Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in madsaxon's LiveJournal:

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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
10:04 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 140 Three weeks after his coronation, Aspet was finally beginning to settle in as king of Tragacanth. The ceremony itself was nothing short of overwhelming; he was glad that pretty much all he had to do was memorize his lines and stand on his marks. The presentation of the royal symbols, the swearing of fealty by officers of the court and high national officials, the investiture of lands, property, titles, and legal authority—all of these activities blended one into the next in his recollection a fortnight and a half later. It was all a rather momentous and not altogether unpleasant blur. The vicissitudes of running a kingdom as complex as Tragacanth were now Aspet's chief concern. He had to decide whether to keep the previous monarch's advisors or appoint his own, for starters. Some of the decisions were made for him when the incumbent advisors took the opportunity of a change in leadership to retire. His economic advisor, for example, was perhaps the leading economist of the day; Aspet didn't want to lose her and in fact offered her a raise in salary to stay on, which she gracefully accepted. His most problematic cabinet position was that of Magineer Liaison. This was the chief magical official of the administration and the primary means by which kings communicated with the magineers, who operated quasi-independently of the royal government. Aspet suspected the current ML to have been involved in what he had good reason to believe was an attempt to cheat him out of the crown during the Challenge. Boogla had, in fact, provided him with clear and compelling evidence of this his first day in office. The ML didn't have to be a great mage himself, but he did need to have a strong command of the terminology and theory of magic in order to be able to interact effectively with the Magineers and their staffs. The Royal Transition Team had provided him with a list of Civil Servant Corps officers with adequate magical training, but Aspet wasn't enchanted by any of them. He paced along the parapets of the Royal Residence overlooking Goblinopolis and pondered the situation. As he took in the dramatic sweep of the villas and inns crowding each bank of the wide, rolling green Mernal River that skirted the northern edge of the city, a tiny seedling of an idea took root and began inexorably to push its way up into the light. Aspet stopped and stared off into the distance, transfixed by this mental gestation. After a few seconds he blinked and a slow grin spread across his face. He turned abruptly on his heel and strode back to his office with renewed purpose and a sense of mission. Having a good idea is one thing, making it a reality quite another. He knew without the merest sliver of a doubt whom he wanted for the ML position, but he didn't have any solid idea exactly how to move ahead with the recruiting process. For one thing, he and the candidate had never met face-to-face. For another, he had no idea at all where she resided, how old she was, or anything else about her, if indeed she was even a her. All he knew was that she was the right person for the job. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
8:46 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 139 Ballop'ril and Prond spent the rest of the day strolling the caverns, deep in conversation. Prond didn't consider himself any sort of intellectual, nor had he ever expended any real mental effort thinking about magic, but everything that Ballop'ril said made so much sense to him. Their brief relationship had opened up a whole world Prond had only dimly been aware existed. At the end of the evening Ballop'ril showed him to the elegant guest quarters and, at the doorway, asked him a simple question that would have sounded utterly alien to Prond a scant few days ago but now seemed perfectly natural and reasonable. "Young master Prond, you have proven a most pleasant and, more importantly, intelligent companion. Your mind is like a sponge, with a capacity for learning magical arts I've rarely encountered. With time and training you could quite plausibly take your place among the great mages of Tragacanthan history. Will you stay with me and be my apprentice?" Prond's eye slits dilated to their maximum extent (like overstuffed sausage casings) and he suddenly had trouble breathing. He tried to speak, but his host held up a finger. "A momentous decision, I realize, and not one to be taken on the spur of the moment. Sleep on it, and we will resume this discussion by the cheery light of morning. Good night." With that he turned and strode down the hallway. Prond stood there in stunned silence for a longish while, unable to remember how to walk. He finally allowed instinct to propel him forward in an awkward, no-knees manner toward what he assumed must be the bed, although from this vantage it more closely resembled the raised foundation for a new condo project. A foundation swathed in costly velvet and fine linens, with a surprising array of overstuffed pillows. He half sat, half fell on the nearest edge and curled up in the goblin fetal position (which resembles a fossil imprint of an animal trampled by a much larger animal fleeing from something hideously brutal and hungry). He lay awake for a few minutes, but the luxuriousness of the bed combined with his mental and physical exhaustion soon lulled Prond into deep slumber. It was anything but restful, however. He dreamed a dream of flying, being chased by dragons and four-winged demons. He dove and swerved through trees and spires of rock, but always the hot reptilian breath seared his eyes and nose. At last he swooped into a narrow cave which his pursuers could not enter. It started as a vertical fissure barely wide enough to admit him, but soon opened out into a broad boulevard lined with soldiers in full dress uniform who saluted as he sailed past. At the end of the avenue was an elaborate dais, decorated with golden ribbons and a multitude of precious stones. On it stood a magnificent throne of the finest hardwoods, intricately carved with scenes from the long history of Tragacanth. Seated in the throne was a young monarch in rich robes, looking slightly ill at ease. The king waited until Prond had landed at his feet, then gestured toward him. The sovereign presented him silently with a staff encrusted with jewels, the gold-cast figure of a winged animal Prond had never seen before attached as a finial. The creature was powerfully built with four large paws. The ears were triangular and tilted forward. From the nape of the neck sprouted a generous tuft of hair that spread out around the head and upper body like a halo. The entire body of the beast seemed to be covered in short, thick hair, in fact. It was odd, but somehow strangely majestic. The dream ended abruptly when Prond awoke wrapped so tightly in the silk blankets he could scarcely breathe. He struggled out of his cocoon, confused and disoriented, until awareness slowly trickled back into him. Eventually the stark vividness of the dream began to fade, but its images remained strongly fixed in his mind. For the rest of the night he relived the mystical experience over and over, pondering its significance. He was not prone to vivid dreams; the vast majority of his oneiric adventures evaporated before he got to the bathroom in the morning. By the time the first rays of dawn came dancing through the glass skylights set into the roof of his bedroom, reflected there by a complex series of mirrors from the surface, Prond was in a peculiarly conflicted state of mind. The surrealistic dream had temporarily driven Ballop'ril's proposal just below the surface of his consciousness and now, with the onset of the new day, it bubbled back up to take over his thoughts once again. The simple truth was that he still had no idea whether or not to accept the bugbear's offer. They took breakfast on a stone platform high above a wondrous grotto with many waterfalls and colorful rock formations, including stalagmites, stalactites, curtains, and crystalline flows. Flitting to and fro throughout were magical blue, green, and yellow butterflies that left trails of glowing red sparks as they flew. Ballop'ril seemed in no hurry to reopen the subject of apprenticeship, and Prond was grateful for that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
6:56 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 138 Prond would have been considerably more skeptical when Ballop'ril introduced himself had he not personally witnessed the moving mountain at very close terms. It was hard to argue with a calling card of that magnitude. Prond had heard of Ballop'ril, of course, but a fairly cursory mental calculation put his age well beyond the normal goblin lifespan. He didn't know very much about bugbears, though. He decided it was both prudent and sensible simply to take Ballop'ril's word for his identity. He was evidently a powerful mage, whoever he was, and that in itself was a strong argument for maintaining an amiable relationship. His host seemed pleased at Prond's unquestioning acceptance and offered to conduct a personal tour of his fantastic lodgings. Prond nodded in silent assent and they set off. The entire mountain was riddled with chambers and catacombs, each more spectacularly appointed than the last. They wandered for hours among the grottoes of towering crystal, precious metals, and multihued magical luminescence. They passed through an endless array of breathtakingly splendid magnificence, punctuated occasionally by glimpses of more utilitarian spaces where the actual work of running the vast complex got done. They stopped at last in a lavishly appointed library. Prond had no idea that many books existed on the whole of N'plork, much less in one room, enormous though it admittedly was. At the center of the expanse was a crystal globe, larger than a goblin, that glowed with an intense blue radiance. Ballop'ril invited his guest to peruse to his heart's content while he excused himself to attend to some urgent duty. Prond wandered in an overwhelmed daze amongst the hundreds of shelves that stretched up into the darkness of the arched cavern ceiling. Massive ladders that moved effortlessly on their tracks with a light touch were positioned every few meters for access even to the topmost shelves. After an incalculable period of aimless browsing, Prond caught sight of an oversized volume far up on an upper shelf that seemed to pulse as would a beacon, beckoning him. He was a tad bit afraid of heights, but swallowed his instinctive fear and scaled the multitudinous rungs in pursuit of the object of his temptation. The grail of his quest was a book with Theoretical Magic: The Way of Mastery embossed in cracked gold along a too-stiff spine. It was musty and dusty and in all ways lived up to the stereotype of the forgotten tome of arcane lore. Prond carried it carefully back to one of the elaborately carved reading tables and opened it gently, half afraid it might disintegrate in his hand so ancient did it appear. It fell open to a passage about a third of the way through the fourth signature. He settled back in the padded leather chair and began to read. Goblins developed what we commonly refer to as senses as a result of slow adaptation to their environment. Over the long history of life on N'plork, the demands of the physical environment allowed those creatures that could detect and respond appropriately to the constantly changing conditions surrounding them to breed more successfully; with each successive generation these senses were honed until no reproductive advantage was to be gained from further increase. As we have discovered throughout our intellectual history, there are many forces and phenomena present in the holoverse that we are unable to perceive without some form of interface to translate extrasensory information into stimuli that fall within our range of sensation. Sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, spark, and the other common senses all evolved in response to survival pressures. We see the colors we see because of the nature of sunlight. We hear what we hear because of the range of frequencies generated by events that affected our survival and reproduction. We smell, taste, and spark in response to other natural stimuli, the processing of which enhanced our survival. Our sense of touch and the related "subsenses" such as proprioception, balance, and visual echolocation are necessary to move through the environment, avoid danger, and gather resources. ‘Magic' is a widely-used and for the most part poorly-defined term. Many different meanings have been assigned to the word, some of them with little regard for what I will call ‘etymological fidelity.' While there are many manifestations of both the subjective mind and objective nature that have been referred to as ‘magical,' I do not refute these events, nor do I begrudge any for applying the term ‘magical' to them. For my purposes, however, ‘magic' will refer to the perception and controlled use of forces not ordinarily perceived by the unindoctrinated sentient. Perception is fundamental to the mage; one cannot control forces one cannot see. Comprehension is next. Again, the mage must understand the forces the mage purports to control. The last and perhaps most difficult stage in the development of a mage is Direction. Not all mages can or desire to advance to the level where they are able to direct the flow of magic. Contrary to popular belief, in fact, relatively few mages choose this path. It is arduous and can lead to great danger for the mage, for Directing is a task that requires absolute concentration and total dedication. Anything less can be catastrophic, as some of the forces of magic are highly volatile and possess tremendous kinetic energy. Many of the greatest mages have chosen not to embrace the discipline of Directive magic, but this has not diminished their greatness. I have read of sentients who claim to call forth magical powers by using symbols, objects, and spoken incantations. I have no firsthand knowledge of such things, but I can say that this would be a very dangerous and rather ineffective method for exploring the forces of which I speak. To call forth magical energy by any other means than Direction is a haphazard process and the results are left largely to the whim of Chaos, of which we will speak at length a little later. Chaos is a very integral part of the holoverse, one of the pillars upon which the fabric of reality rests, but it is in many significant ways an enemy of the Directive mage. Entropic balance requires that any increase in orderliness, such as that resulting from an act of Directed magic, be accompanied by a concomitant increase in disorder at some other locus of the holoverse. In the vocabulary of the mage, this offsetting chaos is called the backflux. In symbolic terms, then, (\/) + (/\) |=> (o-o) where (\/) represents an act of Directive magic, (/\) represents the equivalent backflux, and (o-o) represents the entropically balanced holoverse. The symbol |=> represents "leads to" or "results in." Positive entropic imbalance, such as exists in the short time between an act of Directive magic and the balancing of that act by a backflux, is denoted by (o-o)+. Negative entropic balance, symbolized by (o-o)-, can exist only in a local context, but never in the forward flow of spacetime, called by mages the ventroverse. Entropy is always increasing in the ventroverse except during the periodic nodal events called flux singularities, where the total mass of the holoverse returns to the primordial energy state and entropy is reset. The last of these nodal events is referred to by modern cosmologists as the ‘Big Bang;' the next will occur when the total entropic load of the ventroverse reaches the level necessary to penetrate the temperospatial envelope in which the holoverse is contained (as symbolized by o))). When this barrier is breached, the positive and negative entropic components will cancel each other and a new envelope will be born in the first nanoseconds of the next cycle. On Perception The Goblin sensory apparatus is capable of a surprisingly broad range of signal reception and processing. The demands of survival, mating, and offspring-rearing (which are the driving forces for evolution) place particular emphasis on the range of signals we have come to think of as normal, yet these represent in truth only a subset of the total information that can be processed by Goblins. Evolution has, in effect, developed filters to enable us to shut out signals not immediately concerned with tasks of genetic continuity. Many phenomena go largely or even completely unnoticed until we have reason to pay attention to them. Magic is one these things, or more accurately, the effects of magic. Like wind, magic itself is invisible. The energies that constitute magic cannot be seen by normal eyes. Unlike things affected by wind, however, the manifestations of chaotic magic are most often themselves imperceptible because they operate along a different temperospatial axis from the one with which we are natively familiar. The very nature of magical events dictates that they seem to the unknowing observer to manifest themselves from nothing; this could not be further from the truth. Magic flows along a conduit wrought by the mage from normal space-time to a vast extradimensional energy reservoir known as the Dark Energetic Continuum, or, colloquially, the Slice. At this point his studies were interrupted by the return of Ballop'ril. The old bugbear was both surprised and pleased that Prond had chosen this particular treatise with which to entertain himself. "This is a very old book," he said, reading over Prond's shoulder, "and one that I haven't seen for many years. Wherever did you find it?" Prond pointed over his left shoulder. "Way up near the top over that way." "How did you know it was there?" "Um, it sort of called to me." The mage twiggled his eyebrows. "Did it? Interesting." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
10:01 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 137 Selpla's news instincts were seldom wrong, and her sticktoitiveness once she was hot on an investigative trail was no more than half a tad below frightening. Lom and Drin had to break into a full run to catch up with her as she jogged along in pursuit of the montane migrant. The spoor it left did not require a skilled tracker to follow. "Selpla," Lom asked as he and Drin jogged along beside her, "Have you ever stopped to consider what, exactly, could motivate a mountain to take up a nomadic existence?" "No, I haven't given it a lot of thought. I figure when we catch the thing we'll just ask it." "That's a Selpla plan if ever I've heard one," Lom mumbled as he dropped back a bit. Drin looked at him quizzically but made no remark. The terrain was getting pretty rough by this time, and their focus was on minimizing the skeletal trauma often accompanying Selpla's pursuits of journalistic excellence. You'd think a moving mountain would be fairly easy to catch, but all three of the intrepid newshounds were puffing hard with the effort after half an hour, with no bagged quarry to show for it. The trail had been crystal clear, but there was no sign of the mountain itself. They stopped to rest on a ridge that stuck up rather incongruously from an otherwise gentle upslope. Lom immediately found a semi-comfortable bank of ferns to lean against and proceeded to take a nap. Selpa stood on the highest point of the ridge and scanned the horizon for her elusive fugitive behemoth. After a few minutes she seemed to experience an epiphany. "This way!" she shouted as she ran towards the nearest foothill. Drin shook Lom awake. He struggled to his feet and together they scrambled after her. The route she had chosen became more and more strewn with increasingly larger boulders as it wound its way up the shoulder of a hill that was much steeper in the climbing than it had appeared on the approach. The boys stumbled and cursed whilst negotiating the tricky footpath, never really seeming to gain any ground on Selpla, when suddenly they rounded a corner and narrowly avoided colliding with her. She was standing motionless and staring open-mouthed at nothing at all. Drin and Lom took up positions on either side of their feckless leader and stared out at whatever was holding her gaze in its rapt embrace. Lom was about to make a snide remark about her newfound fascination with hallucinations when all at once the bottom fell out of his brain. Where a moment before there had been a rugged, rock-strewn hillside there now swirled a phantasmagoric fractal maelstrom, replete with darting crystalline insectoids and chromatic milk globule explosions. Lom and Selpla were utterly transfixed by the show. Drin merely came over all peckish. It began inexplicably to hail. "It would appear," remarked Ballop'ril to his guest, staring intently at a glimmering bubble of televescence hovering between them, "that we have more visitors on the lower terrace." Prond had a look. "Ah, I was wondering where they'd got to." (Comment on this)
Monday, April 14th, 2008
7:25 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 136 * * * * * Selpla and her companions sloshed north along the road. They were heading slightly uphill most of the time, which meant opposing the seemingly infinite volume of precipitation making its way down to the lowlands behind them. Progress was slow and taxing. The rain rose and fell in irregular rhythm, but never stopped entirely. None of them had ever seen this much water before that wasn't in the sea. "Think it'll ever stop raining?" asked Lom, glumly. "Not until spell is done." They both looked at Drin. Selpla shouted over the noise of a fresh surge of precipitation. "What ‘spell' are you talking about?" "The spell that brought the rains. Is not natural rainfall. Magic aura very strong." Lom rolled his eyes. "That's ridiculous. There can't have been more than a handful of mages in Tragacanthan history who could cast a spell of this magnitude. The power requirements alone are staggering, not to mention the amount of personal energy and concentration necessary. There's not a goblin alive today with that much dweomer." "Not goblin spell." "Whatta ya mean, ‘not goblin?' Who else could possibly cast something like this? The arcanelementals have been extinct for millennia." "Goblins are not the only magic-users on N'plork." "I don't suppose you intend to elaborate further?" They plodded along in silence for a few seconds. "Cryptic, as always," Lom remarked, shaking his head. Just then Selpla spotted something in the distance ahead of them. It looked like a large tree fallen across the road. They approached it. The crown of the tree was smoking slightly. She walked over to the smoldering lumber and inspected it, the ever-present rain trickling down her face. "Lightning." It was more pronouncement than speculation. Lom had drifted to the opposite side of the road. "Hey, come take a look at this," he suddenly yelled to the others. They trudged obediently to his side and followed his pointing finger. He seemed to be indicating a nondescript pile of rocks. They regarded the manifestation for a long while until Drin expressed what he and Selpla were thinking. "Rocks." Lom raised his eyebrows with an audible squeak. "Yes, they're rocks. But notice something odd about them. They're the only rocks anywhere around here. The nearest mountain is too far away for them to have fallen down its slopes. Also, they are broken and scattered, as though they were dropped from a meter or two onto this spot." Selpla surveyed the scene. "Yes," she agreed, "that is how it appears. The question would be, ‘where did they drop from?'" There didn't seem to be any reasonable answer to the conundrum until Drin pointed out a series of wide, deep gouges all leading away in the same direction. Selpla immediately seized on the discovery, dropping the current puzzle in favor of a far more intriguing one. "My moving mountain!" she exclaimed, "on the trail, trackbeasts!" and she scrambled off along the gouge lines that disappeared over a nearby ridge. Drin and Lom looked at one another, and then at Selpla, who was rapidly diminishing over the horizon. "Something not right about Selpla," Drin said, as they started off after her. Lom nodded in violent agreement. "I keep sayin' that, but no one listens." (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 15th, 2007
5:27 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 135 Prond finally found a refuge of sorts deep in the bowels of the cavern. The occasional rumble still resounded off the stone walls, but actual rocks being heaved in his direction had diminished dramatically. As his eyes adjusted to the subterranean gloom, he began to realize that this was more than just a featureless hollow in the heart of the mountain. It was a complex arrangement of balconies, grottoes, blind corners, overhangs, and fantastic rock formations that stretched far up into the overarching darkness. A few places were faintly backlit, suggesting that someone or something might possibly live here. Prond scratched his head and contemplated what an extraordinary way of life that must be, residing here deep underground with bits of the ceiling constantly falling around you. Headache medicine would seem to be a basic necessity. He wandered aimlessly among the stalagmites and shimmering translucent curtains of crystal, marveling at their intricate beauty and wondering how they escaped being destroyed by the constant motion of their surroundings. Funny thing, though, is that in here the movement didn't seem nearly so pronounced as it had on the periphery. In fact, he didn't really notice it at all anymore. No stones had tried to meld with his head lately, either. He was puzzling over the curious kinetics of the mountain when he rounded a corner and came face to face with the stairway. It was, in a word, magnificent: wide as a city street, helical, bannisters and steps carved with geometric precision by obsessed deep gnomes from the very living rock and slavishly polished to a high luster. It sparkled and glinted as though inhabited by its own sapient light source. Prond stood there awestruck for a longish while, unwilling to break the spell cast by the unexpected architectural spectacle. Finally he approached the lowest tread almost in reverence and padded gingerly onto it. There was a marvelous, undecipherable quality to the experience–like stepping on an exquisitely resonant chime made of frozen clouds. Prond followed the winding wonderway up and up into the stalactite-studded highlands, until at last he came to a grandiose balcony that circumscribed the entirety of the cavern. From this lofty vantage he could see many additional and even more astounding structures than were visible at the lower level. He wondered how such a fantastic subterranean palace as this could have remained totally unknown to the citizens of Tragacanth. "It's the best-kept secret in the country," he said out loud, shaking his head in amazement. "And I'd deeply appreciate it if things remained that way," said a crackly voice behind him. Prond spun around to see a fuzzy little creature standing there he recognized after a few seconds as a bugbear. Hadn't seen many of those before. They regarded each other for a long moment. Prond finally broke the silence. "Did you build all this?" "I was...responsible for the construction," the bugbear replied, "although I didn't perform all of it personally." "Wow," said Prond, simply. "Wow. This place is utterly amazing. Do all bugbears live like this?" He didn't mean it in any racist way; just trying to expand his cultural horizons. The bugbear didn't seem offended. "Many of my kind do choose to live underground, but none, to my knowledge, have taken quite the same interest in...interior design as myself." A light snapped on in his head and Prond suddenly realized his awkward social position. "So sorry. My name is Prond. I apologize for trespassing. I ducked into what I thought was a shallow cave to avoid drowning in the deluge out there and sort of got herded further into the mountain than I intended to go." His host noticed the falling rock contusions on Prond's head and shoulders and shrugged. "Yes, well, no permanent harm done, I suppose. The mountain does tend to be rather selective about whom it allows in this far. You must have impressed it in some way." Prond raised his eyebrows. "The mountain is selective? Are you implying that this huge pile of rocks is somehow alive and aware?" "Of course. The entire mountain has an active 12th level sentience spell and geas on it. It took me over two years to cast." Prond's jaw dropped. "You cast a permanent archmagical dweomer on this place? Who are you?" "My name," the bugbear replied somewhat hesitantly, "is Ballop'ril." (Comment on this)
Friday, October 5th, 2007
10:24 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 134 There wasn't much for it but to keep to his course. The rain apparently felt right at home here and intended to kick back and make itself comfortable. Prond figured he might as well get used to it. The first adaptation he made to his new aquatic habitat, other than working out how to slosh more efficiently, was learning not to glance up in alarm every time thunder boomed out across the sodden landscape. Water was falling with such intensity that his custom of gaping at loud noises actually threatened to get him drowned. He trudged about a kilometer in silence, slanting his head forward to allow supraorbital ridges to divert the flow of water away from his eyes. As a navigational technique, however, this left a little too much to the imagination and he continually careened into rocks, ledges, trees, and the occasional foraging hearth bear, which while potentially quite vicious were easily outmaneuvered as they were neither agile nor aggressive. Especially when soaking wet. Prond stopped to rest in the mouth of a rather dark cave under a rock overhang mostly obstructed by a dense tangle of vegetation. He found this refuge by literally blundering into it; otherwise it would most likely have escaped his attention entirely. He was grateful for the accidental discovery, as the constant drumming of raindrops on the external secondary tympanic membranes above his auditory canals was beginning to give him a headache. As he sat there on a boulder waiting for his head to stop throbbing, Prond noticed something rather odd about his chosen resting place. Bruised and broken plant parts were sticking out from under the rock flooring as though the entire cave had recently been plopped down on them from somewhere else. He contemplated the botanical devastation for some time, but couldn't make any sense of what he was seeing. A sudden movement off to his right caused Prond to turn his head just in time to get beaned right above the eyes by a flat rock dislodged from somewhere in the darkness above the cave entrance. His vision blurred and he stood there cradling his pounding, bleeding cranium when more rocks came careening down around him. His free hand groped the rock wall for some anchorage as the floor began to shift and heave beneath him. He turned to run out of the suddenly treacherous cave but found the way blocked by a granite slab that seconds ago had been the floor of the entryway but now tilted up at a crazy angle. The lithic barrage continued. Prond's only escape route seemed to lead deeper into the cavern, although his common sense was screaming at him that this just couldn't be a good idea. Still, a rapid examination of the tactical situation convinced him to explain to his common sense that, while it was welcome to hang about and take its chances here, the rest of him was evacuating the landslide zone posthaste. He scrambled over the increasingly obstacle-strewn floor, looking for a place not actively engaged in trying to kill him. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 17th, 2007
3:11 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 133 "Excuse me, boss. For a moment there I thought you said we've got a mountain to catch," Knuppa said, shaking his head. "That is exactly what I said, smekhead. We're following that mountain over there. I've been watching it, and it's moved a good half a mile in the last fifteen minutes." Knuppa stared in the indicated direction and confirmed that there was, indeed, a large topographic feature that was apparently ambulatory. "OK...it's a moving mountain. Curious geologically, perhaps, but is it really front page stuff? I mean, after all is said and done, it's still just a pile of dirt and rocks." "I don't give a damp smek about the mountain itself, smekhead. The thing is traveling far too fast to be a natural phenomenon. It takes a very powerful mage to cast a translocate spell to move something that big, and he's the story I'm after. Why is a mage of that caliber out here in the boonies? What purpose does the moving mountain serve? It has all the makings of a great goblin-interest story." "Did it occur to you that a mage who goes around moving mountains might be a tad nutso and therefore sort of dangerous to approach?" "Danger is part of this job, smekker. You knew that when you signed on." "This isn't another one of your ‘imaginary infantry platoon leader' flashbacks, is it?" "There's nothing imaginary about it! I was a platoon leader in the infantry, you smekhead." "Yeah, at a supply depot outside Lunbos. The only danger you ever faced was in the chow line." "That's more than you've ever had to worry about in your pampered life, smekhead, but you keep yakkin' and that's gonna change." A ridiculously loud clap of thunder drowned out whatever response Knuppa made to this challenge and changed the focus of the conversation dramatically. Actually, it wasn't the thunder that mattered so much as the associated lightning strike. It split a nearby gonsap tree neatly in twain, the larger fragment of which fell directly in the path of their dray, rendering any further vehicular progress in that direction moot. Slud let out a sound like the air brakes on a large cargo transport and twisted around to stare accusingly at Kurg, who pointedly ignored him and clapped his hands. "Isn't this great, kiddies? Now we all get to go on a hike. Don't forget your knapsacks and juice boxes." "To say that ‘you suck' would demean vacuums everywhere," Knuppa mumbled.   Prond saw the lightning strike in the distance ahead of him and dove instinctively under a scraggly bush jutting improbably from a nearby overhang. The rain, which had slacked off considerably over the past hour or so, began again in earnest, pouring over him in great, drenching sheets. He resumed his slogging trek along the highway, now nearly obliterated by water, mud, and debris. If this was a typical weather pattern for the area, he reasoned, it wasn't difficult to see why the southlands were so sparsely populated. You'd need to be part amphibian to enjoy living here. Not that being part amphibian was unusual. Some of his best friends were dual-breathers, in fact. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 8th, 2007
11:50 am	Goblinopolis, Installment 132 News item: "/dev/random," my column for the USENIX magazine ;Login:, is now available as a podcast. Check it out! The ever-increasing deluge had finally forced Prond to look for some real shelter. He scrambled a few meters up a muddy embankment and found a hole that after a little excavation provided a snug but relatively dry refuge from the flooding. As the daylight slipped slowly away with no sign of either Kurg or Selpla, he began to feel rather drowsy. The rain had slacked off to a gentle patter now, which made it all the more difficult to stay awake. Finally Prond could fight it off no longer and fell into a deep, contented sleep. Less than ten minutes later Kurg's dray chugged slowly around the bend, still sporting large outcroppings of thick blue mud on the rear wheel wells and bumper. Its noisy passing below him disturbed Prond's slumber a bit, but not enough to bring him to full consciousness as his snoring easily drowned out the rain sounds as well as those of Kurg's vehicle. In truth, he could have acoustically overpowered a medium-sized asteroid strike. When he awoke half an hour later and saw tire tracks in the mud below him, Prond realized they had probably been left by Kurg. He scrambled down the incline and jogged off along the road in pursuit. "Is that them?" Kurg shouted, gesturing at several figures off to one side of the road. Hnuppa shaded his eyes and strained in concentration. "No, that's a couple of rocks." "Those aren't smekking rocks! Are they? Oh, smek." He trailed off as they drew nearer and the lithic nature of the figures became more apparent. Slud was making the odd honking sound they'd come to understand was his version of laughter. Kurg shot him a withering glance but otherwise ignored him. His attention was on something in the distance. He stared at whatever it was so intently that Hnuppa was worried he'd gone catatonic or something. He waved a gnarled extremity in front of his boss' face. "Kurg? You still with us, you ol' planker?" "Quiet, smekhead. I'm tryin' to figure out what that thing is over there." He pointed to what appeared at first glance to be a distant hill. Hnuppa glanced over in the direction Kurg was pointing, but all he saw was a distinctly non-remarkable topographic feature. He shook his head and frowned at Kurg. "You take all your meds today, boss?" Kurg scowled menacingly, but did not take his eyes off the distant object. "You're gonna need more than meds if you don't shut your yap. Get your camera stuff and follow me." "What, on foot?" Knuppa complained. "Yes, on smekkin' foot," Kurg replied, "I'm not taking this dray off the road into that muck and risk getting it stuck again. A little rain won't melt you, or if it does, I'll see to it your smekkin' remains get flushed down a nice, tasteful loo." "Thanks, boss. You're one dwak of a nice goblin." "Don't I know it. Now get your carcass movin.' We've got a mountain to catch!" (Comment on this)
Friday, February 2nd, 2007
11:55 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 131 * * * * * Selpla and her compatriots finally reached the high ground overlooking the swollen Molkpot river. The three of them sat in the muck breathing heavily after their narrow escape from the flood and its attendant zoological perils. The mud wasn't just gray and sticky–it seemed almost sentient. Well, maybe not sentient, but at least more animated than mud was wont to be in their experience. It was actively engaged in crawling up into their most intimate places, no matter how tightly sealed against the elements. Regardless of the discomfort, it was still better than being nibbled on by needlefish or shredded by pincer ants. There were still ants about, to be sure, but not in the concentrated mass of the floating rafts. Selpla was the first to speak. "Well, that was fun. Guess we'd better figure out the best way to get back to the road. Without running that gauntlet again, I mean." "Wonder how Prond is making out?" asked Lom. "He's probably as wet as we are, but I'll bet he hasn't got quite as many, um, perforations." She was noticing the remarkable collection of holes various ravenous creatures had left in her hide. Good thing goblin skin was tough stuff. Drin had been walking around their position in a tight circle and suddenly made an announcement. "Road that way. We walk along ravine." He pointed down a water-swollen gulley leading off to the southwest. Lom and Selpla looked at one another and shrugged. They sloshed off behind Drin, who led them as though he were fronting a grand parade. The path he chose down to the road wasn't exactly smooth, but it was marginally more navigable than the route up had been. When at last they stumbled onto the paved surface, it was barely recognizable under the layers of debris and displaced topsoil the flood waters had scattered across it. Now they just had to figure out which way Prond was from here. The main highway was well-maintained from Goblinopolis to Tillimil, but south of the river Tud it got a bit titchy. It narrowed and widened sans any obvious pattern or logic, and even the quality of the paving deteriorated markedly beyond the Tudmash marsh. There wasn't a lot of traffic between Tillimil and Dreadmost to be inconvenienced, however, which is probably why the Transport Council hadn't made road improvements along that route any sort of priority. That, and the fact that none of them lived anywhere near the place. After some head-scratching and dead-reckoning, they agreed that north along the road was the most likely route to where they'd left Prond, since the natural movement of the water that had swept them along was southeast toward the Gulf of Honkmin. Selpla was trying to take notes on their position so she could pursue the ‘moving mountain' story further once they were again mobile, but the steadily streaming precipitation was making pulp of the leaves in her reporter's pad. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 29th, 2006
10:06 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 130 By the time Trellior managed to break free of Aspet's entanglements, he was dangerously peeved. The frustration at being mired in his opponent's defenses, coupled with a perceived failure of Snarlox's (not so) Ultimate Tactical Software, was taking a heavy toll on the Royal composure. He decided an all-out assault on Aspet was in order. Instead of concentrating on searching for and capturing the other contestants' tokens, he turned to attacking the underlying operating systems themselves. Since the contestants' systems were essentially out-of-the-box non-hardened installs, taking advantage of known programming flaws was an easy way to escalate user privileges and eventually root the box. Even for a hacker with Aspet's obvious mad skills, it simply wasn't possible to sew shut every exploitable hole in the time allocated for the contest. All Trellior had to do was use his (illegal) vulnerability scanner to find a chink in the usurper's armor and punch through hard. It didn't take that long. He found an exploitable remote service on Aspet's computer being advertised to the network and quickly used it to gain a shell account. Then, after a few false starts, he finally ratcheted himself up through the user hierarchy to root-level access. A few more keystrokes and the cursed usurper's system was history. As a bonus, once Aspet's computer went offline any captured tokens residing there would be returned to their respective owners, ripe for Trellior's own harvesting. Aspet, meanwhile, had just about sorted through all the tricks His Majesty had used to protect his token when one of his own alarms went off. He switched back to his home screen and felt a strong jolt of adrenalin as he realized what Trellior was doing. He raced to find the exact location of the intruder in his system and cut him off, but he was too late. A warning popped up that said System shutdown imminent. Please save any files you have open immediately. Shutdown in 10 seconds. No time to dump the process table to kill off whatever was controlling the shutdown; Trellior was probably smart enough to have several backups running to prevent this, anyway. He watched the counter click down to 7. There must be some way to stop him. Aspet's mind raced furiously, grasping at something just beyond reach, when a sudden calm came over him and the mental fog lifted. Seemingly in slow motion, he watched himself type # wait -PMA -9 The counter stopped decrementing at 2. He had overridden the shutdown with an undocumented failsafe kernel command that suspended all running processes except those associated with the current window. When he restarted the system he'd have two seconds to act. Plenty of time. He checked the process list and found the hostile PIDs. # wait -R | seize -T [2347..2350] > null Aspet hit the 'data submit' key and before it had returned to the fully upright position switched back to his attack window and slurped the Royal token over to his own system. Then, for the coup de grace, he forced Trellior's network adapter into an infinitely recursive local loop condition that escalated after a dozen or so iterations into a packet storm which brought the king's interface to a grinding halt. From Trellior's point of view, he had initiated the shutdown of Aspet's computer and watched the countdown suddenly pause at two. It restarted after a few seconds and everything seemed to be working fine when suddenly his attack screen went blank. Switching back to the system screen, he discovered that all communications with any remote node were simply nonexistent. He was off the grid. As he stabbed frantically at the keyboard trying to understand what was going on, the bells started ringing. The Challenge for the Throne of Tragacanth was over. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
6:00 am	Goblinopolis, Installment 129 If you'd rather read Goblinopolis offline, a PDF of the latest compilation of the story so far can be found here. His Royal Majesty Tragacanth was peeved. The canned attack code he was deploying did not operate as expected, and as a result it was taking too long to break out of snot-nosed little brat Asp...whatever's pathetic attempt at a trap. He pounded impatiently on his keyboard as he waited for a new process to fork and spoke quietly. "If you can hear me, Snarlox–and you'd better be able to–this tactical software you wrote is a load of rancid rok excrement. It's not properly pipelined, the processor overhead is bollocks, and the system footprint is far larger than you promised. When I get through here we're going to have a little chat about what it means to serve one's king." He smiled as he imagined his gnome accomplice sweating in the secret room above and behind him. Snarlox was worse off than that, in fact, because he'd just come to the realization that the problems His Majesty The Boss was experiencing were not actually his fault. Somehow, the software he'd surreptitiously stashed on Trellior's computer had been modified by parties unknown. The security had been airtight...unless...there had been someone on the inside...No time to worry about that right now, regardless. He had to figure out some way to get his neck off the chopping block. His audio communication with Trellior was simplex, to minimize chances of discovery by either the judges or some smartass in the audience with a spectrally triggered signal transducer. He did have an illicit encrypted data tunnel into the king's box via a network control channel, however, although use of even that ran a certain risk of being picked up by the RNOC traffic anomaly sensors. Part of Snarlox's job here was to serve as scapegoat if the cheating scheme was discovered; toward that end an elaborate series of fabricated clues had been planted, all of which pointed squarely at him and exonerated the King of any complicity. Snarlox himself had been specially conditioned to resist the standard interrogation methods employed by the Special Investigations Branch of CoME, who would be responsible for investigating any such allegations. Trellior had gone to great lengths to ensure that he did not lose this challenge. Meanwhile, back on the playing field, Aspet was chinking away at Trellior's defenses. The king was employing a rather clever ‘sandtrap' technique that filled in any gap as soon as it was opened. As he tried different approaches, Aspet began to realize that not only was the Royal strategy clever, it was darned effective, especially as a delaying tactic. Of course, Aspet could probably win the challenge now just by holding onto the tokens he already possessed, but he had a burning desire to bring Trellior to his knees for being such a total turd. He strongly suspected that the king hadn't even written the code he was using to cheat. That was much less forgivable, in Aspet's eyes, than the mere act of cheating itself. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 18th, 2006
3:35 am	Goblinopolis, Installment 128 Almost immediately one, then another of his decoy tokens disappeared. Aspet chuckled. Those two would probably leave him alone now unless they discovered his deception in time to do something about it. He followed one of the data trails back to its origin, and found his counterfeit token in the same directory as the owner's genuine one. Shaking his head, he snagged the real token and beat a hasty retreat. Two in the bank, one to go. The remaining token belonged to Trellior. The king had spent his time well so far, first erecting prickly defenses of his own, then building a sort of armored vehicle for invading and hijacking other candidates' tokens by brute force. Once His Majesty entered the field of combat in earnest, it didn't take him long to realize that he only had one real opponent here: Aspet. The other two had already lost their tokens to him, and the fools had even fallen for the old counterfeit token ploy. Clearly they weren't worth expending any additional effort on. Trellior moved without any attempt at stealth onto the network and began to hammer away at Aspet's defenses as hard as he could. Aspet had expected this, given the king's predilection for direct action, and waited until his opponent was fully committed to the attack before playing his hand. He intentionally weakened his barricade at one specific point and hung back until Trellior found and exploited the hole. As soon as the king was through the opening Aspet snapped it shut and trapped the intruder in a "jail" that appeared to be a root-level account but was actually an isolated user with no real access to system resources. He knew Trellior wouldn't be held up long in there, but his brute force approach would actually work against him in these circumstances and prolong that time sufficiently for Aspet to do a quick search for the king's token. Knowing Trellior's style, Aspet simply looked for the most heavily defended area. It didn't take long to find it. He circled the bastion warily, admiring the multiple layers of alternating passive and active defenses. It was beginning to dawn on him that no one, least of all a rusty coder like Trellior, could have thrown up such sophisticated barriers coding from scratch in the amount of time that had elapsed since the start of the challenge. There had to be prefab code blocks in use here, something that was strictly against the rules. At least, against the rules for everyone but the ruling monarch. The only person who could overrule him in this case was Cromalin, and the Loca Magineer would have to see concrete proof of the infraction in order legally to intervene. No, better to use His Majesty's own duplicity against him in a more...direct way. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
8:19 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 127 There was a bit of ceremonial hoohah involving the Loca Magineer and various court officials, mostly for the benefit of the crowd, that allowed the contestants to get intimate with the physical and logical layout of their workstations. At length Cromalin II waved his Scepter of Office in a blessing-like gesture and the challenge was on. The objective of this particular challenge was a capture the flag scenario. Each contestant had an encrypted token in a randomly-chosen location on their local system known only to him. They were charged with protecting this token from the other challengers, while capturing and holding as many of the other tokens as possible. Points were awarded for every second an opponent's token was in your possession and deducted for every second your own token was held by someone else. The contestant with the highest number of total points at the end of one hour was declared the winner. Aspet started by building some stout walls around his token. He changed the name of it, hid the properties by embedding it in a deceptively constructed shell that looked like an incidental system file, and set up reactive sensors throughout the system that would warn him if anyone got close while at the same time moving the token somewhere else, giving him valuable time to take countermeasures. Next he ventured out into the network, looking for easy targets. He found one almost immediately. It was so blatant, in fact, that he knew it must be a trap. He could simply skirt around it, but first he crafted a little time bomb of his own and tossed it into the waiting maw. A little further on he found a remote process being advertised that he knew had a couple of old vulnerabilities. He pushed against the first one and nothing happened. The second, however, proved to be unpatched and he slipped smoothly in through the resultant hole. Knowing a conventional system search for the token was probably both pointless and dangerous, he dumped the directory tree with full file attributes directly from the kernel and sorted it three times: by date created, date modified, date last accessed. Most hackers were skilled enough and had the presence of mind to change all three accordingly when fabricating file metadata, but under the intense time pressure of the challenge mistakes will be made. Aspet did some quick further refining of his sort algorithm and narrowed the pool of likely candidates down to about a dozen files. He created a new directory and tried to copy all of them there. One of the files refused to be copied. "Pay dirt," he chuckled softly. Unlike all other files on the system, tokens could not be copied; only moved. He snagged it, erased his tracks, and beat a hasty retreat. Just then an alert message popped up to advise him that an intruder was closing in on his own token. He sighed. There just wasn't time to plug all the holes, several of which he suspected had been left on the system intentionally. He slammed out a script that created a dozen encrypted decoys and shotgunned them throughout the file space. That ought to slow him down a bit, he thought. He kept one eye on the intruder's progress–better to let him waste time poking around fruitlessly than simply kick him off–and slid back out into the network, on the prowl for another token. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 3rd, 2006
2:47 am	Serialized Fiction List I've started Yet Another Yahoo Group, this one dedicated to the art of writing serialized fiction. Which is what Goblinopolis is, in case you haven't caught on to that yet. ;-) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/serialfiction/ If you have any interest in this literary form as a past, current, or potential author of such, I encourage you to sign up and contribute your thoughts. I also invite those with a desire to promote serialized fiction works through developing new venues or more widely advertising existing ones to become members. Together we can...well, do stuff we might not be able to do alone. Y'all come on down. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
8:01 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 126 He had an escort to the challenge site from two Royal Protective Corps agents, as was normal procedure for all aspirants to the throne who made it this far (to ensure they arrived safely at the RNOC and, he suspected, in order to discourage last minute cheating). They weren't a very talkative lot, so the trip was made in silence. That didn't bother him; he needed to concentrate, anyway. Challenges to the throne were a rare occurrence overall, and this combined with the monumental nature of the contest made them quite important to the Goblinopolis social calendar. The South entrance to the tournament hall was secured and reserved for official personnel only, but the area surrounding the North, public, entrance took on a carnival atmosphere in the days leading up to a challenge. There were barkers, biters, jugglers, jongleurs, illusionists, delusionists, contortionists, extortionists, daredevils, dustdevils, acrobats, fruitbats, and a whole host of other entertainers and profiteers. Just about every race on N'Plork was represented in the teeming throng. Aspet had witnessed this spectacle once before during the last Royal Challenge, but not being willing to mingle in such a motley assemblage he hadn't really comprehended the full scope of the event. This time he only saw the crowds from afar, as the RPC kept everyone back a considerable distance from the disembarkation area for official vehicles. He felt a little strange being hustled up the carpeted runway surrounded by goons in suits, but it wasn't an altogether unpleasant experience. Inside the RNOC tournament hall, Aspet was taken directly to a security station where he was searched, given a lecture on security measures in the presence of the Royal Personage, and required to sign the formal Intent to Occupy the Throne documents. Then it was off to the Master of the Tournament for a briefing on the rules and expectations for candidates. Finally, there was an all-too-short interval where he was allowed to familiarize himself with the equipment he'd be using and the secure network partition established for the purposes of the challenge. Very soon it was show time and the ornate curtains were drawn aside. His opponents, including the current king, were lined up every five meters along a semicircular console with a huge four-way split screen placed out in front so the audience could see what all the candidates were typing but the participants themselves could not. Between each pair of candidates was a read-only network traffic monitor/recorder with a judge at it. Each kept a separate copy of all packets passing across the net and allowed that judge to "replay" any exchanges for analysis, looking for suspicious activity. The system had been fine tuned by every challenge that went before, as something new and unanticipated occurred with every contest. Cameras were strictly forbidden in the audience to discourage elaborate cheating scenarios that had taken place in the past. Several highly trained RPC agents with optical reflection detectors were stationed on a platform overlooking the crowd, watching for traces of the illegal devices. The spectators were a seething pie wedge splayed out within line of sight of the giant display boards. With a growing population of computer geeks in the kingdom, hacking had become rather a popular pastime, even to the point of being considered a sport. The Tragacanthan Royal Challenge was the de facto World Championship of hacking on N'Plork. There were many other competitions, but none with stakes this high. This one was for all the marbles: absolute ruler of the largest and most prosperous nation on the planet. For a split second Aspet sat stunned in awe and terror at being part of something far beyond his station, but he quickly reverted to his long hours of training and focused his thoughts solely on the task at hand, shutting out all distractions. He could never forgive himself if he did anything less than his absolute best here today, no matter the outcome. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 29th, 2006
1:20 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 125 Cranial abuse notwithstanding, Aspet stuck to it like the trooper he aspired someday to be until he decided he'd better wrap things up and realign his brain with the technical challenge ahead. Besides, all this political theory was generating weird cobwebs in his mind. He was beginning to feel a strange compulsion welling up to draft a reelection committee or organize a fundraiser dinner. There would be a total of four candidates for the throne, including of course the present monarch, Trellior I, who had assumed the kingship six years previous. He had been a first-rate hacker prior to his ascension, but it was widely believed he had grown rusty in the three years since his last challenge. It isn't easy to keep your mad skills pumped while playing lord over all you survey, after all. Still, Aspet wasn't harboring any delusions about the challenge he faced. The king had the "home field" advantage and was defending his regime, so there was little doubt he would put up a fierce fight. Also, two previous challengers, both of whom Aspet had known, had mysteriously vanished after failing in their royal bids. This was especially worrisome to him, but he didn't know what, if anything, he could do to prevent it happening to him apart from winning. A complete transcript of that challenge and the one which gained Trellior the throne would prove useful, if one could be had. Fortunately, he had one right here, supplied by the mysterious but ever-useful Boogla. It was weird having a fan you've never met and that you really haven't done anything to deserve. Weird, but gratifying. It was pretty clear from the outset that Trellior was a search-and-destroy hacker. He wasn't concerned with finesse or elegance, just brute force and aggression. The transcripts showed a predictable pattern of reconnoiter/decoy/attack/dodge that Aspet found rather simplistic, although obviously successful. It was a tactic he'd seen and successfully defused before; he could only hope His Majesty's strategy hadn't evolved any since the most recent transcript. That seemed pretty unlikely, though, given that all candidates for the throne came under extremely intense scrutiny by the king's personal staff. They probably knew just about everything there was to know about himself, Aspet mused, and that meant they'd studied his tactics at least as closely as he'd studied Trellior's. That was all right, though, because his own strategy was nothing if not fluid. The morning of the challenge dawned overcast and drizzling. Aspet was up before the light, readying himself mentally and going over fine details of the Royal Network one last time. He was so absorbed with his preparations, in fact, that he almost missed the message that popped up on his screen. To: Asp37!cholinergia!goblinopolis From: boogla!boogla!boo Subject: Good fortune Be wary of the unexpected. Seize() the day. All things come to those who wait(). Aspet rolled his eyes and chuckled. "Another cryptic communique brought to you by the great Boogla." He stared at the words a moment longer, but could wrest no more meaning from them and went back to his review. A few minutes later he looked up and realized it was time to leave for the RNOC. He closed his notebooks, shut down his computer, and said a little Goblin prayer for luck. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
3:09 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 124 The sun was suddenly only a fond, distant memory. A blackness the depth and intensity of which Tol had never even suspected were possible now covered his visual field from horizon to horizon. The air smelt strongly of sulphur and concentrated perspiration. "What the smek is happening?" He shrank down, arms over his face, in a reflexive attempt to ward off the smothering darkness. Eyejay's voice sounded muffled, "It would appear...that we are being sat upon," came the doubtful reply. "Aaagh! What do I do?" "Push the button." Tol scrambled around in the other pocket and found the device. He pulled it out and frantically stabbed at it as the immense derriere closed in. At the last possible moment he found and pressed the correct switch. The rapidly narrowing gap between him and the huge butt abruptly stopped narrowing. He held his breath and continued to cringe for a few seconds for good measure. When it became apparent that gluteal demise was not so imminent after all he crawled out from underneath the now inanimate beast and peered at it with a mixture of trepidation and relief. "Wow," he remarked, turning the remote over in his hand, "this thing really comes in handy. Maybe I should carry one all the time." "I hasten to remind you that the device is merely a remote controller. The actual functionality is provided by the null magic unit down in the warehouse, the construction details of which render it rather unsuitable for portable use." "Too smekkin' heavy to carry around, you mean." "I believe that is what I said." "So anyway, what happens to Rover, here, now?" "Eventually the null magic burst will dissipate and the guardian will return to its native state. It would be best if you were no longer in the vicinity when that occurs." "Not a problem. As it happens, I have a date with a balrog." *        *        *        *        * Aspet winced. The review program he'd established for himself was just short of impossible to carry out in the short time he had left to study, but he felt as though he owed it to himself and to his potential subjects to give it his best shot. It wasn't a review of computer hacking techniques or esoteric network architectures, however: it was the social and political history of Tragacanth, along with a ponderous volume titled The Precepts of Governing by a well-known political scientist of a past generation. Hacking he knew about–it was the process of ruling a nation where he felt woefully inadequate. The fact that no previous contender for the throne had worried about that aspect until after he'd won would have been irrelevant to Aspet even if he'd known about it. That wasn't acceptable behavior in his world view. He knew he couldn't hope to become any sort of expert in policy-making in less than three days, but he had to give it his best effort, anyway. The hardest part, he soon came to realize, was staying awake. Most of the material was...a little dry. He found it useful to bang his head against the table every so often to renew his focus, although he also discovered that too much enthusiasm in this activity led to headaches and fuzziness. As it turns out, the sensation was to become a familiar one. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 1st, 2006
9:08 pm	Goblinopolis Now Illustrated Just a note to let readers of Goblinopolis know that the official site now has illustrations by yours truly. Well, illustration at this point, but I'll be adding more soon. I thought it would make the story a little more interesting if we had some visual aids. I might post them here too, if there's enough interest, but for now they'll only be available at the site. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
11:35 pm	Goblinopolis, Installment 123 "Great. Smekkin' great. So how am I supposed to go on the offensive? Body odor?" He waved his arms back and forth in the general direction of his assailant. "That would be a viable option in your case were the guardian biological. Olfactory sensitivity is a component only of specialized golems created for tracking purposes, however, and that does not appear to be one of the functions of this creature." "How did it find me, then?" "I would posit rather that you found it." "Twice? In totally different parts of the city?" "The triggers can be placed anywhere. Tripping them will summon the guardian instantly; location is immaterial to the process." "So, basically, you're saying," Tol yelled as he narrowly avoided being eviscerated by a well-aimed paw swipe, "that I just blindly blundered into some random tripwire? Why aren't the sidewalks littered with the bones of the other hapless schlubs who've done the same, then?" "It appears to be trippable only by you. Tol-u-ol-specific, as it were." "Why me? Who would go to all this trouble just to knock off a tired old beat cop?" "Pattern analysis indicates that these attacks are meant primarily to dissuade you. Your termination is likely no better than a secondary intent, if the primary goal fails." "Dissuade me from what? Walking down the street?" "The strategic goal is not clear." "There's sure nothing unclear about the tactical go..." His last word was cut short as a section of stone facade on a nearby building crumbled under a glancing blow from the guardian and landed on him. He lay there out of breath, trying desperately to come up with something, anything, to combat this seemingly unbeatable leviathan. The beast assessed the situation and moved in for the kill. "I would suggest that now might be the appropriate time to activate one of the null magic devices in the adjacent warehouse. The field effect should be sufficiently strong at this range." "How am I meant to do that, then? By telepathy?" "Telekinesis is one option, of course, but generally it requires a considerably more advanced cranial morphology than you possess. My advice is to activate the remote control device in your pocket." "What the smek are you talking about?" "The small round object in your right jacket pocket. You picked it up in the warehouse and slipped it into your pocket, probably without thinking as is your wont. It is a remote control device locked to one of the null magic units you examined. Press the rectangular button near the outside edge." Tol reached into his pocket skeptically and was astonished to find that there was a small, hard, round thing in there. He fumbled with it for a moment, trying to find the rectangular button by feel, but finally gave up in disgust and drew the object out to examine it in the light of day. It proved to be his watch. "Wrong pocket," Eyejay explained helpfully. Unfortunately, the diversion provided by the watch incident gave the guardian just enough time to lay in a new and more devastating attack. (Comment on this)