She's gonna blow

I used to read more Fred Reed. I don't even know where he posts these days. Is fredoneverything.com still around? I dunno. I mostly used to read him at the Unz Review, and I know he's not there anymore. This post was cross-posted or reposted on the Ilana Mercer blog.

Annotated by me. Fred's pretty sharp and has many cogent things to say. But he's also got some mile-wide blind spots, enabled/facilitated by his identity complications. I.e., I believe, reading between the lines, that he lives or has lived in Mexico, with a Mexican wife and probably either Mexican step-children or half-Mexican children. So any discussion of demographics and an ethnic component to our problems, he refuses to see. Except for black people, which for some reason he has a keen eye for. But Jews, Indians, or Hispanics—don't expect him to recognize that their "ethnic behavior" has any component in what's going wrong with America. He'll recognize the problems and then go out of his way to not recognize who's responsible for them or why.

Anyway, without further ado:

FRED REED: She’s Gonna blow: It’s Weimar, But Where Is Our Adolf?

As the sentient have presumably noticed, the United States is in crisis, the country’s problems are profound, intrinsic, without solution, and worsening. When a population reaches the point of despair, even desperation, when it sees a darkening future for itself and its children, people yearn for a strong man who will forcibly put things right. Yet it is unlikely that helicopters of Marines from Quantico will descend on the White House and announce the dictatorship of some general. Military officers are too well paid and comfortable to worry about the country. It is hard to imagine an American Mussolini. Trump is a caricature and no one else comes to mind. Yet “unrest” –less euphemistically, “chaos” on the order of Mr. Floyd’s massive riots, is possible. We have seen it. We can see it again.

Consider America today. By comparison with Japan, China, Korea, it is a barbarity, a dumpster, an asylum, an abattoir, an astonishment. San Francisco loses conventions because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks. Almost weekly we see multiple shootings in stores, high schools and, now, grade schools. Murders of whites by blacks run at thirty a month, the news being suppressed. In cities across the country crime is out of control, the tax bases moving out, bail abolished so criminals are freed in hours. Stores leave to escape undiscouraged shoplifting and robbery. Seven hundred homicides a year in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and at least twice as many shot but survive, similar numbers in a dozen cities. For practical purposes, law does not exist in these ungovernable enclaves. Sexual curiosities, once called perversions, flourish with American embassies hoisting flags in support of transsexualism. Mobs topple historical statues. Many tens of thousands live on sidewalks and a hundred thousand a year die of opioid overdoses. The country drops math requirements and English grammar in schools, AP courses, and SATs as racist. The economy declines, jobs have left for other climes, medical care is beyond most people’s means, government is corrupt and incompetent, and wars are unending. There is actual hatred between racial, political, and regional groups. Ominously, gun sales are up.

How is this going to end well? How did we get here?

America has never been a nation in the correct sense of the word, a people sharing values, language, a culture. Rather it has been, and is, a collection of peoples having little and common and, often disliking each other. West Virginia has nothing in common with Massachusetts which has nothing in common with the Deep South which has nothing in common with coastal California which has nothing in common with Cavalier Virginia which has nothing in common with Latinos who have nothing in common with blacks.

No, that's not true. America absolutely was a nation in the correct sense of the word when it declared independence, and for a long time thereafter. The Founding Fathers clearly recognized it, as does census data from the 1700 and 1800s. Regional difference exist within nations. In fact, the American regional differences are largely, as explained clearly by David Hackett Fischer in Albion's Seed, the SAME regional difference that already existed in England transposed to America. Is he suggesting that the English aren't a nation? Or the Germans—if he thinks that there's dissimilar homogeneity in Germany, he's smoking something. French wasn't even the majority language of France until 100 years ago, just the biggest plurality language, and Occitan was nearly as big. Regional differences exist within nations, without negating their state of nationhood.

He is correct, however, in noting, offhand though it may be, that Latinos and blacks are not part of the American nation. They're just people living IN America, but rejecting its culture and heritage, because it's not theirs, natch. 

Until perhaps the early Sixties, the regions got along with each other reasonably well because there was little communication between them. Roads were poor, the internet was not even on the horizon. Radio stations and newspapers were local, reflecting the surrounding culture and taste. The central government was remote and had little influence locally. Each region lived as it wished.

Providing a degree of commonalty was that the country was overwhelmingly white, European, Anglophone and, at least nominally, Christian. It was socially conservative, largely consisting of small towns.

He doesn't seem to notice that he's contradicting his own statement above here, really. But he's right this time. Until the invasion of hordes of foreigners, America had a single culture. Even during the Civil War, and in its immediate aftermath, former combatants on both sides recognized their common culture, heritage and co-nationality.

The resulting culture was unsophisticated but civilized. In the suburbs of Washington (I was there) you really could leave your bike anywhere and it would be there when you came back. In summer children really could play great sprawling multiblock games of hide-and-seek after dark and no one worried. In high school in rural Virginia (I was there too) the boys had guns for hunting deer and shooting varmints in the bean fields and you could leave your .410 in the back seat of your jalopy in the school’s parking lot. Nobody thought of shooting anyone. It wasn’t in the culture. If a thing isn’t in the culture, it doesn’t happen. You don’t need policemen. The boys didn’t use bad language around the girls or vice versa and nobody even thought of disrespect to teachers. There were class clowns (I may know somewhat of this), but no real misbehavior. It wasn’t in white, technically Christian, semi-rural culture.

Then many things happened. In no particular order:

The reach of the federal government grew and grew. Washington, which had been a distant city concerning itself with foreign policy and the economy, could now impose its values on remote society. It did.

Washington discovered the “separation of church and state,” which had lain unnoticed in the Constitution since 1789. In regions of deep religiousness, it became illegal to recite the Lord’s prayer, to have creches on the town square at Christmas, or two sing carols on the public streets. It had nothing to do with meticulous adherence to the Constitution, but everything to do with the discovery by angry minorities that they could impose on majorities. In short, like many movements to come, it was a revenge operation. It has become a de facto program of de-Christianization, weakening a source of social cohesion and leading to anger.

He says "Washington" here, but doesn't point out that this didn't happen until a number rentier of Jews were put on the Supreme Court and immediately started interpreting American law to be out of harmony with American culture. It wasn't, of course. Although Yankees do this to some extent too, and many of them jumped on the bandwagon with the Jews, it was really a very Jewish thing to do to ignore the spirit of the law and attempt to lawyer your way into interpreting the law to mean the exact opposite of what it says. In fact, the Talmud is very much a document that attempts to do that with the commandments. That's not an American point of view or an American approach to structuring society. But because Americans weren't really interested in rentier roles, we kind of inadvertently let foreigners with hostile intentions to our culture creep into positions where they could impose their anti-American "morality" on the rest of us.

But again, Reed is incapable of seeing the effects of cultural differences between Jews, Hispanics and Americans, so he'll never recognize that. He'll just say that it was "Washington." And to be fair to him, as I said, the descendants of the New England Puritans were more than happy to go along with it and boost the signal; they've also got a penchant for telling everyone else what to do and being an entire race of Karens.

The federal government began to dictate what could be taught in local schools. Teachers were forbidden to mention Creationism because a judge in Philadelphia, who appeared to have the scientific grasp of a potato chip, said this transgressed the doctrine of separation. The decision had little practical relevance as there was no likelihood that hearing of Genesis would turn students away from the study of biochemistry. It was, however, an early manifestation of class snobbery against what was seen as primitive Christianity that would later coalesce into hostility toward the Deplorables.

Remote anonymous committees in New York wrote highly ideological textbooks imposed on distant states which did not share those ideologies. The effectiveness of this relied on the principle that outraged parents in Arkansas would have no idea how to oppose distant bureaucracies of whose existence they were unaware and whose phone numbers they could not find. American government is democratic while not allowing the people to exercise power. It is a brilliant system, until it explodes.

Again; notice the geography? Yankees and Jews imposed their values on the rest of the country. Because it burns them up inside that people don't recognize their need to tell everyone else what to do and how to think. It's kind of intrinsic to their natures, to some degree, and it's almost exceptional and extraordinary to meet one who doesn't lean into those tendencies. Some people also call this a feminine vs. masculine approach. There's something to that too. The feminine mind looks for consensus, and if it doesn't exist, tries to force it, because it is deeply uncomfortable with differences of opinion.

Compulsory racial integration, as distinct from desegregation, was an untarnished disaster. Few wanted it, and few want it. The people who imposed it did not, and do not, send their children to black schools. The races transparently do not want to live together. If blacks move into white neighborhoods, “white flight” occurs and if whites move into black neighborhoods, blacks furiously complain of gentrification.

When two cultures have utterly different views of acceptable language, dress, behavior, study, and curricula, mixing them does not work. In the schools, academic standards fell. Discipline became a problem. Across America, cities burned because of conflict between black populations and white police. Eurowhite culture, it turned out, was incompatible with Negro culture. The potential for yet greater disaster seems great, and no one has a solution. There probably isn’t a solution.

It's funny how his vision between white and black is so clear, but he won't apply this same logic to the difference between Anglo-Saxon and Jew, or American and Mexican/Latino. Obviously, the exact same logic applies between any two differing population groups, no matter who they are. It is true that blacks are extraordinarily difficult to live with and beside compared to any other population group due to their well-documented r-selection, impulsivity, lack of self-control and higher tendency towards criminality and violence than any other population. But that's why they should have always stayed in Africa where their only neighbors were each other, and they could practice the culture that worked for them without being meddled with by anyone else, or without themselves meddling in the culture of anyone else. 

So, I guess because of the order of magnitude problem of the difference between black and white culture, he can only see it for one population group or something? Not sure the cause of the blind spot here. Probably, again, his own complicated identity situation makes it harder for him to see what he doesn't want to see. Neal Maxwell used to talk about "wintry doctrines" of the Gospel, and Heartiste used to talk about the difference between pretty lies and ugly truths. In spite of the vast difference in spiritual capital between a literal Apostle of God and an unrepentant and defiant sinner, they were both intelligent, and they were both right. Sometimes the truth is hard to see because it isn't as "nice" as we wish it was, or because it threatens something about our own personal sense of identity, so we reject it in spite of its obvious truth. And the truth is that it isn't just people in the individual sense that are different, peoples in the generic, plural sense, are also different. They're not interchangeable widgets. That's really a pretty insulting and dehumanizing point of view, if you think about it, but it's also at the core of the virtue-signaling delusional wishful thinking that is the foundation of our Current Year ideology, on both sides of the political aisle. If anything, "conservatives" buy into this even harder than Leftists, actually. How many of them brag about "not seeing color" when in fact, color is more highly correlated to behavior than all of the things that (I guess) they think that they do see.

This doesn't mean, of course, that we should just assume that all black people are violent criminals. That would be insane and obviously wrong. But it does mean that we shouldn't think that we can simply "absorb" tens of millions of Third Worlders and expect our culture or our economy either one to withstand that intact.

The Constitution, which once brought political stability, withered, being ignored or interpreted into unrecognizability by judges or made irrelevant by changes in technology and society. Freedom of speech, which meant that I could say that the President was a fool and should be removed from office, became freedom of expression, meaning that porn sites, accessible to children of nine years, could upload videos of a German Shepherd copulating with a beautiful blonde tied down to a bed. Some doubted that the writers of the Constitution had this in mind when providing the Bill of Rights, but none could gainsay the Supreme Court or the federal power.

Again; he should look a little more carefully at which justices were the ones responsible for these precedents. Few of them have good old Anglo-Saxon names. I'm just sayin'.

The behemoths of the electronic media imposed political censorship. Being private enterprises, they could not be disciplined. They became more and more an arm of the central government, which became more and more the property of the Northeastern coastal elites. Entities with names like Google, Twitter, and Facebook cleansed themselves of content thought inappropriate, websites delisted, credit card accounts closed. People disappeared by the electronic media were almost as disappeared as those disappeared in Latin America, though less bloodily. The intention and effect are the same.

That's not true. Private enterprises can of course be disciplined. They just haven't been, because 1) if the government didn't actually help establish them in the first place which there's strong circumstantial evidence that they did, then 2) they certainly saw the advantage of an unofficial arm of the same managerial movement that could do things that was illegal for the government to do, and vice versa. Like with fascism and fascist-like political movements 100 years ago, the partnership of government and "private" enterprise to reach the exact same ideological goals is a one-two punch that's difficult to get away from. Because nobody is vested in taking them on that is in a position to effectively do so.

An unexpected effect of censorship was that those doing the censoring also censored themselves. The media, talking to each other, reading each other, having no contact with or interest in the silenced and deplorable, had no idea of the anger out there. This brought us Floyd and Trump as deep wells of undetected anger exploded. The media are doing it again.

Floyd and Trump are completely unrelated movements, and Floyd, by which I mean the BLM domestic terrorism and riots, were largely sponsored and encouraged by the Establishment as punishment on the American people for attempting to assert their interests by electing Donald Trump in the first place. For him to lump them together as two symptoms with the same root cause is shockingly obtuse. Even the actual BLM organizers weren't overly concerned about the death of George Floyd (from drug overdose, just to be clear. That was also extremely well documented, in spite of the nonsense kangaroo court trial.) They were "trained Marxists" in their own words, and they simply took advantage of the death of George Floyd as a trigger to jump in to action.

The current regime in Washington appears deliberately and intensely divisive. Biden has attacked the South, supporting renaming of military bases in deliberate affront. A thorough racist, he frequently denounces whites. He denounces Trump and his supporters, nearly half of America. He has ostentatiously chosen black women as justice of the Supreme Court, member of Federal Reserve, Vice President, and White House spokeswoman. While these may or may not be competent, he announced them as diversity hires. He is poised to assault owners of guns, sure to provoke fury, has involved America in another war, and wants a federal Ministry of Truth to prohibit ideas he doesn’t like. Profoundly partisan, he makes no attempt to calm things or promote tranquility.

The universality of the internet made difficult or impossible the maintenance of distinct values or mores. It became impossible for the cultivated to inculcate in their children manners, good English, and appreciation of learning when the electronics bathed them in not only the traditionally low culture of America but also the anticivilization of the ghetto. America undergoes both enforced peasantrification and homogenization. Anger grows.

You could also just call that the effect of toxic narcissism and resentment of the weirdos against normalcy and be just as accurate, of course. It probably hasn't escaped most peoples' notice that the champions of Leftist Lunacy are usually the unattractive, the socially unsuccessful, and those who've "taken the ticket" by taking rentier roles that they aren't even remotely qualified for. It's no wonder that they are effectively making war on normalcy as it used to exist in America. And as the saying goes, "Physiognomy is real." If you see some soy-faced pseudo-man or grumpy Karen blue-haired land-whale, you probably don't need to ask them what their politics are.

Congress and the Constitution largely ceased to function, leaving Presidents to rule by executive order, this not being entirely distinguishable from dictatorship. This included the making of war, which became both common and beyond public influence. The legislature no longer governed but was the storefront for special interests of immense power. There remained no body interested in the wellbeing of the country. This led to offshoring of jobs, poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt and rural Deep South, the impoverishing influx of cheap Mexican labor, Donald Trump, and intense regional hatred. Here we are.

Ah, he finally gets around, indirectly, to talking about the invasion of entitled, demanding, ungrateful and unappreciative Third World hordes from Latin America, and India, and to a lesser degree from the Middle East and East Asia. For quite a long time, America could support immigration from almost anywhere, because 1) it came in small enough numbers that it never threatened the economic or cultural well-being of America overall, and 2) there was a lot of social pressure for immigrants to conform to American norms of behavior, or don't come. Both of those have been destroyed in the last few decades, so now we're only a step away from open civilizational warfare over who's vision of America will prevail; that of the Americans themselves, or that of the squatters who have crashed the American party and now demand that the host accept them as members of the household rather than uninvited and unwelcome guests who have—notwithstanding—been pretty well-treated, especially before they became emboldened to become super obnoxious.

This can’t last. The hatreds are intense, the guns everywhere, anger growing at crime, something akin to economic desperation appearing. Washington will leave nowhere alone, will not address national problems, will always give priority to its military, its wars and its empire over domestic needs. The hostility that fueled the Floyd riots, the burning cities, the looting and vengeful vandalism, are still there. She’s going to blow. Watch.

He's right. I think the one of the first real breaking of the dam moments will be when white America finally shrugs off its guilt complex over the hoax of racism and sexism and says that it doesn't care anymore; women and minorities need to shut up and stop being so disruptive, or ship out. But I could be wrong. There are plenty of potential schwerpunkts out there.

Punting just a bit, I admit

This post, as the title says, is me punting just a bit. I don't have anything too important to talk about, but I want to move these image files out of the folder I'm keeping them in, so I'll post them.

"My" old D&D version is B/X, but I admit to a certain strong nostalgic attachment to the Larry Elmore covers of the BECMI line. Here they are in low resolution. Most of them can be bought as reasonably priced prints from Larry Elmore's online storefront, the exception being the Companion cover. Which, sadly, is probably my favorite of the bunch. That can be bought as a giclee high quality print, but it's no longer reasonably priced if you just want some framed posters to throw up in one of your rooms as decoration.

In the correct BECMI order... although I also have to admit that the I set has no nostalgic (or other) resonance with me at all. I just don't care about that paradigm or that art all that much. So, BECM—?

If I were decorating a game room, I'd replace that weird superhero image with one of Elmore's more "traditional" pieces that I have more connection to. I also think that this would fit well in the series, just based on subject matter, although I know that it's an old Dragonlance module cover, so quite a different product.

On a totally different topic, one of the very welcome changes SWTOR made was to take a step back from trying to be WoW, and instead being an Old Republic game that happened, this time, to have some online grouping capability. The reality is that the majority of the playerbase was more interested in the solo story play than "dungeon raiding". As part of this change, there were a number of the old group content "flashpoints" that had a solo mode added to them; they did this by reducing enemy health by (I imagine) a certain percentage, and then giving you a fairly effective "extra" companion in the form of a tank robot fighter. 

Unfortunately, they only did this for about half of the "classic" flashpoints; primarily ones that had some story implication and that you were really expected to play. However, as you play through the original story mode, you get a lot of flashpoint prompts that you can't really do unless you enter a groupfinder queue. 

Then there's just a few from the very first expansion that are still on the same paradigm as the original flashpoints; these aren't really soloable either. But after that, ALL Flashpoints had a solo mode, because the paradigm had change. 

By my count there are 33 flashpoints (although a few are faction specific) and of them, 11 still have no story mode. It would have been relatively easy and should have been a priority to offer a solo mode for all of them, and I still think BioWare should allocate a small amount of resources to create such an option while the game still has some life in it left. Here's my list of flashpoints in order and where you'd pick them up, both those you can play solo already and those that you should be able to. I highlighted the ones that need a solo version in red.

The Esseles (Republic) and The Black Talon (Empire) After doing your first starter planet, you travel by shuttle to the fleet, pick up a few things, and then move on to another shuttle that will take you to the capital plant; Coruscant and Dromund Kaas respectively. While you can skip these flashpoints and take a non-event shuttle, you probably need the XP, so I almost always do with my new characters. Sometimes I even run them through it a few times, because each time gives low level PCs ~3 levels worth of XP, if you have the XP bonus turned on. This was already seen as an "essential" Flashpoint, so there's a solo mode available. It's the two that I've played (by far) the most.

Hammer Station Both Republic and Empire have (with slightly altered cutscenes) access to Hammer Station right freakin' there on the capital planet, and it's clear that it's meant to be played either while on the planet, or at least before you leave it. It isn't a particularly story-heavy flashpoint (I've done it with a group a few times) but then again, neither are the heroics on the capital planet, or most of the exploration missions. It's a bigger side-quest than most of those, but it isn't really that much bigger than, for instance, the Imperial "Friends of Old" Heroic mission.

Athiss The Republic and Empire go to different planets to start their Act I following the introduction; Taris for Republic and Balmorra for Empire. There's not a flashpoint associated with these planets until you hit them later in the story (in reverse order; Taris for Empire and Balmorra for Republic) so you go instead to Nar Shaddaa. As part of that planet, you get the Athiss Flashpoint. Athis is a cool planet that's a little bit like a slightly more forested Korriban; or maybe a Korriban merged with a Tython, or something. Slap a red filter on it and give it the red sky and red lighting, and it'd be a great stand-in for Dathomir too. Like Hammer Station, it's just a side quest, and it's basically the same regardless of faction.

Mandalorian Raiders After Nar Shaddaa, which both factions do at the same point, they both go to Tatooine, where there's another non-story mode flashpoint, Mandalorian Raiders. This is another side mission, so you don't miss too much by not playing it. As an aside, there used to be a weapon drop from this flashpoint that I would really have loved to get my hands on, but it's no longer available. Sigh. Why in the world would BioWare take assets that are already in the game and make them unavailable? There should be some way to still get that stuff. 

Cademimu is the last flashpoint for Act I and is doable on Alderaan, the next planet after Tatooine. It's another "strike team goes and deals with a side quest 'emergency'" style story, but that's OK. After... four in a row, however, the formula is getting a little stale. I like the landscape of Cademimu; a reddish Corsuscant, or more industrial Nar Shaddaa. It's not original, but it's pretty cool. However, the "Governor Chornarov" who in spite of his Russian-esque name is portrayed as a bizarre Yankee caricature of Robert E. Lee—which I admit I personally find a bit offensive—is a strange antagonist. Although he's also portrayed as a coward that you never actually meet; the real problem is a bunch of asylum-granted war criminal milita from the Ord Mantell separatists, which is actually kind of an interesting callback to the smuggler and trooper story start.

Taral V→Maelstrom Prison (Republic) and Boarding Party→The Foundry (Empire) These four flashpoints; and you'll play two of them back to back, but they differ substantially between factions, are the next ones that actually have a significant story element to them, and both revolve around discovering that Revan is still alive, having been kept in some kind of stasis prison for 300 or so years, but now he's free (or you're supposed to free him, depending.) The landscapes are interesting; Taral V looks like a small section of Dromund Kaas that wasn't used previously, the Foundry has a kind of Rakata structures on Belsavis look to it, and the other two are just inside spaceships, and have either a Republic or Imperial ship/fleet look to them, as appropriate. They're both already playable, and you'd probably be pretty confused during the Shadow of Revan expansion if you didn't. You take these up on the first planet for Act II, which is different depending on your faction; Balmorra for Republic and Taris (nighttime) for the Empire.

Colicoid War Games is a flashpoint that you do after Hoth, the last planet of Act II. The very short planet Quesh doesn't have a Flashpoint associated with it. The story involved is a little bit different, although a little hoaky. It's totally optional from a story point of view, but we should still be able to play it solo. So are all kinds of other missions. The order on the flowchart is a little weird here. They suggest that after finishing Hoth, you'd go back to Alderaan and do the Bonus Series, and then go back to the fleet to pick this up. A little unusual.

Red Reaper is notorious as a flashpoint that hardcore people, usually with a stealth class, would solo. Stealthing a mission like this isn't too hard; I've stealthed the Heroic 4 on Section X many times, but actually having to fight the boss by yourself is challenging. But this one was famous for having some sick loot and being relatively easy to stealth/solo compared to the rest, so it used to be spammed a lot. I'd like to see it with a proper solo mode. It's meant to be played between Voss and the Voss Bonus Series.

Directive 7 is yet another weird side quest, where you're on a carbon copy of Balmorra fighting an army of renegade droids. For whatever reason, it got a solo mode, though. Probably because there was a lot more dialogue and cut scenes that most flashpoints, but not at all because it's central to the story, because it very clearly is not. It's a late game addition, though—according to the flowchart, it's meant to be played after Corellia, which technically makes it after the main story is over. The level requirement means that it's concurrent, I suppose, with Corellia, though.

The Battle of Ilum→The False Emperor These two are essential to the epilogue story on Ilum after your class story is actually over. Ilum doesn't have a class story at all, although there are Republic and Empire specific faction stories, a fair bit of exploration, and a big recurring event area. After this are the last hurrahs for grouping content. I could add some of the Operations in here too, including several that are linked together to make for an interesting side story, but that'll be for another post.

Kuat Drive Yards is a weird one. It was released late, right in this section, but it can be picked up and played earlier, and dialogue makes it possible to interpret its place in the story in various places. As part of making this one solo, they should anchor it at a particular point in the storyline too.

Kaon Under Siege→The Lost Island These two linked flashpoints are not soloable, but should be, and they deal with a rakghoul kind of thing. (I wonder if back in the day they were released to coincide with the first rakghoul recurring event?) In any case, they're both pretty cool; Kaon Under Siege in particular is a dark, moody piece with a good zombie apocalypse vibe going through it. 

Czerka Corporate Labs→Czerka Core Meltdown are two more linked flashpoints that are on the small daily area planet CZ-198. These are the last released flashpoints to not have a solo mode. All of the remainder are part of expansions, so I won't talk about where they fit, other than to place them in order. In fact, I doubt I'll offer much commentary on them at all, other than that flashpoints—by this point—had become integral to the way the story was progressed. All of these flashpoints are necessary to actually proceed with the story, but they're less open ended than just running around and picking up story missions, as you did before. Many of them are on planets that you otherwise won't see at all. This is true for a lot of prior flashpoints, like Cademimu or Athiss, but because they're part of the story, it's a little bit too bad; you'd like to actually see some of these planets a bit more.

The Shadow of Revan expansion had four linked flashpoints as it's "prelude" before you went and did the new planet Rishi (with faction only, not class story missions.) The prelude flashpoints are a bit unusual in that they differ somewhat by faction, and the order is reversed on the first two, which are also not really the same (defending vs raiding Tython and Korriban respectively). Then there's some callbacks to Knights of the Old Republic with a flashpoint on Manaan and the Unknown World, i.e., Rakata Prime.

Assault on Tython→Korriban Incursion→Depths of Manaan→Legacy of the Rakata

Blood Hunt is a flashpoint on Rishi where you go fight a bunch of Mandalorians, and then after you kill a bunch of them and beat up their leader, who's now the middle-aged Karen from the early Deceived cinematic trailer, then they join you as friends and allies. Quite honestly, the EU version of Mandalorians is pretty stupid. The Clone Wars did them right, but then Filoni did everything he could in the next series; Rebels and The Mandalorian, to restore the stupid EU incarnation of them back to the canon. 

The Battle of Rishi is near the end of the Shadow of Revan expansion, and certainly the end of the Rishi section. You still go do the daily area on Yavin IV, and then fight Revan himself as a big bad boss, but that's content that's not flashpoint-like.

Crisis on Umbara is a cool location and a fun flashpoint, with a traitor/mole in your organization coming out with a side story that runs for a little while. 

Traitor Among the Chiss is the same traitor, but now he's got the backing of a rogue Chiss element. Another interesting planet that you can't see otherwise.

The Nathema Conspiracy is another interesting planet, and an important part of the Valkorian/Empire story.

Objective Meridian has you going back to a newly interpreted Corellia (different time of day too) and dealing with yet another Imperial incursion. It's part of Onslaught, though, not the original Corellia stuff, or even the Black Hole epilogue on Corellia. 

Spirit of Vengeance is a Mandalorian themed flashpoint that ends on a cliffhanger. Upcoming game update 7.2 promises to finish the story started in this flashpoint, which is a big raid on a rival Mandalorian clan's fleet, or ship or whatever. 

Secrets of the Enclave is another callback flashpoint. BioWare had already added Dantooine as a daily area and recurring event planet, although its kind of small and if there isn't the pirates event going on, there's not a lot to do there (when it is going on, for whatever reason I get a lot of lag on this planet. I guess I get a lot of lag on Ilum when the Gree event is going on too.) But for this flashpoint, however, you leave that area behind and explore the ruins of the Jedi Enclave that was a major part of the Knights of the Old Republic story. It is kind of a shame that BioWare is reduced to callbacks to KOTOR and "hey, remember this stuff, when you used to like us? Well, we've brought it back for you in the hopes that you'll like us again." Then again, Star Wars is doing that more broadly, so... eh. 

Ruins of Nul is on a new planet, and is a pretty cool looking one, actually. It's got this dark Sithy kind of vibe to it, it looks cold and there's a light dusting of windblown snow, and weird reddish plants, as well as a solar eclipse that lasts the entirety of the flashpoint. However, the flashpoint itself isn't that interesting; its got grindy trash mobs and sub-bosses that are basically giant puzzles. I consider this one a pretty but disappointing one, but about where BioWare is these days. 

Archaeolinguistic discussion

I tried to make this  post in the comments section of the Eurogenes blog, but it was too long and the system rejected it.  Even though the person I'm responding to will never see it here, I thought  "what the heck" and I'll post it anyway.

@Andrzejewski "I would love to know what language Tripolye spoke and its linguistic affiliation- is it related to Etruscan, LBK or whatever it was that Ötzi spoke."

Wouldn't we all love to know that! Get to work on interpreting that Vinca script!

Here's a few things we do know: the only languages that we have full agreement on that have ancestry that probably predates the Indo-Europeanization of Europe are Etruscan and Basque. There are other southeastern languages that MAY be related to some of these that we know existed, although we know almost nothing else about them other than that: Aegean/Pelasgian, Minoan, and Hattic. There are some other languages of dubious provenance from ancient Iberia, Italy and Anatolia/Aegean like Tartessian or North and South Picene, etc. Almost nothing is known about any of these, even if they are Indo-European or not. The best "theories" still don't manage to rise above the level of handwavey speculative hypotheses, such as the "Tyrsenian family" or the "Vasconic family" and there is little agreement among linguists about the basis for any of them.

Basque does seem to at least have been geographically consistent as far back as we can trace it, but we can't trace it much further back than to just prior to the Roman conquest of Gaul, many millennia after it was presumably already in place.  It is probably related to or even descended from the geographically larger Aquitanian language, but even that supposition is pretty handwavey. Etruscan "claims" by Roman historians to have come from the north, and may be related to other Alpine languages  like Rhaetic. The Etruscans themselves present a genetic profile that is pretty close to what we'd expect from early Italic-speaking Indo-Europeans, who also presumably came from north of the Alps or at least the Po valley from the Bronze Age, and the exact same material cultures have been proposed for the ancestors of the Italics as for the ancestors of the Etruscans. How a steppe-appearing population that looks on paper like a good candidate for the spread of early Italic languages came to speak a non-Indo-European language is a total mystery. While it seems possible that Etruscan is descended from a language similar to what Otzi's people may have spoken, that's simply based on geographical dead reckoning, and is abductive reasoning that may well have no basis in reality.

I wish for more information on it too, but the reality is that we have no idea what language(s) the EEF population spoke, nor do we have any idea what the WHG language(s) may have looked like, although it seems possible that Etruscan and/or Basque is descended from one such lingering linguistic stock. Quite probably, the linguistic picture was more complex than we expect; if we paint brush in broad strokes, that makes it easier for us to theorize, but in the areas where we actually have SOME information from neighboring early historians among the Greeks, Hittites, Egyptians or Romans, such as the paleo-Balkan linguistic situation, the Bronze Age and early Iron Age Anatolian, Italic and Iberian situation, we see the precise opposite; a patchwork of languages who's relationship to each other is confusing and uncertain at best.  We can probably deduce that that same situation was common across most of Europe, and that the "settling in" of Indo-European languages was a much longer and more involved process that involved multiple waves of differing "grades" of I-E development before Europe was well and truly Indo-Europeanized. By the time we have, for instance, records of the expansion of Celtic in the Iron Age across much of Central Europe, we can presume that it superimposed itself over a number of completely unrelated and anonymous previous Indo-European languages that existed in the area already, as well as who knows how many lingering stumps of pre-Indo-European that was fading away to be lost forever to the mists of time.

One of the best proposals I've seen, although it is precisely the type of broad-stroke paint job that I am making the case against, is Peter Schrijver's broader Anatolian theory where he makes a vague case that Hurrian, Hattic, Minoan, possibly at least some of the modern Caucasian languagess, and even Sumerian all have an ancient genetic link, and that that language family is most likely the starting point for EEF languages. That leaves Basque a little out in the cold, but again based on geographical dead reckoning, I like the idea—speculative though it clearly is—that it might be a lingering descendant of the old El Miron genetic cluster's original language, transmitted through WHG to more modern populations, and against all odds surviving as a hinterlands language isolate in the mountains for millennia. But I wouldn't bet money on that idea, as catchy as it sounds.

Dark Fantasy X Race Deep Dive: The Kemlings

Many fantasy settings have outlines, or even full treatises, that explain the history of the setting going back thousands—or even tens of thousands—of years. A quick glance at two settings that I happen to have nearby: the original 3.5 iterations of Golarion and Eberron, show that they have outlines going back at least 5,000 years and 10,000+ respectively.

Part of the problem is that Tolkien did this, to some degree. And for Tolkien it was somewhat justified, as he had elves that had lifespans of at least thousands of years still kicking around, with living memory of times that should have been so far back that they were mythological rather than verified history anyway. As has often been the case, people following in Tolkien's footsteps have slavishly tried to imitate him without necessarily really understanding why Tolkien did something, or why he was able to make it work. The past works best when it's kind of mysterious—like it is in the real world. Although a number of smug academics firmly believe that they understand the past, I'm not convinced. In part, because I see how callously most of them treat primary sources, and how dogmatic they are about narratives constructed second-hand many years after the fact to try and explain history. But that's neither here nor there, except to point out that in Dark Fantasy X, I have no intention of explaining really any history of any kind that's older than a couple hundred years, and even then, only infrequently. (The same is mostly true for Space Opera X, to be honest with you. I actually think it's a feature of good design, unless you have extraordinary circumstances, to leave the past alone unless something in the past is a major plot point, and even then, treat it only as much as you must.)

So, the kemlings. Where did they come from, and how long ago? There are many indications that they are actually a young race, and may only have existed for ~400-500 years or so. However, because they appeared in a savage area of the setting where records were not really kept, and most people didn't even read or write, and because there are a lot of propagandistic and jingoistic narratives that the kemlings have told about themselves and others have told about them in retaliation, the truth is probably impossible to divine without maybe asking one of the older Heresiarchs about it. Which would be an absolutely terrible idea, by the way. Like most of the non-human races, the kemlings are demihumans; their ancestors were human, but some kind of event happened to their genetics; either the introduction of some supernatural bloodline, or a curse, or something else that changed them into something that's mostly human-like, but not exactly human anymore. In the case of the kemlings, they have charcoal like skin that ranges in hue from that of medium ashy gray to jet black obsidian. At the lightest, they still don't really converge with the darkest of Hyperboreans, but many have wondered at the generally colorlessness of both races, and attempted to tie them together somehow. This seems fundamentally unlikely; the base human stock that the kemlings come from is probably the Drylander barbarians that live in the Baal Hamazi area where the kemlings first appeared.

In addition to their dark skin and black hair, the kemlings tend to have intense yellow or red irises, and most iconically, their heads are ringed with a number of small horns, often forming a crown-like pattern. According to the beliefs of the ruling class of Baal Hamazi before its collapse, this was in direct imitation of their mythological supernatural ancestor, the Daemon-Lord Chernavog, and his direct descendant, the half-daemon Hutran Kutir, the first Emperor of Baal Hamazi. Kutir is often claimed as the first kemling, and he had hundreds of sons and a like number of daughters, all pureblood kemlings, and from them the race propagated, as their descendants, even when mingled with humans, came out as pureblood kemlings. Whether this is literally true or not hardly matters; many kemlings themselves no longer believe it, and think that Chernavog and possibly even Hutran Kutir himself are merely mythical figures who's tangible existence should be doubted. They also often express some degree of embarrassment to be a bloodline saddled with what may well be a daemonic taint, not to mention the stigma of having ruled an empire that is now seen by most as the epitome of evil and degeneracy. Many feel that they have more to live down rather than live up to with regards to their dark heritage (the original source of the name, I might add). 

A pretty typical kemling adventuring fellow from Baal Hamazi. Many kemlings have left the city-states and now live in the wilderness, often in tribes, where they often mingle heavily with Drylander savages.

Many kemlings, perhaps as a result of their dark heritage, seem to be drawn to careers that they should avoid. The consorting with daemons and witchcraft and dark cults that was a hallmark of the Empire still lingers here and there, but it has often translated in to a more mundane focus on organized crime. This infiltrator is an expert assassin, spy and cat burglar, who probably works as a free agent across the city-states for various crime lords.

This kemling lord is one who's family managed to weather the falling of the empire and retain a privileged position in the new order that replaced it, although that makes him an exceptional individual indeed.

Like among the Hyperboreans, the shadow sword career is one that seems to have a long history in Baal Hamazi, and kemling shadow swords—while not common—are at least common enough to be a folk tale told around the Three Realms.

Like the Hyperboreans, and like most demihuman races, the kemlings have a curse that manifests in their bloodline from time to time. 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 kemling individuals so if this is something that you want to use for whatever reason, you can.  

The kemling curse is inextricably tangled in their mythological origin. In spite of the skepticism that many kemlings and non-kemlings exhibit towards the story of Chernavog and Hutran Kutir, their curse is a circumstantial proof, if you will, of genuine daemonic ancestry in the kemlings, even if not necessarily exactly as told in the myths.  It is possible that their ancestor was a Daemon-Lord named Chernavog, who lived for a time among mortals and fathered seed who's daemonic traits are now watered down to represent their own race.  It is also possible that Chernavog's son Hutran Kutir, the Hex-King, is the founder of Baal Hamazi, their glorious empire of the past, although any other detail about is life other than that is vague and to be distrusted.  The kemlings are more likely than any other race to fall victim to the Black Choler, a kind of violent madness.  Such victims are usually quietly locked away or even put down entirely for the good of the community.  In fact, the latter is often preferred, although family members sometimes object. In the worst case scenario, someone afflicted by the Black Choler may burst open when the condition is fully ripe, and a daemon (usually merely an imp or servitor daemon, but sometimes more powerful ones are able to latch on to the bloodline and follow it to the mortal world) will claw its way out of the bloody corpse to afflict everyone around.

In the past, it was seen as a glorious evidence of being touched by Chernavog, and victims of the Black Choler were given pampered existences in peacetime, and turned on their enemies as berserker shock troops in times of war. The inherent unreliability of this strategy, as well as the burden of maintaining them in peacetime, even when there were very few of them, made this practice fall out of favor before the ending of the Empire and its dissolution into various city-states, and someone falling victim to the Black Choler in this time of post-Empire is seen as a disaster and tragedy for the individual involved, as well as his family and community.

The scholars of Simashki have a more grounded theory for the origin of the kemling race and its curse, and teach that Hutran Kutir, if he actually existed at all, was probably born a kemling the same as all of the rest of them. Because this was a time when the kemling race wasn't common or true breeding, but rather an atavistic or recessive trait for humans with a touch of daemon blood in them, this was usually seen as a great curse on the family that birthed a kemling, but Kutir was born in a position of some power and influence as the chief's son and heir of the Awan tribe of Old Drylanders. He probably learned complex architecture, social structure and writing from some of the early neighbors of the region, and most scholars actually favor time spent in Tarush Noptii, the predecessor kingdom of Timischburg. Possibly Kutir returning to the region with a vampiric advisor, even. Kutir was able to quickly conquer and marshal the resources of the Awan tribe, as well as many neighbors, forging them into the force that would found the Baal Hamazi empire, and using imported or captured slave labor to build the first city in the region, Baal Hamazi, deep in the Gorgelands.

From its newly constructed heartland in the Gorgelands, his rule spread throughout the old drylander tribes, founding other outposts which grew into major urban centers: Nashur, Baal Hishutash, Tahrah, Simashki, Ishkur, Baal Ngirsu, Shushun and Isin. Between these urban centers, much of the wilderness that separated them was also pacified: the legendary Pax Hamazi.  As the empire grew, so too did the population of the kemlings. It became fashionable to remove all hair from the head to show off these horns at one point, and that style remains in some of the successor states where kemling heritage is still seen as prestigious. 

Ultimately, some believe that the growth of the kemling population in such a cluster was what foundered the empire. After nearly four hundred years of relative peace and growth, there grew to be too many kemlings living in indolence, and the resources of the empire started to become strained. The old drylander slaves and serfs of the region were forced to live in poverty supporting their kemling overlords. Rebellions were becoming commonplace, and the bloody reactions to them only led to further seething tension and hatred. Nomadic drylander braves and the dark Atlanteans became a major thorn in the side of the administration, waging guerilla warfare from the desert that consumed the coffers of the empire at an accelerated rate. Diabolists of various types had also always been tolerated, and sorcery was not illegal (at least not for kemlings). Their rule was, as a result, often somewhat chaotic as having those with significant power go dangerously insane from time to time; not to mention the consorting with daemons, meant that the stability of their society was limited. This, combined with massive unrest created a situation ripe for collapse.

The sequence of events about 150 years ago that caused the fall of Baal Hamazi is confused and fraught with a number of obviously false theories, conspiracy theories, and wild speculation, but fall it did, and in the process, the land was wracked with arcane storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other earth-shattering impacts that left much of it uninhabited and temporarily uninhabitable. The capital city of Baal Hamazi itself was buried under a sandstorm.  The rest of the area erupted into full-scale revolt. Nearly every major city was under siege, much of the army had deserted, and even the heir to the king was unable to muster enough support to unite more than a small area under his banner. The capital city was abandoned, and the heir moved his court to nearby Nashur, where his descendants still claim sovereignty over the entire region, and they still claim to rule in "the Old Ways" as Baal Hamazi did in the golden age. This is just posturing, though, and the kings and queens of Nashur have seen a gradual erosion of their power to mere figure-head status. Today, a militaristic warlord rules openly, and is the fourth such warlord to openly run the government.

A few of the rest of the major urban centers eventually emerged intact, although independent. Few kings or chiefs of any stripe have managed to hold onto any power that wasn't local for long. Today, most urban centers are effectively city-states; ruling within their walls, and the surrounding fields and lands, but no further. Most of the territory between the city-states is desolate land, thinly inhabited by tribes who scorn any claims of sovereignty pressed by the city-states. Throughout most of the area, the kemlings have been forced to integrate more with the human castes as well; no longer can they be supported by humans kept in slavery. That was the one nearly universal outcome of the many rebellions. Only Nashur in the far north has managed to keep its old drylander population firmly under the thumb of the kemlings. Given the disaster that befell the capital itself, many kemlings have also consciously reverted to the "uncivilized" state, living as their ancestors in hunter-gatherer tribes. Some  of them have relocated to the inhospitable Gorgelands, where they guard the ruins of Baal Hamazi as cursed and forbid anyone to enter. It's a hard life, but they are trying to reconnect with the ways of their ancestors in the hope that they can win back the favor of their daemonic patron.

Many others live in smaller villages, attempting to put the past behind them. They are, in fact, somewhat embarrassed or even openly ashamed of the daemonic and sorcerous excesses of their forebears, like they have something to live down. They are not very centralized, but live in fortified towns and villages in the more fertile parts of the steppes, hunting semi-domesticated antelope, deer, buffalo, and horses as well as growing what crops they can; often shrubby little things like huckleberries and very hardy grains. Those close enough to the coast also fish and hunt seals and walruses as well as the occasional whale. The reality is, though, that the kemling population has suffered a massive diaspora, and while they still make up a significant plurality in the region, they no longer control it. They barely even control themselves, and there are many individuals who quietly pick up and leave the town life either to join one of the barbarian tribes, if they can make themselves be accepted, or just leave the area altogether, looking for greener pastures elsewhere. And the call of their daemonic blood occasionally means that an entire village, town or even larger area falls prey to the sway of some charismatic cult leader who leads them into strange evil practices.

A kemling making a new life for herself by being as unfeminine as possible and trying to learn knife-fighting.

An expatriate kemling adventurer who trawls the Three Realms as a combination mercenary and treasure hunter.

Another expatriate kemling who's fallen victim to the temptation of sorcery to make her way through the world.

An ancient lingering kemling lich from the days of Empire

The Chersky Mafia is the name that outsiders give to what was once called Наший Вешъ (Nashii Vyesh), "Our Thing." The roots of the kemling mafia go back to the fall of the grand empire of Baal Hamazi itself. When the empire fractured into several independent and quarrelsome city-states and smaller statelets, most kemlings incurred a significant loss of quality of life. Their life of indolence as the privileged overlords of drylander slaves was over, and they now had to work or fight for a standard of living very much below what it had been. While many kemlings shrugged and moved on, and several philosophically minded kemlings even saw the development as inevitable and to be welcomed, most harbored a lingering regret for the glory days of Baal Hamazi.

For most kemlings, this was channeled into trying to either build their more local utopias as best they could within the boundaries of their new city-states, or they fled the area entirely, foregoing their heritage as much as possible, in an attempt to make new lives for themselves in new lands, free of the violence and anarchy that gripped much of their former homelands. But some saw it as their divine mission to restore the kemlings to a place of power and prestige no less glorious than that of the past, and hopefully even much more than before. These individuals in some cases formed organizations dedicated to this mission. Most of them were little more than fanatical race-based supremacy cults, and many fell victim to infighting. One, however, became a powerhouse. Kašku Sarruma was a former military man, hard of personality and competent, not one of the more indolent civilians, and when he called the now leaderless soldiers that fought with him to his side, they answered.

These violent and pitiless men, seeing their society fall to pieces all around them still lacked the resources and manpower to impose order, stability and the type of government that they desired over the mobs, the revolting slaves, the incalcitrant natives, and others. In a bold yet desperate move, Sarruma engaged in a number of actions at once, all designed to forge the organization he needed to attempt multiple coups over the regional independent governments that were springing up all through the territory of the former Baal Hamazi. First, he needed troops. Aggressive yet very selective recruitment drives coupled with indoctrination gave him a core of elite fighters, perhaps more suited to subterfuge, assassination and other "black ops" type activities than to the more overt military action that they were used to. In addition, Sarruma kidnapped young kemling women and girls—never too many from one location, and never any that were important enough to be aggressively missed—and enslaved them, forcing them to serve as little more than brood mares for a new generation of indoctrinated warriors. While treated as well as they could be, these poor women and girls lived a life almost constantly pregnant, in an attempt to grow an army the old-fashioned way as quickly as possible for his fledgling organization.

But all of this distracted Nashii Vyesh's attention away from its original goals, and Sarruma had to admit that he would not be able to establish his glorious kemling rebirth in his lifetime, or probably even for several generations. It also required capital. For that, Sarruma picked some of his most trusted lieutenants to go into other lands and raise money through organized crime, and funnel it back to Nashii Vyesh coffers.

Now, several generations after the fall of Baal Hamazi and the formation of Nashii Vyesh, most of its leadership has forgotten or ignored the mandate of Kašku Sarruma, abandoning even the very name and adopting the title Chersky Mafia that outsiders have given it. The organized crime gig is simply too profitable to put it aside for empire building, and the crime lords covet their positions too much to sacrifice them for patriotic ends. The only interest the Mafia has in politics now is in corrupting politicians to turn a blind eye towards their activities, or giving them heads-up of lucrative opportunities that they can exploit. The leadership remains strictly kemling, but they also don't have any qualms about hiring, exploiting, or even partnering with other gangs, as long as they remain in control. In fact, throughout much of the cities outside of Baal Hamazi proper, the Chersky Mafia—the black mob, referring to the obsidian-like skin color of the kemlings—are notoriously partnered up with the small populations of urban woodwoses to the point that it's almost safe to assume that half of the urban woodwoses that you see are gangsters affiliated with the Chersky Mafia in some cities.

A prosperous Chersky Mafia crime boss

A Cherski Mafia criminal watching a safehouse

And finally, the rules for a kemling from the rulebook. As with my earlier entry, this may need some adjustment to account for the world-building that this post did; although in the case of the kemlings, much of my world-building is of older vintage than it was for the Hyperboreans, and little of it is genuinely new, much of it adapted from Dark•Heritage Mks. IV and V.

Kemling: Like the jann, the kemlings are demihumans, in this case with a daemonic twist to their ancestry.  In the past, they had powerful Imperial polities in the mountains to the West.  Those days are past, and the old kemling empire, Baal Hamazi, is now a Balkanized land of warring city-states and primitive villages and tribes.  In many of these societies, the kemlings no longer hold social and political sway as much as they did in the past, as the formerly oppressed human underclasses have wrested power from them.  Many kemlings have fled the turmoil in their homeland and now live elsewhere as part of a massive kemling diaspora.  Kemlings have soot-dark skin, tiny horns poking up through their hair, and yellow "predator" eyes (think of Nightcrawler from the X-men with Darth Maul horns poking through his hair).  Kemlings gain +1 to DEX, a racial affinity for Stealth, and the ability to see in the dark with a biological equivalent to night vision goggles.

A relatively normal prosperous kemling women in a relatively normal situation. I sometimes don't feel like I do enough "regular everyday" images in my samples sometimes.

 

Post election

Mostly, I'm going to quote a Z-man post, and edit it. I may not even offer much commentary, because I'm not sure that I need to.

The votes are in and they have been counted. The great red wave that everyone expected never materialized. The expectation going into the election was that the Republicans would score an easy victory, picking up about forty seats in the House and enough Senate seats to gain the majority. Because America is a haplessly corrupt society, we may never know the final results, but someone will assign final numbers and it will be a slim victory for the GOP.

The main question out of this election is about the legitimacy. Should we believe that the brain damaged hobo was the people’s choice in Pennsylvania? This is a good bellwether for this election, because John Fetterman is as close as we have come to putting a horse in the Senate. His opponent is ridiculous by normal standards, but in comparison to Fetterman he is Cicero. We are now required to pretend that a brain damaged hobo won the Pennsylvania Senate race.

The reason this particular race is key to the legitimacy question is that there is no answer that supports the democratic system. If everything was above board and the people did vote for a brain damaged hobo, then this is proof that the public should never be trusted with such decisions. The openness to voting for a brain damaged hobo should be a disqualification to voting. On the other hand, if the vote is rigged again, then there is no reason for people to bother voting.

Of course, you can shift the question further up stream. What kind of political system produces a brain damaged hobo and a Turkish carny as the two options? Before you even get to the question of election integrity, you have to see that the system has problems far deeper than vote rigging. This turns up all over the ballot. In Georgia, the choice for Senate was between a brain damaged former football player and guy who used to hustle old black ladies for donations.

In Massachusetts, they are celebrating the first openly lesbian governor. Before Maura Healy was famously gay, she was famously stupid. Given the centrality of Massachusetts in the American empire, it is a good representation for how our democracy actually works. Politics in that state have been dominated by drunkards, perverts and degenerates for generations. The system they have imposed on the country selects for increasingly ridiculous candidates.

If we accept wholesale vote rigging is now a feature in many states, there is a limit to how much can be done. Historically, the Democratic machines used to be worth about five percent in the areas they controlled. That is enough in reasonably close elections, but not enough to overcome a wave election. All of the polling and history said this should have been a historic blowout of the Democrats, even when adjusting for the shenanigans that are now a feature of our democracy.

In other words, the results speak to something more than shenanigans. Either people skipped the election, seeing no point in it, or we are now locked into a partisan divide that makes elections pointless. Going back to Pennsylvania, either Oz lost because people thought he was just as ridiculous as Fetterman or partisanship has made elections in the state meaningless. After all, elections pivot on the ability of people to change their minds from election to election.

Put another way, the polling shows that people are angry about the economy and the culture, but they did not see hope in either party. They were not even moved to strike out at the ruling party. Harry Truman famously said “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time.” In this age, given the choice between a uniparty zombie and uniparty opportunist, people will choose the zombie.

The people endlessly yapping about democracy will no doubt claim that democracy won this time, but the turnout numbers suggest otherwise. The uniparty offered up a series of ridiculous choices and 30% of the voters stayed home. They refuse to follow the script because the directors showed no interest in the drama. Neither party offered a compelling reason for anyone to vote, so they were left with the partisan zombies and civic nationalist dead enders.

 

Possible expansion of the Dark Fantasy X setting

Let me give some context. Where did the Dark Fantasy X setting come from, and what are its direct antecedents? This is a brief summary of my history, which I've documented here, if you want a more long-winded version.

Back in 2002 I was already tired (again) of the D&Disms and started experimenting with settings that were obviously sword & sorcery fantasy settings, but not D&D-like settings, with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. featuring prominently. Bloodlines was the first setting that I worked on that diverged significantly from D&D basic. The setting was a kind of analog to prehistoric Lake Bonneville with Rancholabrean fauna, and the non-human races were the aasimar, tieflings and the four genasi as they were presented in the 3e era of the game. This fairly early moved into a version of Dark•Heritage that was a kind of "steampunk Barsoom" overlay on the same idea. The giant lake disappeared in favor of more desert features, and the genasi and other planetouched races evolved into races that were superficially similar, but had a very different genesis. 

By 2004-5 or so, I'd gotten rid of the desert and resurrected an old floating islands idea that I'd had (which isn't unique; I've seen plenty of other people dabble with this concept) and I abandoned much of the steampunk aesthetic. This was now Dark•Heritage Mk. II. Although I actually ran this version of the setting for a while,  it was Mk. III that had the most development (up to this point) when I ditched the floating islands and went more with a Medieval Tarim Basin geography model. This version of the setting was fairly well developed, and I even had novel outlines for it. I did find, however, that I was a little too prone to moving in to esoteric purity spirals of certain setting elements that really didn't need as much development as I was giving them. In fact, the development was starting to hurt the setting rather than help it.

Meanwhile, I was doing some other stuff outside of the direct line of Dark•Heritage. I toyed with a big ole Jupiter-sized setting  (obviously I didn't develop that much surface area, but that was the idea) that used some ideas I had that probably fit a little better with a more traditional D&D-like setting, rather than the more esoteric desert environment that DH had become. I later reskinned some of these elements and the basic geography for another D&D-like game that I ran called Pirates of the Mezzovian Main, around a fantasy Mediterranean of sorts, but with Golden Age of Piracy like stuff from the Caribbean. And, noticing that I was re-using a lot of setting elements from my Jupiter-sized Leng Calling setting, I created a Modular DND Setting wikispaces.  What were originally meant to be drag and drop modules eventually started to coalesce into a setting that would deliberately be based around them being in more or less fixed geographical areas.

All of these threads combined; using Modular elements hung on a Mezzovian Main geography eventually became DH Mk. IV. I developed this quite a lot too; a lot of that development is still here on this blog, for instance. I drew a big map of the setting on a poster board (which I still have stuck behind my dresser and the bedroom wall; I occasionally pull it out and look at it even now.) Mks. III and IV got a lot of development compared to I and II, but ultimately, they weren't exactly what I wanted. Also, things were changing in the pop culture landscape, as well as my reaction to the pop culture landscape. While in the early 00s I was probably tired of traditional fantasy and experimenting with using another cultural baseline (14th and 15th century Crown of Aragon thalassocracy being a notable influence) and steampunk and whatnot all playing big roles for a time—until I decided that I didn't want to do exotica for its own sake anymore. In addition, I feel that maybe I was inadvertently getting caught up in movements that I didn't agree with; while maybe I was ready to  move on from overly traditional Anglo-Saxon, Norse or Celtic influenced fantasy after having been steeped in it for so many years, the fantasy zeitgeist was doing the same thing, but for different reasons. Not because they were caught up in novelty, like I was, but because they hated Western Civilization and deliberately wanted to avoid it. In other words, the seeds of what would become blatant wokeism were starting to infect the genre, and I guess maybe I was a little bit on the early side of detecting it and getting turned off.

So I started tinkering with stuff that would combine Old Country England and Viking nations (mostly) with either colonial or frontier American geography. These were separate activities from Mk. IV, but I gradually started to believe that I needed to leave behind the Crown of Aragon Mk. IV with its pseudo-Spanish "protagonist" nation and replace it with one that was more in line with the majority of my heritage; British-American. I settled on the protagonist nations being essentially calques of Robin Hood like Anglo-Saxons, except in an American Old West like frontier setting. Then, I jammed some other settings that I'd developed into it, notably the Timischburg "fantasy Transylvania" setting that I'd developed for my CULT OF UNDEATH project, and Mk. V was born.

But Mk. V actually was stuck at a fairly high level without much real development for quite a long time. I had a sketchy map and talked a bit about stuff, but mostly I was still referring to Mk. IV stuff in a new geographical setting. By the time I really buckled down and drew a good map, started updating the rules for the game that it was meant to support, and really doing some unique new setting development, I was on the verge of converting Mk. V to DH5, which quickly evolved into Dark Fantasy X. Dark Fantasy X could therefore be seen as either a second draft of Mk. V, which only got minimalist unique development in its first draft, or possible Mk. VI of Dark•Heritage. But it's instead been rebranded as it's own new thing, Dark Fantasy X. Dark•Heritage, while it remains the name of this blog, is now officially a dead brand otherwise in my mind; the setting has now moved on and turned in to something fairly different than what Dark•Heritage in any iteration had ever been. 

It's still probably kind of weird and esoteric in terms of fantasy, but also it represents a focus on my own heritage coming through instead of being de-valued, and as such, is probably in part a reaction to all of the wokeness in our entertainment. I've decided that I'm now more tired of looking for something that's not "lily white" than I ever was of fantasy that is clearly based on the Northwestern European Medieval baseline that was the foundation of most of the fantasy I read from the 80s and earlier. The experiment with experimentation, if you will, was played out and I found I didn't like it as much as I thought I would when I started it years earlier.

Anyway, the Dark Fantasy X setting is mostly made up of three large constituent areas; not by coincidence, the three campaign 5x5s that I'm proposing are each centered on one of these, giving me the full coverage of all three areas when they're all done. It was my original intention to have a lot of discipline about not going beyond these, and for a long time that's exactly what I did. I'm kinda sorta rethinking that premise... but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. These three Realms are:

• The Hill Country; the most Anglo-Saxon frontier America part of the setting.
• Timischburg, the Austrian Empire hinterlands that is fantasy Transylvania.
• Baal Hamazi, the most exotic of them, where the kemlings are from. Although it's also heavily based on my love of the geography of the American West.

While I'd made vague references to areas beyond these three realms, I'd never intended to do any real development of them. However, I may want to make some smaller "satellite" mini-settings that are associated with the main setting. These won't receive the same level of detail as the main Three Realms—at least that's not what I'm planning now—but we'll see how much development they do or don't get. These elements include:

• Nizrekh, a kind of island nation that's the stub of ancient, sunken Atlantis, which has a combination Yog-Sothothery snake cult and ancient Egypt vibe to it. The people living there aren't the descendants of Atlanteans; there's already a race for that, but rather some group that arrived and developed in isolation.
• The wreckage of old Hyperborea; a kind of Ice Age glacier and snow-socked analog to Kadath.
• Lower Kurushat, which actually does appear on my map, but which I haven't given much thought to yet.

Of course, I doubt I'll do any of these until I finish my racial deep dives and my 5x5s, because that will lay the seeds for this to be done by really expanding the material on the races and the main three areas before I start haring after the afterthought areas.  This makes some sense; although Nizrekh has been floating around on the periphery of the setting for a long time, Hyperborea was never meant to make any appearance at all until I did the Hyperborean Racial Deep Dive and "discovered" that there was potentially interesting material still lingering in Hyperborea. (It probably doesn't hurt that I got back into SWTOR again and did some stuff wandering around on Hoth, and that I've been very slowly going through a youtube zoom playthrough that some guys did of the Icewind Dale campaign of D&D.)

Liberal Democracy and Narrative

A small quote from the Z-man:

We see this in the current election cycle. Gavin Newsome, the governor of California, says his party is in trouble because they are “getting crushed on narrative.” It is not the economy or culture; their problem is they have not presented a “compelling alternative narrative” to the Republicans. No one can tell you what the Republican narrative is, but he is sure it must be better. How else can one explain why voters appear to be moving against the Democrats next week?

This incredible op-ed in the Financial Times lays the blame for inflation at the feet of the storytellers, rather than economic policy. You see, corporations are taking advantage of inflation to raise prices higher than necessary. They can do this because “the power of storytelling has conditioned consumers to accept price rises.” You see, “consumers seem to be buying stories that seem to justify price increases, but which really serve as cover for profit margin expansion.”

What those two examples suggest is that the great promoters of liberal democracy think the tenets of liberal democracy are nonsense. The politicians think people are morons who will fall for a good story, rather than vote their interests. The economists think consumers are not swayed by prices but by irrational beliefs. The premise of liberal democracy is that people understand their interests. If given the chance in a democratic system or a market economy, they will express those interests.

Amazingly, his conclusion after this is that good storytellers can convince people to go against their interests. While this is probably true to some degree, the current political landscape on the eve (almost) of the midterm elections is a refutation rather than a confirmation of that conclusion. 

Rather, I'd suggest that people do express their interests, to the extent that they understand them. The biggest problem with regular economic theory as I learned it (as an economics major) in college  is that it presumes that people know and understand what their interests are. In reality, people's interests are at best often vaguely defined, and not always quantifiable, or economic in nature. Higher level economic theory at least nods at this concept, if it does a relatively poor job of accounting for it, but people certainly often have interests that are more compelling to them than financial/economic interests, and sometimes defining those interests is difficult.

People have an interest in the general prosperity of their nation, people and communities, yet they also have an interest in cheaper goods outsourced to Third World crapholes; even if that means  medium and long term costs to the prosperity of their nation, people and communities. Is access to (relatively) cheap iPhones more important to them than the economic health of some community in West Virginia? Again, I don't think people necessarily understand their interest as well as the premise of liberal democracy would have you believe. 

Of course, this was understood a long time ago. Shakespeare famously wrote about it in Julius Caesar and the Founding Fathers specifically created a representative republic rather than a democracy because they knew that "mob rule" was based on fickle, in the moment decisions based on people who didn't understand their interests, or pursue them with the long term in mind.

Still, the point remains that I quoted that section for; the Establishment feels nothing but undisguised contempt for both the people that it claims to represent, and the system that is supposed to limit them. They are the ultimate busybody Karens, who are convinced that the world would be better if everyone else would just allow them to control their lives. If they could be in charge, unfettered by the freedom of others, and essentially enslave everyone to their will, then everything would be great.

This was, of course, the crux of the model proposed by Lucifer who became Satan, and which stood in defiance of God's plan for his children. Lucifer wanted the glory, he promised that all would be saved, but all would be completely and totally enslaved to his will. 

When a political movement mirrors the spiritual movement of Satan himself, that should tell you something about its merits.

SWTOR Character Class Stories ranking

As part of my "Mother of All SWTOR Reviews" I forced ranked the class stories. As I've played around with them more, I've revised that ranking. The reasons for this are twofold; one of them is that as I've been less concerned with picking the "correct" dialogue option that clearly the writers expect you to pick, and which your "girlfriend" character approves of the most, then some of the stuff that was painfully cringy are taken away. A more flippant and slightly (but not too badly) mean-spirited—or at least much less willing to take crap from anyone—smuggler is significantly better than one who meekly acts super simpy and beta around everyone, for instance. I had in particular been disappointed in the smuggler, which I had hoped to like nearly the best, because I like the concept the best, but was really unhappy with the reality of it on my first playthrough. I'm finding on my subsequent playthroughs that I like it better. Quite a bit so, in fact. 

The second thing that has impacted my ordering of the classes is my experience with more mechanics. I had only played each class with one of the two options, obviously, when I did it the first time. The double-bladed lightsaber assassin and shadow both ended up being disappointing. And I've also done all kinds of mix and match tech class alternatives. Some are just playing the other class that I didn't play the first time with the original class story that it was paired with; I have a mercenary bounty hunter, a scoundrel smuggler and an operative agent in play right now, for instance. But some of it was being able to take a totally different mechanical set and apply it to a story. I also have a mercenary smuggler, a powertech agent, a powertech smuggler, a sniper trooper, a sniper bounty hunter, a vanguard bounty hunter, and a gunslinger trooper.

And it's not just the tech classes; I alternated on my force classes too and I have two sentinel knights, a sorcerer consular, a sorcerer inquisitor (also my only woman character) and a juggernaut sith warrior. I may yet even do another marauder sith warrior; my original sith warrior romanced (sorta) Jaesa light side and my current one is romancing Vette light side. I might want a romance Jaesa dark side alternative too.)

Anyhoo, this much more varied experience has me now re-ordering the order, at least in some smaller ways. Some of what I said before is still highly relevant, but a few things have changed.

8) The consular is still my least favorite. I actually already played him as a bit cocky and less simpy and stupid, but the cocky dialogue options come across as kind of douchey, to be honest rather than merely "not beta". I still don't think he's a very compelling character, and it was a major waste of Nolan North's obvious voice talents. Why couldn't the consular have been a bit more like Nathan Drake? And I don't really like his companions any better than I did either; although playing as a sorcerer and blasting flesh raiders all around Tython with lightning is kind of fun. To be fair, I seem to see a lot of people doing that.

7) The inquisitor is still in the same place as before too, although I do like 1) the sorcerer better than the assassin (I only use assassin as a second class for force users, in case I need to sneak by trash mobs with his stealth ability) and I think I like 2) the female version better than the male. Usually I don't, and its not a dig on the voice actor who did the male inquisitor; I just think that the inherent borderline farce elements work a little better with a female character. Her attitude comes across as more cute, whereas on the male, it falls a bit flat. Sexism, I guess. Misandry, even. But it's true nonetheless; people are not interchangeable widgets, and some stories work better with a male vs female character, and some vice versa. In general, I obviously think the heroes of swashbuckling space opera action stories are better as men, since that's almost exclusively what I play in this game, but this one is the exception. Plus, the romance options, for what it's worth, are marginally better for the female character. The bratty alien Jedi that makes up the romance option for the male inquisitor is just lame. So lame that it's worth just waiting until you can romance Lana Beniko in the expansions, I think.

6) I'm dropping the trooper down one slot, although that's less because of my impression of the trooper has changed, and more because the smuggler went up. I'm playing the two troopers that I'm doing as kinda mouthy and cocky and disrespectful of authority; I imagine them more as auxiliaries rather than regular troops who are used to doing the sir yes sir obnoxious soldier stuff. It just doesn't make for good storytelling; a more independent type is necessary for it to work. It's entirely possible that the trooper just wasn't even the right concept for BioWare to tackle (especially as they're clearly anti-military liberals), but I still think they did better than I expected with it in a lot of ways.

5) I'm actually dropping the Jedi Knight down to 5 here. I should note that the white space between all of the stories in the top five is extremely small, which is why they can move around quickly. The problem is actually farther back than the story itself, though—SWTOR fairly faithfully represented the Jedi Order the same way Lucas did, especially in the prequels and the Clone Wars show. Of course, that sucks, because the Jedi are almost the villains as much as the Sith are. They really make Tython irritating to play in particular, although the story does improve substantially as you get more in to it. The plank of wood main character played by David "I hate white people" Hayter is a major liability to the Jedi Knight too. But these problems aren't unique to The Old Republic; SWTOR faithfully adapts these problems from the greater Star Wars franchise, you could say.

4) Although I still really love the agent character, the really, really stupid companion characters have really grated on my nerves in subsequent playthroughs, including my Mirialan operative and my new human powertech playing the agent story. I have really come to love the sniper mechanics, though—I've got both a trooper and a bounty hunter using those mechanics. I'm also not a huge fan of the operative. Sneaking around and ambushing is great, but then once you've done that, the combat mechanics aren't super fun. Best plot, great main character, but super-super annoying ensemble cast of characters, make this one of the better classes, but it strikes me more and more as a missed opportunity to be easily the top story. Kaliyo and Vector as the main culprits, but nobody else in the line-up really steps up to improve it until Raina Temple. And even then, I have to switch out her image to feel like she's sufficiently charming to do the job.

3) The Sith Warrior is just a lot of fun, and his laconic sarcasm is better every day. I'm still a bit disappointed that the romance options aren't wonderful. Vette is charming, but she's a weird funky colored alien without any hair. Jaesa is pretty—especially if you stick the blonde or red-head option on her, but the regular darker Mediterranean-looking Jaesa ain't bad either) but is too frosty to be a good romance partner. Although I do think that if you're patient enough, the reunion at the end of Onslaught is a great romance moment for the game. I've seen enough of the dark side Jaesa to think that she's much more interesting here, although ultimately only a crazy person would ever entertain a relationship with a woman like that. But the Sith Warrior is meant to be strong and alpha enough to do it, especially if played dark side. Because my first playthrough ignored Vette and "romanced" light-side Jaesa, which you can't technically do successfully, I found his chaste monk-approach was a bit flat. Because romancing a green (in my case) alien with tentacles instead of hair isn't super great with me, neither is playing around with a psycho, I didn't go for either option the first time. Doing it anyway makes this class a bit more fun than it was my first time out. And it's still very iconic, whether he's light or dark. And honestly, you can still do a fairly light-side Sith Warrior who turns Jaesa dark.

2) As much as my feelings on the smuggler seem ambiguous and I have a complicated relationship, like with a bad girlfriend, I find that I have more smugglers and bounty hunters than any other class story in the works, and not by a small amount either. If that isn't a clear indication that those are my favorite two stories, I don't know what is. And why shouldn't they be? Both are my favorite concepts; I'm a little over the Gary Stu power fantasies that too often make up the Jedi (even in the original movies) and Sith, and find the writing and performances of the Jedi in particular to be really cringe. The smuggler and bounty hunters, as free agents who only nominally answer to anyone in the Republic or Imperial hierarchy, and certainly don't bow and scrape to them just do it right. 

And honestly, a lot of the problems I have with the smuggler aren't really with the smuggler per se; some of the exploration and planetary garbage on various planets apply to all of the Republic classes. For some reason, it always seemed to fit with the smuggler the most poorly, though. Especially in areas where the smuggler acts like its shocking to suggest that people break the law. Especially when the smuggler acts like its shocking that people might want to smuggle things that are illegal, like one particularly stupid exploration mission on Coruscant. But we're supposed to be automatically enraged because they are slave collar chips and slavery is the worstest thing ever. In spite of the fact that people who believe that are literally willing and in fact eager to voluntarily enter into slavery in Western Civilization, and then insist that anyone else who doesn't want to be enslaved by hateful tyrants is "a threat to our democracy." Sigh. R-selection is the worst. 

But if you could somehow get the XP for the planetary faction stories and exploration missions without doing them, or do them but ignore them, then the smuggler character works much better. Especially if you play him as a bit of a hard-ass who only somewhat reluctantly shows his heart of gold underneath. The Risha romance is a bit simpy too, but that can be minimized somewhat. Do this, and the  smuggler jumps from being a little bit disappointing to being nearly my favorite.

1) Regardless of what they are mechanically, the smuggler and the bounty hunter are mirror images of each other in terms of concept; the independent gunfighter wandering around space, consorting with the criminal element as much as with the official element, etc. While I find the Great Hunt concept itself kind of gimmicky, they did the best that they probably could with it, and then the second half of the game is after it's over anyway. 

I know, I know—this wasn't feasible, and still isn't even now, but the bounty hunter and smuggler in particular make me really think about why table-top RPGs are inherently superior—or at least have the potential to be—to computer RPGs, because all of the things that they force you to do, or don't even give you a reasonable option to deal with, can be handled however you'd like to. But I just feel like the format leaves something to be desired; you invest in your character, and you want it to do what is the most obvious choice, but you aren't given the options to. It's not the same as reading someone else's novel, but it also kind of is, and the writer of that novel just didn't quite give you the character that best fit the plot he was trying to sell. It just doesn't quite work. But it probably comes closest if you play the smuggler and the bounty hunter, and make them basically good guys, but a little on the hard side, like a good Western hero.