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Beach Escapade: Part II
We continue our adventures in Orange Beach, AL with a beautiful sunny day! It more than made up for the rainy afternoon that we had:

* Mouse over the pictures for captions
(Read more at your own risk)Keywords: alya,rafiq,travel,vacation
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Irfan Meets a River
On the way back from Pasir Man, Irfan met a river. It was raging force of nature filled with teh tarik after a sustained rainfall in the mountains. We just came from over the mountain.

This is no pond and there's no melody coming from it.
(Read more at your own risk)Keywords: balik_kampung,irfan
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Steve the Aboleth

This is Steve the Aboleth.
That is all.
Keywords: artwork
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Rafe's 16 Month Birthday
After another fast-paced month, Adik is now 16 months old. He seems to have grown so quickly - when I look back at pictures of him as a newborn I can hardly believe it is the same baby as he is becoming more and more of a person in his own right. We saw that with Yaya, and continue to see it with her, and now we are seeing it with Adik and this is definitely the greatest gift anyone can ever receive - the opportunity to watch our children grow and become their own little persons.
Especially when they are as funny as our Adik is getting to be!

* Mouse over the pictures for captions
(Read more at your own risk)Keywords: alya,around_the_house,birthday,rafiq
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Beach Escapade: Part I
So we went to the beach in April! We went to Orange Beach, AL. Neither Vin nor I'd ever been (not just to Orange Beach but to Alabama in general) so this was a first. We had an amazing time!

Oh Adik! Why didn't you look up? Anyway, I had been planning a short entry with a few pictures of our fabulous time in Orange Beach, but I ended up with way too many photos and a chronic inability to edit it anymore. I think we must refrain from taking so many pictures next time. Some of them actually turn out quite nice.
* Mouse over pictures for captions
(Read more at your own risk)Keywords: alya,rafiq,travel,vacation
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Paper Minis: Edge of the Empire Beginner Game
So, since Star Wars Edge of the Empire role playing game core rulebook will be delayed another couple of months, many early adopters of the game will still be using the Beta rulebook and the Beginner Game boxed set to run their adventures. As previously stated, the boxed set has four pregenerated character folios and two free for download character folios from the Fantasy Flight Games website.
Download the paper miniature characters for the four from the Beginner Game (41-VEX, Lowhhrick, Oskara and Pash) and the two from the website (Mathus and Sasha) at the link below. Click on the thumbnail of Mathus the technician and Oskara the bounty hunter on the right to view the full pdf sheet.
You can use them If you're running the Beginner Game and/or using the downloadable folios for any adventure and/or just looking for general Star Wars paper minis for your own use in any system of Star Wars RPG, be it EotE, D6, Saga, d20, Savage Worlds, FATE, Risus, ORE or whichever floats your boat or flips your ship.
Download and assemble the bases used in the photo below from the One Monk Miniatures website.
Download the zipped pdf here (380 kb).

Keywords: edge_of_the_empire,paper_minis,rpg,star_wars
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57 Months
The countdown is on to Yaya's fifth birthday! 3 more months! Time passes so quickly - I can't believe how big Yaya has gotten. Where did my little newborn baby go? ![]()

* Mouse over the photos for captions
(Read more at your own risk)Keywords: alya,around_the_house,birthday,family_outings,rafiq
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GOKL Escapes The Insurmountable Ned
Earlier today I ran Star Wars Edge of the Empire for GOKL for the second time, using the Beginner Game truncated rules and extra stuff found on the internet.
Everyone was given 10 XPs from the previous session with an option to advance their characters. Qillian Ryn the Trianii and Darter Kel the Zeltron advanced their characters. 41-VEX the manumitted colonist droid saved his XPs for later.

NPC stats and GM notes and stuff
A Brief Prologue
A brief prologue was run to account for the absence players of Lowhhrick, Oskara and Nora. The commandeered Corellian YT-1300 light freighter Krayt Fang landed on a small oceanside shadowport on Rodia. Actually before landing, they kicked the ousted slaver captain Trex out into the humid Rodian swamps a hundred klicks from nowhere. An outlaw tech would be able to install a new BoSS transponder on their ship, but only for 10,000 credits as times are tough. Seeing that the crew did not have the money, the outlaw tech suggested they look for work at the Ithorian herdship that just made orbit recently.
Landing Bay 1138
This particular Ithorian herdship, named Green Fields, was an interstellar starship that was disc 5 klicks in diameter and had a giant transparisteel canopy 4/5th of the diameter that has a living jungle and ocean biomes.There was a central island that formed a mountain 400 meters tall. This type of herdship travelled from system to system and opened their doors to locals as tourists, encouranging them to visit their biomes, to stay in their hotels, to go on safaris and to generally spend a lot of money there.
Krayt Fang was berthed at Landing Bay 1138 at the rim of the Green Fields. Darter, 41-VEX and Qillian went out into the bustling landing bay which was able to support two medium ships and eight light ships such as their own. There were technicians, deck officers, tourist groups heading to or from their ships, load lifter droids, security droids, hustlers, businessmen, entrepreneurs and wanderers. Thanks to some fast talking Darter found a terminal that listed immediate job ads. Most did not pay well, but one ad from Captain Beru Highbringer paid 4000 credits per successful applicant. The job: crew of a Corellian YV-664 converted freighter - now a tour ship - that brought tourists offship to visit gorgeous astronomical sights of the region.
Landing Bay 1142
There were three Lambda-class Imperial shuttles berthed in Landing Bay 1142. Worried, Darter asked around about them. An Ithorian deck officer told them not to worry. Imperials were always boarding the herdship wherever they stopped; always looking for rebels - especially when there were so many outsiders aboard the ship. So far they had never found any.
The trio met with Captain Highbringer at the cantina at Landing Bay 1142. She was a grizzled spacer, as grizzled as a 28 year old human female with long, wavy blond locks could be. It disturbed them that she kept disrupting Darter's spirited pitch to her by whispering to the old force pike by her side as if it was alive. It was even more disturbing when she hired them and paid them half in advance when it seemed that the force pike allowed her to.
Before leaving they noticed four humans in casual tourist garb slipping into the cantina, a woman and three men. They were all clearly on edge, as if on the run from pursuers. The group decided not to interact with them.
They returned to the Krayt Fang to pick up their gear as well as extra space suits. (Yes, even VEX grabbed a space suit for arcane reasons.) They had a light lunch with Nora, Oskara and Lowhhrick before returning to Landing Bay 1142.

The group's initial pool of 4 Destiny Points among 3 PCs
(Read more at your own risk)
Keywords: edge_of_the_empire,gokl,rpg,rpg_actual_play,star_wars
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Cover for Five's The End

Here is another cover commissioned by Ebb and Folks. Five's The End is a novella by David Leyman that completes the trilogy that begins with Three's Company and continues with Four of a Kind (the second artwork in this post). The style of digital inks and colours (instead of a painterly look) of the cover for all three novellas is an editorial decision.
Keywords: artwork,book_cover,ebb_and_folks
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Additional Tugboats Card Art
Recently, I was asked by The Sages of RPG to draw three more cards for their fun card game Tugboats. The game is still in beta and it was played during last year's PAX East.

Pirate Attack

Frankentug
For past work on this project check out the blog post on tugboats and cargo ships.
Keywords: artwork,card_game,sages_of_rpg
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Darkness Falls
Power outages used to be part of normal, everyday life back when we were growing up in Sitiawan. Not that there were blackouts every night, but perhaps once or twice a month (although my memory on the matter might be imprecise). The point was that we were prepared for total darkness when the power went out and it happened often enough to have the experience be a lasting memory.

It almost never blacks out at the Tenth Floor, but last night most of this sector of town fell into darkness. Power outages are a rare event here. Over the many years we have lived here, there might have been less than five power outages that happened at night.
Candles had to be lit. Irfan had a good time studying the candle and its flame.
(Read more at your own risk)Keywords: around_the_house,irfan,power_outage
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EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MI-NATE!

I chased Irfan down two aisles at the supermarket with a toilet plunger saying. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
I was sad that the egg beaters weren't close by.
Keywords: doctor_who,funny,irfan