The Blog of Roon

This is the I-don’t-do-quizzes quiz post. Everybody has one. This is mine.

Before I even started it, though, I had to come up with a list of my characters. That list, to put it mildly, is scary. In alphabetical order, omitting characters I played but did not design, or did not play long enough to get a solid idea of: Afletana, Ahti, Aino, Anis, Bellis, Delphine, Fechan, Fiera, Hannah, Juskinah, Latiel, Maggie I (Rifts), Maggie II (Vampire; dunno why these characters had identical names), Mordechai, Nur, Rat, Shams, and Shirley. Holy howlers.

Hey, I’m leaving out such gems as Peredur pen Gwyn, the Linux geek turned paladin. (Thank you, thank you; the rotten tomatoes will make lovely soup.)

• Years roleplaying: Um, twelve or thirteen. Or thereabouts. Including lapses.
• Favorite three characters: Fechan, Juskinah, um—a couple are slugging it out for third—Shirley.
• Least favorite character: Maggie II. Not much there there.
• Male or female characters? Female, yup yup.
• Oldest character: In terms of length of time alive, probably Afletana, though perhaps Fechan. (Bloody immortal D&D elves.) In terms of percentage of lifespan complete, definitely Nur. In terms of first-played, I think Delphine. (Li, help me out here!)
• Newest character: Tamasi, from Passions of the Tide. Oops. Not on the list. My bad.
• Most popular character: Er. None of my characters win popularity contests. Shirley, probably. Possibly Bellis.
• Character made and never played: Farangis. She didn’t make the list because I haven’t actually played her, though I’m still subscribed to her PBeM.

Which character would be most likely to

• Jump off a bridge? If someone they cared about was in danger, almost any of them. For kicks? Um, Fiera.
• Get drunk and pass out? Eesh. Shams, I guess. Few of my characters have much to do with alcohol. Oh, wait, no—Rat.
• Kill somebody in a very unorthodox way? Fiera. Oh, yeah. Gotta watch out for them werepanthers…
• Get married? Well, Shirley already has. So has Anis. Afletana would be next in line if her campaign hadn’t folded.
• Be far too hyper for their own good? Aino. When you’re House Bjornaer and your heart-beast is a sea otter…
• (Skipping the rape question…)
• Get lost and refuse to ask for directions? Rat.
• Get lung cancer? Delphine. Secondhand smoke.
• Star in a horror movie? Well, duh. Maggie II.
• Star in a whore movie? Latiel.
• Star in a video game? Bellis, if she weren’t homely. Er, Delphine again, I guess. Or Maggie I.
• Make the world a better place? Juskinah.
• Have a torrid gay love affair (not their usual proclivity)? Aino.

Relate each word to a character…

• Love Afletana
• Hate Latiel
• Money Hm. Shams, probably.
• Seduction Latiel
• Lies Rat
• Tragedy Juskinah
• Manipulation Mm, doesn’t tend to be anyone’s specialty. Latiel, faute de mieux.
• Violence Bah. Person who came up with this must have been male. Juskinah.
• Politics Juskinah
• Fire Fechan
• Ice Delphine

Would you ever…

• Play a prostitute? Doubt it. Closest I’ve come is Latiel, who isn’t despite everyone thinking she is.
• Play a musician? Sure. Done it. Shams.
• Play a pilot? I think Delphine was one.
• Play a homosexual? Done it, though typically my non-straight characters are bi.
• Play a pedophile? Nope. Out of the question.
• Play a politician? As in, career-type? Doubtful. I’d play some politician’s flunky, though.
• Create a character for sole purpose of smut? No. Not multi-dimensional enough to be interesting. Smut is fine—yes, I wrote Shirley’s wedding night, and no, you are not ever going to get to read it—but sex is not all there is.

I’ll skip the song assigning, as I’m terrible at it. This came up in a Game WISH, I think, and I spent a solid week trying to find a song for Shirley and failing abjectly. If I come up with anything truly outstanding, I’ll post it.

As I expected, Li blew it off; we are now in full-blown “everybody knows!” mode.

The issue at hand, of course, is Shirley’s MacGuffin, which he now believes he can’t hide any longer. Before he married, he had contingency plans in place, but matters are ever so much more complicated now, and he hasn’t had time to redraw his plans.

Siberia is a really horrid place to feel endangered. This could get ugly. It might end up killing him, who knows?

(Oh, and I’m disappointed in all y’all. Nobody’s even ventured a guess at Shirley’s MacGuffin—and if you know me, it’s really pretty obvious.)

When Iron Crown Enterprises, publishers of the Middle-Earth Role-Playing system, went bankrupt a couple years back, David was one of those left holding bags. His is not a very big bag. They just owe him a few hundred on the last book he worked on. (Was it Hands of the Healer? Might have been, though I’m not sure.)

I wrote off that money a long time ago (though, come to think of it, I never have claimed it as uncollectable on our taxes—ought to do that). I know perfectly well we’re never going to see it, and I’m quite reconciled to that. In the Grand Scheme o’ Things, no big deal.

When the bankruptcy was first announced, though, I hadn’t any idea what kind of shape ICE was in, so when the claim forms arrived, I helped David fill one out and send it in. Ever since, we’ve gotten communiqués from ICE’s bankruptcy lawyers every so often.

Today they had to tell us that they want to be allowed to pay an accountant more than twice what David is owed for doing ICE’s 2002 taxes.

Something’s just kinda weird about that. I don’t have any objection to seeing the accountant get paid; poor schmo deserves it. But it just strikes me that they could save an awful lot of paperwork and postage if they’d just pay off a bunch of small creditors like David.

Yeah, yeah, I know it can’t happen that way. But it’d be way more tidy and efficient than what’s been happening.

Shirley’s conversation with the duck ended well enough. The repercussions of his little trip have yet to be determined.

But since Shirley can’t leave well enough alone, he just started a Serious Talk with his wife’s ward Esperanza (the GM’s non-player-character). It’s a risk for him, a major one—but he’s an honourable chap and he hasn’t much (honourable) choice in the matter.

Classic Li would be to shrug it off, but I’m kinda hoping that isn’t what’s going to happen. I’m fearing a replay of that truly dreadful moment in Star Trek: Voyager when an outraged Chakotay faced with the latest spy begged to know if anyone on his Maquis ship was actually working for him, an artifact of the “we have a secret so let’s overuse it” school of plot management.

We shall see. Li’s a better plotter than that.

Of course Shirley expected lots of odd things to happen to him during the Grand Ellipse.

He didn’t expect to be holding a conversation with a duck. In Russian.

Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. Yes, he’s on something; no, what he’s on isn’t alcoholic.

He’s being a good little stoner and going with the flow, for lack of anything better to do…

Update: Li has posted the entire conversation, such as it was. I’m afraid that Shirley’s savoir-faire doesn’t really extend to conversations with precognitive waterfowl in a language in which he’s not entirely fluent. (Precognitive? Well, if the duck is talking about the Tunguska meteor strike, it won’t happen for another twenty-five or so years. I don’t think ducks live that long. Avian metempsychosis?)

Ah, well. At least it’s clear he isn’t Russian. Fate worse than death, that. To an Evenk, anyway.

Update 2 Oh, and if you look, the conversation contains a truly gigantic hint as to the nature of Shirley’s MacGuffin. Nobody’s guessed what that is yet. (Other than Alisa/Margaret, of course.)

Shirley and Margaret are getting through Siberia as best they can.

Shirley has come down with a miserable chest cold, and in the process of treating it he horrified his guides by unintentionally ticking off the hearth spirit. Thoroughly chastened, he apologized and listened carefully to the prohibitions they laid on him.

I’d say that the spirits sent the cold if he hadn’t had it before he ticked them off. Of course, he might have done something beforehand… but that way lies madness, and Shirley is too wretched right now to care. Though his wife is of course taking very good care of him; it pays to marry a doctor.

He and Margaret are currently unraveling the mystery of the child accompanying them; they initially thought it a case of abuse, but matters are more complicated than that. At least Shirley’s native caution kept them from hasty (and incorrect, it now seems) accusations.

Debate is apparently raging among the guides as to whether Shirley, Margaret, and Esperanza have souls. Apparently Russians do not. They might; they are at least not Russian. Jury is still out, however.

The latest London Times is up.

I knew Li wouldn’t leave Percy cooling his heels in custody (and no, GM favoritism to her husband is not the reason). I did not expect that Addison would get free also, in Parts Unknown (read the article carefully; it’s posted from the Netherlands, but nowhere is the actual place of prisoner transfer stated).

And Shirley, Margaret, and Esperanza are heading blithely out into Siberia knowing none of this; they left Vladivostok on April 10th or 11th. Whee! I can at least hope that Vroomfondel doesn’t get to read Shirley’s tweak of him. (Though if Vroomfondel tries to mess with Shirley, and even more if he tries to mess with Margaret, Shirley may surprise him.)

Not to mention that Shirley is going to be, er, distressed to find out that a fellow Ellipsoid went down in Osaka. Bad, bad, very bad. Where the devil was Scotland Yard, he will want to know.

Shirley’s less-than-wholly-approbatory comments vis-a-vis the dirigible had more to do with Shirley’s galloping acrophobia than anything else. I personally think somebody squealed about it to Basil Cartwright, who grilled them unmercifully about the dirigible and hardly so much as mentioned their marriage. (Though I also think there’s a plot point lurking there with regard to Selena Theopolis.)

Siberia is an ugly place about to get uglier.