Dungeon Mastery: Rats Castle Adventure module 1-15

Feel free to trim the screen shots. the second half next time.

Stellar Cartography: Alpha Centauri A&B

 NASA needs better camera budgets because this was a horrible image..

 Anyway I did stuff to it with Android Gallery App, and overlayed four varying contrast images at 75% transparency to get this. It stripped the bright halo.

 As you can see the Alpha Centauri A&B are there...much of the brightness seems to be particles impacting on the Oort.

All that was left was this. The bright looks like two objects in the Alpha Centauri B system, or given the size of the big dark sphere to the right, Something in the Oort Cloud orbiting a dark planet.

So maybe Planet X is still between us and the Alpha Centauri System.

Anyway... enjoy.

Old School: Weapon Mastery

If you had the D&D Masters Boxed Set and/or D&D Rules Cyclopedia and wondered about the Rules on Weapon Mastery, you might be surprised that their early form appears in the August 1976 issue of the Dragon as an initial idea that allows your character to progress from a basic proficiency to expert in an assortment of Weapons (including some exotics that dont make the Rules Cyclopedia).
Its fully developed form appearing nine years later in 1985 in the D&D Black Box one year short of the expiry of 'abandoned' intelectual property rights held by the Author of the Article.

Weapons You might Enjoy
Some weapons such as the 'Dwarf Hammer' and the Morning Star don't progress in power, as the wielder increases in weapon proficiency which is a pity.

The Two handed Sword requires a minimum Strength of 16 and Dexterity of 9 just to use, while the Two handed Battle Axe can be used single handed with the same stats (Str 16, Dex 9). Thats right...Your Conan can wield a battleaxe in each hand once he achieves two weapon proficiency, inflicting 1d12 damage with expert skill (skipping right over 1d10 from 1d8).

Linguistic Archaeology: Zeus is on the Phaistos Disc

I just spotted the name Zeus on the phaistos Disc. The snake (or horn) paired with an eagle is infact 'horse'. 'Horse-eagle' as Ek-(eu-gal). Alexeus: Al-ek-eus or Ale Zeus becomes Ek-eu-sal/Ek-eu-gal which is volcae meaning 'Horse-Eagle' or 'horse-eagle cry-powerful'. 

Some background: eu-a-eu-gal is volcae for (and the origin of) the word 'eagle'. This 'horse-eagle' pairing exists on one side of the phaistos disc. This is Zeus in the form: 'Ale-Zeus' or 'eZeusal' in Volcae (It might also be the name Ezekiel). 

One discovery parts the mists obscuring another.

Dark Sciences: What if all Quarks are the same Quark?

The proton/neutron model is an up/down quark-pair and one down/up quark. If the particle rotates on its centre it creates a long field projection and a short field projection. Both are interacting with the electron layer as the nucleus. 

If that quark nucleus triangle rotates approaching light speed the short and long field projections compress in 'wavelength?' Until the long field projection becomes a short field projection, and the short field projection becomes a two dimensional field projection. 

The nucleus alters in its effect on the electron shell but also the quark-pair are now behaving like a single quark-opposite. And the original single quark-opposite is now behaving like a new quark-exotic. 

However what if the quark pair merged at light speed 'becoming' a kind of single quark-opposite, and the  single quark-opposite became a new kind of quark that creates a two dimensional projection?

We have diverse quark types. What if the reason we have diverse quark types is some are travelling at light speed, or multiple harmonics of light speed already so they are in fact all the same quark-opposite and simply look different?

This is of course only one quark-series derived from the rotation of say up-quark-single/down-quark-pair. There is the other nuclear particle derived from down-quark-single/up-quark-pair and the exotic transforms of that group dynamic achieving ftl rotation and any harmonic relatives.

Dungeon Mastery: The Implications of Indigenous Languages

The Indigenous Australians continue to provide a jumble of Ideas.

Uluru (Ayers Rock) despite its protoindoeuropean offerings in Ul-ruk (to howl-rough) implying a dust storm also does something interesting if you adjust for the volcae celtic inversion that such ancient celtic words undergo when they reach Asia. We can consider Ul-uru to be related to Uru-ul. Why is is this significant? Because Uruul means 'warm lips' in Khalkha Mongolian (See The Linguistics of Temperature). For Mongolian, a temperature word is considered 'rare'. The prospect that Uluru is 'named' for the Mongolian word implies Mongolians made it to central Australia at a time when the word is in an inverted form. The alternative is that Indigenous Civilization was in an Expansion cycle and Australians from Central Australia invaded Mongolia.
Kha-khal is a village in India and in the Pashto language it means 'To pull out'.

Mongolians were quite wide spread at their height. Dominating China, they might have invaded by ship, deploying the horde to Australia. "Conquer All!" declared the Khan, so we took to the sea and found a great southern land known only in Imperial Chinese Records.

The alternatives are possible:

"We saw smoke from across the water to the north, and smoke comes from the burning of plants so we took canoes and many warriors went across the sea to get wives...some never to return." Indigenous Australian Warriors were known for great feats. Rowing across Sea following the Islands of Indonesia north to kidnap wives might be considered an option. Seems a long way to go to look for a pretty girl who isnt your Sister.

"We take our red ochre people south from Mongolia and China. The winter has turned into an Ice Age so we go south as far as we can to get warm." And they migrate down a land bridge passing many mountainous regions discovering a familiar environmental type covering the centre of a southern land teeming with giant monsters.

Uluru is territory of the pitjanjatjara clan. Pit (spit nitu is ukrainian meaning 'to sweat') jan (yan is mongolian meaning 'thats it')- jat (the Jat people migrated to mongolia from south east asia though they seem to have originated in the Ukraine though gatt is swedish for 'gut' or 'narrow inlet') - jara (Mongolian meaning 'to split open'). Pitjanjatjara is likely refering to giving birth in the Jat language: 'To Sweat-thats it-gut/vagina- to split open'.

The Alawa clan have undergone a similar asiatic inversion in their clan name. Awa-al means 'imagination' in Somali. Awal is indonesian for Early, or beginning. Its possible the Somali origin is relevant.
The Nalakan clan is an inversion of Akannal (an ancient port located on the African Coast on the Red Sea described in The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea). The O'Connell Clan apparently related to everyone with wide travel east and west. Two clans from north east Africa at around the same time. If Al-* is an indicator of the time (two thousand years ago) and location (north east africa) then there are others similarly related.
The Gaj-Alivia clan despite being a merger gives us Gaj which is associated with numerous 'eastern european' locations from Poland and Slovenia down to Bosnia and Serbia; and secondly 'Alivia' which I associate with Olive, but inverts to *-Iviaal which is a proto-norse word from the Late Roman Iron Age. Again a similar time period with people pushed from their lands by Roman Expansion. A proto-Norse/Volcae clan group.

The Alyawara clan would be Yawara-al. The Yawara is a Japanese Weapon used in fighting. The short stick is used to fight hand to hand (an old word for jujitsu).

Dungeons Downunder: The Australian Experience

The Australian Experience has its own loves...

"You are standing among the ruins of an old castle, looking at a flight of steps leading down into the darkness. You wear place mail and have your sword ready. With you are a dwarf, a hobbit with a cross-bow and a green-robed wizard.

You offer prayers to the Lawful Gods, the wizard lights a torch and you lead down the steps. You are in a stone-hewn corridor about five feet wide and eight feet high. You go down about fifty feet and to each side you see a heavy wood door bound with iron bands. The hobbit can't pick the lock, so after a brief consultation you and the dwarf run at the door. It opens, inside are fine rough man-like creatures, but shorter with thick hairy skin: goblins. You have the advantage of surprise, and you start laying into the nearest ones with your sword, and the dwarf with his axe. The hobbit fires off a couple of bolts at the furthest goblin, then starts in with his sword when it comes over to complain. You kill your goblin, the hobbit is doing well but the other three have the dwarf surrounded and he's looking bad. So the wizard raises his hand and writes in the air while reciting: 

THANAT. 

A green glow jumps from his hand to the nearest goblin, which shrieks as if burning, and dies. You kill the rest: five dead goblins, The wizard adds to the map he's been drawing. You search their bodies. Nothing. The room is full of junk, bones, rag. You start rummaging and find a sack: a hundred gold pieces, a fortune for a farm labourer. You split it up and put it in your back packs and are on the point of leaving when the wizard finds a small knob on the wall. Standing to one side he flicks it up; two poisoned darts spring out just missing his hand, and a panel falls open. Inside is an old moldering scroll of parchment and a sword. You take it, it has strange lines along the side and has a magical feel to it. 

The magician casts a spell to read the forgotten language on the scroll then suddenly feels com pelled to follow its directions to the lost armour of a long dead king. The scroll was cursed, but if you survive the armour might be useful. And so back to the nearby village to wait for the dwarf to recover before satisfying the scroll guest. And so on."

-Game Review: Dungeons & Dragons by Martin Ellison, Woroni, Canberra, March 15, 1977 

'GM: 'Walking through the Woods of Quendor, you are in search of the largest tree in the forest, as you have heard that its roots once led to caverns of riches tunnelled by Ground Goblins. You approach a very large, and very dead tree. Its trunk appears to be hollow. Judging by the stories you have heard, you believe you have reached your destination.'

MAGIC-USER: "We climb the tree and look down the trunk with a lantern.' 

GM: 'You climb 15ft and can see that the hollow tree leads down below ground level to about 20ft below the surface.' 

MAGIC-USER: 'We all climb down to the bottom.' 

GM: 'You find yourselves in a circular room 15ft in diameter .with a 5ft wide passage leading off to the north '

MAGIC-USER: 'We look down the passage.' 

GM: 'It extends for 50ft and then turns to the right. You can see a crossroads of some sort 30ft away.' 

MAGIC-USER: 'We proceed to the crossroads and look left and right.' And so it goes on... Later the party burst a door open and are horrified to find a Gorgon inside.! They beat a hasty retreat! 

 

The GM throws the dice and an encounter takes place - unluckily for them - in which the dwarf who charged the door is turned to stone and must be abandoned. However, the rest escape unhurt. Trying the east door, they surprise a party of 10 Goblins. The Magic-User sends them all to sleep and is awarded 250 Experience Points. 

The Fighter slits their throats...

They search and find a chest containing 1500 Gold Pieces, 1000 Silver Pieces, a Potion and a Scroll. They are rich beyond their wildest dreams! But they are also lost in the dungeons of the Ground Goblins.'

- Dungeon & Dragons for Me! Tharunka, Kensington, NSW  May 23, 1978

There is the relevant bits of a bunch of Adds selling dungeons & Dragons to the Aussie Gamer. Tharunka and Woroni are University Campus Magazines. If you are searching for a deeper relevance to how they think the game is played you can investigate the full adds/reviews here:

• Woroni
• Tharunka