Good Eats-Rainy City Style

The Floric Cuisine of the Rainy City
The Sump and Shallows areas of the Rainy City supply most if not all of the city’s vegetables. Cattails roots, boiled, mashed and salted are quiet good. As are the many dishes made with rice from the Sump’s many rice paddies. In the Shallows of the city good citizens maintain the fine kelp farms that enrich many a soup and salad from the rickety, moss covered huts of the sump to the lofty and opulent keeps of the Tower Cliffs. And of course, mushrooms grow in great abundance all throughout the city, outside and in.

The Mushroom Library

The Mushroom Library
A farm of sorts. In a damp hall, great old books lie open, their pages misted on a regular basis. Up from these mouldering tomes sprout many and varied forms of fungi.

Some say the local distiller of tinctures and unguents, Vengus Ult has plans of his own to create a unique mushroom library. One that sprouts forth from the pages of tomes once belonging to mages, wizards and other casters of weird and mysterious spells. The mushrooms then will act as a distillation of the spell on which they feed and grow. Or so Vengus says…

The apocryphal tale of Primus Vitellus.

A tale told in taverns and inns by those that still remember it. For the deed took place hundreds of years ago. It is the story of either a brave or stupid refugee from yet another world turned to water and brought her, adrift to the Rainy City. She, yes she, for she was a woman, though people don’t know this, thanks in part to the efforts of Musca the Censor who thought that no woman could have accomplished such a deed (DENIED!) and thus edited the tale and “Prima” became “Primus” (APPROVED!), she was a brave soul indeed. With great bell helm she went down, down into the deep dark that was the base of the great submerged wizard’s school. And therein, she set to exploring. The way was fraught with peril and terror and she suffered no small amount of pain and anguishing wounds. Eventually though, she found her way to a room, piles of coin and jewels lay there, surrounded by glittering items of all sorts, and in the center stood a pedestal. And on that pedestal sat a box with a huge golden key jutting from it. Not knowing what that key would do once turned, she swallowed her fear and with a mighty twist, Prima turned that key.
The walls of the school shook, and the waves outside set to spinning and whirling. The sky above, unseen to her, cracked open and the rain ceased to fall…for five minutes.

Bobbers

Bobbers
The bays of the Rainy City have been sectioned off, marked with buoys demarcating territories; “land” in the sea. These territories are often owned and surface salvaged by people known as “Bobbers”. They live in large row-boat types of ships with two masts near their middle. The masts though are not for sails, but for the holding of hammocks. Multiple hammocks hang one above another in a row, swinging back and forth counter the swaying of the boat as it rocks amongst the waves.

Temple of the Sea's Bounty

Temple of the Sea’s Bounty
There is a landless temple in the Rainy City, a great boat that plies the waters around the rock at all the Worlds’ End. The Temple of the Sea’s Bounty is a salvaging ship, trawling and dredging the Rainy City’s bay, dragging great hooks deep below the surface of sea, seeking treasures and resources that only the sea will provide. Most of the congregation lives aboard the ship, which never stops moving. Those who wish to join must take a ship or boat out amongst the waves to the great ark-like ship; this includes the rare and brave traders who do business with the temple. Their great and bountiful goddess takes the form of a huge and fecund human woman’s upper torso with the lower torso of an octopus. Each arm reaching out and grabbing or handing out items found at the bottom of the sea

Rickety Village

Rickety Village
An ugly floating conglomeration of ships, boats, buoys and anything else that floats out beyond the fifth swell. The only suburb of the Rainy City, Rickety Village is a dark, damp and ugly place. Populated with murderers and other criminals that would most likely be killed on sight in the city proper, the Rickety Village takes all kinds, literally. The dark, shoulder-wide wooden alleyways, squeezed between various wood and canvas shacks teetering precariously as the lashed and nailed together ships rock, wave tossed past the sixth swell are as dangerous and deadly places as one could find in or out of the Rainy City. Luckily for the city’s good citizens, the village is a ramshackle affair at best and often falls completely apart, only to be rebuilt again within a year or two. The repairs and rebuilding seems to keep the inhabitants of the village busy enough to avoid coming back to the city and creating more havoc

Nerds, help me out.

Fellow nerds, I beseech thee.

The Bioware company is having an auction contest where we can bid with virtual tokens for some really great prizes.
And the more clicks I get on this link, the more tokens I can pick up.
The link just takes you to the BioWare site.
So, what do you say? Help a fellow nerd out?

Bioware DragonAge

Readying for Ragnarok

Did a single deck of cards today with a slight twist.

The push-ups were done on a medicine ball. I also held onto the ball when doing squats, but the 8lbs was pretty negligible.

Medicine ball push-ups: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWFrwGlfRgw
The first type of push-ups featured in the video are what I did.

Red = push-ups
Black = Bodyweight squats

Readying for Ragnarok

Started the workout today with five minutes of jump rope.

Then I went with 5 one minute intervals of dumb-bell swings, with one minute rest in between. The dumbell was 35 lbs.
Here's what they look like, though I hold the dumb-bell differently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Q_Xrxp6o8

I followed that with 5 one minute intervals of sledgehammer work on a few tires in the garage.
Here's what that sort of looks like, though I'm by no means as badass as the man in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJWqx-zPffs

Finished it up with 3 sets of 3 towel pullups.

About an hour later, went for a woods run. 3.2 miles.

Good times.

Readying for Ragnarok

Early today, hit the weights, good times.

5 minutes of jump rope to warm up.

5 x 5 deadlifts 185 lbs, which is all the weight I have. I know, its paltry. But hey, its my bodyweight, so I'm moderately ok with it.

Followed with one arm rows.
5 x 60 lbs
5 x 70 lbs
5 x 80 lbs
5 x 80 lbs
5 x 80 lbs

Ended with towel pullups, which seemed to suck.
set 1: 4
set 2: 2
set 3: 3
set 4: 3
set 5: 3

An hour or so later, hit the trails outside of town in Deerfield Park. 3.2 miles. Not too bad today.

Fauna

The snakes of the planet Psyche, like all other creatures there are possessed of psychic abilities. In lieu of a venomous bite, using the power of their minds, they inflict a crushing despair upon their prey, paralyzing them with depression...

Gaming stuff!

Finished a first draft of a random character relationship generator for new pcs to create connections between one another. It's a random d20, but I'd like to expand it to d100 as soon as I can.

Also finished up a first draft of Titan mutation tables for the sci-fi game space opera game I'm working on.

Woohoo!

Readying for Ragnarok

4.73 miles today. Not too bad. Need more mileage though!

Readying for Ragnarok

3.2 miles through the hard packed snowy trails of Deerfield Park. The hardpacked snow made running a lot easier than usual, finished a few minutes shorter than all the other runs thus far this winter. Woohoo.

Readying for Ragnarok

Solo run today through the downtown area. 4.85 miles. Took me 45 minutes. Music for the win!

Here's a link to the route:
www.mapmyrun.com/route/us/mi/mt%20pleasant/759126409988838123

Tomorrow, something more hardcore...

Readying for Ragnarok

Yesterday 3.2 miles through Deerfield Park. Ugh

Today:
3.42 Miles through Veits woods, did the circuit twice and a bit of the sidewalk leading to and from it.

Readying for Ragnarok

Poker Face!

Three decks of cards today, back to back (mostly), two minutes rest between each deck.

Shuffle the deck. Turn over the cards one at a time, do the value on the card in reps, face cards are ten and aces are eleven.

Set one:
Red Cards=Push ups
Clubs=Left Leg Lunges
Spades=Right Leg Lunges

Set two:
Red Cards=Pushups
Black Cards=Bodyweight squats

Set Three:
Red Cards=Pushups
Black Cards=Crunches


Damages:
570 Pushups
95 Right Leg Lunges
95 Left Leg Lunges
190 Squats
190 Crunches

Time: About 35 minutes.

Readying for Ragnarok

3.2 Mile run today in the woods outside of town. Snow+uneven ground+sore legs from yesterday=suck.

I'm thinking if I get a pair of Yak Trax (a shoe accessory for added traction), I might give this a try with the weight vest on. We'll see. Tomorrow, going to shoot for three decks of cards and maybe, depending on how I feel, some jump rope.

Gunslingin'

The Midwest Desert is a dangerous place...

Sand lizards: Hulking reptiles, laying torpid in the baking sun until prey of any sort comes within their line of vision.
Giant crabs: Hidden just below the surface of the shifting sands, their eyestalks hidden among the harsh desert grasses.
Spike trees: Thin, leaning trees, dancing in the wind. Also covered in long, thin thorns that act as needles once they strike a animal. Then the tree begins pumping a fast acting paralysis toxin into the victim while sucking out vital fluids, leaving the animal a dessicated husk.

They are only a smattering of what dwells in the Midwest Desert. None of which are considered remotely as deadly as the Fire Clan. Think wild, fire worshiping mad men and women. They are a threat to all life in the desert, of which they lay claim to huge swathes of land that they patrol on jack rabbits, driven and kept happy by the tinkerers of the clan.

Cannibals. Savages. Fire scarred, chaos infused killers. And those are the nice things one could say about them...

Gunslingin'

The United States is a place of ruination. When the seas finally retreated the land and cities were decimated. The Midwest has turned to desert. What was the Mississippi River is now a great chasm dry, cutting into the earth. The entirety of the east coast is marsh or swamplands, haunted by wet-folk, vicious critters and swamp hags.

Florida is gone.

Michigan is an island protected by some sort of Elven mysticism.

New Mexico is claimed by Dwarfs, holding enclaves in ancient adobe cities.

No one's been far enough out west to know whats happened out there.

The great cities of the past are a series of massive ruins. The salt water took a great toll on everything it touched. Survivors of a kind have flocked to these cities though. Its all an illusion of safety though, the cities teem with things that creep and crawl just as much as the wildlands between them.

In many cases, those same survivors are just as much critter as they are human...

Gunslingin'

The Maverick

Just a double deck of cards work out for today. With a few minutes rest in between decks.

First deck:
Red Cards = Pushups
Spades = Right Leg Lunges
Clubs = Left Leg Lunges

Second Deck:
Red Cards = Pushups
Black Cards = Bodyweight Squats

Damage:
380 Pushups
95 Right Leg Lunges
95 Left Leg Lunges
190 Bodyweight Squats

Ugh.
That is all.

Gunslinging...

They say things weren’t always this way. Fifty, maybe sixty years back, the unbelievable happened. A rock from space struck the moon, a great, big rock. The glassy white eye that watched over us went a’spinning off its regular rotation. This made all sorts of trouble. The seas went wild. Water rose and covered the land. The air filled with dust and water born bacteria. By the time the moon spun back to where it was supposed to be the damage was immeasurable. As the waters slowly receded the heat of the sun baked the earth dry where it had been. A series of solar flares smacked the earth like savage fiery hammers. They would have been rebuffed at least partially by the atmosphere, but it had been ruined in part by the mispinning of the moon. Civilization was destroyed in the process. New peoples rose up, claiming land as their own. They claimed to have been there all along, under the noses of the human race.

Readying for Ragnarok

A workout journal/log thing. Gonna try to keep track of workouts in here and such.

Todays workout, I dub "Atlas' Burden."

With such a name you'd probably expect a great deal of weight to be involved, well, you'd be wrong. I don't have a great deal of weight at home, so that's a no go. I call it Atlas' Burden because it killed my shoulders. The workout is pretty simple and can be done by just about anyone with a garage and a few simple tools.

It's 5 rounds consisting of 5 minutes each, 1 minute rest in between.
1 minute of fast rope jumping, followed by 30 seconds of sledgehammer swings into an old rimless car tire.
This leaves 30 seconds at the end after the last set of tire swings for each round, I grabbed the rope and did high knee sprint style jumping for it, fast, like a t-rex was chasing me.

It killed my shoulders, probably due to the fact that I haven't done any sledgehammer work in months.

I might do something later tonight if my shoulders feel better, probably a deck of cards workout or two. More on that later..

Games for the Year aka Stuff I'd like to run.

Whew, why should 2010 be any different from 2009? As such, here's a short list of stuff I'd like to run or do gaming-wise in 2010.

Two Campaigns in Pathfinder: One of which being a gritty, "Black Company" style game, with all sorts of blood and death and mayhem and gangrenous wounds. The other, a druid based game set in The Sodden Lands. The goal of which being the restoration of balance between the natural world there and mankind, finding a way to block the frigging hurricane from the mainland.

Then there's the pulpy "Temple of the Ape Lord" module I've been working on for Pathfinder too.


Eberron: I'd love to run me some Eberron, either with Pathfinder rules or 3.5.
Couple of ideas: A campaign in which the pc's all start out as barbarians from the demon wastes.
A Talenta Halfing game that consists of a series of one shots.

Gunslinging post-apocalyptic game: I don;t have a solid name for it yet, at the moment I'm just calling it "Gunslinging". Based on a mish-mash of post-apoc stuff, King's Gunslinger, Korgoth, Fallout 3, The Road, a bit of everything. This one is probably closest to being ready to go. I've made a good number of changes to a few classes and cut down the number of "standard" classes available.


There's also my sci-fi setting too, set in space, sort of warhammer 40k ish, in its setting (tons of human populated worlds) and the huge range of technology (from super high tech to stone age).

Plus, I'm working on my own board game.


Hopefully, this'll be a busy, productive year...

Ugh

Workout today:

Sprints in the soccer field, dragging a tire, in the snow. From goal post to goal post. Sprint down once, jog back, rinse, repeat x8. Were it not for the presence of the Necromancer, I may not have made it.

Old School/New School Vampire?

I've only recently become of aware of the "old school renaissance" in regards to Dungeons and Dragons. By recently, I mean the last three or four years. Up until then I would have scoffed at anyone attempting to talk me into playing anything but the current addition of the game. That changed though, due to the Superhero Necromancer. He actually talked me into played OD&D (which he's explained to me a few hundred times, is different from 1st edition D&D.), and that in turn led to this whole old school world opening up before me.

I'm wondering now though, if a sort of old school renaissance is taking place among White Wolf fans. It looks that way. With the CCP?White Wolf no longer running or organizing the Camarilla Fan Club, a call has gone out among the rank and file of members to return to the Old World of Darkness. I'm not sure what the terminology for it would be though, did they end with 3rd ed. or was it 2nd ed. revised?

Either way, I'm behind it. As in, I support it. The New World of Darkness (especially Vampire), shows a decided lack of mythology that the original had. Werewolf has done a good job of capturing some of the flavor and spiritual interaction that Apocalypse had. I was never all that into Mage so I can't really comment. Changeling is even better in its newest incarnation. And Geist, wow, Geist is everything that Wraith should have been.

Rambling aside, hah, I suppose what I'm getting at is that I'll get the most out of a Vampire the Masquerade resurgence. Although a return to Werewolf The Apocalypse would be great, since I spent soooo much time and money on that setting.

It's all a moot point as White Wolf has apparently outlived its pencil and paper game usefulness to CCP and won;t be producing too much more tabletop gaming material.