Scott Adams on suicide watch?

https://archive.ph/j1lKK

Read the whole thing. I don't recommend watching the whole thing; it's too long for too little benefit. Scott Adams is a very weird guy. He's obviously intelligent, but he's been lying to himself and to his audience for the sake of the Establishment for many years. He really went all in on the covid vaccinations, for instance, and made bizarre claims about them that were obviously not true. 

His biggest problem is that he's a gamma. He is unable to rationalize the notion that he was actually wrong about something, so he's tearing himself up psychologically to try and justify how if he was wrong, at least everyone else was wrong too, because he's always the smartest guy he knows, or at least his identity in his own mind is being the smartest guy he knows. 

However, the problem with that kind of identity is: it's a lie. He's sharp, but he's not that sharp, and he's also clearly been wrong on this issue, and he's clearly come to an understanding that cleared up his cognitive dissonance and forced him to face reality. And because he's built an identity for himself that is all about being right, being smarter and more important than everyone else around him, he can't seem to handle his identity crumbling around him. 

I'm really surprised to see him openly talking about creating a delusion for himself to believe in because he can't face what is actually real. That's incredibly dysfunctional, and is related in some way to his cargo cult belief in the irrationality of people, including himself. Because he wasn't able to rationally get to the right answer, because he shouted down and belittled the people around him who were able to rationally get to the right answer and who told him so two years or more ago, he's doubling down on his belief that they were just lucky to have been emotionally attached to the ideas that happened to be true.

What a bizarre person he's turned out to be. I do feel kind of sorry for his situation, I guess, but then again, the majority of it is based on his own ridiculous attitudes, behaviors, and dysfunctional emotional identity, which he isn't able to grow up and let go of. Granted, at this point, just admitting that he was wrong probably won't do diddly squat to whatever heart damage the "vaccine" caused him, but it would do wonders for his psychological condition. I've never understood that particular gamma affectation of being unable to admit that you're wrong. Everybody's wrong, often about all kinds of things. It is wise to not be too dogmatic about things, especially if your knowledge about them isn't super great, because then it won't be so traumatic when you're wrong, but even about important things, just being willing to accept it is part of being grown up.

It's been clear that he's not grown up for many years now. Watching him spiral into doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on what are literally cargo cult beliefs, and then completely falling apart when his cargo cult turns out to be nothing more than... well, than a cargo cult, has been fascinating in a dark rubbernecking kind of fashion, but not cheerful. I can't even manage to feel any schadenfreude for him. Even though his problems are (largely) of his own making and only exist in his own mind. But because he can't give up on them, he's created much more serious problems for himself, like his divorce and his health.

Presuming, of course, that his health that he's kind of coy about really is covid "vaccine" related, which seems very likely to be the case.

Planetary armor sets

I haven't really payed attention to the specialty vendors on the planets all that often. Very few of them have anything that I'm interested in, with the exception of Tatooine, who has a handful of unique weapons that were worth adapting for a few outfits or companions. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that with one of the relatively recent updates; 7.1 itself probably, although maybe 7.1.1—because I'd been to the vendors not that long ago—they've added a set of world drop armor associated with the classes to this vendor, and you can buy them, and they're legacy bound and just like the adaptive sets; i.e., not just anyone can necessarily buy them (although in most cases you can) but it looks like anyone can wear most of them without them changing. I've got my non-recording Mirialan agent running around in what used to be a Belsavis smuggler world drop set, or at least part of it. 

While not all of these sets are great; I'd say that like the Alliance Crate sets, they're pretty hit and miss, there are certainly some absolutely great elements that I always saved when I could get them, and used quite a bit, so I'm very happy to have this development. They're not cheap; 200,000 per piece, or 1,400,000 for a whole set if you're so inclined, but then again, in today's SWTOR economy, maybe that's not really all that expensive anymore after all.

I've made a fair number of new outfits for a fair number of characters, with probably more to come as a result of this development. I always finally tossed some of my iffy Alliance Crate pieces that I was still holding on to "just in case" so I could make more room in my legacy bank. I wish, honestly, that I could just keep buying more tabs for it.

I also discovered, kind of by accident, that the legacy vendor armor is no longer locked to just the class it was originally meant for. Say what? I just spent a ton of tech fragments getting some shrewd privateer class armor, only to find that the pieces of the smuggler's exalted could already have been used as is anyway? Sigh.

Anyway, that's a curious surprise and delight unexpected development, on both cases. I know that to many, those are "common" armor pieces and therefore not that exciting, but I don't care (or sometimes even know) how common stuff us, I only know if I look at it and I like it. I've always liked certain pieces of world drop armor, so seeing it become available—at 1st level no less, if you have another character who can broker it for you!—to anyone is really cool.

On Twitter and Conservatives

From the Z-man

The one sour note will be seeing so many of our guys rush back to Twitter so they can once again perform for the enemy. Generations of conditioning have trained them to think they need the attention of lefty in order to live. They will abandon the various alternative platforms just so they can carry on like precocious children for their masters on the other side. It is the slave’s mentality.

It gets at the heart of being a conservative. The whole point of the enterprise was to get the attention of lefty and one day get him to agree. It is what Robert Lewis Dabney was getting at with this famous quote. Going back long before anyone alive can recall, the people we call the left have been training their opposition to grovel for the hope of some positive recognition by lefty.

The people racing back to Twitter will deny this. They will say they are doing it because they seek a broader audience for our ideas. Conservatives used to say this long before the internet existed. They would crawl on their belly to get on lefty talk shows, only to be humiliated. They would mew about the unfairness of it all, but then crawl right back at the first opportunity. It was shameful then and it is shameful now.

It is a reminder that even though someone crosses the great divide to this side, they bring with them the habits of mind of the other side. Good salesmen know that you have to keep reselling your accounts in order to reduce attrition. Dissidents have to accept that crossing the great divide is just the first step. The initiates need to be reconditioned to have a positive identity, rather than a negative one.

And the Dabney quote he refers to. All the way back to 1897, which is depressing:

It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent: Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. . . . Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now serves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

Untapped potential

It's unfortunate when Joe Blow on the Internet (no offense intended to the channel I'll be linking to) can see the untapped potential of a major franchise like Star Wars significantly better than the owners of that franchise. As has been pointed out by more than a few people now, the fact that Andor is a better show than just about anything else Disney has done with the Star Wars brand, and yet nobody is watching it means that they've killed it with their mismanagement and poor offerings. Now, even with good content, people have already tuned out and lost interest. The brand has become nearly worthless. They'll have to provide non-woke, or even anti-woke content that is actually entertainment for some time as atonement before they can win back their audience. To paraphrase Mr. Darcy from Pride & Prejudice, the fans good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. But forever isn't literal. It just will take a long time to regain any sense of trust from the actual fans of the franchise to bring them back.

But it could be done. Actually, a major change in the leadership at Lucasfilm and a public declaration of commitment to the fans instead of an anti-fan, anti-white, anti-American screeds would go a long way towards making that possible in a single day. But then, they'll have to deliver. And they could. The franchise still has a lot of potential. Here's a sampling of what it could be, made by fans from footage cut from the Old Republic.

 For some reason, this guy didn't make a tribute to the Jedi Knight, the most iconic Star Warsy of the stories in the game. But the bounty hunter and smuggler feel a bit more iconic after The Mandalorian, at least, even if they don't have any lightsabers or idiotic "heroes' journy" beats.

Too many projects...

I have too many projects! I've mentioned a few that are hobby related here; my SWTOR recording of all my new characters that I created specifically to record, so I'd have a record of their stories when the game inevitably and eventually folds. And this is a big job;  I've got twelve characters that I'm doing this with, after all! And its not just the playing and recording, because then I have to edit the videos. That's a major undertaking, involving what will eventually (if it hasn't already been) hundreds of man-hours of work. Fun work, to be sure, but still—the hours are real. I've spent more time this last week on this than any other hobby endeavor, but I've got quite a few new videos (on YouTube too) to show for it.

I've also talked about my plans for Dark Fantasy X, including finishing the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER 5x5, and then eventually doing the next two 5x5s. I'm only about half done with that; maybe less. I've done three of the five, but there are then the character specific columns that I want to do for every member  of my iconic "sample" four-member PC group. And I might rejigger slightly the groups; rather than having two groups with two core members and two not quite as core members, maybe I'll start with all of the core members together and then propose that they eventually split into two groups who both pick up new members. Either way, I envision that the work I have to do after creating all five of the columns of the 5x5 will still be significant.

I've also had a revamping of the monsters list from Dark Fantasy X on my to-do list for a while, although that's a back burner project that I'm honestly not really thinking about yet. And my Space Opera X doesn't have a monster/foe list at all yet (although I presume NPCs will be much more important than monsters there anyway. Maybe an appendix with a bunch of statblocks makes more sense for that game. Although it'd be really useful for Dark Fantasy X too, and honestly, I prefer to run either game as more humano-centric rather than with a monster focus.  The monsters are meant to be major set-pieces.)

Of course, monster is a bit of a misnomer. I have low level NPCs in my monster list, as well as a large variety of fairly mundane yet potentially either dangerous or useful animals on the list too. I've got some rather radical ideas here and there on how to structure the document, so there may be bigger changes coming besides just a thorough review of the stats in light of the changes in chargen, but either way...not in the short term. That's a medium to long term project. Closely tied to it are major updates needed for Space Opera X  and even Hack Fantasy X, the game that I don't really spend any time on at all. (I doubt that I'll start spending lots of time on it, but at least one update to really get me from Fantasy Hack m20 to Hack Fantasy X is probably warranted, at which point I can put that game "in storage" as usable and complete as is.)

And I've still only done one race deep dive; the Hyperboreans. I still have Atlanteans, kemlings, orcs and goblins (which I'll treat together since they are two morphs of the same race and really only have one shared history), woodwoses, jann, and seraphim or seraphs, and I probably ought to discuss the various human cultures in more detail too.

Of course, on top of all of this, I've just started a new job. I'm still getting all of my benefits set up and transferred from my last job, but I need to roll my 401(k), figure out how much to contribute, and turn off my severance health insurance now that I just got my new health insurance set up (actually, maybe  I'll wait until my new insurance cards show up before doing that, just in case.) So the personal front has been pretty busy too. On top of that, I have a daughter getting married at the end of the year. I'm not super involved in the planning for that (just the paying for it), but it's not nothing.

And my oldest grandson, who just turned two this summer, asks my son (his dad) to talk to Bapa and Ma! a lot, so he calls to let us video call him every other day or so, for a good half hour to forty five minutes. Although I am sometimes in the middle of something when that happens, I usually drop it to talk to him. Bapa is, of course, his best pronunciation of Grandpa, and Ma! is a funny story. My wife was a little bit sad that he would say Bapa, but she was just "Dat" for "that" when referring to her; what he says when it's not motivated to try and pronounce the word or name of something. So she was trying to really emphasize the word grandMA, saying it like that to differentiate it from grandpa.  Since she emphasized the MA part so much, he started calling her Ma! the way that she emphasized that last syllable. Which made my wife very happy, as she now has a unique name, and she thinks the genesis of it is kinda cute.

On top of that, there's of course all kinds of other things. We're active at church, so we have stuff going on there from time to time. We're in the middle of the fall harvest season, and although I live in a suburb of a city famous for its manufacturing, there are a lot of countryside apple orchards and cider mills and other fall stuff to do that you don't want to miss, because fall is my favorite season, and honestly it doesn't last long enough as it is. I have friends that we hang out with, we have other things to do with my daughter while she's still at home (we're going to go see Black Adam tomorrow night, for instance.)

Anyway, the point is that I'm not grinding out blog posts, and there may be delays on these announced projects. If there's anything that I've been grinding, it's the stuff on SWTOR that I wanted to do. Galactic Season 3 launched last week. But it was a delayed, late launch due to some issue or other, so I couldn't start grinding until Thursday.  So, in typical fashion, when I'd already mentally committed myself to grinding stuff on SWTOR, I grinded something else: I still had two craft skills that were stuck in the high 600s and not at the maximum of 700 which I needed to finish (and due to a stupid oversight on my part, I was stuck on and couldn't figure out for a few days.) I finally finished the reputation track on the three reputations that I had at Champion and wanted to get to Legend; Section X, Yavin 4 and Makeb. And because I had two new characters that needed gear, I built up a bunch of stuff for them so that they can rock fine hand-crafted (by my other experienced characters) stuff underneath their outfit designer custom appearance weapons. I actually did that with several of them as I was going through the game for the first time, and building up my craft skills in the first place (although that was before weapons were in outfit designer, so you actually saw the crafted weapons). But crafting a full set of 10-75 level weapons and off-hand gear for two characters by two characters (because one needed Armstech and the other needed Artifice) is a little bit tedious and time-consuming. Grindy. I'm finished with it now, but I spent more time over the weekend doing that then I thought I might.

Named rapier characters

In my "named characters" folder, I had a few that held rapiers. With the new, vastly improved rapier models, I thought it worth updating them, and maybe giving a quick character summary, at least as far as I've developed them so far.

Audley Hardwicke is to be part of a character specific "5x5". I don't imagine him ever appearing in a game, unless someone decided to use my pregen iconics as a character, as he's the specific villain associated with Stefan Clevenger. Part of Stefan's backstory is that he was an official Ranger Shadow before going freelance, and he clashed with corrupt leadership, which sparked his exit from that organization. He "won"; the leader went down, but because he still had some loyal followers in the organization, Stefan decided that it were best if he left. Audley Hardwicke is that deposed leader. Was he just run-of-the mill corrupt, embezzling money, and stuff like that, or was he corrupt in the Shadow side of things? I don't know yet. But he's a rather dashing and charismatic villain nonetheless. 

Captain Borus is a character designed to be part of the "newly" developed Orcling pirate column of the 5x5, where he's a minor supporting character with a ship that the PCs will most likely sail on. He's destined to come to a bad end, as Captain Taurak will attack and board him. If he PCs and Borus beat off the orcling pirates, Borus and his ship are marked to be made an example of, and he probably won't survive that. If Borus ends up surrendering, he's financially screwed by the raid and will struggle for a long time to get back on track.

Marshal Hathawaye is the leader of the Lady's Guard, a paramilitary elite organization loyal to the Grand Duchess of Waychester. We find him in the first column of the original 5x5, where he and his organization are living as bandits outside of town looking for opportunities to restore or rescue the Duchess from the tower. Although he's not a great guy, given that he's become a bandit prince and all, I see him more as a naïve dupe rather than an overt and corrupt villain. There might yet be the possibility of redemption for Marshal Hathawaye.

Hero Forge

While waiting for SWTOR to update (actually it finished a while ago; I'm just waiting for the servers to come back online) so I can see what the new Seasons will look like, I checked out the Tuesday update for Hero Forge. A few weeks ago we got the really cool Mad Max outfit and gear, but then we got a few sticks and stumps and stuff; hardly thrilling material. Today, we got a musketeer-like swashbuckler outfit, and rapiers that actually look like rapiers instead of super heavy parodies of a rapier. 

I may actually have to go in and update a lot of models. The new outfit is really good too; one of the top tier ones, so there may be other updates for models who's look is just out of date and clunky compared to what I can make with them now.

Sigh. Always something.

Here's a few samples of my updates, plus one new character who uses a few of the new elements.

Next steps

It's been a quiet week, since I spent much of my time at my new job this week, and had busier than normal weekend and evenings. I do, however, hope to get the blogging moving again, and I have three projects in particular that I'm focusing on in the short term.

1) SWTOR. I'm playing a fair bit again after setting it aside for a good six weeks or more. I've got a decent-sized backlog of raw video to convert, and plus I think the new Season 3 is supposed to start tomorrow. I guess I won't necessarily blog about this with a regular cadence or anything, but when stuff comes up that I want to talk about, I'll probably do so and because I'm playing a lot right now, it may be a bit more than normal. As usual when I play SWTOR a lot, it tends to draw my attention to Space Opera X and its setting too. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that comes up here and there, although I do put a lot of that kind of stuff on the other gaming blog, honestly.

2) I want to do the remaining work on my 5x5 for CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER. I might actually even run this sooner than I thought; my oldest son, who hadn't ever been particularly interested in D&D before, says that his two brother-in-laws (his wife's brothers) are interested in playing, and he was talking about trying to do something with them. I told him that I would be happy to run for them, if they add my daughter's fiancé to the group too; I know he's interested. But even if I don't run, I still want to finish the development work anyway. Personal issues have obviously caused a delay, but I honestly thought I'd have been done with this by now.

This will include, by the way, a redrawing of a part of my map, so I'll have some more mapmaking posts when I get to that phase of the project too.

3) I want to finish my more detailed posts about the races. My material in the rulebook itself is pretty sparse, and while I talk plenty about kemlings and jann and Hyperboreans and whatnot here and there, I really haven't put it down in a succinct yet "one stop shop" kind of format before. My Hyperborean post from a couple of weeks ago will be the format that I'll probably follow for the other races, although I may think of improvements to its presentation yet. I'm finding that doing this causes me to develop as I post, because details will come up that I hadn't thought of before, so it's a good setting development exercise too.

Some other stuff outside of those three pillars that I have on the backburner include a possible revamping of the monster list from Dark Fantasy X and actually turning Space Opera X into a document in the same format as Dark Fantasy X. Those are longer term projects that I always meant to do but hadn't gotten around to yet; I'll just note them here in case I get started on them by some miracle.

mRNA global testing

The narrative is starting to change! The Truth is starting to push through the months and months of lies and reach the mainstream, because you can't keep the truth down.

https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/20221007-guidance-mrna-covid19-vaccines-doc.pdf

UPDATE: A handful of other timely links on other topics.

On Russia, our relationship with her, and the neocons:

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=28447

I've seen a bunch of stuff in the news today about Columbus Day and "Indigenous Peoples Day" which is a fake holiday. Anyway, they're a little early; October 12 is Columbus Day. But here's the real scoop on the "indigenous" peoples of the Americas.

https://www.unz.com/pub/jhr__life-styles-native-and-imposed/

SWTOR Tracker 10/7/2022

I haven't done much with SWTOR since going out of town for my first wave of vacations this summer, to Boise to see my son and his kids, and then to Bear Lake for a family reunion, and then hiking in the Cloud Peak Wilderness of central Wyoming. After that lengthy vacation, I'd obviously lost loads of momentum with SWTOR.

Of course, not long after getting back and getting caught up with work, I got laid off from work, which made me feel unmotivated to play computer games when I needed to be finding a job. I also went back to Boise for two weeks as my oldest son (well... his wife, anyway) had another baby. I was already planning on doing this before getting laid off; it wasn't really vacation, it was working remotely so I could be around when needed. The baby came early, so it wasn't really exactly what we envisioned; neither my wife nor I watched the other kids while they were in the hospital, because we haven't even showed up in town yet. And, of course, I spent a fair bit of that time chasing around; the first week I was there, I had on average two interviews a day, and by the time the second week was halfway through, I had four offers to sort through. I had to accept one before coming home, or it would have expired, which I did, and now I'm scheduled to start on Monday.

Of course, this means less time to play video games again. Although my evenings will be relatively as free as they had been, I think, I'll be a lot busier during the day, and will—at least for now—be in an actual office, not working from home, so that means no firing up the game during my lunch break or anything like that. That said, due to timing, even though I haven't played much the last couple of months, I hadn't actually had my subscription run out either (I buy one-off two month blocks of subscription at a time). It was about to in a week or so, so I actually just bought another two month block. I'm feeling a bit motivated to play some more again, and let Hero Forge take a little bit of a back-seat. Not that I want to stop doing that, and my Dark Fantasy X posts—in fact, I envision a fairly substantial revision to the monster list of Dark Fantasy X in the nearish future—but I also want to get back on the bandwagon with my SWTOR videos and playthrough.

So, here's my latest version of the tracker; basically the same as the one I posted in June. A few updates, not because I've done much of anything, but because I've made some decisions that I hadn't back then.

Anstal Tane. Level 44 Scoundrel playing the smuggler story. Sith Pureblood, male. Recording all missions. Just finished the Taris bonus series. Although he's the farthest along, I may well play more of him, so as to spread the pack out just a bit and not have everyone bunch up on just the second and third planets.

Elemer Kell. Level 36 Sentinel playing the Jedi Knight story. Imperial Zabrak, male. Just arrived on Taris and walked out of the spaceport, but otherwise have to start all of the missions. After moving to Nar Shaddaa and recording just a bit with Anstal, I'll probably do him next. In fact, I'm trying to reorder the list of characters in the order I expect to play them. Recording all missions.

Vant Galaide. Level 35 Mercenary playing the bounty hunter story. Human male. Just arrived on Balmorra. I actually skipped the phone call from Crysta so I could go shop for a Mako customization on Balmorra and make her blonde, but then I fast-traveled back to my ship. Recording all missions.

Revecca Arden. Level 34 Sorceress playing the Sith Inquisitor story. Human female. Just about to go to Balmorra.

Haul Romund. Level 33 Mercenary playing the Smuggler story. Human male. On Coruscant.

Codon Veile. Level 21 Sniper playing the trooper story. Chiss male. On the Republic fleet; needs to take the Esseles to Coruscant.

Vash Galaide. Level 35 Powertech playing the agent story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas

Phovos Maledict. Level 28 Juggernaut playing the Sith Warrior story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas.

Mirabeau Tane. Level 20 Gunslinger playing the trooper story. Cyborg male. Just arrived on the fleet from Ord Mantell.

Wulf Hengest. Level 30 Vanguard playing the bounty hunter story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas.

Embric Stane. Level 19 Mercenary playing the bounty hunter story. Cyborg male. Just finished Hutta. I actually decided to bench Embric and not worry about recording him. I may still play him from time to time, just like I do my other benched characters, Taul Kajak and Hutran Thanatos. (Who by coincidence are both Mirialan.) In fact, that's what I've been doing since getting back in town and playing a bit again; crafting and selling with John and playing a bit of Hutran Thanatos on Tatooine. 

I've got a fair number of videos to edit, but I'm deliberately not going to worry too much about that for now. In the past, I'd sometimes psyched myself out not to play, because I didn't want to record more video, because playing is more fun than video editing, and I didn't want to mess with the latter. For now, I'll do whichever of the two I feel like and not allow myself to get worked up over the backlog.

UPDATE: I was looking through my raw videos, and I've got a lot of Anstal Tane on Taris coming up, and then some other stuff, including the launch of Codon Veile and Mirabeau Tane. However, the last several have, for some reason, no sound. I screwed up when recording them and probably forgot to adjust my settings on OBS, so it was looking for sound coming from my Xiberia headset, which I wasn't using, or something like that. Luckily, most are of Embric Stane, who I'm not going to worry about... but not all of them. Sigh. Maybe I should just use someone else's archived play if I ever want to watch this again when it's gone. That's discouraging.

UPDATE II: Well, I played Phovos Maledict through to getting his ship. I actually think, because I have so many "young" characters that don't have their ships yet, that I want to get everyone their ships before moving on. The galaxy really comes alive once you have a ship; not before. That means, I'll be doing a bunch of Coruscant and Dromund Kaas, I suppose. I had six characters, three and three on the two factions, that needed it. Since I just did a Sith Warrior, I'll need to switch to a Republic character next to break up the rainy jungle monotony. And maybe I should do one of the trooper stories so that I can space them out a bit too. I'll probably do Codon Veile next.

UPDATE III: Before I do that, though, I'm finishing off a few things that have lingered for too long. Luke, my OG smuggler is on Makeb, and I want to both just finish that, and also finish leveling up the Makeb reputation which has been on Champion for months. I actually just finished the max for the week, and I'm only a couple of hundred shy. But in addition to the Makeb reputation track, which has been almost but not quite finished for months, I've got the Section X on Belsavis and the Yavin 4 reputation tracks in basically the same place. I won't actually be able to finish any of them this week, but I want to max out my reputation this week so that I can easily and quickly finish them next week because I've only got a couple hundred rep points left to do. Then I'll record the next part of the next character, which will be Codon Veile doing the Esseles and Coruscant. Let me reorder the characters in the order I plan to do them, starting with Phovos Maledict, who I just recorded a bunch of earlier this week.

Phovos Maledict (check)

Codon Veile

Wulf Hengist

Haul Romund

Vash Galaide (the agent)

Mirabeau Tane

Vant Galaide (the bounty hunter)

Anstal Tane

Revecca Arden

Elemer Kell

From now on when I make updates to this, I'll use that order.

Sextus Vedius, Lord Mayor of Lomar

The Lord Mayor of Lomar, sitting in state in his Grand Hall, where he meets with the Council of Lomar. The chair that he sits on was made from stone brought back at great risk and expense from Old Hyperborea; in creed at least, if not always in practice, to remind the Lord Mayor of where his people came from and keep true to their heritage. 

These aren't my own work, but I really like them, so I'll add them for the heckuvit.

Bloody Mary coming through the bathroom mirror

A great rendition of Frankenstein's monster

Dark Fantasy X Race Deep Dive: The Hyperboreans

Because Lomar is starting to feature a bit more in the threads of the CHAOS IN WAYCHESTER project, I thought it would be a good idea to start my new RACE DEEP DIVE project with the Hyperboreans, and explain how they're different than just exotically colored humans.

Because at first glance, that's exactly what they appear to be; humans who have a chalky grayish white skin tone, colorless gray or white hair, and even pale, silver-chrome eyes. But as with all of the demihumans in Dark Fantasy X, exotic appearance isn't the only thing that sets them apart from their formerly fully human ancestry; all of the demihumans are subject to some kind of curse, supernatural admixture or mutation, or other inflection point after which they are defined as no longer completely human.

The Hyperboreans, as their name implies, originally come from the far north, in a kind of strange climate anomaly where clement weather prevailed over the countryside. They lived in a variety of autonomous city-states, which had a variety of cultural, religious and other differences between them, although they also recognized their brotherhood as Hyperboreans. The entire land was conquered several centuries ago by one of the members of the Heresiarchy, supremely powerful sorcerers that have most of the advantages of both liches and vampires, without the weaknesses of either—and for that matter, with less humanity than either at this point as well. Jairan Neferirkare, the Soulless—a beautiful yet treacherous tyrant who put the Hyperboreans under her thumb for a century, but who's mismanagement ultimately resulted in the destruction of that realm, was the culprit in this particular case. The climatic anomaly that made Hyperborea livable was destroyed, and harsh, frozen weather came in. The society of Hyperboreans fought back against Jairan, and ultimately prevailed, although it was a Pyrrhic victory. Jairan fled but the land was unable to support the population that once lived there. Only a handful of hearty nomads; mammoth steppe hunters, still call this place home, and they are a primitive and superstitious rump of the former glory of Hyperborea, who worship a twisted memory of the Heresiarch as a goddess. Other remnant populations maintain ties to cults that Jairan still influences, but by and large, the Hyperborean diaspora from Hyperborea was fairly complete, and once outside of the influence of the benighted land, most Hyperboreans went their own way culturally. With the retreat of Jairan and the collapse of the climate in the area, savage Inutos moved in as well, driving most of what remained of the Hyperboreans either extinct or into further diaspora. 

Nobody truly believes that Jairan Neferirkare was killed; but her whereabouts have been unknown for many long years now, and most are hopeful that they will no longer have to worry about a reappearance.

However, all of the Hyperboreans were tainted by a curse that Jairan left on those who were so gauche as to reject her rule. Today, even in some circles, the entire race is called the Cursed. Like most demihumans, they do not speak of this curse to outsiders, and many do not know of its existence, or do not believe it if they have heard of it. In terms of the game (as opposed to the setting as a place for potential fiction) I'd suggest that unless a player wants to roleplay out the effects of this curse, that it be seen as not affecting PC characters.  I suggest, in fact, that they not affect major NPCs either, unless it's a theme or something that you want to explore deliberately.  I'd additionally suggest that if you needed a statistical number for how likely it is to occur, that number is quite a bit less than 0.1%.  However... there are considerably more than a thousand Hyperborean individuals so if this is something that you want to use for whatever reason, you can.  

This curse, when it manifests, takes the form of an uncontrollable urge towards cannibalism.  Nobody knows for sure how many Hyperboreans are cannibals (some primitive or evil subcultural entities engage in the practice culturally whether affected by the curse or not), but those who fall under the curse must consume human flesh, or they will slowly devolve into ghouls.  For the most part, the repast must happen once per month at the least.  Some Hyperboreans in Inganok suspect that their own people, devolved into ghouls, and then clawed their way out of savagery into lucidity again and are the origin of the vampires of Timischburg; although it seems unlikely that they would be the only source of such if they did in fact contribute at all, given that the land of Timischburg, especially Grozavest itself, has been laboring under a dark curse for far longer than the Hyperboreans have lived there.

In Lomar, the practice of cannibalism is highly illegal, and those who fall victim to the curse are immediately proclaimed legally dead and are either euthanized, or locked up permanently if they are caught and their cursed nature is uncovered. The founders of Lomar originally came from the city-state of Zobna within Hyperborea, which was always the epicenter of resistance to the rule of Jairan Neferirkare. They are the most noble and civilized of the Hyperboreans even today, although they were also during the years that Hyperboreans still inhabited their homeland and practiced their native customs and cultures, and they reject the curse as being no more than what it is: a curse, although some other lingering populations wear the curse as a badge of honor of sorts.

Lomar borders the Hill Country, and the Zobnans of Lomar have friendly relationships, for the most part, with the Hillmen. A brisk naval trade passes between Lomar and the Hillmen cities of Cayminster and Waychester, as well as numerous smaller ports and stops along the shores of the Darkling Sea. The Zobnans have, in fact, adapted many customs from the Hillmen; they speak their language, they dress in similar (albeit sometimes exaggerated or even caricaturish) clothes to the Hillmen, and the majority of them have converted to Christianity and have adopted the cultural penchant for individualism and the sovereignty and sacred nature of the individual, although they don't really quite understand that concept the exact same way that the Hillmen do. All in all, Lomar is a success story of migration and establishment, and peaceful coexistence and syncretism with the Hillmen, many of whom are welcome to live among them within the city itself.

Here's a few sample Zobnans from Lomar, although some of them have traveled outside of its borders.

A city guard of Lomar, with a traditional maul as a weapon

A "shadow sword" manifesting her supernatural weapons as two hand axes.

A somewhat battered mercenary or caravan guard.

Some small number of Zobnan "revanchists" still travel on occasion to Old Hyperborea to hunt gnoph-keh or Inutos. Their dream of reclaiming their homeland is quixotic, but they persist in keeping an eye on the place nonetheless, which keeps the Inutos from spilling out, if nothing else.

A dignitary; one of the Councilmen of Lomar, most likely, a powerful body that advises the Lord Mayor of Lomar.

A sage from the Academy of Lomar. Possibly even a student of thaumaturgy. From the perspective of the Hillmen, the Lomarans are a bit too casual in their prosecution of potential witches and warlocks, although... in true Hillmen fashion, they just shake their heads and let them do what they do rather than attempt to intervene or lecture them.

Gnumus Silesus is an expatriate Lomaran, who lives in Dunsbury. He enjoys the warmer climate and the friendly atmosphere, so he makes sure that his business dealings on behalf of clients in Lomar keep him away from Lomar as often as possible. He's a friendly and welcome sight in most of Dunsbury, although his attempts to dress like a Hillman occasionally border on tragicomic.

Kimnor Rugova is another expatriate from Lomar, who travels with freelance Shadow Ranger Stefan Clevenger, and considers him his unofficial brother. He's got some kind of beef with something going on in Lomar which he is loth to talk about, although his exile from that city is self-imposed.

Ampelius Pictor is a Zobnan by culture, and he dresses and appears as one, but he's actually fallen into Nyxian cults and radical politics secretly. Which brings us to...

There is another group of Hyperboreans living in Lomar as well. They are a more recent addition, having moved en masse about a century or so ago. They hail from the old Hyperborean city-state of Nyx, which was hit much harder in the Pyrrhic wars of freedom that drove off Jairan Neferirkare, so they represent a much smaller population, but they are still a sizable plurality of the population of Lomar today; somewhere between 20-25%. (Hillmen and other non-Hyperboreans represent another 20-25% or so; Zobnans make up the majority 50-60% of the population.)

The Nyxians are not nearly so cosmopolitan as the Zobnans, and hang on stubbornly and in fact somewhat bitterly to their traditional ways as best they can, although attrition of younger generations who forego Nyxian traditions and assimilate into the Zobnan mainstream is a real issue. They dress all in dark, often prefer a savage appearance with strange shavings in their hair, tattoos and other barbaric cues. They often speak their dialect of the old Hyperborean language among themselves and resent having to use the common speech of the Three Realms. Few of them are Christians, and they malign that faith, sticking with their own ancient cults. Although illegal in Zobna, some of them practice cultic cannibalism in secret, and they often protect rather than surrender those of their number who fall victim to the curse of the Hyperboreans. 

Although they fought for their freedom against Jairan Neferirkare in generations past, and suffered more than most for their travail in that regard, their cult has been infiltrated from almost the beginning by agents of the Heresiarch, and they unknowingly work for aims that further her goals in ways that would see the Nyxians continue to suffer.

The political and cultural tension between Zobnans and Nyxians in Lomar has threatened at some points to boil over into riots, suppression, expulsion, or even genocide, as the two camps aren't really capable of living in peace; their goals are too incompatible. The Zobnans want to welcome the Nyxians as long-lost brothers, but the Nyxians all too often have no use for the Zobnans, want to see their way of life destroyed as an insult to Old Hyperborea, and feel that those who won't convert to their radical death cult need to simply be removed... one way or another. Finally after many, many years, some of the Zobnans are starting to wake up to the incompatibility of these goals with their way of life, and are starting to feel that the Nyxians who won't assimilate need to be exiled from Zobna, or put to death if they will not leave on their own, as the only way to preserve their own way of life for their own children.

In the past, these tensions have always managed to be tamped down by the Lord Mayor, the Councilmen and their representatives, but the root disconnect remains.

Here's a bunch of Nyxians. Physically they don't really look different than the Zobnans, other than that their traditional Nyxian dress is distinct. In spite of their militant traditionalism, however, the lines between Zobnan and Nyxian appearance have been significantly blurred.

A Guild Assassin, an ancient Nyxian custom. Naturally, it's illegal in Lomar, but it persists nonetheless underground.

A Nyxian berzerker

Even the most militant traditionalists have taken a liking to the fine quality Hillman weapons. This Carlovingian style sword is a common sight in Lomar.

This Nyxian is heavily accentuating his savage Nyxian heritage, with a traditional wave dagger, and a deliberately unkempt, barbaric appearance.

Shadow Swords were always more common among the Nyxians than among most other groups in the Three Realms, and they may indeed have been a Hyperborean invention, or creation of Jairan Neferirkare in the years in which she ruled Hyperborea.

If the Hillmen think that the normal Zobnan Lomarans are casual in their approach to witchcraft, the Nyxians almost embrace it. There's an interesting dance between the legal aspect of it (it isn't legal at all) and the ancient cultural occultism that is part of Nyxian life.

Another Nyxian warrior who plays up the barbaric appearance that is his heritage, although this guy probably functions relatively well outside of Nyxian society, and uses the cachet of his appearance  as part of his sales schtick as a mercenary.

Finally, there's a small population of secretive Hyperboreans who live in Inganok in Timischburg, who come from neither Zobna nor Nyx. While secretive and sticking to themselves, they also have lost most of their cultural distinctiveness, and aren't really any more secretive or unfriendly than most benighted small communities elsewhere in Timischburg. Their claim to fame is the mining of onyx from the Onyx Peaks, and fishing in the ocean and Ryazan Bay. They're also famous, among those who know them (who are few; famous maybe isn't quite the right word) for their pessimism and stoicism in the face of adversity. They seem to have been in Timischburg since before the coming of the Timischers, back when it was a different kingdom called Tarush Noptii. If that is true, then that suggests that they had already left Hyperborea before the collapse of that ancient kingdom; maybe even before Jairan Neferirkare arrived at all. This may explain their almost complete lack of any recognizable Hyperborean cultural traits, in spite of their obvious physical linkage to their distant cousins in the north.

Inganok onyx miner

And just for good measure, here's the description from the Dark Fantasy X rulebook. As I've developed this more detailed and nuanced description of the race, I may need to slightly edit this to be up to date.

Hyperborean: Racial affinity for Stealth, +1 to Athletics and +1 to Knowledge. These characters are exiles from long-lost Hyperborea. They have exotically pale chalk-colored skin, hair and eyes, and are altogether almost completely colorless. They speak in a voice that sounds like a rasping whisper. They mostly live in the city-state of Lomar, or in the forests even further to the north, but pressure from invading Inutos in their original homeland has caused more of them to be seen in the lands to the south.

Update

I feel like I owe an update, and so it's not just me journaling about my private life, I'll add some new Hero Forge images that I've made. I just got back last night pretty late from close to two and a half weeks out of town. I would have made a post earlier, but it's so much easier to type one on a regular keyboard than on my phone, so I didn't.

As I mentioned a few times in my last several posts, I've gone through a bit of a personal life transition, and how that affects my blogging is still TBD as the ramifications of the change continue to roll out. I got laid off in late August, I was very stressed about my income for a few weeks, then I had loads of bites on my resume and relaxed quite a bit. I ended up, within six weeks of being laid off, with four job offers and probably more on the way had I not decided to stop pursuing more of them and settle up with one of the ones that I had. This will be comparable in almost every way to the job I was laid off from, except hopefully with a better working environment where I don't keep my head down with low morale and little confidence in the leadership. As the saying with the boiling water and the frog goes, sometimes you don't realize how bad a situation gets until you find yourself with a new perspective to appreciate it. The only thing that I was forced to give up which I'll have to manage on my own now is my retirement; my old job had a pension. I am still vested in it, but it won't be as big as I'd hoped since I got laid off, so I'm not going to be able to rely on it to fund the majority of my retirement income. I also have a 401(k), but I honestly haven't paid a lot of attention to it. I will have to now! And I'll probably work longer than I would have liked, unless I write big hit novels in the next few years and come into money that I'm not expecting.

And I'm not even relocating! Which is a two-edged sword; I would have loved to relocate out West to the Rocky Mountain states, but nobody in Idaho called me back, the Utah jobs either fell through, ghosted me, or are just taking too long to materialize, and I never really found a good opportunity in Colorado, Wyoming or Rapid City. It'd be kind of funny if I still hear yet from the DOT job in Albuquerque at the end of the year. Considering that it would probably have even better security, benefits and maybe better pay than what I took and Albuquerque is a relatively cheap place to live, I might even consider it if they call me back in a few months and want to talk. Sheesh. That also depends on how well I hit it off with my new job.

Anyway, I start my new job on Monday, a week from yesterday. Again, how busy I am for my hobbies and how much mental energy I'll have to devote to them is still up in the air, but I'm positive about the future. Of course, maybe blogging will take up less of my time than other pursuits. We'll see.

I am also somewhat flattered and encouraged at the reception my resume got in certain circles. Not that I crave the validation of others, but it's still encouraging to get sometimes nonetheless.

Anyway, I've gradually gotten rid of a lot of the library minis that I got from Hero Forge, finding them not really adequately portraying either my style or my setting, or even correct proportions for human beings sometimes. I've also further modified many that I did keep, either fixing some of their proportions, or dirtying them up with the splatter decals using (usually) one of the stone colors to represent dirt or fading. It does kind of tend, after a while, to give most of my minis a kind of grimdark look, but that's OK given that I'm going for an analogous tone to the WFRP game, which is kind of Call of Cthulhu meets the Daredevil show in a fantasy setting.

In any case, the majority of these in this post will be new unique minis, however.

An updated model for Ampelius Pictor, the sorcerer from Lomar who was fomenting trouble among the Haunted Forest Tazitta tribes.

Although the year is almost over, I do recall that Hero Forge promised us print patterns for cloth. This historical Gallic warrior, with limed hair, would look better and more historically realistic with a tartan pattern on his pants. Maybe the body paint is a bit much too. That's actually more of a Pictish thing than a Gallic thing anyway.

Someone made this small image using the new stump stuff that dropped last week. It's kind of silly, but I found it whimsical and charming. (Speaking of which, today we got a few new staves.)

Speaking of whimsy, here's a Skeletor model that I made.

A basic adventuring swordsman type, but with funny boots. I wanted to use as many of the (then new; now three updates back) Mad Max stuff in a fantasy milieu as I could.

A jann who's pretty assimilated into the southern lifestyle, or at least southern clothes. Although it doesn't really show in this image because of the dirt spatters and whatnot, his skin is actually more red than it looks here. But a darker variant is hardly unheard of.

I called this the bog beast; it was actually someone's attempt to make a fantasy Chewbacca, which I modified somewhat.

A new angle on my camping knight model.

A new angle on my veteran Waychester city guard.

Meant to represent your typical country gentry. It's fair to say that, as in the Shire, there isn't really a nobility in the Hill Country per se, especially not in Southumbria, but rather landed gentry that take on the airs of nobility. This guy is gentry without the airs, if you will.

Not sure. An armored bad guy, obviously, but beyond that, I don't know what to make of this other than that I like it. Also, an early use of my custom brick color with weeds growing through the cracks; my favorite use of the bases.

A decadent wealthy daughter or maybe even wife of a nobleman, or a very wealthy landed gentry.

I didn't create this duelist, but it's a pretty good use of a lot of the Mad Max elements in a fantasy setting too.

Mostly I just wanted an excuse to copy this pose.

Ghost Riders in the Sky. Of course.

A Hillman or Timischer who's kind of "gone native" and dressed like he's from Simashki, or something. I also included, although I've included it before, my own proto-Ragnar model, because I think it's interesting that this first model here is one that I found in the library, the second is one that I created myself, but both obviously use the exact same pose. I use a lot of APR poses that I import out of my folders, but I'm obviously not the only one.

The Herald of someone important. Reminds me of that line from The 13th Warrior.

Nobody will ever accuse this battered Hyperborean warrior of being a perfumed useless simp, on the other hand.

I was playing around with mimicking what I had seen as a Kowakian monkey-lizard, and came up with this alternate view of an imp.

A jann mercenary

A prosperous jann trader, or maybe a dignitary.

A kemling action grrl

A monkey familiar, kind of based on Abu from Disney's (original animated, not the pointless live-action remake) Aladdin.

A less "civilized" monkey familiar or animal companion.

Another Hyperborean warrior.

One of the orc pirates from my recent (well... before I went out of town a few weeks ago, anyway) 5x5 entry.

A primitive tribal slinger. I have no idea how this would fit into Dark Fantasy X, but when I saw the image in the library, I had to have it.

Kind of the Prince of Persia, but I like him too much to not consider him a Dark Fantasy X compatible character model.

I may have posted these before, but there's two renditions of the Paizo character, The Red Raven. I kind of like the grungier look, but the brighter red is probably more accurate to the Wayne Reynolds artwork.

Just a random thug or bandit or something.

I liked my earlier snakeman cultist, who was kind of based on someone's interpretation of Mortal Kombat X's Reptile in Hero Forge. So, here's an alternative to the idea from two angles.

Another thug or brigand, using the same pose as the above.

This tax collector model came out with too-broad shoulders; from this angle at least, his head looks too small. I'll probably need to make a few minor modifications.

Two angles of an urban drylander thug, a race that I hadn't quite explored yet. They're not really a separate race, they're just drylanders who live in the cities instead of in tribes in the wilderness. Sometimes individuals can pass back and forth between both groups, depending on their background and knowledge.

Another urban drylander. I didn't mean to imply that they were all criminals, although based on these two images, they kind of look like they would be.

A dignitary from Loma of the Zobnan caste.

Another Zobnan; a researcher, probably into highly illegal thaumaturgy.

Plague Doctor. I don't have a specific place in Dark Fantasy X for this kind of thing yet, but they're always super spooky, right?

I had a guy I'd found in the library called "Medieval Vigilante" (or maybe that's what I called him in a file rename. Can't remember.) I remade him from scratch, though, including using only my library (and a few standard) colors, and now call him Street Crime.