi's cause against the will of the rest of the council, doesn't find out what we did.  That was, after all, just last session...

Bared Blade

A quick and dirty read at 288 pages, Bared Blade--the second of the Fallen Blade series and sequel to Broken Blade which I read a week or two ago--was an excellent book.  I quite enjoyed it more than the first.  I'm glad to see that the two main characters develop nicely, and get a crop of (mostly) new characters to interact with as well.

I'm also quite glad to see the setting expanded upon and explored at some length more so than in the first book.  But I'm also glad to see that in doing so, the fundamentals of writing a good story weren't set aside.  I've said it before and I'll say it again (repeatedly--possibly even ad nauseum) but I think customers for fantasy fiction strongly desire and in fact even demand that their novels explore and explain a fantasy setting.  By this I mean that readers want to see some setting development.  And it also means that they want to see something fantastical--their fantasy can't be too subjected to the mundane.  Daniel Polansky's Low Town failed to really develop the setting any and failed to show much fantasy in the setting, frankly, and I think it's to it's detriment in the marketplace.  But this can't get carried away to the point of subsuming the demands of telling a good story with good characters and good plot structure and pacing.  All too often, fantasy writers indulge this too much and their novels turn into plodding travelogues.  Although I don't exactly think this myself, it's a common enough complaint about The Lord of the Rings that it takes the better part of 200 pages to actually get started for real because until then, it's basically a travelogue of the territory of the Shire, the road to Bree, from there to Rivendell, etc.  China Mieville's Perdido Street Station also tends to wander afield showing off how "edgy" he is by adding gratuitous nonsense in the form of setting detail.  Of about 600 pages (in paperback), close to 200 pages could be cut without harming either the narrative or character development, for instance.

McCullough, in Bared Blade, manages to give us quite a bit of detail about the Others--the non-human Durkoth in particular--who are really nothing like your typical standard fantasy races at all.  More imaginative than Mieville's bug-headed people or cactus people, in my opinion.  Fascinating folks, actually.  He also gives us a lot of detail we hadn't seen before about not only the political situation of the world (which he also names for the first time in this novel) but now magic works, and what it can and can't do.  But this information was carefully dispersed to never feel like a lecture or travelogue, and to a great degree, it's actually integral to the resolution of the plot which is always a nice surprise.  I recall advice in a lot of old "how to write science fiction" books and essays from various authors who make a point of saying that science fiction isn't really worthy of the label unless some element of science is actually crucial to the plot and in fact the story couldn't be told without referring to it.  Stories that only had the trappings of science fiction, but did not integrate them into the plot (so that you could swap those trappings with those of a western, or some other adventure story, and still tell the exact same story) were disparagingly called "Bat Durstons" in reference to the mocking fake examples given repeatedly in early science fiction magazine Galaxy.  I've never actually heard of anyone making a similar admittedly fairly snobbish appropriation of this concept to fantasy, but the lesson was sufficiently drummed into my head that I actually kinda like to see a fantasy story that actually relies on some of it's fantastic elements, without which the story would have to actually be modified.

Other than that, though, the set-up and plot reminded me sharply of The Maltese Falcon, including a desperate search by various parties steeped in skulduggery for a lost MacGuffin.  Not that there aren't important differences, of course, but the basic set-up is the same.  As in Broken Blade this novel also cultivates--or perhaps more accurately merely flirts with--a noir voice.  But it doesn't feel genuine here any more so than it did in the earlier novel--it felt too lighthearted.  To re-use my earlier example, it felt like a swashbuckling caper wearing a noir Halloween costume.  And as before, that is not in the least a complaint--if anything, I found the voice and tone incredibly compelling and interesting, and suggest that it greatly contributes to the charm of the novel and the series (so far) overall.

Almost immediately after finishing the novel, I put in a request for the next one for ILL, and put in a request to my library that they buy all three of the existing books as well as pre-order the fourth one which is due out this summer.  If the next two stand up to the same standard that the first two have, I'll probably just buy them and continue buying them as long as the series continues. 

Making a list, checking it twice...

Hoping to make three... count them three posts today.  One on DARK•HERITAGE, specifically the next A TO Z post, a book review of the second Fallen Blade novel, and this post--a list of hikes I'd like to start planning.  I've come to realize that my goal of hiking the Triple Crown--or even one of the full legs of it--is not only not very realistic (due to time off work considerations among other things) but probably not even really desirable.  I like to get away into the wilderness, but do I really want to spend the better part of a year and a half hiking all three major trails?  I actually think not.  If my wife was as avid about the concept of hiking, I'd be more willing, but she's 1) suffering from an old knee injury that frankly makes the concept of 20 mile, or even 15 mile, days in the mountains seem fundamentally unlikely.  Especially day after day for weeks and months at a time.  And 2) she doesn't really get it anyway.  And although she tries to be supportive, that only goes so far.  And frankly, even if I didn't have to work at all, I don't know that I want to spend that kind of time away from my family either.  In fact, I'm sure that I don't.  So, as much as the concept of hiking a combined total of some nearly 8,000 miles combined fascinates me, I've come to realize that it's an exotic fascintion rather than something that I really want to do.

That does not mean, of course, that I don't still really want to hike.  There's a lot of hikes that I want to do.  A lot of them are not necessarily named trails with associations and traditions, but hand-assembled loops that I as the hiker construct by linking various existing trails.  I can think of dozens of such hikes of a few hours worth of walking to up to a couple weeks or so that I'd love to do in the Wind River mountains, the Tetons, the Sawtooth range, and Sierra Nevada, the North Cascades, the Smokies, the San Juans, Big Bend, and various spots on the Colorado Plateau, and elsewhere.  But the list below is for named trails with a tradition and often an association that maintains them that I'd like to start making real, concrete plans to hike over the course of the next several years.  Because of the nature of these kinds of things, the hiking season is relatively short (although that can be extended somewhat by doing some southern desert hikes like Big Bend or the Guadalupe Mountains or something during the "off season") so it seems unlikely that I'd ever do more than one of these a year.

I included on the list, the "big three" trails that make up the Triple Crown, although as I said, I'm not really interested in hiking them in their entirety. I am, however, extremely interested in "section hiking" significant portions of them.

• The Teton Crest Trail (40 miles) - I've always seen the Tetons as a kind of Holy Grail of western mountains, rather fairly or not.
• The Wonderland Trail (93 miles) - makes a grand circuit around the flanks of Mt. Ranier near Seattle.  A portion of this trail is pictured above.
• The Uinta Highline Trail (96 miles) --traverses the crest of the Uinta Mountains in northern Utah--a place I've actually hiked before as a teenager and quite enjoyed.
• The Tahoe Rim Trail (165 miles) -- marking a complete circuit of this massive lake, although a bit off the beaten path from the very busy actual lakeshore.  Concurrent for about 50 miles with a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, too.
• The John Muir Trail (210 miles) -- one of the premier backpacking experiences in the country, starting near Half Dome in Yosemite and going all the way to the peak of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48.  Although not exactly concurrent with the PCT, it travels through much of the same territory, including through many of the same basins and by many of the same lakes and peaks.  One of the most scenic trails in the country by all accounts.
• The Colorado Trail (486 miles) from Denver to Durango, basically, through a huge swatch of the most scenic of the southern Rockies.  Combined for almost half it's length with a portion of the Continental Divide Trail.  I've also spent some time on (or at least very near) the southern terminus of this trail in and around the Needle Mountains, where I peaked (with my group) either Mt, Eolus or Windom Peak (it's a little embarrassing to admit I don't know now which it was) in the Weminuche Wilderness.  That was one of the highlights of my outdoors experiences; I'd love to expand on it, since it was now almost 25 years ago.
• The Arizona Trail (817 miles) is one that I probably wouldn't hike the entirety of, actually.  The very southernmost portions are, in fact, not really recommended by the society that maintains the trail and publishes info about it due to our government's unwillingness to protect our border, thus making the southern hundred miles or so decidedly unsafe with a lot of criminal alien activity in the area.  Although I often talk a lot about the mountains of the west--the Rockies, the Sierras, the Cascades--I actually have an equally great love of the southwestern deserts.  There aren't a lot of named and traditional long hiking trails in places like the Grand Canyon, Arches or Canyonlands National Parks, etc.--even the desert section of the Continental Divide Trail is the least developed and complete.  The Arizona Trail is one of the few exceptions, and for that reason alone, if for no other, it is an attractive option.
• The Appalachian Trail (2,180 miles) - Again; I'll never intend to hike the entirety of this trail.  Especially not in a single thru-hike season.  I'd love to spend much more time exploring the Blue Ridge mountains portion of this trail, which I've seen a little of in the Great Smokies National Park last year, and I'd love to hike much of the New England section of the trail someday, though.
• The Pacific Crest Trail (2,663 miles) - Of all the long-distance trails, the one that most fascinates me.  I could actually see myself hiking most of the trail--but not all at once.  Breaking it up into manageable sections seems like a way to go that's more likely to fit my needs.  I'd love to do the Transverse ranges of southern California, skip to Walker Pass--hike all the way to Lake Tahoe (which is already covered by the Tahoe Rim Trail, see above), then do the Klamath Mountains of northern California.  I'd probably do highlights only of Oregon and Washington, but I'd love to do more hiking around Shasta, the Goat Rocks Wilderness, Crater Lake, the Three Sisters, the "Cascade Matterhorns" and probably the entire trail from Snoqualmie Pass to the northern terminus.
• The Continental Divide Trail (c. 3,100 miles) - The longest of the legs of the Triple Crown, and the least complete.  Frankly, this trail somewhat intimidates me, and not because of it's length--because it's so isolated, so poorly developed, only about 70% complete, and is really for those who just charge off into the wilderness blazing their own way to some extent.  But many sections of the trail really appeal to me, including probably most of Colorado (much of which is on the Colorado Trail anyway), much of northern Wyoming (through the various Wind River Range wilderness areas, and the Yellowstone-Teton Wilderness/National Park complexes), and much of northern Montana (the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park.)  Portions of the northern Colorado part of the trail, southern Wyoming and southern Montana, as well as most of the New Mexico portion of the trail I could probably skip and look for higher priority hikes to do.)

This is a boring post--don't read

Just for my own records, here's a list of books I've made that are at our public library that I want to read.  Some of them are early books in series--if I like book one, the rest of the series will likely fall into place as well.

• Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham
• Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook (I've been wanting to read this for a while, and actually our library has the anthology with the first three novels all in trade paperback format.)
• Dhampir by Barb Hendee (I think Goodreads recommended this to me based on books I was reading already.)
• The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker (no relation to Bob Bakker the dinosaur paleontologist.  I presume.)
• Hounded by Kevin Hearne
• Something From the Nightside by Simon R. Green (I've enjoyed his light-hearted Hawk & Fisher stories; this seems like it's probbaly somewhat forgettable, but right up my alley.)
• The Devil You Know by Mike Carey
• Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb (an author I've heard about for years but never read.)
• The Hammer by KJ Parker
• Shadow's Son by Jon Sprunk

And the following is not at our public library, but is available through ILL:

• The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer

Master of Devils and The Worldwound Gambit

I’ve been on a rather furious reading streak (which is good for knocking back titles on my perpetually growing To Read list—which actually has finally been shrinking for the first time ever lately.) In addition to the two novels I just reviewed, I’ve finished two others—both of them in the Pathfinder Tales line of tie-in fiction to the Pathfinder role-playing game and its default house setting, Golarion.

Now, Pathfinder is basically D&D, right? So, let’s be pretty clear about that up front; this is D&D tie-in fiction that just happens to not bear that name. And that’s fine. But occasionally a little odd.

The first of the books I read was Dave Gross’ Master of Devils, the sequel to his earlier novel Prince of Wolves, a kind of buddy movie type storyline with the noble half-elf Chelaxian Pathfinder Varian Jeggare, and his rough-and-tumble tiefling friend and partner Radovan. I’ve heard Radovan occasionally described as Jeggare’s side-kick, but I really don’t get that vibe reading the novels—from a story and point of view perspective, both are equally prominent. Like I said, their relationship feels more like an Odd Couple buddy movie than anything else. They’re not exactly Holmes and Watson (although kinda) and not exactly Murtaugh and Riggs (although kinda) and not exactly Bing Crosby and Bob Hope (again—although kinda) but they do have an interesting vibe between them.

In Master of Devils, however, they spend most of the book apart, on separate plot threads that don’t converge until the end of the novel. And a third voice (and separate plot thread) comes in some chapters that are POV of Arnisant, the dog that they picked up in the last novel. I liked both (all three now, I guess) of these characters, so it was fun to see them and “hear” their various voices in POV, which are all quite distinct. The story is and setting this time around, however, is quite dramatically different from the last novel. Where Prince of Wolves was in a fantasy version of Stoker’s Transylvania, Master of Devils is in a fantasy version of a Hong Kong martial arts wire-fu movie a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Couple this with some fish-out-of-water aspects (since none of the characters are local, and the customs and surroundings are strange and exotic to them; which makes it easier to present to the readers as well, in many ways) and you’ve got a very compelling story.

As with Prince of Wolves, however, I found that the ending was a bit less satisfying than I hoped. As the three plotlines converged and tension ratcheted up, POV switched faster and faster, and finally was describing the same scenes from different perspectives. This, however, rather than offering more perspective, offered less, because Gross occasionally would skip stuff and describe is happening just barely “off stage.” And as the conclusion rushed to its… well, its conclusion—I found myself scratching my head just a bit wondering exactly what had happened. The denouement was also underwhelming—it happened too fast and skipped over details, as if by this point, the reader must surely have lost interest in seeing how everything played out as long as everything was back in place for the next volume in the series.

I don’t mean this to be a crippling complaint, though—it was a minor dissatisfaction on what was otherwise an excellent novel. It’s not exactly new anymore either, and I’ve got the third book in the series (which also is no longer new) waiting on my shelf. After I wander a bit through the Fallen Blades and Abyssal Plague series, no doubt I’ll come back to this sooner rather than later.

The other book I read was Robin D. Laws’ The Worldwound Gambit, in which a quest into occupying and corrupted demon territory to shut down a demonic threat by grabbing the MacGuffin is cast as an Ocean’s 11 like heist/con. This novel I liked quite a bit less. Laws’ voice never really caught on with me; it somehow felt awkward and artificial all the time. Part of this was that it was told in present tense, which I admit I find awkward anyway, but part of it was that it just didn’t feel quite polished enough somehow. This wasn’t helped by the dropping of clear game-related vocabulary into the text—antipaladins being the one that most egregiously offended my sensibilities. Making a big deal out of the difference between a sorcerer and a wizard in the text (without explaining the difference really) might be fine for gamers, but for anyone else, it just feels weird, and marks the novel as game fiction. The same was true with the silly characterization of alignment that peeked through the seams at various points. The characters were also fairly cardboard caricatures most of the time.

Despite that, however, some of the characters started to grow on me. Jerisa as the scorned lover, accompanying team leader Gad knowing that her love for him was both unrequited and frankly kinda psychotic and broken, was an interesting plot device that could have been brilliant in better hands. Calliard, the demon-blood addict who used his addiction to gain extrasensory perception when it came to demons was an intriguing concept. I might even adopt a riff on that concept as a fifth iconic character for DARK•HERITAGE when I get a chance. Tiberio, the huge half-orc pacifist, on the other hand, felt like baggage who’s idealistic position made me just wonder why in the world he came along for the ride at all. Rather than being interesting, his twist made him feel both useless and frustrating more often than not. The crazy fire guy might have been interesting, but I had to roll my eyes when his own personal hell was being stuck in a place where nothing would burn. Really?

I heartily recommend the Jeggare and Radovan stories—both that I’ve read so far—but I’d have avoided Worldwound Gambit if it were up to me to do again. I think I was suckered in by my well-attested love for the demonic in D&D settings, and seeing how they can be described and presented—and more often than not being disappointed in the execution of it.

Next up on the reading docket is book two of the Fallen Blades series, then a non-fiction book from the library, then... probably book two of the Abyssal Plague series.

L'Isula Dzovençan—Demon Isle

L'Isula Dzovençan is the formal name of an island located midway between Razina and Sént-Haspar (Razina being on the Razine Peninsula on the north shore of the Mezzovian and Sént-Haspar located just east of the Colomá Swamp,where the Mezzovian Sea pinches to a relatively narrow point.)  The name on the map is usually forgotten, though, and it's known by it's more usual nickname--Demon Isle.  L'Isula is part of a strange trifecta; one of three places in the Three Empires region where the bizarre and "The Other" somehow leaks through into the mundane.  The most infamous of these locations is the Plateau of Leng, where the "leak" is so bad that it has corrupted and warped a broad area, the entire Forbidden Lands.  The capital region of Tarush Noptii is also a font of strangeness, where the astronomically implausible fact remains that it is always night, no matter what else happens in the regions around it.  The third is the Demon Isle.  Unlike Leng, it is not dispersed over a broad area, but concentrated, like a piercing hole drilled straight through the matter of the world into the world Beyond.

There are cities on the Demon Isle, and mortals live there.  In the interior, the landscape is haunted and warped into strange sculptures, and demons wander as freely as do mortals.  In the port cities, the effect is more subtle.  But it exists nonetheless, and the inhabitants of the Demon Isle are somewhat insane--deranged cultists of their demonic patron Tetep-Uradad-Namme.  Reavers who make hail from places like Darkwater or Scurvyport are anathema on the Mezzovian Seas, even in lawless places like Porto Liure or Sarabasca.

Like a microcosm of whatever Hell from which the demons on Demon Isle come from, squabbling demon lords set up demesne's of their own and fighting in Machiavellian style for influence and power.  Not all of these self-styed demon princes are actually demons, though--various members of the Heresiarchy occasionally set up shop in this bizarre place which furthers their own researches or aims.  In fact, many would-be purveyors of the sorcerous arts make their way to the Demon Isle, as a way to quickly gain forbidden knowledge that can not easily be learned elsewhere.  But doing so is fraught with danger, as life is extremely cheap on the Demon Isle.  Both the mortals who live here and the demons who think nothing of the lives and souls of mortals have no compunction against incidental murder or worse.

The other feature unique to the Demon Isle is a subset of hellspawn unique to its shores.  Although it is unclear to outsiders exactly how this comes to be, the Witchlings are a female only variety of ehllspawn unique to the Demon Isle.  Always fit and beautiful, these tropical seductresses sport large curling horns on their heads.  Although they are natural succubi, they delight in almost feral violence and torture more than in pleasures of the flesh.  Many are amongst the most depraved and feared reavers to sail the seas.

Various very brief book reviews

I've decided, when reading multi-book series, that at least at this point in my life, it's better if I break the series up.  Instead of finishing one book and immediately picking up the next one, read one book and then pick up something else.  Come back to the next book in a week or two.  With that, I've read books one of two new series, and will come back to both soon (one because I already own books two and three; the other is a library book) and want to give a quick rundown of my experience.

Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough

This is the first book in the Fallen Blades series.  It's only a trilogy in the sense that coincidentally three books are out now; I believe a fourth book is due out later this year.  I stumbled across this at the book store, but rather than buy it, I made a note of the title and author and went and looked for it via the library.  I'm currently waiting on book two to arrive.

The premise is that the main character (the title character, actually) is a washed up drunk who used to be one of Namara's Blades, an assassin for the goddess of justice and retribution.  At one point, he was the best at what he did.  But, the other gods decided that Namara was getting in their way, always looking to repay evil with stern payment, and she was herself killed by the other gods, and their temple (and all the blades) were either killed, or at least outlawed and operating with a death sentence on their heads.  The main character, Aral, doesn't take well to this development, so he's a depressed drunk, kept alive only by the need to preserve his life so his familiar, a shadow creature that literally resides in his shadow, won't die.  And then trouble comes a'knocking, in the form of a beautiful woman in a red dress...

If that sounds like a very typical noir set-up that's been "fantasied up" a bit, I'm sure it's supposed to.  The book, as it unfolds, reads very much like a noir novel with fantasy elements.  However, somehow it doesn't feel like a noir novel.  It's just a little too light-hearted, somehow.  It feels like a swashbuckler action story wearing a noir Halloween costume.

That may sound a bit like a complaint, but actually it's not at all.  This odd juxtaposition, makes the novel very compelling and fun to read.  And the main characters are all very likeable.  The setting, with vague allusions to Oriental elements, and a magic system that is quite interesting (all mages of any kind must cast magic through their familiars--and various schools of magic have various familiars, from Aral's own shadow to the dreaded stone dogs of the Elites.

The book was relatively short--under 300 pages--and moved along at a good clip.  With interesting action set-pieces and interesting characters, it has much to recommend it.  I'm happily waiting on the second book in the series, and hopefully after that, the third and the fourth (and however many more follow.)

The Temple of Yellow Skulls by Don Bassingthwaite

The Abyssal Plague was a big "event" in D&D fiction a couple of years ago.  I read the prologues; the ebook novella Gates of Madness by James Wyatt, The Mark of Nerath by Bill Slavicsek, and The Seal of Karga Kul by Alex Irvine.  As my prior reviews show, none of them was exceptional.  But for whatever reason, I was determined to get through the actual trilogy which followed, so I bought them all.  I've actually owned them for several months at least (almost two years in the case of the first book, the one I just read) but hadn't read any of them until now.

Now, Don Bassingthwaite is a pretty good author.  I gave a pretty good review to his Legacy of Dhakaan series recently.  And that works for him again here, too.  Taking the characters and set-up of Nerath, he goes on to spin a fairly cliche story of crazy cultists trying to summon up some insane god trapped since the beginning of creation, yadda-yadda-yadda.  But cliche is only a problem when implementation is boring or pedestrian.  Bassingthwaite manages to do a bit better than that by implementing the story well.  In that way, it becomes a "clever exploration of familiar tropes" rather than merely cliche.

That said, the more interesting characters were the ones he introduced, few though they were.  He inherited (from Slavicsek, or whomever watching over the entire Abyssal Plague project came up with these bozos) a pretty bland slate.  I didn't love this book, but I liked it quite a bit.  I actually found the "save the world from demonic invasion" plotline kinda interesting--although Bassingthwaite's hints at deeper motives and conspiracies underlying that simple premise is a big part of why I liked it.

Bassingthwaite also wrote the concluding volume in the trilogy, but curiously he did not write the middle one--that honor went to James Wyatt.  I guess we'll see how that tag-team writing notion paid off.  I'm half expecting that the entire series--trilogy plus 2½ preface novels--will only end up being two good novels, interspersed by at best mediocrity.  And yet I perservere regardless, hoping to be pleasantly surprised.