Placeholder Post

Sorry guys, you're not forgotten. I've been feeling pretty run down and non-creative for the past week, and various Real Life commitments have eaten my time on top. I blame the heat: I'm really not built for the summer. (It's raining today and glorious.)

You may have noticed I've been focusing on trying to catch up a bit with my 2015 Reading Challenge progress and making my way through the Musical A-Z rather than telling the current Pathfinder or Aberrant tales. In Pathfinder, we're undertaking the Starstone Trial, and as this is meant to be a secret thing my GM has asked I don't reveal our progress through - which is fair enough, as he and the other players are overall kind enough to co-opt the story to put up here. I think our version has also been shaken up to suit our characters. I know our Golarion is different to canon and particularly that fewer people have survived the trial and all who have done so received divinity. So I'll return to that story once we're dead or gods.

In Aberrant, we left it with a press conference about to be given by the NPC Alastair. My GM's going to be sending me a copy of the speech to kick me off on that. Then there was some fuss and bother and a scene borrowed from the film 'Kingsman: the Secret Service'. In the film, Colin Firth's character has an epic fight scene in a church. The choreography is exciting - it has a feel of comic book art, at least to me - so the scene was borrowed for Adam's vengeance after his home was attacked, with one of his workers and his dog being killed. This was the week before the attack on the church in Charleston and, whilst the church in our game was a cover for a very unpleasant anti-nova organisation (the ones behind the bombing of the film premier), it's still a bit too close for me to be comfortable writing about just now - especially with other churches being burned down since. Adam seems to have gone on to carry out further violences I didn't know about out of character either, so I could hand-wave the whole thing whilst writing from Chrissie's perspective, but I feel more comfortable offering an apology, of sorts. Even an inept one like this. I'll get back to the novas when I've got the press release.

I've got a few characters I want to write up too - Svetlana's friends Anya, Piotr and Misha, for a start, but also a Jedi cat I played in a Space Munchkin game run by a friend at uni to introduce his housemates to roleplay, and a pair of fantasy siblings, orphaned in a fire blazing through the poor quarter. I have some big ideas for Bethany and Eric and that might end up being a short story rather than just a character write-up. Kismet's been on my mind too - I've been accidentally developing and fleshing out her history at odd moments.

Also, I've been reading through the Lords of Gossomar and Shadow bundle and have been rolling ideas around in my mind there too - both worlds and characters. I've been particularly inspired by a series of tweets from Frank Winters (RPG Union) about treants as player characters. It got me thinking about both a more traditional, Lord of the Rings-style race, somewhere between hobbits and ents (druidic, gentle, life-giving), and a darker tribe, dangerous and deadly with a grudge against mobile life (like the forest that snares and torments Snow White in the 1938 Disney film). That could create a very interesting forest covered realm (have you ever read The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K LeGuin? It's not my favourite book, but it is my favourite title and she is one of my favourite authors).

I was really pleased with the entry that won the bundle and have had a lot of people suggest I develop the idea - a lot of support and advice, as well, from people who know about writing and that's been excited. I certainly have characters and what might be the glimmerings of a plot, so watch this space.

Anyway, I will get back on track soon. Meanwhile, enjoy a photo of Cat exploring the car.