I power-haggled the taxi. She was cursing under her breath that I knew how to do that. We got to a good price somewhere between where I started and where I was willing to go. So that was nice. Then I made it to the venue, that was also nice. Unfortunately they didn’t need me today. That sucked.

Let me explain. This trip I am basically losing money on as it is. Which sucks. It really does, however I was hoping to get enough magic cards to somewhat offset the cost. Unfortunately… since I wasn’t working today like I had planned, I will be even less able to offset the cost and will mostly be a sadjudge.

So I got to me room, my roommate had arrived a few days ago, and someone was in my spot in the meantime. So I put my stuff down, went to the venue, found out I wasn’t working, came back. Took a shower then they arrived. So then we went for tacos. Then I napped. When I woke up, I played  a few games of EDH. Lost 2, won 1, tied the last. Not *too* bad considering what I went up against.

So, after all that, We went to the judge dinner. Learned how to play Ascension. Met new people. I gave my secret-judge-friend some maple syrup, which absolutely blew his mind. He treated it with the same reverence many people treat holy relics. He actually got his in a *really* nice bottle. I finished up my game of Ascension, ate some nice regional food, taught some people how to play shithead, came up here to write this.

So… the day started out kinda bad. It’s not much better, but we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

So I should back up a bit. I’ve been up to a lot lately. Well, I’ll describe the airport thus far and see what happens. I hate Houston’s airport. Mostly because they cram 7 terminals into one circular room. They’re mad. Well, I got here after the last flight, the guy next to me got frequently airsick, so that was fun. He didn’t on this flight, which is fortunate.

I found my terminal, scrounge up a waterbottle and poured a bunch drinkmix into it. Then I shared some drink mix with a hispanic janitor. I’m currently camping out under a charger terminal charging my things and writing my story down, which I should start earlier with, and I will. Eventually.

I’ve seen two other travellers, one with an accent I think was german, asking me if I knew any good places to crash. I told him I planned o sleeping under the rows of benches. A little bit ago a girl came in and is sitting a bit away from me. Probably wise. She did smile though.

So that’s what I’m doing *now*. In the less general sense, I’m going to Mexico City to judge a Magic tournament. Which is awesome because it’s a thing I like doing.

In the even less general sense, I’m in school again. Studying journalism. Which means I should be blogging more. In fact I’m bound and determined to make that a class. But that’s later. For now I’m going to school. And translating. I’m a medical translator. No more dogs. It’s sad, I liked the dogs. They liked me. I even liked by boss. Until the stress of running everything himself got to him.

he gave me an ultimatum. That’s usually a bad idea with me. Oh well, his loss really. So school full time. Interpreting part time. Tutoring when I get a chance, and volunteering at a game store.

Did I mention I found a game store? Dark Matter games. It’s pretty awesome. The owners and people who work there are pretty awesome. Wednesdays I’m running D&D encounters, which is kinda cool, although it could be cooler. Sundays I’m running Living Forgotten Realms when we’re not playing Pathfinder Society. Saturdays, which I had originally declared to be Board Game Night, have become Pathfinder Night. Which is kinda odd considering I wasn’t consulted in this. I came in ready to play board games. They said we were playing Pathfinder. So I played Warhammer instead.

Then they told me it wasn’t a request. I should pick a module to run. It didn’t matter that I’d never ran Pathfinder before, I should get on that. So I picked a module, said screw it, made them pick a module, for me to run, which happened to be the one I pickled. So I finished my game as a korean lady and her son came in to make characters. So we made characters, we played the module. Turns out the module is *VERY* Roleplaying oriented. Adam wanted to smash things. I spent most of the module one sentence ahead of where we were playing.

In all it’s how I usually run games.

So yeah, that’s my life. I run games three days a week, go to school 2, do homework when I’m not doing either. Interpret in the mornings when I can.

I’m going to try to keep up with this. It’ll be cool.

When I was lonely, I thought of death.
When I thought of death I was lonely.

I suppose this error will continue.
I shall enter each gray morning.

Delighted by the frost, which is death,
& the trees that stand alone in mist.

When I met my wife I was lonely.
Our child in her body is lonely.

I suppose this error will go on & on.
Morning I kiss my wife’s cold lips,

Nights her body, dripping with mist.
This is the error that fascintes.

I suppose you are secretly lonely,
Thinking of death, thinking of love.

I’d like, please, to leave on your sill
Just one cold clower, whose beauty

Would leave you inconsolable all day.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.

As for the guests, somehow all my major relationships were there and pretty happy to see me. I was a bit shocked to see my first girlfriend there, but I worked on keeping everyone all happy and occupied for the most part. Me and the first girl had a bit of catching up to do, since it’d been a very long time since we’d seen each other.

The second thing that ended up happening was that my Nemesis joined the party. He somehow convinced my brother that this was *his* party as he was off to the Chaosrealms and may never be heard from again. I may have just gotten back from there actually. I ragequitted the party and tried to sleep in the park across the street. The cold from the fan on me probably had something to do with me dreaming I was sleeping outside.

Anyway, I went back and the party was winding down. My video games were being played. largely not by me or my friends as the Nemesis had taken over. The exes were all standing around somewhat uncomfortable. It was at this point that I screamed the most visceral scream I think I have ever done. Twice. It was like on all fours screaming on the ground with everything I had.

When that was wrong I remember the First being there, doing that comforty thing that people do. We knew we had to leave. The Nemesis was done, and he was toying with me now. Somehow he had set it up to ruin everything I had. So we both fled. We caught up a bit on things. She mentioned how she had left a string of broken hearts behind her, and went from toying to lamenting, I had a bit of a vision of her going to slutdom, but remembered my own decent and decided we were ok.

So we fled, to a mallish area, where the Nemesis caught up to me and began mocking me. I was doing something like trying to run the wrong way up an escalator (I think he was controlling it somehow). He seemed to be hovering a bit over me, whether he was an apparition or not I don’t really remember.  I let him know I knew what he was doing. He said no one ever believe me, no one ever does. I told him that he hadn’t replied to the MySpace message I sent him in weeks. He freaked out, apparently social media was his weakness, so he left to go check on the abandoned site. Meanwhile I managed to scale the nonmoving parts of the escalator and caught up with the First.

I knew the plan now, it was time for us to attack. There was some sort of themepark version of a villians lair nearby so we went there.  There were a few challenges we had to pass at first. The one that really stuck out in my head was having to walk under a pool of some sort of burning acid. There was a little box type thing we had, and as long as we stood up and kept walking it would be fine. The First was a bit nervous, but I reminded  her that we’ll be fine since she’s already walked through Death once to get me, walking through this together would be nothing.

The lair itself was set up cinematically like a movie reenactment. The guests were lined up along the back and the action happened in the front. This one was about the climactic final battle. Fitting. The first phase, we were all given knives, we were then being psychokenitically controlled, or maybe magnetically, either way, the knives we wanted to deposit in the boss were trying very hard to deposit themselves in our neighbors. I remembered this part from my previous encounter and held the knives sharp edge out along my forearms for the most control and told the First to do so as well.

After that phase, things start to get blurry. There was another phase that may have involved some sort of firehose/ectoplasm spray or something. I didn’t pay too much attention to it really. I knew the Nemesis was weakening, I woke up shortly after. I kinda blame the Duane and Brand0 Double Dragon video I was watching right beforehand, and the Haunted Sorority House dungeon in KoL immediately before that.

The second dream was far less fun. I was back in class with a special guest teacher, I still had all my notes. In fact I had notes from 5th grade where this teacher originally taught us (somehow in 2000), and was all proud and trying to show them around. That was mostly it. The difficulties were in actually finding the right notes, reading my handwriting, damaged notes, the usual dream stuff that prevents you from remembering details.

Archmage Ascension

What amounts to prehistory for Rakthallos. The time of the Archmages is roughly the equivalent of Atlantean era lore. Fantastic magic was throws around casually, the Gods walked among the people and took an active role in events.

An idea for this era would be exploring the forces that were opposite of the Archmages. Why haven’t we heard much of them. Some of the major greek-style mythos.

Ahn Zayne is from around this time.

Archmages Falling

This is when the world broke. The sphere cracked and tilted, throwing the sun to the west and wreaking havoc on the world. Faith in the gods at this point was shaken and many other religions can be traced back to around this time.

Stories here would be either taking part directly in the challenging of the Gods, or the aftermath. The Darksunish Teratish Desert was forming at around this time. the Frozen Wastes were… freezing. This is somewhat the Dark Ages of Rakthallos.

Rathnekkar fell through the cracks around here.

Emperor

The Emperor united the different factions in the aftermath of the Archmage war. Magic was outlawed. Great Machines were built (possibly by the mechanical counterpart to the Archmages?), vague alliances were formed among all the races in an effort to prevent the Cataclysm from happening again, and possible wreak vengeance on the Gods.

Stories here would be mostly centered around the rise and fall of the Emperor. There was a great underground resistance, that after a few false starts managed to form the seeds of the future empires. The Tower was build and later fell creating the Shattered Mountains. I have plenty of notes from a cool 2nd D&D campaign from this era.

The Glass family came around here. A lot of folklore and mythology dates here including a somewhat humorous collaboration vaguely depicting a group of heroes and brigands battling the Emperor (this tale is somewhat akin to our King Arthur mythos.)

Pax

After the Emperor fell and the Tower collapsed, there was largely a time of piece. Rathnekkar had finally began to unite others like him to form a group loosely known as The Changed. Vampires, Zombies, all sorts of supernatural Cursed folk. Another group known as the Changelings rose up at around the same time and was a counterbalance, Fae, Shapeshifters and the like were here. Werecreatures were caught in the middle and used as emissaries.

This will be a largely political story. I ran a (I think) highly successful D&D campaign in this era that was pretty awesome. Other stories would mostly be exploring various parts of Rakthallos, but this was certainly where all the action was.

This is where a lot of the Outsiders come into play, those not strictly native to Rakthallos are probably from this time. This is the Ravenlofty era as well, Elric and Grumby probably came to Rakthallos around here.

Quest for the Artifacts

This is also known as the Second Archmage war. The Human/Dwarven alliance in the West fights the Archmages Retured from the East. The Truce between the Changed and Changelings is broken and fighting has broken out all over.

Stories here will be essentially following a faction of the fighters. There are several sides to choose from, and they all hate each other, so there is plenty to do here. The aforementioned D&D campaign ran mostly in this era.

Symballius and Baslock are from around this time.

Collapse

This story could go several ways (and in the D&D campaign it did!). Rakthallos collapses in on itself (like a balloon loosing air). Those in the know want out. There are several rumors on how to best accomplish that. Stories will likely be following those rumors.

This was the culmination of everyone’s plans taking place all at once.

How do you feel about what’s happening in your area?

I’ve heard reports of tear gas, but they’re unconfirmed, I somewhat doubt it myself.

Tents and the kitchen and medical tent are all gone. The medical supplies and food seem to have been confiscated

Close to 2 dozen arrests so far. The Governer did order their dispersal, for breaking curfew, but it seems to be fairly orderly.

15 arrests so far. State Patrol commanding the rest of the people to disperse. Maybe a few dozen left.

I think the Jesus/Jobs comparison was accurate. Cool guy. Said cool things. Died too young. His followers are mostly pricks though

Notable that the campers in front of the Apple Store were more violent than those at the State Capitol.

Throughout history, humanity has been defined by it’s most powerful weapon. Remember that we are in the Information Age.

5ish arrests. No violence. The last of the demonstrators appear to be being moved out. Continue to spread the word or ignore it. Your call.

Alright, y’all get a bit of a break from me. Finishing up the last bit of work and will be away from the radio for a bit.

The police appear to be now arresting those who have "broken curfew" which ended over an hour ago. Reports less reiable however.

The police are advancing again. Looks like before it was largely state patrol, this is now the local cops.

The the protesters have been given another ultimatum. 15 minutes to get off. DPD has moved in.

I probably would be out there joining the protests over not making enough money if I weren’t y’know… Working.

The main concern now seems to be that they had said protesting is allowed between 5am-11pm, now the park is indefinitely closed.

When I get home i’ll link to the archived newsfeed I was listening to. They did a pretty good job covering things

News coverage seems to be normalizing, they’re not especially covering the sweeps last night. People are determined to stay

The Denver Police seems to have weeded out the bad elements in their force. They handled themselves very well. Rose above themselves.

Ironically, the loudspeakers can’t be heard over the noise. This seems to be an object derision.

They plan to return. However looks like they’ll need a permit. Seems to be competing groups with permits.

The protesters are still milling about. Not allowed to re-enter, the main road is being blocked off.

Oooh. The park is now officially closed indefinitely. You need a permit to use it now.

Some people are saying the police were being little girls. I say they were acting very professionally. Much kudos to them.

The stragglers seem to be milling about until about 5am when they can lawfully reassemble.

They’re allowing the food to be salvaged. The police and protesters are working together now. Looks to be winding down

Round 2 is up. There are some demonstrators refusing to move. The police car roleld up on them but they’re backing down now

So far no arrests or violence. Looks like both sides would rather avoid either of those.

In other news 3000 dead in Syria protests.

The two remaining structures are semiperminant. 2x4s and whatnot. The police are reluctant to arrest

The kitchen and medical tent are on the sidewalk which seems to be a safe zone for the demonstrators

The police are mostly screening to keep the protestors coming back in. They are armed, but they donzt seem ready to use them.

The demonstrators are backed into the soup kitchen and medical tent, arms linked "Occupy the Kitchen!"

In other news, someone wanted me to explain to him what was happening and there was a paper right in front of him. Open your eyes people.

So far no violence. The protesters were changing "Peace!" earler. The tents are down and the people will likely be next. #OCCUPYDENVER

The newsfeed was cut. There has been a lot of interference. Should be back shortly.

The last two tents containint food and medical supplies while they are shounting "Shame!!" and "We Will Rebuild!"

The protesters are lecturing the police, letting them know they’re all in the 99%

The police seems to have led the stragglers off the property. Somewhat of a standoff right now.

Police moving now again. They’ve pretty much surrounded the park already.

Ha! A pedicab showed up to take protestors out. Way to hustle.

The tents are being taken down by the police. No arrests. Confiscating the tents.

More media presence. Several news vans. You should be able to pick up footage.

The protesters are trying to provoke the police. The police are being quite calm and professional. Good job.

HAZMAT has ben brought in. The ground reporter is shuffling around looking for somewhere safe. The police are being very reasonable

"The Police are the 99%" is their current chant #OccupyDenver

The protesters are not singing the anthem. The police are being calm and professional, methodical.

So yeah, again, if you don’t care, fuck off. This is important.

The protestors are linked in arms chanting "this is what a police state is like" still no arrests or violence.

Fortunately no one is causing trouble. The protestors are unhappy but leaving when confronted, forced out of thier tent.

Protestors are claiming their tents are private property. Police are rousting them from their tents no violence yet.

Denver Police are somewhat notorious for brutality

The police are moving in. Last minute protestors are moving out. Batons out

The police have seemed to drawn a weapon. Not an aggressive posture.

No confrontations yet, the police have arrived with reinforcements. The protestors are backing off.

So, yes, you’ll get it from me in fragments as I find out more. I’ll be doing my best to get the word out. If you don’t care…. Fuck off.

The protestors are refusing to move. A standoff is eminant. This could be bad. #OccupyDenver

There is a live boradcast going on here. The riot police have moved in to kick the protestors out of te capital.

Oh shit. It’s going down at the State Capital.

The first part: we were all being contacted by this group. We had formed some sort of unit (also we were given little wrist straps that had tear away straps on them. They didn’t work right, and the strip on top was frozen, so the only way to see the time was to tear ir off, and you only had so many). The whole point I think was to tear off a strip and use that to record time, like ok I was here at *tear* 10:46 see here is the strip. Dunno.

Anyway, me and like 6 people were attempting to form a unit to combat an alien threat (maybe the one in the previous dream). These groups were to be doing most of their actions during REM sleep, so we were all asleep for out meeting. Well the leaderguy, the one in charge of operations was doubting the efface of the team was on. So I gave a rousing speech on why we were awesome. He was calling out inadequacies and discrepancies in our reports, effectively saying I specifically falsified my resume. So I went over point by point, telling him that what I wrote were my goals, also if he’d bothered to look, that below he’d see how I had planned to implement these goals, and what progress I was making. So he could either kindly read things in context or… Fuck off.

In the dream I woke up and was relating this to an olderlady who was cheering us on. In the party as well was Paco, and some guy who was essentially a merchant. But now I was back ‘home’. I remember going around some giant mall/space complex. It’s a fairly common theme for me.

The next part of the dream I was inside the alien compound. Our team had been betrayed by the leaderguy. One of the girls on the team was impregnated with some sort of alien thing. They were using her as an incubator really, and I heard her screams very loudly. The overseer scolded her saying “Look, we gave Hitler seven testacles, you can handle one little alien baby.”

For the most part the scene was panning over etched hybrid skulls, mountains of them don’t know why per se. They seemed important. Maybe a ritual artifact. There were more bits to the dream but they faded a bit. I’ll try to keep this going. I almost didn’t write it as it was too faded, but maybe this will help others not-fade

As she’s asking me this, she stops conducting and the band gets a bit out of control, the teacher comes in and tries to get things under control before the inspector hears, but it’s too late, he’s already coming up the stairwell and heard it from the next room. I shuffle to hide things I and others have left around. I was supposed to be doing something, but don’t especially remember what.

I talk to the generalyguy let him know that I’m just cleaning up after lunch (pretending I’m janatorial or something) he vaguely dismissess me, but is somewhat dissapointed.The implication is he will cut funding. Me and several others discuss the implications of this in the back of the room. Mostly that schools that have been cut are worthless and pitied by the rest of society. We notice that the back of the room (which is turning out to be more like an amiptheatre) leads into the woods.

We all go through the woods, and finsd a large barrier that has been partially broken through. It’s a wooden deal with beams aboutas thick as I am, but here is enough room where they have been wedged loose to squeeze through. Sensing something is up we go through. We’re immediately on some sort of spaceship type area.

It’s a sort of loading dock. Turns out the general is part of an advanced wave of invaders who are attempting to weaken us by undermining our educational system. The group of us, of course take the fight to them, and an epic battle ensues, unfortunately, we’re beaten back. As we come out of the dock area the ampitheatre has changed into more of a cabin and we’re on a bit of an forested island place (there is water in the distance) almost like a summer camp.

The war has now already begun. It’s dark and my job is mostly logictical. There is a girl, she’s been badly wounded, and is in a full body cast. I take care of her, try to watch a movie with her, positioning her so she can watch it, I think I even made popcorn. I don’t know her, but I know it’s important to help her. I do what I can for her while monitoring the progress of the raid-team.

Morning comes, she’s feeling a little better. The team returns. It’s still going badly, they did some major damage but took some major losses, they were unlikely to significicantly delay the impending invasion.

Now I wake up, still in the cabin. It is a school retreat. I try to let everyone know about the dream I just had. The alarm goes off soon after that.

Cherdan was a hunter. The larger beasts had been hunted to extinction, so he survived by hunting for the vermin and pests that fed on the remains of the larger creatures. The rats were cunning. At times, he feared they would be to cunning for him. They seemed to work together like one mind, waves and waves of them would sometimes run out an entire town. Cherdan hoped to stop that.

The Amazon Desert was largely his home, the wild pigs had been run off into the receding jungles, but the rats had taken home in their wake. She always considered the rats to think like the Aliens. They somehow communicated without words. She remembered the Coming, she was very young, a few years old at most, but the singular impression they left her never faded.

They seemed to touch into her mind. She felt the warmth and love of her mother. The cool pride of her father. Her brother bickering introduced the first darkening cloud into her thoughts. As her circle of awareness expanded to the jealousy of her neighbors, the anger of the man down the streets, she felt the overwhelming truth about emotions. They were best hidden away.

All of humanity became connected that day, for a brief time, all the pain and sadness, anger and rage, millennia of repression laid naked for everyone to see. Truths were laid out and the little lies that everyone told each other to keep sane were blown away like chaff. Soon, the secrets of entire nations were known to everyone. It was too late to stop the chain reaction, and finally, after endless eons of swimming in the emotions of the entire world, it stopped.

Then the bombs came. Those not obliterated in the first wave of attacks were left to rot away, a living death caused by the fire from the skies. Those who had taken shelter had survived and emerged to a raw world. Burnt and forsaken now, the aliens had left, content to have destroyed the world with it’s own darkness.

Cherdan looked out into the skies. The rains were coming again, they promised to be thick this time. The torrential downpours of ash and chemicals that killed life instead of restoring it as the waters were once rumored to do. The tears of those slain, or the hatred of those who slew. The rains of blood.

The Great Storm as it was sometimes called, had been said to be roiling more or less continuously since the Great War. The weather whipped across the plains more often than not, and while it may not have been strictly uninterrupted in the several centuries since it first began, it had held it’s reputation nonetheless.

Muris knew about the bandits who roamed the Old Wall, taking refuge in the miles and miles of mounds and edifices that crisscrossed the land. They made their lairs among the stone and wood walls and had a network of passaged and tunnels known only to them. Typically, they hired themselves out as Guides. If you were accompanied by a Guide you were safe. However, if you tried to make the passage on your own, you were likely to run out of provisions, whether through the trials of navigating the mazes, or the sudden lightness of your packs.