To renew or not to renew…

I’d all but forgotten I was a premium member so it surprised me greatly to get an email telling my annual subscription is due for renwal.  The Lab are about to automatically take $74 from my account so I can be premium for another 12 months.

Unless I cancel it, of course.

I only became premium to help a friend out with tier and I’m not doing that anymore, so apart from getting a few L$ a month I don’t need, a Linden slum-home I never use and access to live help that’s never actually been of any help when used, what the hell am I paying my $74 for?

Sadly, as much as I love SL I can’t see any point in being a premium account anymore, can you?

Unless… unless maybe if I could trade my crappy Linden Home for a nice 512 of mainland I’d be interested…

 

Gang Wars: End Game – Part 1

Beck came round slumped on the floor. He was cold, it was dark and someone was talking nearby “… must have watched her come up the stairs…followed her…” he pulled his eyes open only to find he couldn’t see “…the retinas may be detached… could be temporary, could be permanent…” the voice said “…no idea how many… or where they took her…” Beck managed to sit up but decided not to try and stand until the world stopped spinning. He felt stone beneath his hands and wood behind his back, the strong odour of fish was all around him “…must have be in a room somewhere near the docks…most likely the cannery…that means the Tong took us…” It began to dawn on him that it was his voice, slurring and mumbling to himself, trying to work out what had happened, trying to talk himself round.

His head ached and his face felt swollen and tender to the touch. Whoever had hit him had done a good job. He opened his eyes again and this time found the darkness speckled and shot through with grey patches, light crept in to his inky prison from all around and his eyes, far from being blind, were merely taking their time adjusting until he could eventually make out his surroundings. He was in a small, dark room filled with crates and shelving, the air was frigid and the only light came from under what he guessed was the door and from between ill-fitting wooden planks in the walls. He was in a cannery cold store, he fancied, and alone at that for there was no sign of Meili being in the small room with him. Fear and anger rose in his belly as his mind raced with terrible visions of her fate at the hands of these animals. He struggled to his feet and staggered over to the door. Locked! He banged his fists as against it and and shouted as loud as he could muster until there was a sudden hard thump from the other side.

“You shut up!” a Chinese man shouted.

“Where is Meili? Tell me where the girl is!” Beck bellowed back.

The voice on the other side laughed cruelly “She with boss. She have good time. Pretty girl, eh? Boss like pretty girls.”

Beck threw himself at the door, battering it with his shoulder, hurling insults and curses through it until he used up what meager energy he had left and felt himself slide slowly to the floor. Outside his tormentor shouted back “You no worry. You next, OK? Boys see you good, OK?” he cackled and banged on the door. “You go in cans, doctor, understand? You go in cans.” The laughter moved aways from the door and footsteps tramped off away into the cannery leaving Beck alone in the darkness once more.

“Hi Doc,” came a voice from the shadows.

Beck’s froze as he felt hot breath on his neck, skin almost touching his own, “Who’s there?” he whispered quietly into the dark.

“They’ve got her, Doc, they’ve got our girl. You let them walk in and you let them take her and now I’m going to have to get her back, aren’t I?”

Beck was holding his breath, afraid to move or make a sound.

“Well? Aren’t I?”

Beck nodded, a small, jerky movement laced with fear.

“Then I best get started, eh?”

The shadows rippled as Jonny O stepped out from the darkness and smiled a smile full of venom and murder.

To be continued…
All the “Gang War” posts can be read on my blog here and over on the Steelhead Ning here.

*****{*}*****

 

Gang Wars: Kidnapped

The knock roused Beck away from the cold meal he’d been pushing around the plate for the last fifteen minutes. For a moment he wondered who it could be, the snow storm blowing in over the hills from from St Helens had driven everyone inside seeking warmth, but he supposed it was a patient looking for him to make a house call. With a sigh he dropped his fork into the congealed gravy and went to open the door.

Meili stood, her jet black hair speckled with fat snowflakes, staring at him mutely with wide, tear-streaked eyes. He barely knew what to think, what to say. After everything they had said to each other, after everything he had done, he thought he had lost her forever. “Meili,” his voice sounded small and breathless, “you came…”

The fist came from behind her and caught him full in the face. His world went black and he fell backwards into an abyss that had no bottom.

***{}***

Fan had to work hard not to grin from ear to ear as he pulled the burlap-covered handcart through the open cannery doors. Workers looked up nervously as startled the Tong guards, young arrogant men left behind as the older gang members prepared for evening’s attack on the Dragon Lady, sprang to attention and ran to grab him, He shrugged them off angrily “Get your hands off me,” he hissed. To a man they backed away half a step, unsure of what to do – being told to take down Fan was one thing, actually taking down one of the most dangerous soldiers in the Tong was another. Fan sniffed haughtily, smoothing his clothes for effect, “It would be wise for you all to treat me with more respect that that,” he said to them.

One spat on the floor at his feet, “Huh, why? The boss has put the word out on you Fan. He has a message waiting for you, I hear,” a ripple of laughter ran through the men.

Fan stared back at the youth who had dared speak to him is such a manner, committing his face to memory; if his plan went well he’d need someone to make an example of to re-establish his authority and he would do nicely. “I think the boss will change his mind once he sees what I’ve brought him,” Fan said calmly. All eyes turned to the cart as, with a cruel smile, Fan pulled back the burlap to reveal a terrified Chinese woman laying bound and gagged next to an unconscious white man, “Tell the boss I’ve brought him a gift…”

To be continued…
All the “Gang War” posts can be read on my blog here and over on the Steelhead Ning here.

*****{*}*****

 

Pharos Investigations (UK): Black Sheep – Episode 1

A lifetime ago (2000 to 2003, three years before I came across & joined Second Life in November 2006) I started a Play By Email (or PBeM) Call of Cthulhu game set in Manchester in 1930. It was, even if I do say so myself, quite successful and was followed by a small number of seriously talented CoC writers. Alas a new job and a bout of ill health in 2003 saw the game drift into an eternal slumber about half way through its run (that’s right, this baby would have taken about 6 years to play out). My last act was to wrap up each turn into a PDF for archiving and these file have been with me ever since. I’ve been meaning to publish them here for a while but never really found the time – well that’s about to change.

Ladies and gentlemumps, I humbly present to you (typos and all, I’m not re-editing 20plus PDFs for anyone!) all 21 turns of “Black Sheep”, a Pharos Investigations (UK) Call of Cthulhu tale as it was played over on the old Yahoo Groups. The PDFs contain the post I sent out to the players along with their (slightly) edited replies and then any further communications & posts in that turn. The writing varies greatly, some players were more experienced than others, some players left and new ones took over their characters, I even ejected one player (actually, two!) if I recall – what I’m trying to say is don’t expect to read a novel here, it’s really just series of tarted up emails and therefore can feel a little disjointed at times. Still, I had a blast playing and I think you’ll enjoy reading

You can read Black Sheep – Turn 1 here. In turn 1 the investigators meet for the first time and are almost immediately plunged into danger – I did this deliberately to both start the tale off with an exciting bang and enable me to judge the quality of the players who’d signed up.

I’ll post the rest of the turns over the next few weeks – you can find them using the category search terms “Pharos Investigations” or “Black Sheep” or by visiting the page I’ve set up here.

 

It’s you, stupid…

Have a look in the mirror. Go on, have a really good look at your face. That face that stares back at you. Those eyes. Those eyes belong to the reason Second Life is shit. You are the reason the Lab employees go home crying at night, you bastard!

I’m not going to link to Uncle Hammy’s Glorious Revelation of The Ultimate Truth (can you guess why?) so you’ll have to google for it, but trust me when I say he proves conclusively that Second Life’s woes (I’m not sure what they are, but if Hammy says we have woes then we bloody well have woes!) are down to you – yes you!

It’s not lag. It’s not the viewer. It’s not high prices. It’s not the fact the Lab is competing with land owners and renters. The shitty customer service. The fucked chat. No. It’s you and me not just shutting the fuck up and sitting quietly like the open wallets we are spunking wonga up the Lab’s leg like a sex-addled ATM. That and the fact you just won’t let him have facebook-humping-SL dream and cruelly insist on keeping your name secret so you can hide behind a made up persona, you cowardly shit!

So listen to Uncle Hammy, keep your miserable whining to yourself and keep paying the bills so the Lab can have more parties Hammy can crash and twat on about.

Fuck me…

 

Roleplayers of Rank – a post in which I swear. A lot. Seriously.

I’ve never fancied roleplaying in a military or police structure, at least not an authentic sounding one where players take on ranks. Partly it’s my inherent dislike of being told what to do, partly it’s my lack of interest in replicating the intricate structures of organisations I have little (or less) interest in in real life, but mostly it’s because roleplayers seeking rank are almost always insecure, egotistial, elitist, piss-stains of the lowest order and I don’t find being around them to be conducive to my desire to be happy.

Before you get me wrong, I am *NOT* taking a shot at military/police/organisational RP of any era or genre, or the people who take part. Honestly I am not. Many a good WW2 Unit, Roman Legion or Star Fleet Corps exits in SL and I know at least one casual roleplayer in SL who plays as a Navy officer and she is, frankly, lovely. I’m emphatically, totally and definitely NOT talking about these.

No, I’m talking about the type of Jonny Big Bollocks who votes himself the top of the, let’s call it, Castle Defence League or Metropolitan Constabulary and sets about strutting around like said Big Bollocks were something all and sundry should get down and pay homage to. These are the actions of a fool. An idiot. An insecure child. A cock.

To them RP is merely a way of encircling themselves with liggers and dolts who constantly feed their voracious and vacuous egos. On top of that they tend to be shockingly dull folks seemingly incapable of friendly chat & banter and instead cursed by the need to be constantly aloof and superior, an act that does not endear them to me and instead fills my mind with the desire to repeatedly punch them square in their wizened, redundant love-pump until their either their pelvis shatters or my fist explodes.

Why so angry Mr Burro? Why so shouty about these (soon-to-be) dickless wonders? Well, I’m glad you asked. It is because it does me good to be shouty. It makes me feel better. I don’t cope well with bottling things up and of late I’ve been doing just that. Not any more. I’ve popped my own cork, so to speak…

You see, when it comes to play I like collaboration. I want collaboration. I desire it as a randy Mr fox desires a pretty lady fox flashing her come-to-bed-eys and flicking her lovely brush at him. I <3 collaboration. I believe in friendly, open, enthusiastic roleplay. I want to bring folks in to my stories (and visa versa). I want them to run with ideas other than mine. I want the whole to be far, far greater than the whole. I, dear reader, want people to play together and have fun and not complete.

And yet I find myself surrounded and bested by small minded, jealous, parochial, cliquey cunts who need to create ranks in order to feel they have respect when, in fact, they have confused respect with resentment (not an easy mistake to make given their default feeling to any ideas not their own is resentment, but they make it all the same).

So fine. Great. Be the big old General. Pin the shiny badge on your chest. Just as long as you get to dictate just who can play (and, more importantly I suspect, who can’t) with who and where and when, I’m sure you’ll be happy. Except you won’t. It will end the same way these things always do, but you are just too fucking dense to understand that, aren’t you. When it all turns in on itself, when all the resentment (sorry, respect) and bitterness and back-biting that you surround yourself with brings it all crashing down, you’ll down what you always do and will slink away to find somewhere else to infect like the virus you are. There’s always another sim, another group, another community you can insinuate yourself into and poison.

Stay and fight Burro Boy, I hear a lone voice cry. Stay and see your vision through! No, I answer back. Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck the horse they rode in on. I’m not a fighter, I’m a lover. Not a lover of virtual lady gazelles you understand, but rather a lover of fun and open creativity and a million concepts Captain Dipshit and his merry band of uniform wearing, rank-wanking numbnut shitsacks will never be able to understand. Fuck 'em all in the eye.

Besides, they’re not the only ones who can move on.

 

Calling All Ducks – Nova Albion’s 7th Anniversary Need YOU!

From Ducks

Saturday 19th March 2011 at noon SLT – meet under the Grignano Arch and let’s quack in the 7th! Everyone and anyone welcome to join us!

 

A re-post: Salazar Jack and The Great Erase.

Aeons ago, I had the idea of cataloguing the various creation tales of SL. This never came off and a page on this blog I created for that purpose remained unedited for several years. Well today I’m deleting it, but not without copying across the information on Salazar Jack’s Great Erase. This information, or rather the links within it, can not be gaurenteed but I’m loathe to lose any nuggets and slivers of his tale and so I’m copying it across to this post. Enjoy and then head over to his blog and twitter feeds to find out more.

• Blog (it seems to have undergone a [further] shrinkage of its own and is now just one page )
• Sal’s Twitter
• Kahruvel’s Twitter

~~~~V~~~~

The Creation Files

Where did this world come from? What existed before the Lindens flicked the switch and opened the doors? Nothing? Void? Or another world entirely? A few people, I am one of them, are asking these questions and seeking their answers. Here’s your handy cut out and keep guide to the creation beliefs I’ve come across.

Salazar Jack and The Great Erase.

Salazar is actually a true resident of this world having been born in the one that existed before SL but was lost in 1969 (that’s by our calendar, I’m not sure what that would have been in the pre-SL world of Sal’s family) in what came to be known as The Great Erase.

The world of Salazar’s family, called Urtahra, was a bustling, populated one that was wiped almost entirely from the face of existence by a massive energy wave that deleted all in it’s path and erased the whole world. Only a few people survived and led by Salazar’s great grandma they escaped to Earth where they made lives for themselves never suspecting that they would ever be able to return to their home-world.

That was until Linden Lab opened up Second Life in 2003. Salazar and the other survivors have slowly made their way back and found in it ghostly echoes of their former world. From the re-built city of Nova Albion to the replanted forest of Kahruvel, Salazar has dedicated himself to exploring and reclaiming as much of the old world as he can find.

Even now, five and a half years down the line, finds are still being made such asMagallen Linden’s discovery of the Nautilus landmass that Sal’s great gran remembers tales of from centuries before her own time.

So the world we know as Second Life is built on the reclaimed ruins of an earlier world destroyed in some still-unexplained disaster. Given that the Linden’s have admitted they don’t know how they missed Nautilus and have never found a cause for The Great Erase, we must all worry that this new world is not as secure as we would like to imagine…

RESPONSES

Re: The Great Erase (From Salazar Jack)

“Only a few people survived and led by Salazar’s great grandma they escaped to Earth where they made lives for themselves never suspecting that they would ever be able to return to their home-world.”

In truth, more than a few survived. Quite a few. Acording to my mom and grandparents, over 70 people arrived with us in Kansas State on Earth, out of the hundreds that went through our portal that day. We never learned where the remaining souls went. And those that arrived with us eventually dispersed. Contact with them gradually diminished over the years. Life was quite difficult actually as the United States government was naturally very interested in our group whose sudden arrival was accompanied with little explanation. Most of us went into hiding to avoid scrutiny. A few, if the stories are correct, were apprehended and not heard from again. It was fortunate that the location we ported into was so rural and remote. It allowed some time for us to make plans before authorities became aware of the situation.

After returning here there were some stories that surfaced of others who had escaped. Like this one…

http://forums.secondlife.com/showpost.php?p=406300&postcount=42

I’m not sure if the portal they used was they same one we did. There may have been more than my folks were aware of.

 

Eraserhead Mk II (for Enjah who loved Mk I)

 

Inception Mk II (for Osprey, who hated Mk I)