76 Months
76 months of Yaya!
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Eclipse Phase: The Viking Funeral Undertaking
Static. A disjoint in time, and perhaps space. Venus is a thread in another wisp of memory.
I see red and grey skies over the maglev as it speeds toward the city of Ashoka through the dry, rocky Martian desert. I used to be Hokusai the neo-octopus artist, on the run from Nine Lives the soul stealing crime cartel. Now I walk on two legs in a ghost morph, in a physical body optimised for stealth operations. With me is the female async Quill, her telepathic mind percolating with a thousand paper cranes.
Back in Valles-New Shanghai, we are the only two members of Fastball Express hypercorp who answer the VR call from one Mr. Miyazaki. He gives us the time and invitation for an upcoming Zanzibar marketplace that would occur in 30 hours in Ashoka. There a neo-gorilla named Winston will be attempting to sell something valuable and rare: a handheld controller for a Pandora Gate.
My cover is Shankar, a game hunter. Quill is Devi. As soon as we disembark, Shankar and Devi blend into the Ashoka afternoon crowd.
Clearwater Beach - October 2014
We spent a short weekend at Clearwater Beach in mid-October. It was quiet, relaxing and warm. Just the perfect beach vacation. We were here in March for almost a week but I totally did not have time to blog about it. We had lots of fun then though. It is fortunate that my current project is in Tampa so it was only an hour's drive to Clearwater Beach.
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Halloween 2014 Spooktacular
So since dressing up in costumes is one of Yaya's favorite things to do, Halloween is something she has been looking forward to for a while. Despite the non-candy-eating child that she is, she loves to go trick or treating and we often play "trick-or-treat" games at home. So here are our Halloween photos!
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EOTE: I Was Young When I Left Home
Edged by the Empire
Episode 07 I Was Young When I Left Home
Previously on Edged by the Empire...
Irfan did not use any of his 15 XP to upgrade his character Hondo Pash. He rolled Destiny Points for the PC and the two main NPCs, who are basically auxiliary PCs anyway.
Blowin' In The Wind
Recently departed from the port of Silverlake in the Naboo system, the Lava Jaeger flew into Blue Nirvada's atmosphere, a frozen ocean world orbiting a blue dwarf star in the Tarabba Sector.
However, there was a vicious snowstorm along their flight path toward Obsidian Island, the hometown of Captain Hondo Pash and his 9-year-old sister Yuzy Pash where they grew up. The armoured mercenary gunslinger Giin Lawquane in the co-pilot seat with the BlasTech EE-3 blaster rifle slung on his back asked, "Do we wait it out?"
Hondo took a second to ruminate, then decided, "Let's go in." The YT-1300 light freighter plunged into the maelstrom of ice and snow. Buffetted by incredible bursts of wind, Giin was thrown off the co-pilot station. Astromech R2-8D8 rushed to help with the controls, but a tremendous downdraft slammed down hard onto the Lava Jaeger. Hondo was unable to control the ship which then crashed into the snow-swept ice fields beneath. The ship skidded on the plains.
Giin Lawquane is floored.
Artoo beeped a warning: They were skidding at high speed towards a large patch of rock that rose above the ice field. Hondo fired the ship thrusters to bring the ship to a stop before they crashed into it. Damaged, they decided to wait out the storm. Yuzy served everyone meiloorun-flavoured ice cream.
Rafe's 34 Month Birthday
Two more months until Adik turns 3! He is now at his 34th month! Whee!
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Cave of Dramatic Lighting
We visited Gua Kelam yesterday. Gua Kelam is officially translated as "Cave of Darkness" at the plaques we saw at the site. The cave is a tunnel that runs through a limestone hill for about 350 metres. Here are is photojournal of our visit.
It had been a wet weekend with rainfall every day, aptly putting the "rain" in rainforest. Water was dripping from the leaves and roots and vines of the foliage above the entrace to the cave.
In the 19th and early 20th century, Gua Kelam used to be a passage for tin miners to transport their ore from the mines to their staging area. According to the plaque, many miners perished during heavy rains when the river flooded the cave.
14th Anniversary
It's been 14 years since we got married. Since then, through shifting soil, moving goalposts, storms of ablative particulates and a deluge of fish entrails, Ain has been an excellent partner, wife and mother to our son. 14 is not a big number, but we thought we'd celebrate surviving this radioactive wasteland for another year. I love Ain so strongly that Hawking radiation is being emitted on the surface of the singularity of our sordid story.
We went to a restaurant that we had been to several times which served delicious food. However, the food did not live up to its delectable precursors. But that, I suppose, is no excuse not to enjoy the night.
Here's hoping for a much better year next year. I've heard myself say this every year for the last 20 years. 20 years of saying it but not being able to pay bills might have skewed my brain away from the norm; way, way past the border of healthy cynicism.
Bah. Anyway... here's hoping for a much better year next year.
Star Frontiers: Balneum Blue
Last year I illustrated some pictures for Balneum Blue, an article for Star Frontiers RPG. And after more than a year it's finally released in the pages (and the cover) of Star Frontiersman magazine issue 25!
Here's the cover I did, of some gigantic floating aquatic jellyfish creatures called the hydrozoan.
The planet known as Balneum Blue has an intelligent native species called the Gnatha that live in biotech coral cities.
All the image above needs is a map of all the train stops.
Dwarves: Patreon Paperminis
Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!
The second batch of paper miniatures for the Patreon campaign has been released for patrons. Six flavours of Dwarven characters for your fantasy role-playing game campaign! Also included is a bonus PDF of a squad of armed Orc warriors.
Don't forget to check out other posts for free downloads!
Aidiladha at KLCC
Monday was a carry over holiday for Raya Haji which fell on a clear sunny Sunday. A trip into town would be nice, we thought. It was too far for the car to reach the Bandar Utama region, so we drove somewhere closer: Kuala Lumpur City Centre which was not too far away by car, via the AKLEH elevated highway. It even has a dedicated exit into its underground car park. Despite it being situated relatively close, we do not visit the Suria KLCC mall all that often.
Things appeared as they usually do in the mall.
Irfan mapped out the door infrared sensor area at the department store. Who knows it might be useful some day.
Our lunch were takeaway boxes from Cold Storage. Ain had the nasi goreng. Irfan and I had a slice of pizza each.
We ate in the shadow of the towers.
Meanwhile, the new edition of Dark Heresy could be found in Kinokuniya. The price was too high for an impulse purchase though. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only RPGs.
Aidiladha at the Tenth Floor
Another year, another Aidiladha spent in Kuala Lumpur. There was no balik kampung because of insufficient resources. So yesterday we tried to make the best of it.
In the morning, we went for Solat Aidiladha at the Pandan Indah mosque. This morning, for some reason the khatib was not firing all engines. Perhaps he was exhausted.
Then it was time for salam hari raya between ourselves. First, Irfan salam and kissed Ain.
Followed by the same with me, after which, Ain started cooking some nasi lemak in anticipation of impending visitors.
In the afternoon, Irfan's school friend Fikree and his family, as well as his cousins Aiman and Zara, came a-visiting. Apart from savouring the nasi lemak, Irfan, Fikree and Aiman played some Tsuro while Star Wars Rebels was playing on television.
Even young Zara was intrigued by the game.
Since boardgaming was pretty fun, the crew moved on to Small World.
After many weeks of differing levels of smog over the city, it was refreshing to have clear skies (and breathing air) for the day.
Especially for this holiday.
Day of Dredd
Earlier this week there was a drive via online social networks for a sequel of 2012's film Dredd starring Karl Urban as Judge Dredd. Known as Day of Dredd, there were many posts and tweets about it across the internet. Even Psi Judge Anderson actress Olivia Thirlby herself made a thank you video for fans who helped with this drive.
Dredd was an enjoyable, very tight, very focused story with just the right balance of grittiness and the absurdness of the future social dynamics of Mega City One. Its violence is very explicit, assaulting viewers with the atrocities of the film's villains. It sets the tone for the grimness of the situation of having Dredd and the rookie Anderson trapped in a vast but somehow claustrophobic Peach Tower residential block by Ma-Ma, the local drug lord played by Lena Headey.
Of course the dire circumstances only serves to accentuate how cathartic the payback is to the criminals when Dredd regains the upper hand. It's no spoiler he would eventually get the upper hand. How he gets there is a roller coaster ride.
Would a Dredd 2 emerge from this effort? Let's hope so.
Here's my contribution to Day of Dredd on Twitter:
Circus!
So we took the kids to the Ringing Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the Nutter Center!
As it turned out it was also Vin's first time at the circus. I remember when Hisham and I went when we were children - it was an Indian circus I think, and they would camp at that big field that is now a supermarket of some sort. Or perhaps houses. It was close enough that we could even walk there and avoid the hassle of finding parking, etc. from our house. I remember our Tok and Opah Pasir Panjang (paternal grandparents from Pasir Panjang) also went with us. It was the first time I rode an elephant, at the circus back then. Anyways, I absolutely enjoyed it as a child and was very glad to be able to take Yaya and Adik to the circus too!
One of the highlights for Hisham and me was that the elephants would poop while performing. It wasn't the fact that they pooped that necessarily made us giggle (although I do admit it kind of did), it was the sheer size of the excrement. It was HUGE! I imagine some guy would have to shovel that onto trucks or something. LOL. Seriously. Anyway, we did not see such a sight at this circus, with the kids.
Rafe's 33 Month Birthday
We are 3 months away from Adik's third birthday. 33 months old! 2.75 years old!
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Assembling the Patreon Paperminis
Here's a quick tutorial on what to do with the paperminis once you've downloaded them from the Hishgraphics Papermini Patreon page and printed them out.
My free paperminis earlier were a no-frills, plain flat affairs which had no base for them to stand on. Those paper minis, when assembled, required a base assembly. For the Patreon paperminis, I thought I'd include something extra: several options for bases.
Here are some thoughts on how you can assemble the minis.
The above is a printout of the free downloadable PDF sample of skeletons and wraiths from my post at the Patreon page. It was printed onto white card stock.
Then I sliced and diced it to extract the papermini elements. As can be seen above, each element folds back onto itself on top (towards the papermini's head) along a blue dashed line. But it also has base tabs on the bottom (towards its legs). When assembled, the base tabs fold out to form a square base.
Hishgraphics Paperminis Patreon
I am happy to announce that the Hishgraphics Paperminis Patreon site has been live since Friday.
Since I've been creating Star Wars paperminis and putting them on this blog for free download by the gaming community, why not go the extra mile by offering general (and not licensed-dependent) paperminis via a Patreon campaign. There will eventually be paperminis of characters for games ranging from high fantasy to science fiction to pulp to horror!
You will be able to pledge for paperminis at different reward tiers from general mini designs to customized minis of your own characters for your games!
Again, many thanks to a lot of my friends for their encouragement in one way or another, especially Ivan Tam for pointing me toward Patreon in the first place, and Peter Schweighofer and Josh Roby for their diligent feedback of the Patreon page before it was launched.
Check out the Hishgraphics Paperminis Patreon campaign! There's even a free download of skeleton and wraith paperminis for you to test them out.
Mos Eisley Shoot-Out
Peter Schweighofer, who was a writer and editor at West End Games back in the '90s and the editor-in-chief of their Star Wars Adventure Journal periodical, sent a couple of rare gaming memorabilia to me which I received earlier this month.
The first was the Mos Eisley Shoot-Out miniature game.
The game is a simple boardgame that came with a paper foldout grid map of the streets of Mos Eisley and cutout miniatures of characters you could play in the environment. The rules were a simplified version of West End Games' Star Wars The Roleplaying Game combat rules. It was also marketing material that cleverly generates excitement for the RPG itself.
I don't think I'll be clipping out the paper figures out of the document. And not just because I have other paper minis that I could use for the purpose. I'm uncertain, but the map looks to be a segment of Jennell Jaquays' amazing full-colour foldout map that came with the Tatooine Manhunt module, which I once ran early during the Strikeforce Enteague Star Wars D6 campaign.
Finally, Peter also included a promo card of the splash page artwork illustrated by Doug Shuler that accompanied the short story Mist Encounter written by Timothy Zahn in Star Wars Adventure Journal #6. The photograph above places the card alongside its printed page counterpart in the book!
Peter is currently a freelance writer who produces excellent gaming sourcebooks like Pulp Egypt for the Any-System Key. Thanks for letting me have a piece of Star Wars RPG history, Peter!
