Won't Somebody Think Of The Children?

That's all I can hear. 

I'd like to share a little detail about myself: I was not raised in a religious environment. I think the closest was that one of my Irish grandparents forbade me from being raised Catholic. One of the Catholic grandparents, I believe. As a result, I was raised around very little religious influence and did not attend a church with any regularity until I was in high school, at which point a tall, freckled ginger invited me to go to her youth group meetings with her.

I feel, in the long run, I may have been a bad influence on her. She's since gone on to marry the school's most intense metal-head and had a couple of offspring with him.

I was ejected from this congregation after nearly a year of asking too many questions and bringing in other people who asked too many questions. I have a tendency to ask difficult questions, and as I've grown, the language and placement of my questions have been refined to the point where they can be boiled down to "Is it, though?"

This approach to life not only leads to interesting answers, but to conflict as well. Such as every time a white dude commits a crime, and the inevitable progressive cry of "It's terrorism" goes up and I'm compelled to ask "Is it, though?"

I've always preferred ballistics to energy

The most entertaining train of thought that I've heard recently has been regarding the Parkland students that have had their smug teenage faces plastered over every Left-leaning news outlet: "Just when I thought ______ couldn't go any lower, they stoop to making fun of children."

Well, I'm not exactly who you're aiming at, but yes, I would stoop to making fun of children.

I can't stand children. But above all that, I used to be one. I used to be a snotty, idealistic little brat that wanted to be the hero of my own story, and then after attending a high school in Alabama and being a freaky little goth kid at said school, very nearly becoming a headline myself in one of these stories. I remember how emotionally charged and how uneducated about the world I was, so I will absolutely make fun of children, and most importantly, why do you sound like Helen goddamn Lovejoy? Why have you spent the last few decades laughing at anyone who said "Won't somebody think of the children" just to turn around and say the exact thing the moment there's some children who got on CNN and said exactly what you wanted to hear?

But no, I don't think they're 'crisis actors.' I don't think they're just doing it for attention, but damn if they didn't get attention; Emma Gonzalez and David The Hogg are gonna have a career in front of them. Did you know Emma has her own article in Teen Vogue discussing her hair, or lack thereof?

Did you know that David Hogg has been featured heavily for attacking advertisers, supporters, or even companies that have discounts with the NRA?(Wait, hang on, that link may have been wrong. My bad.)

I will not stop saying that Gonzalez looks like a Fallout character.

I will not stop pointing out the irony of her wearing a Cuban patch on her coat.

I will not stop saying that Hogg looks like a special effect, or that he and his sister's armband gambit was hilarious.

I'm not sure whether to make a sandwich joke, a fascism joke, or an American Psycho joke.

These are kids who got thrust into the spotlight and ran with it. They're public figures now, subject to criticism and ridicule. If you don't want them to face that, then don't promote them.

Assorted Calibers Podcast: the Logo

I had a notion and some time this morning, so I threw together a rough draft of what I thought our logo ought to look like. Weerd tells me he likes it, so I guess we're going with it.

I asked Oleg Volk to take some pictures of ammunition for us so that we don't have to pay Shutterstock to remove their dumb watermark. Expect a much nicer version of this logo when the episodes officially drop.

By the way, we have a Facebook group now, so be sure to join so you can pester Weerd about when the podcast is going to air! ;)

Busy For the Next Week

Back in January I referenced, but didn't explain, a family crisis that I was working with my mom to fix. I don't want to get deep into the details, but the short version is that my 82 year old father, who has Parkinson's Disease, has degenerated such that he is no longer capable of handling the family's finances. We found this out when, unable to hide it any longer, he admitted that we were deeply in debt, were losing more money than we were bringing in, and that the family's savings were gone. Needless to say, this caused a lot of anger and resentment, and both my mother and I have had to learn the intricacies of our family's financial situation and try to figure out what could be done about it.

We've considered filing for bankruptcy, and we've considered getting a reverse mortgage, and we rejected both for reasons which are good but I don't want to explain. We've settled on trying to get the house refinanced in such a way that it will reduce our monthly bills (both on the principle payment and by using the money to consolidate and pay off credit card dept), but that requires inspectors to get all up in our bidness, as the kids say, and that means mom and I are busy cleaning up the house in preparation for a bunch of people to tromp through it and invade our privacy. That's basically going to be my life for the next few days.

Then Wednesday I'll be packing for my speaking engagement in Fredericksburg, VA, which I know shouldn't take all day but you don't know my life. Then I leave on a jet plane Thursday, speak on Friday, and then see some folks in Virginia on Saturday before flying home Sunday morning.

So I'm going to be quite busy and may not be able to post anything here until I return. Hopefully Salem will have something tasty for us on Wednesday.

Pellatarrum: Dwarf Migrations

Given that the dwarven city-state of Agnakorem is both resource-rich and of infinite height, one wonders why dwarves exist anywhere else. After all, was it not designed to be a dwarven paradise?

It was, but that doesn't mean the residents of heaven are angels. Or, to paraphrase Sartre, "Hell is other dwarves." There are a few reasons for this.

• Dwarf society is extremely conservative. We're talking "1950s America meets the Stepford Wives" conservative. Dwarven society is just so, and it's been that way for millennia, and it works well so there's no reason for anything there to change. If you want things to change, then you're just being selfish -- have you no respect for tradition and heritage? Why do you want to meddle and make things difficult for others?
• Everybody knows everyone else's business. Imagine Agnakorem as an apartment building; specifically, one of those buildings in New York City where bored housewives look out the windows to see who's coming and going, and bored children play on the stoop. Comings and goings are seen, arguments are overheard, new possessions are noticed as they're being brought up the stairs, kids are tattling and adults are gossiping. There is little to no privacy due to the close quarters and the clannish nature of dwarven society, and so anyone who is just a little bit different is noticed and talked about.
• There is a fixed order of doing things and if you don't have seniority, you're on the bottom. Let's say that you're a dwarven craftsman, and you discover a new technique for forging mithril that is faster and easier than the traditional method. Not only will no one else use your new-fangled method -- it isn't tried and true, after all -- but no one else will buy your material, either, because it's clearly shoddy because it isn't properly forged. No one wants to apprentice to you, because you selfishly believe that your idea is better than the wisdom of your ancestors, and so not only are you a disgrace to your clan and your profession, but you also taint everyone who studies under you. Or works with you. Or sells to you. Or is related to you. Or... you get the idea.
  
  The only way a new idea ever gets adopted is if a craftsman submits it to the Council of Smiths, who will carefully look over the proposal and ask questions (like defending your dissertation, only worse), and then if some small glimmer of merit is seen, then a study is commissioned where the long-term impact of your idea is considered. Yes, perhaps you can forge mithril faster, but what will that do the price of mithril? Will the speed of production increase the demand for mithril items? Can the miners meet that supply? Will the increased amount of mithril on the market devalue the commodity? And what about the crafters who make their living forging tools for mithril-workers? Look, there's an entire economic ecosystem here, all very delicate and balanced, and one little change can have catastrophic effects. Let's study it for a century and see what happens -- we don't want to move too quickly now!
• Dwarves live a long time, so you might have to wait decades or longer for things to change. Imagine a family-run corporation where everyone in management is effectively immortal. It's not enough to have merit; you have to wait for an opening. And if people rarely die or get promoted, there's very little room for upward advancement.

So any dwarf who is a little bit different from the norm, or who is nontraditional, or who likes privacy, or wants to try a new technique, or has more ambition than patience is likely to say "Screw this! I'm out of here. I'm going to find my own mineral vein, and set up my own forge/shop/school/colony, and do things my way!" These dwarves are often charismatic and take friends and family with them when they leave. 

This makes everyone happy: disruptive elements are removed from traditional Agnakorem society, and the young dwarves get to do things their own way... until, of course, they become the Council of Smiths, telling upstart dwarves of the next generation to slow down, think things through, and act in the (new) traditional manner. 

And thus the cycle repeats.

Sit! Good boy. Beg! Good boy. Shake hands! NO NOT LIKE THAT

Ladies and gentlemen. What you have just witnessed was a man annoying his girlfriend and making fun of a reviled Authoritarian government system. This was uploaded originally in April of 2016. Over a month later, he was arrested. He was found guilty of being "Grossly Offensive" just yesterday. Off all the things I could talk about this week, it absolutely had to be this one.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a free speech supporter. Not just a supporter of the First Amendment, but the idea of freedom of speech and freedom of expression as well. As long as you aren't causing actual harm, you should not face legal consequence; and if you face social consequence, you should have every right to defend your position.

Being of a strong Irish descent, I used to playfully tease an ex-girlfriend of mine who was of strong Scottish descent that "At least the Irish put up a fight! Scotland rolled over and took it after William Wallace." Part of me really did believe it (probably that same part of me that had signed up to the Sinn Fein mailing list for a few years). But either way, I still really wanted to visit Scotland one day.

Not anymore, though. Fair Glasgow, you have been struck from my bucket list; I'm not setting foot in the country that plans on jailing a man for teaching his dog to shake hands in a tastelessly funny way.

From The Great Dictator to Monty Python's "Mr. Hitler" to Captain America: The First Avenger's skits with Cap punching out Hitler, Hitler and the Nazis have been played for laughs at their expense dozens of times. Games from Wolfenstein to Sniper Elite have let you play out the fantasy of being the one that kills Hitler, not to mention scores of Nazi soldiers. And that's not even getting into memes -- how many remixes of that bunker scene have we seen? I don't even need to say the name of the movie for you to know what I'm talking about. Chances are you've laughed yourself hoarse over some version of that scene that you've found particularly hilarious.

But here we are now. A man annoys his girlfriend by teaching his dog to shake to a historically vile set of words, even saying "there's nothing less cute than a Nazi," and his country arrests him, drags on legal proceedings for almost two years, and finds him literally guilty of being offensive.

To the crown of Scotland:

I am Salem and I confess.

I have been #GrosslyOffensive.

I wish to be barred from entering your country.

On pain of death if need be.

All Aboard the Hype Train!

Buckle up, buttercups, because at least one of these announcements is going to BLOW. YOUR. MINDS.



The Return of Weerdy and Pony
Last night, Weerd Beard and I recorded episode 001 of the Assorted Calibers Podcast!

ACP (yes, that was deliberate) is the spiritual successor to the GunBlog VarietyCast. Not only will we talk about issues of the day relevant to gunnies, but we also have gunnie contributors talking about the things they find interesting.

In Episode 001, I discuss Florida's new gun control bill SB 7026 and what it means for Floridians. There's also a Patented Weerd Audio Fisk (tm), and new contributor Savage1R from We Like Shooting tells us about bitcoins in his Savage Segment.

Want to know more? Of course you do! So stay tuned for more information on when the Assorted Calibers Podcast drops!

UMW Speaking Engagement
On March 30th I will be in Fredericksburg, VA at the University of Mary Washington for their first annual 2A Day! As you can see by the schedule below, there will be a lot of great speakers, so if you're able please come by and hear me speak.

For those interested in attending, this map shows the parking areas (circled in blue) relative to the building where the even is being held (circled in red).

Stop by and say hi!

Pellatarrum: A Brief History of the Fire War

Really, it's the elves' fault.

Everyone thinks the Fire War is the fault of the orcs. and to be fair, they did start the war. But you see, there's an important distinction between "Who started it" and "Who caused it", and it's the elves who caused it.

Back before Pellatarrum was created, when the Heroes Who Would Be As Gods discussed their rebellion, the original plan was to overthrow the genie races and have each servitor race live in their native elemental plane as conquerors: air for dragons, earth for dwarves, fire for orcs and water for elves. However, that plan was quickly revised during the initial slave uprising when it was discovered just how powerful and how entrenched the genies were. The four races' strategy was converted into something which looked like a rag-tag rebellion but was really a delaying action while They Who Became As Gods looked for places where their people could escape and the genies would not follow.

Unfortunately, their choices were limited. The negative energy plane was nothing but entropy and death, with positive energy plane not much better because the life energy radiating from it would be too much for any mortal body to contain. The ethereal plane was a realm of formless mist with no resources for sustaining a civilization, and the timeless nature of the astral meant that their populations would never grow and their people would forever be stuck in stasis.

Therefore, it was decided (mainly by the dwarves, but the dragons thought it was a good idea and so everyone else went along with it) that they would make their own realm for their people to live, one with bountiful resources for all and toxic to geniekind.

Thus began the quest for the Engines of Creation, objects of mystery and wonder of which little is still known. The wisest sages of Pellatarrum can only describe them as "conceptual lenses" (Do you mean they're lenses for concepts? Or do you mean that they are lenses in a conceptual sense? ... yes.) which focus the raw creative force of the positive energy plane into true substance. Through means unknown, They Who Became As Gods re-aligned the Engines of Creation for a brief period of time, creating Pellatarrum according to the dwarven blueprint.

And everything was fine... for a time. The dwarves lived in the Dayspire, the elves in the seas, the dragons ruled the skies, and the orcs had everywhere else. Yes, all right, technically the dragons lived on the ground and under the ground and underwater and wherever else they wanted, but 1) they were big and 2) they were loners, not a growing and sprawling civilization, so the orcs were generally okay with this because they had all the rest of the land. Besides, dragons are apex predators, and orcs respect strength.

Yes, everything was fine for thousands of years, until the elf schism. Something happened within their culture to split them so thoroughly that roughly half of their population fled the seas and used magic to evolve themselves for land habitation.

This was, to put it plainly, a massive problem for the orcs, because now they were competing with the elves for territory and resources. While elves didn't reproduce as quickly as orcs, they lived far longer, which gave them an edge in terms of knowledge and power. More importantly, to the orcs this was a violation of the treaty which had been forged at the creation of the world. Was the full and proper name of the realm, written in the tongues of the four races, not "This beautiful thing, crafted with toil, and home to all orcs?"  It was right there in the name, and yet the elves invaded their lands and violated the compact. To the orcs, this was not just a legal misunderstanding or a diplomatic gaffe; this was invasion. This was rank betrayal and theft. And they would not stand for it.

So, in proper orcish fashion, they invaded the elves right back, to show them how it felt and to drive them back to the sea where they belonged. Naturally, the elves didn't care for this and counter-attacked, and soon it was open warfare.

Both sides petitioned the dwarves and dragons for redress of grievances. The dwarves essentially said "This isn't our problem and we don't like either of you enough to make it our problem. Work it out or kill each other as you see fit, but leave us alone." The dragons had to be swayed on an individual basis; some sided with the orcs, some with the elves, but most of them also just wanted to be left alone.

Then the orcs had The Idea. Since elves magically evolved themselves to live on the land, the orcs could do similar (they were not the broken, barbaric race of today, but a people of great strength and magical power). They took advantage of their short lifespans and rapid breeding cycles by force-evolving themselves into perfect warriors, and then they created many races to serve in their armies. Goblinoids, ogres, beastmen; all had a part in the Great Conflagration, with the orcs as their heroes and generals. The war was long, and bloody, and took many orcish generations (both in terms of time and in terms of lives lost). But the Fire Army was powerful, and they broke the back of the elven foothold and began to drive them back to the sea.

If the orcs could have contented themselves with beating the elves, they would have won, and Pellatarrum would be a different place indeed. But they were insulted by the dwarves' lack of honor, and irritated with the aloofness of the dragons, and decided that they would make "home to all orcs" a literal truth by destroying everything which was not orcish.

The fact that the elves, dwarves and dragons needed to create ambassador races to facilitate diplomacy and cooperation during the war shows just how real the risk to them was. Think "Zerg Rush" on a massive scale, bolstered by powerful magics and champions who could inflict hideous casualties even after being dealt a mortal wound. The Great Conflagration was indeed like a terrible wildfire, whipping itself into greater and greater fervor, consuming everything in its path.

The Fire War was terrible in ways that Pellatarrum has never seen again. It was every fantasy battle you've ever seen the movies combined with World War 2. Yes, even the atom bombs. It reshaped the landscape, flattening mountains and creating valleys, boiling seas and burning nearly everything into ash. The most brutal, decisive battle of the war took place around the Dayspire, which had been turned into a massive weapons factory and siege engine platform. Dragons and elves lured and herded the Fire Army into cleared killing fields around the dwarven stronghold, then took shelter in pre-made bunkers which ringed the perimeter. Their job was to prevent the army from escaping while the dwarves annihilated them with technology, and magic, and raw elemental power.

When all was said and done:

• Agnakorem was a holed, smoldering mess that had lost much of its defenses and more than a few outer layers. 
• The dwarven army was exhausted, having used nearly all of its weapons and resources in the war. 
• The elves were nearly extinct, numbering only in the low hundreds and with no home to speak of. (So great was their schism that only a few returned to the sea.)
• The dragons had lost nearly half their adult population. Fortunately, they had laid many eggs in preparation for such an event, and there were plenty of kobolds to sing their eggs through gestation. 
• The orcish civilization ceased to exist. Those who survived fled into the wilderness as refugees, where they had to compete with the other orc-spawned races for resources.

It took centuries for the land to recover. Humans and gnomes, having been granted their freedom, built towns and cities. The elves secreted themselves in the deep forest and the dark jungle, using isolation as a shield while they rebuilt their civilization and studied the magics the orcs used in the war. The dwarves repaired as much damage as they could and returned to being craftmen, albeit ones with an eye towards defensive weaponry. The kobolds were content to serve their dragon overlords. And as for the orcs, one of the few things that the allied races agree upon is that the orcs must never, ever, be allowed to return to their former greatness, so they periodically attack and destroy any orc settlement they can find. The only reason that the orc race is not extinct is because good warriors are also good survivors.

Just to be blunt about it: yes, the three races of dwarf, elf and dragon cheerfully committed genocide during the Fire War, and if they could have killed every single orc child they would have.

As you can imagine, the Fire War is a touchy subject.

• Don't mention it orcs at all. If you're lucky, they'll be ignorant and not know what you're talking about. More likely, it will be seen as a challenge ("You're calling me weak and defeated? I'll show you who is weak and defeated!") that ends in bloodshed. 
• Dragons these days don't care (much) about what the orcs are up to, but they have their spies and their strings to pull if necessary. Some red dragons, though, are very interested in what a new orcish nation could achieve. 
• The dwarves are shamed by their actions -- partly because of the atrocities they committed, and partly because if they hadn't been so isolationist the Grand Conflagration might not have happened -- but they aren't so shamed that they've found room in their hearts to forgive the orcs of today. 
• Elves, on the other hand, practically relish the thought of killing orcs, and those they capture are ritually sacrificed. Elven hatred of orcs is so concentrated, so refined, that it's (nervously) joked that elves don't truly want to kill all orcs, because that would mean there would be no more orcs left to kill; instead, they want to put them in farms so they can be killed in quantity at leisure. 
• Halflings avoid orcs whenever possible. 
• Humans and gnomes are the only non-orcmade peoples willing to give orcs a chance. Sometimes that turns out well, and sometimes it's rewarded with violence. 

In many ways, Pellatarrum is quite literally post-apocalyptic. It's just managed to clean up rather nicely.