Facere Mortis of the White Sea

With level 50 and the title of Death Wind accomplished I have no real need to persist with a solo sojourn through the world of Cybermancy. Although I may yet attempt to raise the required funds to unlock the final research topic "Streumonic Complementarity". Possibly next time I pick up this game Anoiki the OCD Healer will step forward in jolly Co-op. But for the interim its time for another serious look at CKII.

And thus I have arrived, by the Metastrumontic Force I have survived within this blade, by the grip of Facere Mortis and zhiznmau I have possessed Arne. Now he shall be know as Arne av Necrocybermancy and I shall spread my grip on this world. First though I must start small, through guile I’ll supplicate King Harald Hardråde of Norway.

Ah yes nicely done, now Arne is the Count of the Koala Shire and my funds and followers are sure to grow. A comely wench from Rannveig has taken notice of me, her skill at intrigue is nothing to be scoffed at. So I have made sure that Arne falls in love with her. His heritage will be useless without children, I must also see about increasing the size of his court, by whatever means children must be available to me.

With a somewhat stabilised powerbase I believe it is time to think about expanding, though not to much or too quickly. Lest I be found out by the local authorities. The Duchy of Karelen is the De Jure ruler of Koala Country, which should be sufficient for now, and since ally the other country leaders are simple tribesmen nobody will complain if I get a little hostile. The Casus Belli of Catholicism suits me well at this time. And the lakes of Käkisalmi have piqued my interest. From there Arne should be able to work back towards his capitol.

Unfortunately though the strength of my steel was never questioned the arm that wielded me faltered in the first battle. With out the Agnatic-Cognatic Gavelkind succession laws I would have been in a very sticky pickle, fortunately a single female hair remains, my Alpha Female.
Now I need to put myself into the hands of a vassal, but he was an accountant and had no use for Facere Mortis and thus sixteen years I slumber on the wall of the armoury before I am once again able to swing on the hips of power and guide the progress of nations.

Fortunately it was easy to find a matrilineal match, but even better than that my hosts house is filling with children, sweet pliable children. Since the Demesne I have control over now only consists of Koala shire I’ll probably have to take a more peaceful approach to land acquisition. At least until I can foot a reasonable army. Pity, in the old days with my bear killer and a few Invocations of werewolves I’d have been able to decimate an army by myself. With this setback it may be in the third generation that I proceed past the first step of my Brainwashing campaign. That generation should have enough siblings with which to forge some good alliances, though I’m not sure how thick their blood will be.

These Soumenusko tribal villages are constrained by their chaotic-antisocial belief system. They are like children who cannot tell the difference betwix fact and fiction. But I am patient, meek and empathic so this is acceptable for now. After all it is well known that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Gradually my family will grow, once I gain some vassals to influence I should be once again able to subvert the powers that be in the Duchy of Karelen. Then I should finally be able to move onto phase two.

Foistering Institutilisation onto my vassals may require an influx of intriguing courtesans. This should enable governance by a stable technocracy, mainly focused on intrigue. If this goes particularly well my hosts wife will always be his most qualified Spymaster. I will also require a temple of Anoiki with which to seed the papacy with Zhiznmaijitsu. In order to use the solid foundation that Catholicism seems to maintain, I may need to seed influence over its holy sites; Koln, Santiago, Rome & Jerusalem. It may take a few more generations to form appropriate habits amongst my followers, they must believe that my sociopolitical structure is the only valid possibility.

The third stage of my Necrocybermantic brainwashing will be the most dangerous, requiring total Scepticism amongst my followers. Here I will have to be cautious of who I possess next, for a small mistake may see my culture fracture, with the mindless masses of the institutionalised rebelling against all independent thought. If but one person can discard the repetition of tradition and see the true value of old habits This is when Technomancy will be reborn and the great Sojourn can begin anew.

For the final stage, creation of Communal Mysticism. I should no-longer have any followers; once my brain washing is complete the true believers will have realised the limits of logic and come to accept that the mysteries of life are many and paradoxical. Rather than blindly following my guidance or rebelling against my guile. I should have comrades that I can rely upon and look to with respect and equality. They will be able to see through the candles and hymns of tradition but still find value in them. Thus I will be able to transcend this mortal coil and my essence will be free of these Facere Mortis. My hope is that the Saints of Anoiki will be able to thus turn the tide of the church and that independent arms of the House Av Necrocybermancy will persist across the world, driving intrigue and secretly advancing the dark arts of  Metastrumontic Zhiznmaijitsu.

Bright Souls: Broken again

Another exerpt from the discarded diary of Anoiki the Axe:

I suppose being Shredder still fits my personality. Especially since I haven’t yet invested in more vitality. Armour is the only way to get more amorous. I still haven’t found a way to heal up other than consuming my humanity and quaffing esters. Surely there is somewhere to find somebody to teach me somehow to reactivate my trollish regeneration.


But no, wait this is cool

I’m a flaming shinigami zombie pussycat princess, emerging from a waterfall, but don’t worry, I’m here to heal. Flames didnt show up in pic :(

Wowsers I’m squishy like this though. And though pretty cool I must say the sword was more effective, I’d almost also praise its ranged attack (which you can shoot up trees) but the double-dodge, roll & stab seems to have the same range. Though I’m not a 100% effective type of person and being bloodied by 30% bleeding blades is a bit more becoming (be even better if I found a nice bikini). But you can’t always have your cake and eat it too, sometimes I find that the cake is a lie. Marzipan incidentally is an interestingly named icing, and I like it, soft and gooey. But it always seems to be covered with that really hard icing that’s got eggs in it.


Plans for future:
For cleaver 16str
Ring of the evil eye from near the basilisks in the depths before the gaping dragon
Miracle of regeneration in tomb of the giants. (or bountiful sunlight as an AOE)
Reah of thorn land sells replenishment. But then I need a dirty handkerchief. But she was absent…
May need to join the princess clan to use the other miracle.
 
Unfortunately I’d put this on hold awaiting Nicole so that we could have 3 player Co-op
But this never eventuated, and last night me and josh attempted to have another go but we both now crash on startup. Possibly something to do with the reduction in services of the GFWL system? But a search on the Nexus and Steam community page indicates that some people are still actively playing successfully. There is also a lot more fun to still be had here too.

I've done it, I've got E.Y.E

Based off the suggestion of the prior playthrough to fulfill my face I nolonger trusted my boss, Rimanah.
Oh and Spoilers..





At the first opportunity I betrayed him and joined the Federal Officers, They were all ninja and hidden in a giant empty flying saucer. So with an extremely complicated plot I helped Cyrus plant probes to keep an eye of the Secreta Council.

But then I got the Substitution gate from Bastian Balthazar Bux, who is now a cool space pirate. He made me want to be more ninja, so to quote Kakashi "Ninjas must look underneath the underneath"

 I went back ant told on Cyrus to my mentor who thus asked me to prove my allegiance, through murder. Thus I turned him into a werewolf.

Then I met this old dude who confused me some more, maybe Rimanah hasn't re-written my memories and maybe he is a good guy after all? Apparently the three of us were once the pinnacle of productivity for the Secreta...

Once I met my mentor again he was... different. Maybe different like Rimanah. This is so ninja, its just like with Itachi, I don't know whether he is a bad guy pretending to be a good guy pretending to be bad or if he really is a good guy underneath all his ninja. Maybe Itachi is dead, maybe he isn't, maybe he is un-undead? or he just faked his death in order to hide away?
Blarg, too much head hurty. I'll try out my new gate instead.

 WOW, using a gate for the first time was scary, and totally not what I was expecting.

and here after about the twelfth time I got a pic of turning somebody (a master) into a werewolf (almost).

A short movember

What's the style for this year?
Don't know it still isn't clear.
I'll decide based on donations.
It'll be worn without reservations.
You've got to donate decisively.
Won't be coloured, but then... we'll see.
mobro.co/Raskalnickoff


Also I want to do a big blog post, in the form of a short story. But I need extra motivation lest I bail halfway. So I have challenged Riverbank (who has abondoned his blog) to a duel. He has three three thousand word assignments due by November ?th (I need to check this) Thus I must have a comparable volume of words published in the same week at at least a final draft stage.

The 1000 words behind the picture

 Story behind the picture. Basically Sam likes drawing and keeps drawing so he gets better at it and this is an example of Sam’s art. The inspiration came from a few Sojourns playing E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy, which is a cyberpunk RPG with 32 player co-op campaign. I had built for agility; I can’t remember the name of that character. But I found that using the dual pistols and duel katanas also let you have on of each and if you hold sprint while attacking then my sword became a whirlwind of steel. Thus I spent most of the combat sprinting at the closes enemy and if I didn’t die on the way then I’d decapitate them. Occasionally a ranged attack was required or I’d have no energy left and that is when I’d resort to guns, (after all it’s a FPS too).

In addition to that in real life I’d generally always play while wearing the vest of a berserker, thus the brown mark on my chest.

Further into the game Sam was the first to unlock the Bearkiller444. An impressive sidearm that fit in well with my playstyle. It essentially functions as a sniper rifle. Thus I had no mid-range attacks, but good speed to either get back and stealth + snipe or be a real berserker and charge, chaotically waving my sword about.

Recently I was looking at the rare achievements I have in steam and decided to get a representation from E.Y.E, I’ve also bought several copies of this game to support the devs. But then I found I’ve lost all my saves. So since I was starting with a clean slate I decided to aim for the DeathWind achievement and be exactly the avatar that Sam depicted.

This play though I haven’t had anybody to Co-op with as yet so I didn’t mind going all out for the speed stat. No worries about getting isolated from my squad mates, or of getting left behind and not seeing any action at all. As soon as I could I got the upgrade to go camo. Later I levelled up the skills required for the Bearkiller and decided to try out one of the Psi skills, Invocation [LINK]. I’ve avoided all the actual Cybermancy upgrades, preferring instead to spend my cash on researching regeneration to avoid permanent malus [LINK] and gradually heading towards the Necrocybermancy achievement. After that the stats I like are Medicine for the medpack, Strength to reduce speed Malus, Endurance to stay invisible longer.

My view above and stats below, I'd need somebody else to take a screenshot to parallell the top pic.

Yesterday I completed the first playthrough (again), blindly following the commands of Rimanah. But now I’m doubtful and think my mentor sounds a whole lot more honest, though he is very secretive. But that may be because he is following the Secreta directly?

Following on, as these things tend to, I’ve been inspired by VRbones’s guide [LINK] to have another look at CKII. I’m pretty sure I can setup myself in the Kola Sami with the last name “av Necrocybermancy” if I can convert it first to Catholic. My plan then would be to change my culture to Russian or Malkavian and breed up a secret society through lust and intrigue. Similar to how my last playthrough ended up. It would be nice if I can rename a De Jure to Raskalnickoff as well. I hope I don’t lose in the first generation (again). Probably once again most of the potential wives with Intrigue will be Turkish, so it may be challenging to breed both Malkavian & spies.
I like to start in Kola because I keep reading it as Koala Shire, and Skrælings start too far east to be on this map, and the Norse don’t seem to exist in vanilla at all. I don’t know how helpful it will be to send closely related [image of blood] courtesans to run the ….. of other courts. But it may make plotting fun, my rivals would be the Spanish Inquisition and the Illuminati I suppose? Also to follow on from E.Y.E I believe I should send my wife to spy on one of the baronies north of Rome to steal all their smarts. Strangely enough living in another country causes no problems with producing legitimate hairs.

OK, that was way harder than when I tested it yesterday. I renamed a few places but my only choices were "of Anoiki" from a temple "of Zombies" from the same country and "av Vampires" from the Norwigian King's castle. I really wanted a "House of Necrocybermancers" to tie in with eye, but I'd run out of funds...


Unfortunately in CKII you can only research strategy & technology, whereas in E.Y.E I could also research magic, archaeology & psychology while it’s technically a FPS. Hrm I suppose Fable3 has a similar mix of disciplines [LINK] but Cybermancy has a way better story, especially the mission on the abandoned space station. Also the way Cybermancy deals with a lack of permadeath is a lot more satisfying than the somewhat comparable “immortality” of Fable.

The other valid possibility for making CKII more interesting would be to bring back Anoiki the Axe of Bikini Paradise from the world of Dark Souls [LINK]. Since Nicole seems no longer able to join us and Anoiki has successfully conquered the country of Colander [LINK]. But then I wouldn’t really have anything to build on other than the name itself. Although I do recall that Anoiki started off in the land of ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow. Maybe I'll try to make Anoiki the Axe the Pope of Healing?

I also have to begrudgingly admit that this winter many a time I was found to Sojourn whilst wearing clothing on my upper body. Seems I’m less insulated than I used to be, or possibly more acclimatised. Also its not easy to exclusively work on my agility. Gymnastics has been somewhat helpful but it seems to obtain the next level and begin learning some new skills I first need the strength to hold my own weight, preferably upside down. I kind of need one of Kenichi’s torture devices [LINK] to gain the physical ability I now know I require. If I had the strength to hold half my weight I could show off my flexibility with a back arch or bridge [LINK]; If I could do ten pull ups then I’d probably be able to show of my balance by walking like Might Guy [LINK] If I could do both of those then I would probably have the confidence to complete a backflip, and with that level of skill I could finally follow Azo’s guide [LINK] on how to do a wallflip. Then I could brag about being agile.

Hydrophobia: Bites the dust?

Unfortunately Dark Energy Digital the makers of hydrophobia have gone bankrupt. I was looking forward to its sequels. It seems that a good game with novel water physics wasn’t enough to keep them afloat. Probably they would have benefited from some marketing. I for one didn’t buy the game because I thought it would be good, in fact I didn’t have high expectations at all and only bought it because it was on sale and I have a thing about H2O.
But then its almost exactly the sort of game I like, nice story interesting places, tricky (new) puzzles. But what I really liked was the water physics, I haven’t even been able to come close to replicating water to this quality in Pov-Ray. Another good point was helpful devs, there were more active than most dev groups I have seen and defiantly changed the game for the better after a bit of community involvement.

Though the point I set out to make was that indigamer startups often don’t work, regardless of how much they deserve it. Minecraft and Psychonauts are exceptions. Making your own game isn’t all profits, playtesting, steak and gravy. Mostly it seems to be years of packet noodles and hunting colons with a lot of bravado and talk.

Anoikis's Warband 9: Finally the day has come

Well it's been sach a long time I think I've lost some of my diary but here goes...

I’ve lost a few castles now, the Nord Lords are putting up much more of a fight than the Vague vassals were. I may need to cut my losses while I am ahead. I wonder if they will accept peace with me? That would be nice then I could possibly even make them an ally.
Also I’d forgotten to return to my Court in RiverCreek, there were another 5 blokes waiting to swear allegiance to me. Two of them though seem to be spreading disunity amongst the ranks. When I finish with my current offensive I probably should sort that out.
Another thing on my to do list is to chose a reliable persuasive companion to look after the affairs of state. I’ll probably give them a town & Castle to fund their endeavours.

Art was the man for the job he was building castles now he will be building an empire. Although, lots of things seemed to happen when I gave him the job, so many so that I’m not sure of the repercussions yet. Including peace with the Nords, though none of the Nord Nobles are too fond of me at least the will nolonger attack me.

This has dragged on too long now I really need to aggressively push through to the end. Pretty sure I can take anybody atm but don’t want them to build large armies. If I can attack faster than they can retaliate and take castles quicker than them then I should be fine.
While being present in the battles certainly helps with morale and practically everybody survives the quicker way is to just let the minions have at each other. But then half of them deem to die.

So the sand people no longer have a place to call home, but there are still enough small bands of them running about that they may be able to pull of another siege. With that I went over to the other side of the world to investigate the green rednecks. Their homes were easy enough to overrun but neither they nor the sand people have been willing to admit defeat. Now only the Blue Nerds remain with a home and they won’t acknowledge me as a rightful queen. But I better not declare war on them just yet.


I think I suppressed the green rednecks for a whole week, and thus they surrendered. Unfortunately while I was doing that the sand people have captured a town in one corner of the map and a castle in the opposite. So it may take me a while to eliminate both fortresses and make sure they don’t retake the one while I am besieging the second. Though, I am quietly confident now that I can achieve total victory, soonish, probably.


...
And again I have a few missing pages.
…

Nope not remotely soonish. By my estimation in ~150 days I had conquered most of the world. Then maybe 50 days of chasing the sand people from one side of the world to the other, they only had a couple of free bands but every week they seemed to manage to take a castle back from one of my vassals. And yes that leaves about four months trying to find the last 20 or so homeless nerdish nobles so that I can soundly beat them in battle.

It turns out that there is a bug involved here. The rate at which the last few nobles escape from my prisons is greater than the rate at which they reappear on the map. And if it takes a week for them to start acting then for that week they will never surrender. And for the past 4 months there has been at least one nerd free and holed up in some bandit camp preventing my complete conquest. But now that I know what the problem is a solution is easy to find, bring out the TweakMB and let us see what we can do.

Finally the day has come. I think I would have been more satisfied with gaining Girl Power but this is slightly rarer.

Frog had fun

kk so I’ve poked around Kanto a little and I really should let josh catch up. The next challenge will be to beat Ash Ketchum and he will be ~level75. Apparently the best place to train is the elite four. But my team still struggles with the psychic Bill. I think Kowai-Sama’s Ice Beam will be neatly paired to Lance’s Dragons now. The other three were of no consequence last time. But to preserve my party’s PP I’ll need Anoiki Axe, Flash   Cut and the poor old Transportation to prevail against psychics.

Though I really should wait for Josh to catchup….

Incidentally seems there are rumours that the new Pokémon X and Y will have a new type, the Fey to combat Dragons. And the starter pokemon will be pure elementals, not paired with a fighting, poison subtype or anything. The super pokemon in Y is a flying ghost. I wonder if there will be an Ice/Fire combination?

And with this Frog is well and truely finished with a short foray into the past of the Pokeworld. To recap:

#1 frogs-foray-into-frogless-world
#2 frog-fights-feind-and-finds-friend
#3 frogs-toung-twisted
#4 frogs-shinys
#6 frog-not-very-happy-with-hms
#7 frog-used-struggle-it-wasnt-verry
#8 frog-discovers-teamwork

All in all Frog had fun.