Tamaranis

Hey, if you vote green, when we run out of three metals necessary for a modern nation to function, or something, you can at least say, "I told you so."

No, really. Vote for the NDP even if you don't think it has a chance. I've talked to so many people who really like the NDP, but don't want to vote for them because they don't think they'll win... If everyone weren't so scared to go against the current a little the NDP would probably form a government. And that doesn't just go for NDP. If Canid likes the Green Party, then that's who she should vote for. I'll say this about most politicians, they don't have an inkling as to what "nonrenewable rescource" actually means, and what the term implies. At least the Green Party has that much worked out.

It's a wasted vote because it's perceived as a wasted vote... no other reason. I almost wish it was illegal to conduct a poll in an attempt to predict the winner of an election... Canid If only you knew how helpless our military is becoming... Canid's Mom First time I've ever heard that term... Made my day. I'll have to work out exactly how to pronounce that. As for the Green Party... I don't know much about them, but I seem to remember looking into it and finding that they had an overly simplified view of the interaction between humans and their environment, which is a bad thing for an environmental party. They had ideas like "Let's shut down a bunch of nuclear reactors, and do absolutely nothing to offset the resulting drop in the power supply! Not so much because we've assessed risks and come to the conclusion that nuclear power is worse for the environment than conventional power, but because people just don't like nuclear power!" But I think that was provincial Greens, not Federal. Maybe Federal is different. Besides, if you really care about the environment... Gas doesn't need to go down, it's *way* too cheap. That low price is encouraging people to use it. We should be paying three to four dollars a litre at least Electricity, heat, and basically every other energy or energy-like commodity are also too expensive. If they all cost twice as much, we could actually start shutting down power plants. Maybe you're ready for that Canid, but most of the country isn't. The major parties aren't focussing on the environment because that's not what voters care about. (An aside: The reason the major party's leaders appear to be pathological liars is that the voters, as a whole, want nothing so much as some nice lies to believe) Anyway, I pre-voted NDP because I think if they were ever hypothetically in power we'd see some beneficial changes. It's not as if my one vote is going to swing the election, so I cast it for the party I like the best.

"Hey Liberal government, where'd those several billion dollars go?" "I dunno..."

I haven't been very active of late, but on a whim I clicked the story at the top of the page. After Ozymandius and Yui each chip in their bit there typically isn't a lot left to say, but I'll just add this: I work for a company called Arcas Direct Marketing. Sometimes charities hire this company to canvas over the phone for them, and you totally captured the hopelessness that sometimes swallows you up when you're trying to do that. Of course, the experience has made me so bitter that I expected David Contable to be one of those people you immediately wish you weren't speaking with.

“No,” said Robby as he worked quickly to affix the pair of gauntlets he’d been given to his belt, “But I think I’d very much like to step outside and see just what’s going on.” He could definitely taste magic in the air. Not the passive sort of magic that might be detected from nearby enchantments or magical effects already in place, which he could hardly ever detect anyway, but the sharp taste left by energetic spells being cast in rapid succession. That, combined with a third tremor passing through the room, was worrying. “I don’t mean to be rude...” He said apologetically as he walked briskly from the table and toward the exit. Robby found himself becoming more alarmed with each step he took through Ugarte’s mansion. The servants seemed agitated, leading him to believe that he hadn’t mistaken a regular occurrence for something serious. The magicky smell was only getting stronger, and the occasional tremor continued to pass through the mansion. It wasn’t until Robby found a window and looked outside that he became truly alarmed, however. Buildings were burning, and without walls in the way the screams and cries of a city under siege, and yielding, reached his ears. It wasn’t in Robby’s nature to stop and consider the consequences of his actions at times like this. After a brief assessment of the distance to the ground he launched himself out the window. After falling for a little more than a second he struck the ground. Robby rolled as he hit the ground, transferring his downward momentum forward. As he rolled to his feet he kept moving, heading toward the city gates at a hard sprint.

With the significant number of people who can't play until such and such a time... The world won't end if there's not a werewolf game running at all times. Why not select some date when everyone should be more available and wait until then?

Yeah, poor Waterlily

Are we supposed to pick whether we're lost or overwhelmed, or if Salinye was/is lost or overwhelmed? First case, lost. Second overwhelmed. I'm not going to try and go into details on that, because I'm so greatly outmatched in that sort of thing by those who already have gone into detail that I'd just seem silly. We were kinda starting to worry about you, Salinye, it's good to see you're still around. Also, an evil midget, who is even now reading over my shoulder as I type, insists I use a ninja smilie. It's just easier to agree.

The bunny in that picture is clearly not Mr. Bunny. Just thought I'd chip that in. Welcome and all that.

I don't even like "messenger-speak" while chatting in MSN messenger...

I normally avoid these things, but I guess even I have to wish happy birthday when it's the founder himself. Happy Birthday, Fearless Leader.

Robby darted up and down passages in the hedge maze. It was very beneficial to have a task that occupied his mind to a certain extent. Often he ended up covering the same passage three or four times, affirming that it did indeed lay exactly there. Several times a sudden need to check his location against where he believed another passage to be lead Robby to plunge bodily through the hedge-wall. It was a very resilient hedge however, and in the process of fighting through he tended to leave some skin behind. The hedge wasn’t completely impassable, but it was thorny enough to thoroughly discourage passage. Even passage by the rather difficult-to-stop Robby. Still, an overhead map of the hedge was emerging in his mind and expanding outward. The use of markers might have been more efficient, but Robby didn’t have any markers to use, and causing deliberate damage to the hedge itself as a method of indication might upset whoever the owner was. Soon enough he’d find a way through. Before he found his way through however, Robby found something completely unexpected. He came to a gap in the soft grass that formed the floor of the maze. Piles of freshly dug earth rimmed a gash in the earth, running perpendicular to the passage, which seemed to continue on beneath the hedges on either side. Long stakes as thick as a man’s leg were driven into the ground near the edge of the gash on his side, and were at a forty five degree angle to the earth, as if to discourage very rapid approach. The gash was still spitting tiny clumps of dirt into the air at a furious pace. Robby approached cautiously, peering over the mounds of dirt and into the gash in the earth. He placed on hand against one of the stakes, he didn’t apply a great deal of force, hardly any actually, but it still shuddered, the fell, tearing free of the edge of the pit as it did so. A series of high-pitched alarmed shouts and cries emerged from the gash in response, the shower of bits of earth stopped. Finally getting a clear view inside, Robby saw that the trench, for that was what it was, was full of gnomes. They averaged perhaps three feet in height, and each possessed exaggerated features and a gnome-sized shovel. The gnomes spotted Robby and each began a series of furious accusations. Their faces, already flushed from exertion, turned redder with anger. A few climbed from the entrenchment in order to more effectively curse and brandish shovels at the intruder in a threatening manner. So enraged were they that Robby feared he would soon be fighting against a swarm of the tiny men. “Whoah, hey, I’ll put it back!” Robby loudly declared over the gnomes, hands spread out in front of him. With considerable effort Robby lifted the end of the stake that had originally been pointed into the air, and dragged it a short distance from the spot it had originally been embedded in the earth, realizing as he did so, that a stiff wind could easily have inflicted the same damage he had caused. These actions were met with furious accusations of thievery from the gnomes. Before the gnomes could take desperate action, Robby rolled the stake such that it was positioned on earth that offered a little more resistance, and began pounding on the elevated end with one hand. Much to the surprise of the gnomes, wood splintered beneath he hand, and the stake sunk a little ways into the earth each time it was struck. Once Robby felt it would actually stand on it’s own, he struck with both hands, allowing him to make greater progress. “Sorry, you’ll have to sharpen the end again, nothing I could do about that,” he said, examining the cuts and bruises his hands now bore. Nothing that wouldn’t heal on its own. The wild accusations of the gnomes reversed meaning and became praise for what a great fellow Robby was, fixing that stake for them, the way he just had. He was ushered towards the entrenchment and invited to examine the fortifications the gnomes had created. He was very careful not to touch any other stakes, as none of them looked a great deal sturdier than the one he’d knocked down. “You never know when some one is going to come lay siege to your fortifications” a gnome rapidly explained, “and you never know where they’ll attack either so we started making this entrenchment in the hedge maze here it’s not even very easy to find...” Robby stepped down into the entrenchment itself as the gnome spoke. It was more of a step than a hop, the entrenchment was little more than waist high. “...I don’t know how you found it you must be very good at mazes but this place would be really awkward to attack because if you cut down the hedge it regenerates very quickly the roots do that too...” The gnome emphasized by hacking at roots hanging down from a portion of the entrenchment that passed under the hedge itself “...and we have a hard time keeping the passages clear...” Robby became very sure he did not possess a monopoly on superhuman endurance as the gnome lead him on a tour of the entrenchment without ever really getting specific on where one sentence ended and the next began. As he spoke he continued to work, hacking at stubbornly regenerating roots with startling speed when they passed beneath the hedge, and digging at parts of the entrenchment he did not consider deep enough for brief periods, throwing two or three shovelfulls of dirt in the space of little more than a second, then moving on. The trench network was extensive, underlying perhaps a third of the maze, and was nearly as confused and misleading in its layout as the maze itself. The gnomes, Robby learned, were not preparing for any specific enemy but rather the possibility of one. Learning of them was difficult, because eventually his original tour guide abandoned him, and steering the direction of conversation with these fellows was rather difficult. There hadn’t even been any gnomes up here two weeks ago, but they had apparently decided that in order to hold the maze against some hypothetical attacker they would need to first inhabit the maze. Despite the small stature of the gnomes, Robby found himself thinking that hypothetical attackers were lucky indeed they would likely not be attempting to take the maze. It probably would have ended in disaster for them. keeping up conversation with the gnomes made concentration very difficult, but apparent freedom to roam their trenchwork made travel through the maze far easier, if not any less confusing. Alternately travelling on the ground and within it, however, he reached the opposite end, bid his fourth tour guide farewell, and slipped under the final hedge wall between himself and the castle.

First off: Ayshela, you rock. I had been somewhat interested in this from the start, but some "badness" happened in the thread and I figured I was as likely to make things worse as to fix anything by commenting. So I'm really relieved to see that that's all cleared up now. On the issue of security, it's not that I don't worry about it, it's that I'm convinced if some one really wants to find me they will, So I'd probably be using my real name if I participate, even though a few members would immediately recognize me as a result of that. What I'm more worried about is that I couldn't accurately roleplay myself. The idea of it makes me kinda nervous, actually.

The thing I found about Hellsing is this anime is where they finally realized when you're completely invulnerable to small arms fire, you don't need to try and avoid bullets and act like it's not the case.

Robby had been an odd dinner guest. He was friendly and seemed easy to speak with, but he’d hardly touched the elaborate meal layed out in front of he and the other mercenaries. Only after prompting would he taste any of the food or wines, and then he would only taste, usually compliment, and then insist he simply wasn’t hungry. When his gift was presented to him, he couldn’t help but smirk a little. Appearances could be deceiving, he knew, but it appeared that the wealthy and powerful Ugarte had bestowed upon him the gift of gauntlets he could have found through determined searching of the city’s refuse. “So what do these do?” He asked conversationally, then curled his index finger against his thumb and struck one of the gauntlets. The gauntlet bounced a short distance across the table, almost as if it weighed far less than it really did. “Or do I simply strike you as some one so hard done by that ruined gauntlets should be a treasure to me?” His tone and manner made it clear that the gift had amused, and not offended, him however.

Whatever direction he had ended up travelling in, Robby realized, it didn’t lead toward Darnsdale. He’d been travelling for too long, he’d have reached the village by now if he were still on course. All he could be sure of with regards to his travel was that he was moving in a mostly straight line. He could at least manage that much. Until night fell. At that point his tactic of picking a feature on the horizon in line with his direction of travel and walking to it failed. Since he was certain he was going to wrong way anyway, and going in an enormous circle during the night seemed preferable to remaining still and having nothing to think about but how miserable the swamp was, he kept moving. Leeches and insects continued their furious attempts to devour Robby alive. His immediate attackers would quickly become disheartened, but others were ready to replace them. He had not lost enough blood to them to seriously injure a man, but enough that the loss might begin to wear on him. When he slogged through mud it clung to him, so that when he moved a across a relatively dry patch it continued to weigh him down. His pause after the scuffle with the large monkey or small ape had been closest thing to a rest he’d had since entering the swamp. He had neither eaten or drank anything. And yet he continued to move with speed that was almost impossible. A casual traveller on the open road would not have been able to match the still-rapid strides carrying Robby through the swamp. Suddenly, it occurred to Robby how his journey through this swamp was beginning to resemble tales of mindless golems or animated corpses. Creatures that when given a task by their creator would pursue it with a single minded purpose living creatures found wholly disturbing. If told to retrieve an item or destroy an enemy a thousand miles away a golem or a walking batch of corpses would move in a straight line to their target. No terrain could stop such creatures: swamps, deserts, oceans, artic plains, all the same. They would mindless step into the obstacle, and days, weeks or months later emerge at the other side. Or so stories said. Such a creature could have matched Robby’s trek. At first, the comparison was only somewhat disturbing to him. He was tireless, but this did not automatically make him mindless. In fact, he considered himself much more “aware” and “alive” than any number of people he’d met over the years. But his thoughts had begun a downward spiral, and telling himself he wasn’t a simple automaton didn’t allow him to pull out of it. Though the reason for the spiral was different than it had been in the past, Robby recognized the pattern in his thoughts. This did not, however, allow him to change that pattern. It occurred to him that he was not like the stories of a mindless golem that crossed incredible distances and obstacles because they were between it and its goal. He was like the stories of a mindless golem that had been told to retrieve an object or go to a place that did not exist, or had been given a too-vague order by its master. The creature marched endlessly through the world to no end or purpose. Instead of relentlessly pursuing some goal, Robby was travelling endlessly and forever to nothing. This journey was an analogy, a very accurate one he felt, to everything he had become. Not mindlessly, but purposely, pushing forward. If he had eternal life and was not struck down in one way or another, he’d still be relentlessly pursuing nothing at all with all the single-mindedness of an unfeeling automaton a thousand years from now. The reason he had become this purposeless thing was that he had betrayed the empire, he knew. The empire had been his single, all-consuming purpose. Before his betrayal he had possessed both a mind and a purpose. And now, lacking a purpose, there hardly seemed a need for the mind. He had known it would come to this, too, before he had betrayed them. He had been reluctant, but it had not stopped him. For some reason that remained unfathomable even to him, he had turned against something he loved in order to inflict misery on himself. Thoughts of the empire wracked Robby with guilt, as they always did, but this time the guilt was overpowered by something else, probably self-pity. Purposeless existence was bearable only by pulling a curtain over everything and pretending some purpose existed, or that a purpose wasn’t necessary. He had lost his purpose, and his mind had finally tripped against the curtain. He couldn’t seem to put it back, now. How did others exist, knowing no purpose? Did they just heavily cloud their own minds? Was it because he had found purpose in the empire, and now that it had been lost, he couldn’t exist otherwise? Were others just as worthless as himself, but blind to it? Did that blindness make their lives even more meaningless than his own? His thoughts shuddered away from that dangerous path. Perhaps in that particular respect he was mindless and automatic, but shoved into a life or death situation, Robby would never cease to hold the lives of others above his own and defend them... Was that last shred of purpose left to him, surfacing from time to time and pushing him toward heroism, the result of a lack of free will? Were things he had considered his own good deeds just part of his endless walk down a path to nowhere? Robby tripped over an old tree root, jerking his thoughts outward for a moment. He stopped. Only now did he stop his trek. It seemed grimly fitting that even as he had focussed on the meaningless nature of this journey, he had kept moving. Robby had never considered suicide, it was simply not part of his nature, and he didn’t consider it now. Instead he considered stopping here. He could just stop moving, stop thinking, and collapse here. Forever. The swamp could grow over him if it so wished. Maybe the insects would succeed in their task of draining away enough blood to kill him. He would die of something sooner or later. If a large predator came for him instinct would force him to defend himself, but he might have lost enough strength by then to be unable. He never considered suicide, but if death came looking for him, what point was there in fighting it off? For some hours Robby stood and stared forward, mostly unseeing, occupied with his own dark thoughts. Dawn came, and at first he didn’t notice it. Had he still been paying attention, he would have spotted it much sooner than he did. The surrounding terrain was far drier than what he had been travelling through, and he was very near the swamp’s edge. Directly in his line of sight was a large, elaborate hedge-maze. Within the maze, apparently its goal, was an equally large and elaborate castle. For one reason or another, Robby always snapped out of these dark moods. He always started moving again. He might have been purposeless, but he wasn’t mindless. Curiosity got the better of him, and he started moving again, towards the castle and hedge-maze.

I wouldn't put it past those sneaking, kniving computers...

Irresponsible Captain Tylor People! No one has heard of this one, but this is where it's at. I mean... In the future a guy named Tylor decides he's going to join the space force and end up put in the pension department, and he'll have a nice cushy carreer ready to go for the rest of his life. Due to his complete disregard for everything, he accidently diffuses a hostage situation he wasn't supposed to be anywhere near on his first day, and is made the captain of a starship. But fate always plays tricks on Tylor and he becomes captain of the Soyokaze, a dumping ground of members of the space force who were too insubordinate or dangerously incompetent to be wanted anywhere else. (This includes Jason of the Friday the thirteenth movies, oddly enough) Hijinks ensue, the crew of the Soyokaze face such threats as superior Raalgon forces, robot assassins, genetically engineered diseases, vengeful space-ghosts, and a beauty contest. The golden rule keeps seeming to apply, and Tylor ends up a legendary hero. It's not serious, at all. But it's hilarious. And the "final battle," which takes place several episodes from the end, is the best final battle of any anime. Ever.

(Hmm... The random number generator tells me “swamp” and “bottomless backpack”) (Here we go...) A shortish man ran northward on road that, due to years of disuse, might better be classified as a path. He was perhaps five and a half feet in height, and of a slim build. He might have been mistaken for an elf, but that he lacked the distinctive long and pointed ears. He carried no visible weapons, and if he had any equipment or supplies of any kind they were in the backpack he wore. It didn’t seem to weigh him down any, though, and he comfortably maintained a brisk pace. ... Robby produced from his pack and carefully examined the map showing the way between the villages of Bivoc and Darnsdale. It was a very simple route, really. A road ran more or less straight north from Bivoc, and a few dozen miles would take a traveller to Darnsdale. There were no obstacles marked, no history of banditry, and not even any major intersecting roads. And for that reason, Robby was perplexed to see a swamp directly in his path. Was the map a practical joke? Had no one he’d spoken to travelled this road in the last two decades? Or was some foul magic at work here? He wasn’t a mage, but he was sensitive enough to the ebb and flow of ambient magic that he should have noticed some one casting a spell that would dramatically alter the landscape in his vicinity. Somehow that didn’t give him any confidence. But the swamp stretched out as far as the eye could see, and going around might add days of travel to a journey that should only have taken part of the afternoon. Slogging through muddy water wouldn’t slow him down all that much. Besides, if some evil wizard had it in for him, just skirting around the swamp wouldn’t save him anyway. The road disappeared immediately upon entering the swamp. A little farther in, the trees grew thick enough to block out the sun. Robby did his best to keep moving in a straight line without the aid of a compass. As he travelled, he began to mutter increasingly inappropriate things under his breath as he became increasingly miserable. Leaches periodically attached themselves, then rapidly became dissatisfied with the quality of his blood and let go. Biting and stinging insects found themselves similarly dissatisfied, but only after having bitten or stung. Robby constantly swatted and waved his hands in the air to fend them, to no avail. An observer might have been surprised at how effectively Robby was able to kill an insect by grazing it with his hand while it was still in flight, but it was still to no avail, they just outnumbered him too greatly. Several times the water he was wading through became deeper than he was tall, and he was forced to swim, removing his backpack and holding it above the water when he did so. At another point he walked directly into something rather akin to quicksand, but with more mud and less sand. By sheer virtue of his frustration with the swamp around him and a strong desire to “show it” he fought his way free and continued his journey after being submerged for several moments. A quick investigation of his backpack revealed that due to its excellent quality, the contents had survived the ordeal more or less unscathed. Unknown to Robby, several large snakes and one alligator considered making a meal of him, but each eventually decided that his behaviour was just a little too out of line with normal prey. One particularly brave creature apparently did decide it could make a meal of him, or it found some other suitable reason to attack. It was a small simian thing, probably weighing less than it’s intended victim, but it had the advantage of surprise. It waited until Robby was working his way through some waist-deep water, more occupied with a fresh round of leeches and the sticky mud than with watching the treetops above him. Fangs bared, it leapt at the unwitting traveller below. A brief struggle ensued, which partly consisted of Robby trying to figure out just what the hell had leapt onto his back and was attempting to use its teeth to sever his spine just below the skull. Both combatants submerged for a period of time that would have been alarming to anyone with a vested interest in the survival of either one. The simian emerged first, and began swimming for the shoreline as quickly as it could without the use of one of its arms, gasping for the air it had been denied. Robby emerged second, his breath was curiously calm. He pried off several of the leeches than had attached themselves to his torso, then gave up on the process and decided it would be more effective to let them drop off on their own. He was about to resume his journey when he noticed two things. The first was that he had lost all sense of direction while he’d been fighting the whatever it was that had attacked him. The second was that his backpack seemed a little lighter than it had before he’d been attacked. He removed it, and immediately realized the reason. The little monster had damaged the seems around the bottom, which had become split to such an extent that there really was no bottom anymore. The contents, herbs, spices, and some mail he’d promised to deliver to Darnsdale for a small fee, floated mockingly in the rancid water around him. Robby tossed the backpack aside, the swamp had won, it could have it. He then picked a random direction and started walking again. (See, the backpack was bottomless! But not in the way Katzaniel intended! I’m so clever!)

There was no sign of the demon. Either its shapeshifting abilities allowed it to adopted a more mundane guise that supernatural senses couldn’t penetrate, or it had already truly made good its escape. The gap in its warding would persist for some time, however, and if it should decide to suddenly return for revenge, it would still be suffering the same vulnerability that had caused it to flee in the first place. With the demon defeated at least for the time being, and feeling confident he could do the same thing again, Tamaranis turned his attention to the Hostel. It was still under siege by legions of the dead, and a fair number of The Pen’s membership were still inside. Normally he’d respond to this sort situation with some heavy handed de-animating spells to disable the more dangerous undead, followed by a few hundred competent soldiers to cut up the remaining fodder. Unfortunately he hadn’t recovered nearly enough mana in the final moments of his battle with the demon to overcome a dozen or so liches in magical combat simultaneously, and his small but loyal body of troops were a day’s march away. The same lack of mana that ruled out the option of raining destruction on the undead from the sky also introduced difficulties into the somewhat less savoury option of animating his own undead horde to repel the one attacking the Hostel. The complete lack of viable corpses was another barrier to that tactic. Revealing the destructive abilities of the dragoons to any enemy necromancer this early in the game would remove an advantage that Tamaranis wanted to keep for now, and the few of them he had to command couldn’t be guaranteed to succeed unsupported against so many undead anyway. Instead he travelled on foot towards the hostel, so as not to attract the attention of their spell casters, intending to destroy any zombies or ghouls he encountered in physical combat and save his mana for when a lich or magically inclined vampire inevitably got in his way. But the opportunity to raise his blade against the swarm of undead never came. Before he reached them Tamaranis’ attention was drawn to the sound, rather than the sight, of a blinding and hateful light. The other undead ceased their attempts to gain the roof or destroy Ozymandias in order to gaze, unmoving, at the source of the sound. Those that were capable raised their voices in cries of alarm, the majority that were not emitted soft moans or rattles of terror. Tamaranis began drawing darkness to himself to such an extent as to obscure his exact location from the universe. Those undead present that possessed some semblance of free will turned to flee, but were hindered by their unmoving and mindless counterparts. The darkness became complete, such that detection of whether Tamaranis was on the battlefield near Custos Manor or was in the tomb at the base of the obsidian spire became impossible. Then the final, all destroying Word swept out from the hostel. Those undead who heard The Word were faced with the impossibility of their own existence, knew of nothing but the impossibility of their own existence, and ceased to be. The Word hesitated briefly as it met walls of silence hastily erected by liches, but it forbid the existence of such things, unravelled the magic, and continued on, filling the minds of the liches themselves. It washed over the darkness Tamaranis had conjured, overcame the lack of definition, and replaced the all-obscuring darkness with the natural darkness of the night, revealing nothing more than grass and a low shrub. *** Rather than slowly defining his new location, as was the normal course with Tamaranis’ mode of magical travel, he was abruptly slammed into being within the obsidian spire, his alternate location having been instantly ruled out as impossible by the holy word. The Word, almost acknowledged, danced just out of reach in Tamaranis’ mind, promising an infinite wisdom and understanding that was very tempting, despite the knowledge that part of that wisdom fundamentally forbid his own existence. Tamaranis refused to know it. He spent hours forcing his mind away from what he had nearly heard, removing it from his thoughts, only allowing himself to think on the tinniest portion of a syllable at any given time to ensure he wouldn’t suddenly extrapolate what the entire word must have been. By the time Tamaranis had recovered from hearing a part of The Word, it was dawn. He wouldn’t meet with the others at the Hostel, it wouldn’t be necessary. He’d dealt with the demon, and the holy word would have ensured the destruction of the undead. Instead he would spend the day here, at the centre of an artificial mana nexus, recovering his energies and sleeping the sleep of an archmage. If nightmares should come, during the day no less, then let them come.

But you still used it! See there it is! You could have said "I would have said that horrible abbreviation involving a / with a letter to either side to annoy you" but you didn't! Not annoying me, even for a moment, is all a lie! Don't trust Katzaniel! It's all a sham! Thanks for the blood and the Blood Light. Being undead and having no vital functions makes conventional exercise pointless, and I haven't been writing enough lately to keep the extra pounds off...

James tries to think up a retort to throw back at Wetherby, something to say that would prove his innocence, but he can't think of anything. He can't even say for sure if the letter opener was still there when he made his search or not. Finally he responds with a frustrated shout of"You're off your rocker!" "...but it doesn't matter, because everyone else seems to think that poor crippled lady is running around tossing daggers at horses in the middle of the night." They were all crazy! That woman in the wheelchair couldn't take to fall for this. OOC: A vote for Norfolk, since that breaks the tie.

Since no one else seemed to want to do it, and no one else seemed to be paying enough attention to him to stop him from doing it, James went and made a thorough examination of the murder scene. He couldn’t figure anything out from what he saw, but he felt better for having tried, especially being the only person who tried at all. He rejoined the “party” such as it was in time to here Edwyn Cooper’s numerous outbursts. At first he thought Edwyn was just a fool who thought of himself as some tragic, noble hero, while in reality he was a just loud and taking this as badly as everyone else. Then it occurred to James, though, that maybe this Edwyn Cooper was an actor pretending to be reacting very badly to what had happened. “I think I would feel better with you locked in the basement,” he muttered, not very far under his breath. OOC: A vote for Edwyn Cooper.

"Look at this now, my boss turns up dead and you all go turning on each other like caged animals" James declares. "None of you have even seen it!" There is a moment of silence, followed by James' decision on what should be done next, "We should all go have a look at the body, is what we should do. Some one might notice something important, a clue, like." Protests began based on what was proper, "Well it's what that Mr. Holmes fellow would do, isn't it?" OOC: No accusation just yet.