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My God can beat up your God! in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Sunday, May 28 2006 13:44 Profile Homepage #128
GremlinJoe has lost me. I can accept that he believes in an all-powerful, benevolent God who can and does work miracles. Fair enough. On the other hand, that still doesn't distinguish GremlinJoe's version of God from any of the more popular versions of the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim Gods.

"El" means God. Actually, it means god with a little G. "Shaddai" means almighty. Is there really a problem with people talking about God almighty? What makes "God almighty" more acceptable, or "Dios todopoderoso," or any language's equivalent except Hebrew's?

—Alorael, could possibly see being offended by some other deity being described with a uniquely Jewish term. Since the Abrahamic God is the same whether you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, it's just a matter of theological trappings that go with the term.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Ancient Mystery: Solved! in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 22:25 Profile Homepage #6
Why is anything from which a chicken hatches a chicken egg? If a chicken hatched from a very large frog's egg would it still be a chicken egg?

—Alorael, who would prefer to say that eggs predated birds in general in evolution. All birds lay eggs and the chicken evolved from some egg-laying forebear. Therefore the first chicken hatched from an egg regardless of the egg's classification. An egg came first.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Slith fort (A1) in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 22:22 Profile Homepage #11
Sliths are obviously from an evolutionary branch that diverged reptiles after the development of scales but before the amniotic egg. I'm not sure development came in that order (in fact, I'm pretty sure it didn't), but between bending rules to make an evolutionary history for an imaginary species on an imaginary planet and following Earth's phylogenetic order, I think we all know which wins.

—Alorael, who is willing to concede that the sliths may have evolved "backwards" into having non-amniotic eggs and gill-bearing young. Why? Because the Creator wanted to have a scene in which a band of adventurers slaughtered slith young in a wet environment. Teleological but plausible, isn't it?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
the exile I music in The Exile Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 22:10 Profile Homepage #10
MIDI can be played by Quicktime and therefore by iTunes. I still have a few MIDIs that iTunes will happily play, at any rate, and Exile1.mid is among them.

—Alorael, who will admit to being fond of organ music. It helps that it's really not an instrument ever touched by an amateur unlike, say, the violin.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
How To Live With The Curse in Nethergate
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 19:19 Profile Homepage #2
It's not so small. I think it's equivalent to at least three points of Dread Curse.

—Alorael, who has not tested this extensively. This is, in fact, a figure made up more or less on the spot based on the fact that three is a substantial number with several applicable associations.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Slith fort (A1) in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 19:17 Profile Homepage #8
The obvious solution is to slaughter the inhabitants of the fort and then relocate the sliths of Gnass so they can care for the eggs and young. Such relocation can take place by force if necessary.

—Alorael, who wouldn't want to impede a grand tradition of stomping on natives, especially natives who don't look like the invading race. Sliths don't look much like humans.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Giscard? in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 19:15 Profile Homepage #6
Gremlins aren't nearly as frightening without their manic laughter, theft, and confusion rays.

—Alorael, who spent a great deal of time standing still while confusion wore off in the various gremlin caves of bygone Avernums. A4's two grelmins are not nearly as much of a headache.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum V ideas in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 12:06 Profile Homepage #10
Despite some superficial resemblance, apparently not.

—Alorael, who has a suggestion (or several). A4's combat with height once again included, a superior plot, and new areas to explore. Oh, and free kittens!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Giscard? in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 12:01 Profile Homepage #3
He wants three or four. You can find enough in Giscard's house and the storeroom with the gremlin, but if you're like me you already stole the Gremlin Wine from Giscard. Fear not! You'll find enough in the Great Cave to make up for it, but it will take a while.

—Alorael, who never seriously considered just killing the gremlin. He's not entirely sure why.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Ghosts of Stalin in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 09:45 Profile Homepage #17
You can say that the Soviet Union was a disaster of a state without calling communism inherently evil.

In fact, you can call most communist regime disasters, too. But that still doesn't make communism evil.

[Edit: Disasters, yes. Unmitigated, no.]

—Alorael, who doesn't blame Christianity for the Crusades or the Inquisition, Islam for fundamentalist terrorists, or democracy for Bush.

[ Saturday, May 27, 2006 09:46: Message edited by: Equipoise ]
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Custom Names - images inside in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 09:40 Profile Homepage #17
I declare a new rule by fiat: anyone who posts "in before the lock" or the like is both giving implicit permission for that post to be edited without mercy or explanation and permission for another post in any other thread to be similarly edited.

You have been warned.

—Alorael, who is also often disinclined to lock IBTL threads. Especially ones like this one, which isn't all that bad.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Body Armour as Celts in Nethergate
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, May 27 2006 09:36 Profile Homepage #7
Nethergate is still only $15 when purchased with another Spiderweb game. Unless you're going to get an Intel Mac soon and won't be able to run Classic at all, I highly recommend Nethergate now instead of some nebulous superior Nethergate at an indeterminate time in the future.

—Alorael, who need not mention the collector's value of the original Nethergate. Why, some people might be willing to pay $30 for it some day!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Official George R. R. Martin Innuendo Topic in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, May 26 2006 17:05 Profile Homepage #4
I read books. This is not a book, so I don't want to read it.

—Alorael, who is out before the lock.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum V in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, May 26 2006 07:45 Profile Homepage #371
Please don't double post. You can add information with the "Edit" button.

Importing characters would be a problem because each game starts you at level 1 and builds up. The game would be trivial if you started with a character who could tear through everything.

—Alorael, who wouldn't mind some areas that didn't just become entirely depopulated with ease. On the other hand, because monsters stop giving you experience once your level is too high, more monsters generally wouldn't result in higher levels.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Dan Brown Book... in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 23:56 Profile Homepage #27
Incidentally, Angels and Demons touches on the virgin birth as divinel IVF. Now I'm just looking for evidence of Mary being conceived in a sterile area, or at least an exceptionally clean and probably disinfected room, and we've got immaculate conception too!

—Alorael, who believes the plural of Jesus is Jeez. Yes, you thought it was just a way to avoid taking the name of God in vain, but it's much more multifarious than that.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Visions of the future. (was: It's my turn to spam.) in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 20:38 Profile Homepage #33
Congrats on (finally) reaching a celebrable post count, Zeviz!

—Alorael, who expects a healthy mix of dystopia and progress. Dystopia seems to be an endemic human problem. And there's always the threat of environmental collapse, oil use catastrophe, or good ol' nuclear disaster to bring everything back to the stone age.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 20:36 Profile Homepage #92
Who inscribes walls in the vernacular?

—Alorael, who believes the Talmud served and serves its purpose of conveying information to literate Jews without becoming entangled in problems of local language of choice. The consequence, however, is that there's even less incentive for anyone to keep up a working knowledge of Yiddish or Ladino.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Dan Brown Book... in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:14 Profile Homepage #7
With strong enough magnetic fields you could have your antimatter whirling very fast in very small loops, but I don't know enough about the process to think of a way to make such a suitcase that could be moved without bashing the suitcase into the antimatter and causing a mess.

—Alorael, who is waiting for one more post. Just one more!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:10 Profile Homepage #85
Hebrew survived as a religious (and legal) language long after it was no longer used for daily life. That's one of the reasons Hebrew could be so successfully revived centuries after it essentially became a dead language.

—Alorael, who wonders what the modern legal process would be like if one could legitimately use an entirely unused language for legal proceedings. There's a lot of Latin already, but it could be worse.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Blackcrag Fortress in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 12:06 Profile Homepage #1
You can get through a few secret passages to meet some more people, like the blacksmith for the fortress, but you can never explore all of Blackcrag.

—Alorael, who wanted to create a scene and demand equality for Worms. He had to settle for killing the empress and dying for the cause.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Vahnatai Lexicon in The Exile Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 11:00 Profile Homepage #5
It's the same one. The Encyclopedia Ermariana just has a little bit of pretty wikification.

—Alorael, who demands citation and not original research.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
My God can beat up your God! in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 10:57 Profile Homepage #79
A question on Biblical literalism that just occurred to me: how can the New Testament be both the literal word of God and the literal word of, say, Mark? Even if we do have a reasonably accurate reproduction of what Mark wrote, he was only human. Humans have a history of being easily influenced witnesses and often mistaken. They also tend to exaggerate and selectively emphasize.

—Alorael, who believes Hebrew survived as a spoken language along with several forms of Aramaic until several centuries after Jesus's death. Jesus was most likely a speaker of Aramaic, however, based on direct quotations and the language spoken in his part of the world.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
the exile I music in The Exile Trilogy
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 10:46 Profile Homepage #7
It's just a MIDI. You can't get Exile to play it, but you can play it while playing Exile. Or you can play a real recording of Bach's music. Or you can play whatever you want.

—Alorael, who incidentally has a recording of the Little Fugue and who has listened to it as part of his playlist while playing through Avernums.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Body Armour as Celts in Nethergate
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, May 25 2006 10:42 Profile Homepage #3
Actually, all the characters recruited in Vanarium can wear armor. That includes the two Celts, one of whom will join a band of Celts and the other of whom will only join Romans. Go figure.

I agree that the Celts have less need of a fifth character, though. Your only choice is another fighter of some kind, and that fifth character is stuck in the back. With armor, the character will also be slower. That means that fifth character won't get into the battle until your lead bashers have already torn your enemies to pieces, usually.

—Alorael, who was occasionally saved by having a breathing, armored body interposed between certain death from behind and his druids.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Avernum V in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, May 24 2006 09:27 Profile Homepage #368
quote:
Originally written by Vicheron:

If a cataclysm is prevented, bad things will still happen. A lot of people will want to leave Avernum. Valorim will have trouble absorbing the new arrivals. There could be accidents with the portal. There'll also be speculations and theories about unnatural causes of the the cataclysm. Lots of people are going to think that the Vahnatai were behind it. The Anama may take advantage of the situation by telling people that such events are caused by ramapant use of magic. Both Avernum and the Empire may be forced to spend massive amounts of resources to solve the problem, limiting their ability to respond against other threats, such as bandits, chitrach investations, those random undead attacks that pop up out of nowhere, etc. Plus the solution to the problem may not even be permanent.
If a cataclysm is prevented and bad things happen, they are unexciting because they are out of the control of the party and because the game is cataclysm prevention, not post-prevented-cataclysm cleanup.

Blaming the vahnatai for another disaster is a good way to cause mass disgust on these boards.

—Alorael, who didn't realize NPCs were protractors. Contractors, perhaps? (See generic crypt in Truffle Days.)
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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