The Odyssey, part two — guest post by Corellia
The problems began when I got to Bergen. I first got lost (I had to call my sister who went online and found out where I was and how to get to the boat I was supposed to take), and then I found out that I had looked at the wrong schedule for the boat. There was no boat on Saturday afternoon. Now, this is the problem with having such travel anxiety that you can hardly see straight. You’re sure to get at least some of your planning wrong.
Read more (PDF): The Odyssey, Part Two.
The Odyssey, part one — guest post by Corellia
I am not a dog person. I love all animals (except snakes), but the only animals I worship and adore are cats. I also hate travelling. Which makes it even harder to understand why I would spend the last part of my Easter holiday travelling across half of Norway to get myself a new dog.
Read more (PDF): The Odyssey, Part One.
The GameMaster (guest post by Black Bear)
I didn’t start playing role playing games until I was in college. Note I said “playing,” because I owned a copy of Basic Dungeons and Dragons from age 12 or so. Read it til the pages fell out. Rolled the cheap dice–the color of blue chalk–over and over, and drew up elaborate maps of the dungeons I’d explore if I had friends who wanted to play. But that key element was missing–and in hindsight, it’s a little surprising my middle school friends and I didn’t play. We were the right sorts of nerds; we all played computer games, we watched Star Trek (original series) obsessively each day after school… Yet somehow, D&D never got on the radar properly, and I didn’t have my first taste of real gaming until I began working at a local store called The Game Preserve.
The GP, as it’s still affectionately known, opened my eyes to the wide world not only of games (board games, puzzle games, wargames, role playing games) but to the wide world of gamers. We run the gamut; even back then it wasn’t just the guys in black t-shirts who William Shatner famously railed at on SNL: “Move out of your parents’ basements! Have any of you EVER kissed a girl?!” There were and are plenty of folks like that in this hobby–but there are also lots of folks who come to it from different angles. People who like stories, and fantasy, and improv acting, and solving puzzles, and working as a team with a bunch of other like-minded friends. That was a huge part of the draw for me; when I got to college and fell in with a real regular gaming group, it was a rich part of my social life every week, to get together and tell a fabulous story each Saturday from 2 until 10 (pizza break at 6. Occasionally take-out Chinese, if we were feeling flush with cash.) We all turned out all right, too–a doctor, two lawyers, a writer, a poet, an archaeologist, an alt-medicine practitioner, a computer jockey…and me, a so-called museum professional.
So, gaming is a large part of my life–enhanced by the fact that when I graduated from college with no obvious job prospects (thank you, medieval studies degree) I went right back to work at the Game Preserve for a number of years. I continued playing my games of choice–RuneQuest, and Call of Cthulhu–in the ensuing years, and in the process discovered that if I was going to play the sorts of games I want to play, I was probably going to have to be the gamemaster. That is to say, I had to be the one in charge. In college, I was always just a player, acting out my character’s part in our increasingly complex adventures; but after college, I began to mastermind these things myself. This isn’t as complicated as you might imagine; while I come up with the basic thin lines of a plot myself, my players are the ones that flesh it out, making it into a real Story, so to speak. As an example, one year for Halloween I literally had nothing but the following jotted down on a bit of notepaper for our H.P. Lovecraft mythos-based horror game:
TRAPPED ON A TRAIN
ELECTRICAL MONSTER HIDING IN BAGGAGE CAR
SLOWLY WORKS WAY UP TRAIN ZAPPING PEOPLE
HIJINKS ENSUE
My players made those four sentences into an evening of fun for all concerned. For those who’ve never played these sorts of games before, essentially the gamemaster is the one who says things like “The train is 8 cars long, including an engine and caboose. You’re sitting in the dining car, eating dinner, when the porter says, ‘There’s a mysterious crackling sound coming from the baggage car.’ So what are you doing?” And the players are the ones who say, “I’m grabbing a fire extinguisher! I’m running toward the baggage car!” (Or, perversely, “I’m stealing all the silverware while the porter is distracted.” Part of being a gamemaster is being prepared to roll with it when your players do things which are, from a story standpoint, utterly stupid.) This is where the fun comes in–it’s up to me what the crackling sound is, and what happens when the players come running back with the fire extinguisher. But it’s up to them what they do when they see a horrible ball of blue hissing flame busily charring its way through their steamer trunks. Spray the extinguisher? Throw a mail bag at it? Run like hell? I won’t know until they do it, and this is what makes the hobby so much fun for me–the constant back and forth of storytelling, balancing the predictable against the unpredictable.
Thus it happened that Robin and I came around to New Thing. As she said in her blog a few nights ago, I’ve been regaling her with stories of my players’ foibles for years now. It makes for great re-telling afterwards; Greg Stafford’s RuneQuest, which is the world I chiefly game in these days, is a lush and varied mixture of high fantasy, low fantasy, and Joseph-Campbell-esque mythology, making a fabulous backdrop for the ridiculous situations my players get themselves into and out of on a regular basis. As she also said, we’ve talked many times about ways to make a McKinley-based RPG happen on the website–but thus far, most of the ways to do it up right would involve a LOT more work on her part than the blog does now, not to mention skirting the edges of copyright disaster. But then she came up with the brilliant thought of approaching it from a different angle–we’d play our way through a story of Robin’s own devising, with me contributing unexpected situations and characters for her protagonist to encounter. But it’s all very fluid–each of Robin’s episodes influences what I may or may not toss into the mix for the next go-round. It’s less a game (no dice rolling, and as she says, the protagonist is NOT allowed to die) and more a cooperative storytelling experience in which Robin writes something amazing, and I keep monkeywrenching the works at key points in the plot. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m delighted to know that people are enjoying it–it’s fun to do! I love serials myself; Plot Without End is an appealing format for me (obviously) and so I’m excited to see where New Thing goes. Hope you are, too!
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Note (pant, pant) that we haven’t got to Cathy’s first monkeywrench yet. I’m SLOW. –ed.
Steps on the way to beekeeping IV (guest post by AJLR)
It’s a year, now, since I first started looking after a colony of bees. The year has been notable in many respects, mostly to do with my repeated feelings of ‘Why did they do that?!’. It is said among beekeepers that beekeeping has a 30-year apprenticeship and I suspect that may be underestimating the time required to gain a reasonable degree of understanding about what a colony of bees does in different circumstances, and how best to look after them.
When one is a novice in any area of reasonably complicated activity, one expects to find the early stage a steep learning curve* but when that activity involves looking after live beings of some sort the learning curve also involves large amounts of ‘am I doing it right for them and will they survive?’ With bees – and I don’t know if any other beekeepers reading this have experienced anything similar – I’ve found that thinking about how a colony of social insects will react as opposed to how one interacts with (typically) small mammals, one has to recognise that what is being looked after is a) a collective mind rather than a lot of individuals and b) there is no evidence to suppose the colony realises that one is trying to do the best for it. For me, and I realise it may be different for other beekeepers, the interest lies in watching the complexity of how the colony manages itself, in trying to work out from the various clues available what I need to do to help them do their own thing, in learning more about a fascinating creature, and in perhaps being able to harvest some honey if there’s a surplus. There is no personal relationship with the individuals or the colony – none of the bees is ever going to fly to me for a cuddle, or a grain of sugar fed at fingerpoint, or a game.
So, what have I learned over the past year?
I think respect would be the first thing. It’s not that I didn’t have a great admiration for honeybees (and other bees) before this. I appreciate this may sound strange – after all, they’re just doing what their genes have programmed them to do, without any conscious choice or intent involved. However, a closer acquaintance with the intricacy of their lives, their ordered activity, and the beauty of what they produce – whether that is wax comb, honey, or propolis, has given me the utmost respect for them as a species. What extraordinary creatures they have evolved to be – and how much we depend on them for so much of our food production.
Next, I’ve learned that bees don’t read the manuals. This fact may not come as a total surprise to anyone, but the multitude of ways in which a honeybee colony can react to their habitat and conditions has been a source of puzzlement, frustration, and sheer amazement to me over the past year. My new colony started off, last May/June, by being unhappy with their new young queen. There was nothing wrong with her that I or my beekeeping mentor could see but they kept trying to get rid of her by raising new queens. They had plenty of space in the hive (cramped conditions can lead to a new queen being raised and the colony splitting), she was newly-mated and laying evenly and well, and there was nothing wrong with or in the hive that we could see. Yet every 2 – 3 weeks I’d find another couple of queen cells being built and with eggs and once (when I was a few days late inspecting one week) the cell had been capped. Eventually my mentor suggested that I just let them get on with it and accept that, as I didn’t want to start a second colony in my first year, it would be best to let them sort themselves out without my regularly removing queen cells. So that’s what I did – panicking slightly one week when I couldn’t find a queen at all (the new queen must have just hatched and was lurking in a quiet corner, while the ‘old’ one had gone) but slightly comforted by the fact that the colony was not agitated and upset as they would be if there was no queen in the hive. That is not in the least how a new colony with a young queen is supposed to behave, according to the books, but hey…
The third thing I’ve learned is that belonging to a local beekeeping association is a great help in retaining one’s sanity and not having to spend mega-amounts on such things as a honey-extractor in one’s first year. Not that I had much honey to extract – I wasn’t expecting any, to be honest, as a colony’s first year energies are usually employed in building themselves up and making new comb (needed both for raising new bees and storing supplies) takes a lot of bee-hours. Being able to borrow equipment from my local association (and asking the experts how it worked) was extremely useful. Mind you, if the expert who lent me the radial extractor had mentioned, at the time of my collecting it, that it was not a good idea to have eaten supper just before trying to clean it (and pass it on to the other member who needed it urgently) after extracting honey, so that one wasn’t head-down and bottom-up in a large stainless-steel drum on top of a fairly full stomach, I would have been even more grateful. That, and learning that if you don’t have the honey-frames loaded very evenly around the extractor drum, then it will try to waltz rapidly round the kitchen when you turn the dial up to extracting-speed, so that you have to fling your arms round it in a fond and stabilising embrace while your husband makes a wild dive to turn the power off! And has anyone else noticed that honey is sticky?
So, a year after starting and with a colony that has survived the winter reasonably well, I now find myself contemplating my second year as a beekeeper. I hope to observe more, to learn more, to be able to keep my charges free of the various horrible pests that try and get them, and – possibly – to get a second colony started in a couple of months’ time. If anyone wants me, I’ll be out at the apiary, watching my precious bees. :)
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* And that, possibly, it’s not a great idea to try and learn two complicated and demanding new activities at the same time. Beekeeping and bell-ringing, for example (though at least I know who to blame for the second of these!).
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Steps on the way to beekeeping III
Steps on the way to beekeeping II
Steps on the way to bee-keeping I
Peter Story, continued
I’ve got the ratbagging lurgy again. Arrrrgh. Although I admit it’s a bit of a relief that there was more going on on Thursday than sorrow, loss and existential dread—it seemed to me I was overreacting a bit even for me. But if there were germs involved. . . .
So what possible better excuse than to give you the rest of Peter’s story?
The Third Dormouse, part two
The boat didn’t look nearly big enough from the outside, but inside there seemed to be room for everyone, and what’s more in one place it was cool enough for the polar bears and in another place it was hot enough for the salamanders. Strange.
Then the rain began. Rain like no one had ever seen before. Rain like buckets being emptied, like baths being emptied, like swimming-pools being emptied, like ponds and lakes and seas being emptied out of the sky. Soon Grandad’s boat was floating. Soon the water was over the tree-tops, soon it was over the fields and over the hills, soon there was nothing but water as far as Anna could see. The waves bellowed and the wind howled and the thunder roared and the lighting flashed and flashed again.
Anna was scared by the lightning, and wondered if she hadn’t better throw Perhaps over the side after all, but it didn’t seem fair, and besides the lightning kept missing Grandad’s boat, and she felt quite well and she couldn’t see any sea-beasts, so she went off to look after the rodentia instead.
The animals didn’t seem to mind about the storm. They ate and slept and dirtied their cages as if they’d lived on Grandad’s boat all their lives. It was a lot of work feeding them and cleaning the cages.
That was the great thing about Possibly and Maybe (and Perhaps). They didn’t need any feeding or cleaning. They just slept.
Then the rain stopped and the clouds blew away and the sun came out and the wind died and the sea stopped surging around and everything was calm and still, as if winter was over, and at that point the animals started getting interested in each other.
The elks got very interested in each other and the mandrills got very interested in each other and the sloths got slightly interested in each other and the hedgehogs got very interested in each other and the giraffes got very interested in each other. . . .
“Don’t look,” said Grandma, on her way round checking the cages. “I must say Him up There isn’t wasting much time about starting over. . . .”
“The dormice aren’t,” said Anna. “They’ve woken up, but they’re just sitting in their corners yickering at each other.”
“Waiting for a bit of privacy, I expect,” said Grandma.
“You don’t think they’re both boys?” said Anna. “Or both girls?”
“Nonsense,” said Grandma. “Him up There wouldn’t get a thing like that wrong. It’s probably just something dormice do before they get started.”
She checked the rest of the rodentia and hurried on to the artiodactyla.
When she went back to her cabin Anna heard a scratching and squeaking coming from her knapsack. She realised that Perhaps must have woken up, but she wasn’t qick enough when she opened the pocket. Out popped Perhaps, dropped to the floor and scuttled out of the door. Dormice aren’t sleepy when they’re awake. This one was really nippy. Anna tried to catch it, but there was a lot of clutter in the corridor and it kept slipping behind things and darting away. Anna chased it all along the corridor and down a flight of stairs and into the animal quarters. At least its hurt leg looked to be all right now.
It seemed to know just where it was going, and scuttled and darted among the cages until it reached the rodentia, where it climbed up the bars of the red squirrel’s cage and started yickering at Possibly and Maybe. They got wildly excited, so Anna grabbed Perhaps, opened the door and popped it in.
The first thing that happened was that Possibly and Maybe started fighting each other. They really went at it. Perhaps just sat and watched, but Anna was afraid one of the others might get hurt, so she grabbed the nearest one—she didn’t know which it was, maybe Possibly, possibly Maybe, but it wasn’t at all happy about it—and shut it in an empty box which had pine nuts in it for the squirrels.
By the time she got back to the cage, Perhaps and the other one were very interested in each other. Perhaps was the female, it turned out. That’s nice, thought Anna. I shan’t have to call her “it” any more.
She went on to clean a few more cages, but the next time she came past she heard an amazing racket coming from the pine-nut box.
It didn’t seem at all fair, so Anna just swapped the males over. Perhaps didn’t seem to mind, nor did the one in the cage with her. They were still very interested in each other. But the one in the box set up a terrible scratching and squeaking.
Grandma will be sure to notice, thought Anna. I’ve got to get it to go to sleep somehow. So she took it along to the polar bears’ cage and hid it in the coldest place she could find. The dormouse in the box decided it must be winter again and went to sleep. Anna asked her cousin Josh, who looked after the ursidae, not to touch it, but she didn’t tell him what was in the box.
So the voyage went on. From time to time, trying to be fair, Anna swapped the males over. Perhaps was perfectly happy with either of them, and there were always just two dormice in the cage when Grandma checked them. Soon it was easy to tell which was the female, because Perhaps started getting fatter.
“Told you so,” said Grandma.
Then there was a lot of business with Grandpa sending ravens out to look for land, and them not finding any. And then it was a dove, and it came back with a bit of twig in its beak so they knew there had to be land somewhere, and then they came to an island and the humans all landed. And the water went down and down, and they saw that the island had to be just the top of a mountain, and Grandad said it was time to let the animals go.
So he and his sons lowered the gangplank and Anna and her cousins went through the boat opening the cages one by one so that there wasn’t a mad scrum. When they did the polar bears Anna took the box with the dormouse in it and put him back in the cage. Perhaps was really pregnant by now, so the other two weren’t interested in her any more and didn’t start fighting. Anna left them to the end before she let them go.
When she got to the entrance Grandma was busy checking the animals, but everybody else was staring at the sky. Anna looked, and saw a wonderful rainbow arching right across from one horizon to the other.
“Look, Grandma!” said Anna.
Grandma looked up, and the three dormice went scuttling out.
“What does it mean?” said Anna.
“It’s Him up There,” said Grandad. “I’ve just heard him say that’s it. He’s not going to try this washing out and starting over stuff again.”
“I heard him too,” said Anna’s cousin Sara.
“Me too,” said everyone, except Grandma and Anna.
Grandma was looking at her lists.
“I seem to have missed the dormice,” she said. “Did anyone see the dormice go?”
“I did,” said Anna.
“How many were there?” said Grandma. “Just the two?”
“Probably,” said Anna’s mother, not thinking.
Now Anna thought she heard something. It might have been distant thunder, or it might have been somebody laughing at a private joke.
She watched Perhaps, very fat and pregnant, with Possibly and Maybe yickering beside her, scuttle down the slope and disappear into the clean new world.