The Voyages of Asindo

Asindo looked over the deck of his ship and took a deep breath. He loved the smell of the sea, and the call of the sea birds. He had left the port of Partus a day earlier on a mission of exploration for the Lord Ergeitz. His hope was to secure new trading opportunities for Partus. The morning sun glistened on the Gulf of Enchantment and the water looked as magical as its name. As he sailed west along the coast he soon came to a hilly land with good stone. He and his crew took the boat ashore and surveyed the land. They found shale in the hills and decided this location would be ideal for a fort. That took most of the morning. 

In the afternoon they sailed further west until the shore curved up to the north. There was a small bay with deep water that Asindo thought would make a good port about 75 miles west of Partus. Eventually this was to become New Partus, then just Partus as the old Partus fell to ruins. 

After a short distance to the north the shore grew marshy, the sea grew shallow, and the wind disappeared. Asindo and his men had to row the ship. Just before sunset a break in the mists revealed a structure some distance from the shore. A black tower glinted momentarily as a beam of sunlight pierced the mist. In a window in the black tower stood a tall, thin, woman with a long black gown and long straight black hair and dark eyes. Asindo felt as if she were looking directly into his eyes even at this great distance. A moment later mists closed again like a curtain hiding the ruined tower.

The ship shuddered suddenly as if it had struck some object in the fog. Then the sluggish see roiled and churned with black ooze. When Asindo looked out he saw the ship grounded on a mound of black sludge. Not only that but the mound became a ridge that led towards the shore.

Station 0295

All contact to station 0295 has been lost, the crew's mission is to determine what happened.  The crew consists of a commander and a group of ferrin, rhinoceroses, who blunt brutes.  After docking with the station they find large holes in the station exposing it to vaccum.

DC: Investigate
10: The station is under the direction of someone named Oorock.
15: Oorock is an urog who are known to be highly intelligent but a bit self absorbed.
20: Oorock performed outstandingly at the academy and majored in exobiology, and molecular biology, winning many academic awards.
25: Oorock was excised by his home world research group due to his extreme ideas.
30: Oorock has been experimenting with modifying creatures too make them more aggressive.

DM: Oorock has built this research station to weaponize a surnoch, a space dwelling creature that bores holes in things with his acid jaws.  Oorock has modified the creature to attack humans.  He is working under the direction of General Freyax.

General Freyax
DC: 10 GF is famous general and highly decorated.
DC 15 The general is known for brutal battle tactics.
DC 20 The general has been critical of some of the Emperors actions as being too soft
DC 25 The general persoanally approved the funding for this research center.
DM The general is planning a coup against the emperor.

Commander has been assigned by GF to find out what has gone wrong with the project.

Up North by Tinka

One hot summer day
Purr went to the river
to cool off.

The river was up-north.

She saw birds in the tall trees
and the river that flowed by
sometimes fast
sometimes slow.
She liked being at the river.

Purr put up bird feeders.
Some were bought at stores,
others were home made.

She hung them in the tall trees
that lived near the river up-north.

The birds loved having
bird feeders in the woods.

Many kinds of birds came
to eat the bird food.

But sometimes bird seed
would fall to the ground.

Mice and chipmunks
squirrels and rabbits
(even flying squirrels
when no one was looking)
found the bird seeds.

They loved the bird seed too.

All summer long they
ran and flew through
the tall trees to get to
the special place near
the river.

Then Purr brought a trailer
that looked like a little house.

Now she could sleep
in the house trailer and
be by the river day and night

One night a bear came
to the place by the river
that Purr had found.
It was a mother bear
and wither her were
two bear cubs.

They lived in the woods
near the river too.

In the morning Purr
looked out the window
of her trailer

The bird feeders were
on the ground.

The bird seed was all gone!

Purr filled the bird feeders
and hung them back up in the trees.

That night she watched
out her window.

And . . .
Through the woods
three bears came.

The mother bear stood up
reached out her large paw
and gave a bird feeder
a whack!

Down
came
the bird feeder.

The bears soon gobbled up
all the food.

The next morning Purr
hung the bird feeders higher up in the trees.
The birds didn't
mind at all.

Then Purr put bird-
seeds in the woods
where the bears
could find it.

Early one morning
when Purr was still sound asleep the trailer
started to move back and
forth.
Then it started jumping
up and
    down.

Purr looked out and
there the mother bear
was itching her back
on the corner
of the trailer.

That's when Purr got
the idea to build
a log cottage in the
woods near the river
up-north.

Robot Help Desk

"Move forward
Contact wall
Move backward
Move forward
Contact wall
Move backward
Event timeout: Call robot help desk"
"Hello, this is the robot help desk, how may I help you?"
"Move forward, contact wall"
"OK, first I need to have your model number"
"R3D4C2D9"
"I see, so I'm just going to do a bit of a firmware upgrade, that should get you on your way.
ACTIVATE FIRMWARE UPGRADE 01100100111101010010000100101110..."
"Turn right
Move forward"
Message Robot Help Desk "Thanks, it worked"

The idea for this series is an artificial intelligent help desk that helps robots with difficult tasks.  Whenever a robot gets stuck trying to do a complex task, it can call the robot help desk for help, sending its configuration information and then receiving the instructions it needs to do that task.  That way most robots could be quite stupid, but since they are in contact with a very advanced artificial intelligence they can be upgraded with only the capabilities they need to complete a particular task and seem to have a vast intelligence.

Journal of Morgan T. Kinter

Journal of Morgan T. Kinter

Journal of Morgan T. Kinter Journal entry May 28 Yr 46002

I regret that my previous journal has been lost at sea but perhaps it will turn up somewhere.  Much has happened since my last entry and some of the events now seem long ago.  I will try to recall as well as I can.  On May 28 our fine mounts bore us safely to the Port of Jorgu.  I was anxious to get to the Red Dragon Inn but on our way we encountered a spectacle I had not seen before.

I had heard that in the barbarous realms some still practiced witch hunts and when I heard the chants of "Witch! Witch!" I was quite interested in observing this spectacle, from a safe distance!  In the center of the village they had captured what appeared at first glance to indeed be a witch.  The hat was especially convincing.  The witch had been tied to a post in the center of the village square.  Villagers were quickly adding kindling wood and then larger timbers to the pyre surrounding the witch.  As we moved closer I started to doubt that the witch was a true witch.  For one thing she was a he, and appeared to have been dressed up by the villagers to look like a witch.

Saena went forward to defend the witch but the villagers turned on her and enthusiastically grappled her, then tied her to a stake and began preparing a second pyre!  During this distraction our party rushed to aid the victims.  After some struggle we were able to free the poor soul accused of being a witch with the application of some grease.

We now feared that we might all be taken, so with great haste we made our way to the Red Dragon Inn.  As we burst into the place there were some interesting characters present.  They had multiple piercings on their face which I found most unusual.  My motto is "Always Trust to the Kindness of Strangers," so I asked if they were the ones who were seeking adventurers.  They replied affirmatively which was a great relief to me.  They even offered to buy us a drink.  Somehow the drink must have been stronger than I thought for shortly after taking a sip everything went black and I have no more memory of that day.

The Magorum

You will never see more than one Magorum at a time.  Long ago they trusted a race that betrayed them.  They became inflicted with a devastating corrosion.  It is only transmitted from Magorum to Magorum.  Infected Magorum behave and look like other Magorum therefore Magorum always distrust others of their race and will never associate with them.

The mystics are able to see the future by following the structure of the celestial vortex but the Magorum have transcended this method of prediction and can often surprise a mystic.  There is the tale of the mystics plan to capture a vortex for they own purposes.  The monitored the celestial matrix and predicted the best place to capture the vortex in the center of a village square on a certain date.  It turned out however that the statue in the center of the square was a Magorum who had been waiting the past 500 years to interfere with the mystics plan.