Art Folio: The Guys

Dungeon Mastery: The World Tournament

For those of you familiar with Dragon Ball Z, the greatest events to occur in the Animated series were focused around the World Tournament. The greatest fighters (and many not so great) the world has ever seen would converge on the Tournament to battle - sometimes to the death - for prize money.
And the Stadium was filled with a populace looking to witness the carnage first hand.
A World Tournament is useful as a Teaching aid for those looking to learn how to handle the basic character sheet. And because you only need to roll to hit, and factor in Strength to damage, or dexterity bonuses to armour class it means the Dungeon Master can host a large player group who use little more than their character sheet and the information they have written down. Sixteen Players can cough up their entry fee for their character (10gp). And pairing off into eight round one combat pairs, they can fight each other while other PCs watch on.
Combat and death? Normally if you reach zero hp your character is dead, and as DM you would need to decide if your tournament is a 'death match'. If you dont, once you reach zero hp you should be considered unconcious for the Tournament, though a natural 20 should always be the kind of hit that does hard damage that can kill or knocks the opponent from the tournament ring.

Tournament Etiquette

• Combatants knocked from the arena are out. Fight over.
• Unconcious combatants are at the mercy of their opponent though they may be removed from the arena with no combat roll.
• Accidentally or intentionally Killing your opponent is murder - unless its a death match in which case why are lawful PCs anywhere near this?
• Clerical healing between combat rounds is okay.

Eight victors from round one can pair off into four combat pairs and duke it out for round two. Four victors can pair off for two combat pairs in round three, and two finalists can fight it out for the 160gp prize money.
So without being a huge amount of wealth, winning a tournament should earn the player character some Experience and hard cash that can be spent on better equipment. A poor first level fighter might wind up 10gp poorer, 160gp richer, or dead.
Your players characters get an awesome origin adventure where their characters can all come together, while the players learn how to handle their character sheets.

You dont need to be delving the Dungeon Masters Guide, or Players handbook other than initially rolling up your characters. The Dungeon Master's load is reduced to storyteller rather than bookworm and dice roller.

Linguistic Archaeology: climate induced gender ratio collapse?

First off some background data:

Indigenous Australian Individual Names

DJ                              UL                          NG                           OTHER
Kadjali (m)              Tulu (f)                 Mirawong (m)       Ditzi (f)
Windjedda (m)      Bulla (m)               Dingle (m)             Manbuk (m)
Badju (m)               Bul-bul (m)           Wungala (f)*         Numeuk (m)
Djarapa (m)           Ngulwun (f)*        Ngulwun (f)*         Kunduk (m)
Mattindji (m)         Bulya (f)                Weingu (f)             Mamru (m)
Muradji (m)            Ulna (f)                                            Mamanduru (f)
Kudjerri (f)             AL                                                           Nadba (m)
                                 Jalnuk (m)                                           Kinunjun (m)
                                 Jalna (f)                                                  Dunia (m)
                                 Dalmaru (m)                                        Iramaru (m)
                                 Jamalumpowa (m)                         Kuparunni (m)
                                 Ninual (f)                                            Mardinya (f)
                                 Wungala (f)*                                         Yama (f)
                                 OL                                                            Lobor (m)
                                 No Names?                                            Maran (m)
                                 IL                                                      Minyinderri (m)
                                 Lumberlili (m)                                            Yaba (m)
                                 Billarra (m)                                               Marlu (m)
                                 Bilemu (m)                                              Bema (m)
                                 Milajun (f)                                             Kumbob (m)
                                 EL                                                             Inetina (m)
                                 No Names?                                          Gumajun (f)
                                                                                                  Ikeiginni (f)
                                                                                                   Bemini (f)
(f/m) female/male     33m, 19f
*multi-cultural

Ul, Al groups exhibit 50/50 gender balance showing long healthy period pre-18ky.
The El phonetic is tied to first human settlements (sel: settlement, pele: high place/citadel). Il is a pre settlement migration group. So its before first human settlements (18ky). Likewise podj-podj are described as size of small children so indonesian hobbits (18ky).

Conclusions: some subgroups (il phonetic-pre settlement humans, dj-podj-podj indonesian hobbit subgroup) exhibit near extinction with populations reduced to one woman and many males. Assuming same timeframe for shortage of females in pre settlement human, as with Indonesian Hobbits, approximately 18,000BCE.

If this is the result of climate change, then future climate change may result in greatly skewed population ratios between males and females leading to social collapse and a die-back of populations. So future climate change could affect birth rates for females resulting in less females. This will be pronounced in third world nations resulting in social chaos.

Updated (12/12/2018): these people are emerging from a bad ice age. There has been high parts per million dust recorded in Lake Vostok ice cores around 20ky-18ky along with temperatures as low as negative five, with very low CO2 count in lake vostok ice cores. Perhaps a bad Asteroid hit? The polar glacier ice extended across north America and up from Antarctica across the southern ocean. Sea levels are one hundred and twenty metres lower than they are at this time and in the millennia to come they rapidly rise.

Oh Shiny: NASA to look at shiny rock

For all those who thought it might be gold... No. No rush to buy seats on SpaceX Big F...ing Rocket to claim the multi-ton gold pebble in the first Interplanetary Gold Rush for Mars.

Its colour is Chromium (III) Hydroxide (with a slight red tinge from the light its reflecting).

You never know, I could be wrong.

Cartographers Guild: Iron-gate

Irongate guards the town of the same name.

Plot Hook: The Tomb of Crown Prince Otar Mkun

On a detect concealed entrances roll (of 1-2 in 6) The Player Characters stumble across a small tomb carved in the side of a hill.

1- Beyond the Stone that conceals the easily accessed entrance from the view of random travellers passing by, the tunnel, ten feet wide, ten feet high, descends twenty feet into the hill.

2- Deep within the hill, a thirty feet diameter circular chamber fifteen feet high at its ceiling's highest position. A Bronze Statue as tall as a man depicts a bare chested, unarmed man wearing a kilt and a helmet with two great horns. The statue is worth 20gp in bronze melted down. It is infact the Crown Prince Otar Mkun whose family ruled in the region five thousand years earlier. Anyone stealing the statue or desecrating the tomb attracts a Minotaur who pursues the PCs until death.


That should provide your players with a plot hook.

Short Fiction: Age of Warp - Cochrane

title: Age of Warp - Cochrane

"As you can see," Zephram Cochrane stepped over the electrical lines, making his way forward pursued by the hover-camera. "The Rockhampton still requires a considerable amount of work before she can carry colonists out to... wherever."
"But," Zephram pointed through a hatch at the warp reactor. "She has a fully operational warp reactor."
"The Dilithium crystal itself was tricky to grow," The hover-camera bumped against Zephram Cochrane's head invoking his ire. "Do you mind?"
"Where was I?" Cochrane looked past the hover-camera. "Growing dilithium crystals... Lilly!"
"Lilly!" Cochrane slipped past the view of the hover-camera momentarily before the cam returned him to centre focus, his back to the lens. "What was that thing you wanted to discuss with me earlier?"
"I wanted to talk to you about the..." The small woman noticed the hover-camera loitering behind Zephram Cochrane. "Is that a hover-cam behind your back Zeek?"
"What?" Zephram Cochrane raised an arm and looked below his arm-pit at the hover-camera he had forgotten. "Oh right... yeah... just filming a cam-tour."
"Anyway..." Zephram returned his attention to the woman who had stayed with him through the Warp program. "What was that thing?"
"I wanted to discuss that..." Lilly eyeballed the camera as it moved. "...issue of the 'Swiss' Protocol."
"The 'Swiss' Protocol?" Zephram Cochrane remembered something he had been ignoring for a decade. "ah."
"Stop Recording." Zephram Cochrane turned his attention to Lilly leaving the hover-cam floating in the air behind him. "You found one?"
"A Borg Nanomachine." Lilly held up the specimen container. "It was in my comb."
"Captain Picard killed one of the Borg right in front of me." Lilly looked at it closely. "It must have got on me then."
"It seems to have deactivated in the aftermath," Lilly considered how close she came to becoming Borg. "While attempting to assimilate my hair."
"Well then," Zephram Cochrane smiled at his unsuspecting quarry. "Lets see if we can assimilate it."
"You still have to get the Rockhampton under way." Lilly smiled and pocketed the prize. "And give the Warp five Engine speech."
"Oh god," Zephram Cochrane laughed at the idea of an engine that would take a century to grow its own warp crystal. "The little engine that could."
"Right," Cochrane nodded in acceptance "lets get the speech done and then back to the Rockhampton."


"All right Lilly," Zephram Cochrane stared at the Readout. "Activate the Nanomachine."
"N-One activated." Lilly watched the data of the microscope display the Borg Nanoprobe altering the cut of the Dilithium Crystal. "and functioning as programmed."
"Incredible." Zephram sat back, staring at the screen entranced by the Nanomachine. "Its creating in a moment what would have been impossible with any existing Dilithium Crystal fabrication systems."
"A whole other Warp Field topology in
 superposition," Zephram Cochrane looked at Lilly with a look she had not seen in his eyes since first flight. "And when its done we will have Warp Ten."
"That will certainly be faster..." Lilly contemplated a distant memory and whispered: "than I have gone Before."
"Oh yes." Zephram looked up from the microscope. "very fast."


"All right Captain Mills," Zephram Cochrane stared at the Read-out from the orbital shipyard that fed him the warp drive data for the NCC Rockhampton. "Retract moorings and ease her out of Space dock."
"Moorings..." The Moorings retracted releasing the Rockhampton to space. "...retracted."
"All right Captain," Zephram smiled. "Take her out past the breakwaters and Engage Warp Drive."
"With pleasure Doctor Cochrane." The Colony ship Rockhampton pushed away from the  spacedock at one quarter impulse and at two kilometres jumped to Warp with a single Word from its Captain: "Engage!"


"To hell with them all Lilly." Zephram Cochrane stared at the report on the Administrative news net data tablet dominated by Lilly's dead face. "God damn arse backwards murdering bastards."
"No more objections Lilly," Cochrane dropped the data tablet and pulled the warp ten crystal module and its dormant nanomachine rider from the warp crystal fabrication microscope and carried it toward the Phoenix sitting on the maglev track in the centre of the hanger. "Time for that test flight I keep putting off."
"Doctor Cochrane?" Zephram Cochrane spotted a young Henry Archer hugging an arm full of documents. "I hadnt realized you were back."
"Henry?" Zephram Cochrane pushed the gantry against the hull of the Phoenix and climbed it with his prize pausing to insert the new warp crystal before turning to look at Archer. "I'm going to put you in charge of the Warp five Engine."
"Doctor Cochrane," Henry Archer dropped a data pad in surprise and scooped it up only to realize Doctor Cochrane had slipped from his field of view to loot a crate of Rations from a shelf. "I'm honoured you would consider me."
"Don't let it get in the way of having a life Henry," He had just condemned Henry Archer to die in a desk job waiting for a warp five dilithium crystal to grow. "God forbid there wont be an Archer at its launch."
"What about you?" Henry hadnt considered children or the Departure of Doctor Cochrane from the Project. "What are you going to do?"
"Right now I'm going to take Lilly out for a flight." Cochrane pushed open the hatch and piled millitary rations into the small storage locker of the Phoenix keeping a bottle of Bourbon at hand. "Time to go Lilly."
"Lilly?" Henry Archer sorted through the files sure one mentioned she had been shot dead by in a barfight started when Green accused Cochrane of selling out Earth to the Aliens. "Sir?"
"I christen thee..." Zephram Cochrane gulped the Bourbon and with an angry and rage filled swing, shattered it across the Titanium cockpit of the Phoenix. "the Lilly."