It's Not A Person. It Doesn't Think Like You. It's *Not* Your Friend.

     So a few weeks ago, someone over at USGamer wrote an article (that I'm not linking here - should be easy enough to Google, but I don't want to give them any more traffic than they've already gotten on it) about how they'd been invited, along with some other journos, to take a look at Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. The article this person wrote is prime fodder for a tirade against social justice, throwing around terms like 'rape allusions' and 'problematic' but that's not what I'm here for today.

"the scene in question being one in which a withered Dracula stumbled toward a family with his arms outstretched, the camera abruptly switching to a first-person perspective. He kills the father outright, then grabs the mother and sinks his fangs into her neck, draining her life energy to restore his."

     The fact that this act is the shocking act to the author of that article is telling. That they draw parallels to rape and sexual assault simply because Drac discards of the father, apparently not even rating a snack, and feeds off of the mother. The fact that the mother in the family is used for feeding while the father murdered and tossed aside is what shocks them, and apparently not because of the loss of human life. 

     Twilight. Vegetarian Vampires. Interview With The Vampire and its romantic ruffled sleeves and angsty pretty-boys. Even to a lesser extent the folksy suckheads of True Blood or the sympathetic badasses of Underworld. At some point the boogeymen quit being scary monsters, and started becoming the harmless-but-edgy bad-boys that read like a Young Adult novel 'gone wild.' I do not, and have never, understood this, and I'd like to try and work through this.

     Vampires are corpses. Let's not fool ourselves. Vampires are well-preserved zombies with a few extra biological tricks that let them keep fresher and more sapient than your average rotting ankle-biter. As far as I'm concerned, the only differences between zombies and vampires is dress sense and where they bite you. They're not romantic. They're not Beautiful Avatars of The Dark or Mysterious Scions of Eternity. They're cadavers that have forgotten to fall over and rot.

     In addition to this, they are predators. And in deference to the article that brought this whole tirade on, they are not SEXUAL predators, any more than a shark or a peregrine falcon is. In order for vampires to continue 'living,' a human has to die. In order for a vampire to live, *you* might have to die. The very existence of a vampire species is detrimental to the well-being of the human race. Werewolves don't have to hunt humans specifically for survival. Nobody romanticizes zombies (ok, there was that one recent movie, but come the fuck on).

     So really. A vampire attacks a family, kills some of them and eats another. Were you expecting them to stand idly in the shadows with a brooding look on their clammy face, quote poetry to woo them over? If Castlevania intends to depict a vampire as a brutal killer, more power to them. You aren't supposed to romanticize them. You're supposed to be afraid of them. You're supposed to want to kill them on site. They're inimical to your survival.

     I'll side with Buffy, Blade, Van Helsing, Anita Blake, or any of the Belmonts. I'll stand by the werewolves in Underworld and Watcher's Council, Nightstalkers and Whistler family. The only good vampire is a dead one, or at least one that's had its soul restored so that it knows what a monster it is and will spend the rest of its existence snuffing out other suckheads. They're monsters, they should be put down, and I'm not sure what the author of that article is expecting of them, if not to kill and feast on a grouping of humans that wasn't in enough control of their faculties to either run or fight back. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to go sharpen a chair leg in celebration of the return of the monstrous vampire.

WNW: PSA

Ugh. Wednesdays are my day to get stuff done, and today I have been getting stuff done like a boss.

This means I'm tired and have very little to show for it.

Here, have a funny PSA about how awesome humans are, based on the following conceit:

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

If you would like to read more about this concept, I invite you to fall down the rabbit hole by Googling the phrase "Humanity fuck yeah." You will either giggle like a loon or be disgusted.

Traveller Tuesday: There's a Hole in the Jump Drive, Dear Liza

There's a Hole in the Jump Drive, Dear Liza is a mini-adventure which can be sprung on Traveller players if they do something foolish with their ship's engines.  It can be run for one player (although if you do that it really should be on a small ship, such as a Type S), but the optimal group size is 4-6 players.

This adventure will make more sense if the GM waits until a suitable trigger event has occurred, such as:

• A gunfight or an explosion in Engineering
• A jump drive or power plant hit in combat
• An engineer with a history of bad rolls
• Skipping regular maintenance 
• Sloppy maintenance, such as from a class C or D starport
• Installation of an experimental, untested jump drive
• Just barely rolling a misjump

Prelude
First, give them a chance to notice that something is a little off. Tell whoever is on the bridge or in engineering (there is always someone in on duty during jump, isn't there?) that the Master Caution alarm sounds and the accompanying button lights up. An Average skill roll of INT + Pilot indicates that this is odd; nothing else on the caution panel is lighting or sounding. They have a master caution and nothing else seems wrong.

A brief sidebar on terminology and technology:

• All bridge (and, presumably, engineering) indicator lights are also buttons. 
• You press the button to turn off the alarm.
• "Caution" is less serious than "Warning".
• Warnings are in the red panel and cautions are in the yellow/green.
• They each have their own chimes. Caution is “Hey, wake up” volume. Warning is "Oh Shit!" volume.
• The writers of this adventure are making the assumption that, in the name of safety and robustness, all significant pieces of equipment have their own computers so that they can be brought offline, diagnosed, repaired, and rebooted without having to reboot the entire power plant or jump drive. 
• A bit of color text too. Since the Solomani greatly influenced the design of ships in the Third Imperium, redundant panels that a Vilani would have put in as a matter of course were excluded from most designs. OSHA is happy and carefree compared to the Vilani bureaucracy... 

It Begins
Both the bridge and engineering get a caution alarm that the Primary Field Strength Generator has gone offline. This isn't a disaster as the Secondary FSG kicked in (that's its function), but sensible PCs shouldn't let that ride because the FSG is the part of the Jump Drive that actually generates the jump field.

Losing the jump field prematurely would be bad.

1. An Average EDU+Jump Drive is required to inspect and reset the Pri FSG. Nothing appears to be broken or need replacement, so it's a simple matter to reset and reboot it.

2. Once this happens, the power plant seems to be surging -- nothing critical, just a 5%  increase in temperature and/or pressure, so the dampers need to be reset. In order to do this without losing power to the jump drive, the dampers need to be reset one side (A, then B)at a time. This is an Average EDU+Power Plant roll.

3. Just as they wrap that up, the FSG Secondary Fault alarm comes on. They fix that and, once again, the power plant is surging, this time by 10%.

If the GM wishes to engage more players, or if the PCs have a sufficiently large ship, there can be more Field Strength Generators:  FSG Primary A, FSG Primary B, FSG Secondary A, FSG Secondary B, etc.  A useful rule of thumb might be to use a letter for each 100 dtons of ship, such that a 100 ton Type S will only have a Primary and Secondary, but a 200 ton Type A will have an A and B for each, and a 400 ton Type M will have a Primary and Secondary A, B, C, and D. 

Bounce the players between those three things for a while. Increase the tension by rolling behind the GM screen to scare them. Use description and atmospheric flavor to stress an increasing noise and strain to the system as they shut one side down and the other takes the load. Increase the difficulty of rolls to Difficult, if desired.  Then chase them from A to B, Primary to Secondary, toss in a power plant A and B surge...

Eventually, one of two things will happen:

1. A character will stop addressing the symptoms and try to diagnose what is actually causing the problem;
2. A player will make an impressive roll (be it a 2 or a 12).

Stopping to Think
If they stop to think, make more lights come on. Create an atmosphere of "if you don't get on this, you're dead!" Examples:

• The Master Warning light goes off, indicating an imminent, catastrophic failure of the entire Primary Field Strength Generator system. Secondary FSG is supposed to take over in this instance, but the warning indicates a failure in the handoff from primary to secondary. This requires the engineering crew to address both the failure of the PriFSG and the fault in SecFSG simultaneously.
• After being rebooted/ having parts replaced/ getting repaired, the Primary system no longer shows good function. The caution and warning panels says they go out as soon as the primary is fixed, yet can be visually verified to be running. This hints at a much deeper problem, and players may think the wiring is faulty, or there is a virus in engineering. This is an excellent opportunity to have non-engineer characters get involved in the action. These should be Difficult rolls, at the very least. 
• The problem is spreading to other parts of the jump drive. The Field Geometry Sustainer is what keeps the jump bubble in proper proportion around the ship, and it's threatening to warp and leave parts of the ship uncovered.  Also note that it is abbreviated FGS and easily confused with the Field Strength Generator (FSG), especially if inexperienced crewmembers have been pressed into duty. INT+Jump Drive to understand what the Chief Engineer is saying...
• Other technobabble:  Jump Kernel Lobe Generator (computer system which generates the jump field geometry), Field Geometry Fault Sensor (double-checks the FGS for safety), Kernel Lobe Geometry Error (now I'm just making things up). 
• Don't forget problems with the power plant as well: Plant Coolant Level Low. Pressure Low. Pressure High with Level Low (that sure messes with a thinker!).
• Is there a Droyne PC among the crew? Did he remember to ceremonially bless the ship by placing the Voyages coyn under the jump drive?  If not, tell him that through his carelessness he has doomed them all and encourage him to rectify his mistake. Have the Droyne getting in the way of the repair crews as he tries to place coyns in ceremonially correct places:
• Voyages on the jump drive (alternately: astrogation system)
• Heat or Fire on the power plant
• Air or Water on life support
• Signal on comms/sensors
• Anything else that sounds reasonable (Warrior in a turret, Technician on the Chief Engineer's tools, etc).
• Have the Droyne make a DEX+Athletics roll to avoid getting in everyone's way. A particularly bad roll can even result in a a coyn being dropped into someplace inaccessible, or worse, the entire bag being dropped and all coyns rolling away...
• Throughout ALL of this, stress how lights are flashing and alarms are sounding. Main engineering should sound like a Vegas casino when all the slot machines pay off at the same time. This is stressful and highly distracting, and unless there is someone whose only duty is to sit at the control panel, calling out names and types of malfunctions while turning off the lights and alarms, all difficulties are raised by one category. 
• Generally keep them jumping from problem to problem, with each repair making other parts worse. This is why the adventure is titled after a children's song about a never-ending problem.

Failing at these tasks doesn't solve the problem. A critical failure results in the same panel indicator going to warning. If another critical failure occurs, see "Oops!" below.


"Then Fix It, Dear Eneri"
Eventually, someone is likely to start putting clues together and realize that, despite what the instruments are saying, the equipment isn't actually malfunctioning. This will prompt a Very Difficult INT+Engineering roll to diagnose (Formidable if lights and alarms are blaring, or if the PC is trying to solve this "cold", i.e. too early in the game session.)

If they succeed, they realize they are chasing after snakes in the cockpit, which is an ancient Solomani expression from the early days of aviation and means "Oh, fuck, what NOW?" In other words, "Everything is going wrong except for having actual snakes in the cockpit, biting the pilot."

On all Imperial-standard ships and small craft, there's a button that illuminates all the lights on a panel. It's marked Test. Decade after decade, snakes get in the cockpit while the crew diagnoses a "problem" caused by a burnt out bulb/ loose connection/ bad fuse/ what-have-you and nobody EVER thinks to hit "Test". They've been replacing and testing good parts, and it all boils down to the Traveller equivalent of a burnt-out bulb and fuse...


If They Press "Test"
All of this rigamarole is the result of a bad sensor in the Jump Field Monitoring System.The JFMS Fault light is malfunctioning (doesn't light up when Test is pressed) and the diagnostic equipment is out of calibration. How did this happen? High tech tools are sensitive to all manner of things: impact (from starship combat), lack of maintenance, a careless technician, jostling from a bad landing or gas giant refueling, etc.

If they do this, they aren't out of the woods yet: they still have to try and fix the JFMS Fault with uncalibrated diagnostic equipment -- a Very Difficult (at the least) EDU+Jump Drive roll. Be sure to inform the engineer that the manual says that with faulty JFMS an apparently properly functioning drive could result in a misjump!


"Oops!"
If anyone critically fails at a Warning task, things get REALLY loud and REALLY flashy as everything alarms and emergency protocols execute. Lights go red, every klaxon known to the Imperium sounds, the power plant starts venting coolant, and a computerized voice starts alerting everyone aboard (including the passengers) that it is necessary to abandon ship and to get into vacc suits, rescue balls and escape pods.

Roll dice. Wince at the results. Have the lights go off, possibly the gravity too. Make, make the players think that The End is well and truly Nigh, and they are about to experience the mythical TPK  (total party kill)...

... and then everything goes quiet.

After all that noise, silence is really disturbing and eerie. If possible, the GM should just silently stare at the players for 30 seconds to a minute, just to make them uncomfortable. 

And then, a lone light on a panel in the dark engineering room begins to blink. With all the lights off, it's clearly running on its own battery.

That panel is something very plainly labeled, but easy to overlook because of its generic name: Master Fuse Control.

On that panel, a lonely computer screen has a display of the fault checklist. That screen, which they've been burying under charts, or hidden behind the Chief Engineer's alcohol still or collection of empty booze bottles, gives the following instructions:

Step 1: Press Caution/Warning Panel Bulb Test
Step 2: Check Breaker/Fuse Panel

As their hearing returns to normal, the PCs can hear the power plant calmly humming along -- having performed an emergency warm reboot, it is now operating normally. The jump drive is still switching between the Primary and Secondary Field Generator, but neither is actually broken. It's troubling to hear them switch over, but aside from some clicking and humming the hand-off is smooth. It will need to be repaired once they put in to port, of course, but the wisest course of action is to Leave Things Alone until their ship is out of jumpspace and the entire jump drive can be taken offline.


Moral of the story
Space travel is dangerous, jump drives are finicky, and regular maintenance is essential.


Special thanks to Angus McThag, co-author, for helping me flesh out this scenario. 

Palette's Product Review: Echo Sling

Back in October, when I was scrambling for donations to my Squeak or Treat raffle, I was contacted by Matt Rogers of Echo Sling. He quite generously gave two slings to be raffled off (and this was in addition to the sling he donated months earlier for Jennifer's Evict Lyme raffle.

So in addition to being a gunnie, Matt is genuinely a nice guy. Because of this, and because I wanted a sling of my own, I've been proudly hosting an advertisement for Echo Slings on this blog.

As it turns out, Matt is struggling to make ends meet (aren't most folks these days?), and so because he's one of the tribe and makes an excellent product, I'm going to review his sling here. He didn't ask me to do this; I'm doing it because repaying kindness with kindness is the right thing to do.

Echo Sling ($18.99 + $3 shipping)  

Before I begin my review, I want to lead with an excerpt from Pat Cascio's review at SurvivalBlog. Some of you may call this laziness, but the results are so damn impressive that this testimonial needs to be the centerpoint of Echo Sling's advertising:

[...] one of my German Shepherds, "Sarge" showed me a method for testing the sling. Sarge isn't quite a year and a half old, and he loves to chew-up cardboard boxes that FedEx and UPS bring me almost daily - he honestly believes UPS and FedEx come to bring him new toys to destroy - and destroy them he does. While examining the sling, Sarge decided it looked like a new chew toy and grabbed an end, and the tug-o-war was on - he loves playing this game with "Arro" one of my other German Shepherds. (We have four in our house right now, but we've had more than that in the past.)

Sarge and Arro - and even Fanja, our little female, got into a three-way tug-o-war with the Echo Sling - my older main male doesn't much get into this game - he's Schutzhund 1 trained and certified, and he likes to bite - not play tug-o-war. So, over the course of a month, I let Sarge and Arro play with the Echo Sling - and these boys can really pull - they've destroyed a number of pull tug ropes in the past year. Over the course of this "test" the polymer buckles were chewed on pretty well - but still functioned, though they had teeth marks on them. The Echo Sling was looking worse for wear, but the dogs never did break it - and these boys can really pull and pull hard against each other. There was some fraying, on the ends of the sling, where the boys usually grabbed it in their mouths, but the sling didn't fail. Now, if a high-quality Nylon sling can take this kind of abuse, over a month, and still function - I'm impressed. I never let the boys chew on the sling - I know it wouldn't last but a day if they did - but I let them play tug-o-war several times a day with the Echo Sling.

I have lesser-quality Nylon slings and I know, if I had given them to my German Shepherds, they would have made quick work of them - they'd be destroyed inside of a day or two.

I'm going to repeat that: three German Shepherds played tug-o-war with an Echo Sling for a month and they couldn't destroy it.  I can't think of any endurance test tougher than this that isn't a deliberate destruction of the product.  Matt calls it the "Hundred Year Sling," and while I don't know that it will last that long, it's certainly tough enough to handle whatever abuse you can throw at it while out hunting.

Other reviewers (including McThag) have commented about the quality of the stitching, or how easy it is to adjust, or how it could really stand to be padded at the shoulder or a little wider than 1" across. I agree with pretty much all of these thoughts. However, there are two qualities to this sling that so far no one has commented about, and I want to address.

First off, you'd think that a sling as tough as this would be made of rough material, right?  Nope. The nylon feels light, smooth, and soft to the touch. It's not silky by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is it so excessively manly that it rubs you raw. This is an important consideration in any sling that you plan to wrap around your forearm in a hasty sling shooting technique. It may start to rub after carrying it across your shoulder for several hours, but it won't rash up your skin after an afternoon at the range.

Additionally, given that women are becoming shooters in ever-increasing numbers, and the fact that Matt offers slings in lots of colors  -- two shades of pink in stock, and custom colors are also available (McThag got his in purple for no additional charge) -- this is an ideal sling to give to the gun-toting lady in your life. You're welcome, gentlemen.

Second, this is the only sling that I've seen which could also be turned into a belt (instructions for belt-ification are included with the sling, and can also be found here). While some folks might regard this as an odd feature of questionable merit -- how many times has someone had a belt malfunction while hunting? -- they are missing a key point in all this:  You can also use a belt as a first-aid device. 

• As a tourniquet
• As an arm sling
• As a way to immobilize or splint a limb
• As a tow strap for an emergency litter

Less ridiculous now, right?  Put this sucker on your hunting rifle/shotgun and you have a multi-purpose first aid device. Let's see that piece of padded neoprene you bought at Wal-Mart do that!

In short, Buy this sling.  It's made by a gunnie, for gunnies, and Matt is a generous and decent human being besides. 

My Rating:  A

If Matt were to offer his sling in a 1.25" size, then it would be a perfect A+. 

Obligatory FTC comment:  I was not paid for this review. Go away. 

Some changes around the place

Some minor format changes, mostly.  Some of you astute folks will notice a new ad floating about somewhere. If you are curious, I direct your attention to some new legalese in "The Fine Print", below.

Keen-eyed sorts may notice some posts having gone missing. This is deliberate. I am trying to sell some of my fiction and have therefore removed it from this blog in order to increase its value to publishers.

Other than that, just some redecorating as I futz about with the placement of boxes. Nothing too major.

I have been Batman'd

So yesterday, the Queen of Snark paid me one of the nicest compliments I've ever received.

I was talking about how I wished I had the courage to do a photo shoot with Oleg, because I have this idea for a poster that would have an incredibly powerful message -- but I'm hesitant to do it because I know it will draw a lot of flack, and I don't know if I can handle all the hate and mockery that would result from it.

And then she laid this on me:

1/16, 7:06pm

Tamara Keel
Fuck 'em. They ain't nobody, and you're Erin goddam Palette.

WOW.

I realize I sound like I'm bragging here ("Look, everyone! Look what Tam has to say about me!"), but my only reason for bringing this up is honestly because I want to thank her in as public a way possible for making me feel so very good about myself and giving me what is one of the best compliments I've received in a long time, right when I needed one.

For context, here is why I call this "Batmanning":

So now you know why I'm so flattered. Thank you, Tam. You really don't know how much this means to me. I really don't get what people see in me (and no, that is NOT fishing for flattery, so please don't), but I am delighted every time people that I like and respect tell me I have good qualities and that I should be proud of who I am and what I have done.

So thank you. Not just Tam, but everyone who has stood beside me, everyone who has boosted my ego, and everyone who calls me friend. Thank you all so very, very much.

High Quality Non-Content

     So, apologies for the lack of depth this week, but I've a friend in town and am quite busy. And am on
vacation, technically. Here's what I've been up to, mainly:

My friend and I visited The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, where we saw..

 

Chicago Pile-1, the world's first Nuclear Reactor, in Lego.

Vintage radio. My Fallout fanboyism is showing.

Sweet Noir Film Posters.

Then we climbed a mountain. Well, we drove up a mountain at least. On the way, we stopped in an area with lots of warning signs.

Please, do approach. Feed the bears. 

Whoops. Somebody fed the bears.

10,678 feet up. Give or take. That's the city, down below.

Proper content resumes next week. I have something that's been irking me that I need to expand my thoughts on.