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What the heck? in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #21
It used to be possible to vote for the karma of members who had turned it off, although it still didn't display.

When you turn your karma back on, it returns exactly as it was when it was deactivated. There's no way to falsify the opinions of others here!

—Alorael, who is willing to at least partially falsify opinions for the right amount. Rates are negotiabl on a per-star basis.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Level cap in A2? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #11
Silverlocke is in A1 as well. She's in the middle of a lake in the Great Cave area, where she makes tea as well as potions.

—Alorael, who never managed to clean her out and make her restock in A1, incidentally.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
My how far we've fallen... in Richard White Games
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #18
As far as you need to know, I'm plaid. And striped, too. It's unfortunate.

—Alorael, who was willing to suffer even that indignity for the good of Richard "I offend sensibilities by my games, not my ethnocentrism" R100G100B100.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
exactly what does skribane? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #10
I find it interesting that Thuryl jumped to the interesting ones before noticing that snorted drugs aren't on the list. And while dripping is ambiguous (eye drops or IV drip?), dripping into ears could indeed be a very fun and rewarding way to take drugs!

—Alorael, who wonders now if aural skribbane goes better with trance or ska. He's tried it with Handel, and while the result is interesting, it isn't an experience he would care to repeat.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Death to Anama!!! in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #23
If only good people could use magic, adventurers would be reduced to hunting down nonmagical brigands and baddies, rampaging beasts, evil priests, and politicians.

—Alorael, who finds that use of magic entirely reasonable. If shopkeepers won't give you a potion at cost so that you can dispatch the Terrible Hordes of Darkness, they deserve to experience some literal robbery themselves.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
What the heck? in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #13
If you have bad karma here, you probably kicked a puppy or something. No, we don't know about it, but that's how karma works. Do something bad and something unrelated will punish you.

—Alorael, who highly advises not taking this literally, as this is a very loose (read: fictionalized) version of karma. The real version involves being reborn as zooplankton after you die because you kicked a puppy.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Level cap in A2? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #1
Silverchat is and has been down for a while, and the A2 level cap is 50.

—Alorael, who is sorry to be the bearer of terse bad tidings.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Which Spiderweb Soft. Games do you like? in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #16
A2 or Nethergate, depending on the day, then A1, A3, E2, the Geneforges, E2, E1. Blades doesn't go on my favorite Spiderweb game list, because it's not really a Spiderweb game. It's actually almost as much a TM game as a Spiderweb game, and that's scary.

—Alorael, who likes Blades quite a lot. It just doesn't belong with the rest of the games.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
THE ABOMINABLE PHOTO THREAD: THE THIRD COMING! in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #186
You can download the movie on a Mac by option clicking or holding down control, clicking, and choosing something that involves saving or downloading the link. You'll need to download Windows Media Player to view it.

—Alorael, who isn't sure if clicking the link works properly if you have WMP installed.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
If you could invite 4 people to a dinner in any form... in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #79
You'd ruin his angst and he wouldn't thank you for it in the long run, although he might be pathetically grateful in the short term.

—Alorael, who feels the need to point out that Casper is dead as well as fictional and ethereal. He fits into all categories of removal from current reality!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
My how far we've fallen... in Richard White Games
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #9
Actually, you're missing the subtleties of Richard's White supremacy (or is that Richard White's supremacy?): his games are actually white papers, except their games.

—Alorael, who deduced this from trying to think of what else could produce as much aggravation and suffering and difficulty as the games pertinent to RWG. The answer was immediately apparent: the government! The conspiracy is even more vast than was previously thought!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
exactly what does skribane? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #6
As the resident skribbane expert, I can explain. Skribbane's intoxicating chemicals are contained in its leaves and are most potent when extracted from the rest of the plant. That is why skribbane is sold in bottles. It is diluted because extraction leaves it dissolved in something, but not all dilutions are the same. For timid first-time users, a much more dilute form is recommended. More experienced enjoyers of skribbane (may they die a thousand deaths for taking it from me!) often prefer the pure extract with no added solvent or a combination of skribbane and hard liquor.

—Alorael, who is under the impression that Gale's zombies were so completely dysfunctional by A3 that they were willing to pay exhorbitant prices even for the raw leaves. E3's Gale residents were still coherent enough to demand a finished product.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
If you could invite 4 people to a dinner in any form... in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #77
So only those who consider God a fictional person can invite him? Seems unfair to the faithful!

—Alorael, who isn't sure that fiction has ever really been people.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A4: Official Releases? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #7
The only member I can point to in that demographic range is seven, and that thread shows just how much faith the community has in Jeff Vogel's assessments of BoX players.

—Alorael, who will add that that one seven-year-old seems to like plot quite a bit and suspense even more. Suspense for years and years and years!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
What's so bad about it anyway? in Richard White Games
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #15
There apparently still is such a game.

—Alorael, who did not peer too closely. Some things are not meant for mortal eyes, and Homeland isn't the only one.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A Question about the Slith and Nephilim in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #70
Mortimer never said that the jam is brains. He said it's Eyebeast glue. I'm inclined to agree.

Keep a metal away from oxygen and water and it won't rust, keep it away from other corrosives and it won't otherwise corrode, and keep it from having a sharp edge so it doesn't poke and you have a perfectly good brain substitute. It would require a totally different metabolism, but that's what we're discussing.

—Alorael, who advises against keeping this discussion serious. It's a hopeless effort that actually failed several pages ago in a subtle fashion.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A4: Official Releases? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #3
Eight, you say? I'm pretty sure it's seven.

—Alorael, who knows that Jeff values his chances to tease his customers, which aren't frequent given his avoidance of these boards.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
If you could meet one person off this board.. in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #7
Anyone who is a pedestrian. "Meet" isn't really the right word, but it'll do.

—Alorael, who can only wistfully recall the days when everyone would have said Rosycat.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A Question about the Slith and Nephilim in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #64
Limbs or telekinesis. It doesn't have to be the creature itself that has the limbs, but "puppeteer" critters have already been used to death in fiction and seldom in a way that makes them biologically and evolutionarily plausible.

You just said it. Creatures need something to think if they have any complexity at all. On Earth that means a brain, but silicon life on another planet could have something more like computer chips. The Oblongians of Planet Kgggi think with an organ that resembles a hamster wheel and that is in no way tied to anything but conscious thought and emotion. Autonomic control, reflexes, and the subconscious are entirely separate. You're showing your own limited imagination now!

—Alorael, who has also heard accusations of certain segments of the human population thinking with their stomachs. Whether this is true or not has not been seriously tested by any laboratories.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
THE ABOMINABLE PHOTO THREAD: THE THIRD COMING! in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #161
quote:
Originally written by ben XIII:

Was that some kind of a joke there with that post count because of his post count here, or something else. Sorry, but I'm kind of an infrequent visitor to Polaris.
It balances my karma. I can't be the highest without also being the lowest.

—Alorael, who notes that Drakey has a remarkable voice for such a young child.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
1000 posts! in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #60
quote:
Originally written by Spring:

Other titles are given out by Drakey. Aran, Kel, Alo, David, Ash, saunders, Thuryl, and others have them. You can kind of tell them apart.
Close, but no cigar. I've been implying my desire for a custom title for a long time, and I started changing my PDN daily as a sort of protest, but I've never gotten one. I've never actually asked for one either, that I can recall, so I'm probably not technically blacklisted either.

—Alorael, who now wants to know if anyone has posted a serious goodbye topic and then never actually managed to leave before. There have been short absences, but has anyone equalled Aran's straight-faced lie?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
what do you think of summoning? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #15
I may be referring to to the wrong games, but I stand by my opinion. Meat shields are even more worthless in Avernum and somehow seem to have an even higher chance of surviving and getting in your way. They don't even act as good decoys for enemy spellcasters, who seem to continue to target your characters no matter what's in the way.

—Alorael, who used Capture Soul and Simulacrum in Avernum exactly as he did in Exile. They're fun but entirely unnecessary.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Our President in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #155
The Holy Trinity makes Jesus' status as an independent entity ambiguous to me, but that's because I have great conceptual difficulty with the Trinity.

quote:
Genesis 1:27
And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Man is actually "Adam" in Genesis. That means you can't argue that it's actually "human" in Hebrew, but you also can't argue that it's "man" per se. EIther way, "Adam" goes from him "oto" to them "otam" without transition. The argument that Eve isn't in God's image is shaky without recourse to Paradise Lost. Genesis 2:21 says that the first woman came from the first man's rib, but the first man is created in Genesis 2:7 from dust and not specifically in God's image.

—Alorael, who wouldn't draw too much inference out of the pronouns used to refer to God. In Hebrew (and Aramaic, probably) everything needs a gender, and masculine tends to be the default when gender is applicable but unknown.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
what do you think of summoning? in The Avernum Trilogy
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #1
The only reason to summon is if you're desperate for bodies in between you and them, but if you need a blockade that badly then you're doing something wrong. In addition to wasting your spell points, your little minions also get in the way of fireballs and the like and have an unfortunate tendency to turn entire towns hostile.

—Alorael, who went through all of Exile 3 with only a few summons, and those were all castings of Simulacrum. Most were for fun rather than for a reason.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Our President in General
Law Bringer
Member # 335
Profile Homepage #144
There are two ways you can view gods:

1. They do not exist, do not meddle in day to day reality, or do so in completely capricious and arbitrary ways that are really no different from luck.

In this case, the true effect of a god is the belief of worshippers, which is independent of the god in question. hard-line, extremist fundamentalists are scary because of their beliefs, not because of the target of their beliefs.

2. Gods interfere in tangible ways, albeit ways apparently deliberately calculated to be unmeasurable by doubting and damned scientists. In this case, Ben is right. But so is a terrorist. As an outsider, I haven't seen any more convincing evidence of any gods on one side or the other.

—Alorael, who will admit that believing in an ostrich produces no ostrich eggs, but think back to 1984 (the book, not the year). Or various cases of mass self-hypnosis, hysteria, or whatever you want to call it. Weird things start happening when people believe even when it's an unfounded or a patently false belief.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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