Water (as a destructive force)

This will make the third time I’ve tried to write this post, and the third day of working on it. Though, yesterday was F*** It Friday, so I hadn’t planned on working on it then anyway. What I’ll do now, I suppose, is try to create some semblance of a post that makes sense in one fashion or another.

Water, H2O, is the most important liquid on the planet. The human body is composed of two-thirds water, our blood is salt water (also called saline) while protein thrown into the mix. The earth’s surface is two-thirds sea/ocean to one third solid landmass. Water also happens to be the number one most corrosive liquid on the planet as 100% of things placed in water will dissolve into nothing given enough time. It is also considered one of the most important ingredients in life. Life as we know it began in the sea billions of years ago, and in astronomy the number one goal in finding earth-like planets is finding planets with water on them.

Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons is covered in a thick layer of ice, and scientists believe that down past that ice is a water ocean, and possibly life. God only knows how long it will be before we can test that theory though. Our space program is moving at a crawling pace, and faster than light travel is still decades, if not centuries, beyond our capabilities. Though, according to Star Trek, we’ll have achieved faster than light travel (or Warp Speed, which is a way of bending space time and not necessarily moving faster than the speed of light) by the year 2063. That is also supposed to be the year first contact takes place in the early part of April (I forget which day), and that’s something I’m looking forward too. Lol. Even though the Vulcan’s are dicks and won’t allow us information to a reasonable warp speed for a century or more. I mean seriously, do you know how SLOW warp one is? Just play STO for a few hours and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

And, none of that has anything to do with water. Or how water is a destructive force. I think I might have started in that direction, but God only knows.

Anyway, things I think of when I think of the destructive power of water can pretty much be summed up in one word: Atlantis.

Yup, the mightiest of civilizations wiped off the face of the planet in three days and three nights. Tidal waves, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, yup Atlantis pretty much had it all.

Also…

The most powerful cutting tool on the planet, called a waterjet, is a hyper pressurized jet of water. I think. Pretty sure it can cut through a three inch thick piece of steel in less than a minute. But, I’m not sure. Again, I didn’t check Google.

And, that’s enough from me today.

Ryan

4-24-14/4-26-14

The Shovel of Truth

The Shovel of Truth (pictured above) is a +5 golden holy shovel of lie smiting and depression bane. Its use is designed solely to clear away all the nasty crap one's mind comes up with at the worst of times. Like when you think that nobody cares about the things you do.

It's not true.

It never has been, and it never will be. Somebody will always care about the things you are doing. And, sometimes you won't even realize those people are there.

I've been feeling that way recently. I've been kind of in the dumps about a lot of things, and one of those things happened to be my blogging and the results I didn't think I was getting.

Well, I had a real long drawn out chat with a friend of mine and she was telling me about how depression is just one great big lie. It's your mind working against you, telling you things, hateful things that aren't true. It's the voice that whispers about how you messed up that job interview. It's the voice that tells you you're worthless, that everything you've done up to this point has been meaningless.

After a while, those lies get heavy, and I told my friend about how I am. I told her that all I wanted to do was collapse beneath them, let them run me over, just so I could get a little rest. I told her I wanted to give in, and give up. Then I told her what giving up meant to me (and that's not something I'll repeat here), and she told me that I didn't strike her as the type of person who just gave up.

I believe that.

There have been so many points, so many places in my life where I've just wanted to give up. I've wanted to lay in bed and wallow in my grief and self-pity. I've believed the things depression's been telling me. But, I didn't give up.

I kept moving. And, it hasn't always been my own will that's got me going. More than once it's been my wonderful Cupcake pulling me up out of the muck and getting me to start moving again. And, I thank her for that. She like's to say she's a flashlight for me, to help me find my way in the dark. I like to think of her more as a lighthouse, one that shines as bright as any star, and let's me see the world for miles and miles.

And, now I have a shovel to help that lighthouse. Lol. Poor analogy, but I think you get what I mean. I now have a weapon to use to beat that depression back. I have the truth to back me up.

The lie: Nobody cares about my blog/writing.

The truth:

Blogger- On average I get between 20 and 30 hits a day, with one official follower.

Fanfiction.net- One of my stories has 59 favorites, 107 alerts, is featured in 2 communities, and is just shy of 50,000 views.

Hubpages- I have 10 followers, and I haven't posted a Hub in the last three months or so.

People care. The proof is there, and I just need to be patient to get the numbers I want.

So, I'm going to take my Shovel o' Truth, and I'm going to go beat some depression/lie zombies to death. Later.

Ryan
4-23-14

Trolls

You got a purty mouth. Heh. Heh. Heh.

Big ugly green monsters without too much going on inside their noggin, and most of them have the ability to regenerate. That’s probably all you really need to know about trolls. But, cutting the post off there would be kind of lame. So, I’ll see what else I can weasel out of these critters.

Trolls, in Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, are just shy of being a giant in height (nix that, they are giants) topping off between seven and eight feet tall and weighing anywhere between three and eight hundred pounds. If they have hair it’s greasy and limp and their noses often look like it’s been broken one too many times. They favor swamps, bogs, and moors as their homes. Trolls, like I mentioned above, have the ability to regenerate hit points over time and re-grow limbs and such. It’s not a fun thing to come up against, especially if you’re lacking a torch, or a campfire, or a weapon with a flame enchantment on it.

Another interesting thing to note is the lack of gender among trolls (at least from my point of view and my house rules) as they reproduce asexually. To make more trolls you cut a piece of an existing one off and a new troll, minus a few points of intelligence from the base troll, will grow in 3d6 days. This makes it really nasty for adventurers who hack and slash their way through a whole troop of trolls and don’t take the precaution of burning the bits and pieces after the fight. What that group gets is an army of pissed off trolls tracking them down later in the week.

And, one fun thing that comes along with this is making a smart troll.

According to 3.5 stats for a troll the average intelligence is a 6. This means the troll gets a -2 modifier to anything that requires the use of intelligence. And, if you’re making a troll PC you take a -4 racial adjustment to whatever you rolled for intelligence. The statistic block even goes so far as to state that 3 is the lowest a trolls intelligence can drop.

So, how do you make a smart troll?

First, you bring a little malevolent pixie named Damien Trollbringer (he’s been mentioned on the blog before) into the picture.

Second, you pick up as many wondrous items as you can that give bonuses to intelligence.

Third, you let Damien go at applying all of these magic items, ointments, potions, and what have you, and then use a Wish spell to bind all of the items to the troll as if they were a natural part of his body.

Not Revenire the Troll King, but I can't draw so he's close enough.

The result is Revenire the Troll King. Revenire (the last time I looked at the character sheet) has an intelligence of 35 giving him a +12 to any intelligence related skill. He used this intellect to escape Damien and went about creating an army of super trolls. He used his own fingers to spawn the first ten of his army, those are his generals, each with an intelligence of 30, the subsequent generations, after the fourth, is back to having average troll intelligence.

I would do the math on that, but it seems like it would be a lot. At a random guess, I’d say you’d have around 100,000 trolls, assuming that each general cut off all ten fingers, and then the next generation did the same, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, that’s an epic level adventure waiting to happen J

Anywho, I’m off.

Later kids.

Ryan

4-10-14