Hardi scoffed. “Give it up. Give us the antidote. They’ll get you eventually, and another ten thousand people might be dead in the meantime.”
His jaw set, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got a deal for you…” taunted Hardi.
I want to go home and play with my computer now.
“Stealth“–Chapter 11 of Witches–is up!
“Actually,” Darnell said as Hardi’s hand moved toward the comm, “I don’t think we’re going to solve anything over a comm. I want to meet in person.”
Hardi hesitated, then said slowly, “I’ll… talk it over with the folks here.”
“Hardi!” hissed Robert through the doorway. He crooked a finger hurriedly. “Get off the line.”
Chapter 10, “Opening Salvo” is posted:
“What brings you to my world, little bug?” the colorful woman asked Hardi and Robert. Her glance flitted between both of them before settling on Hardi. “Well?” she cooed, head tilting. Her accent was much lighter than Lucia’s.
Hardi straightened in her seat. “We’re looking for the people who have been attacking your world.” She paused briefly as six guards entered and took up positions in the corners and framing the door. “Are you hiding them here?”
Not much longer on Witches–just a few more chapters. I’ll probably spend some time with my lovely arties before starting another close-ended piece like Witches. I miss the more free-form style of the Transhuman Congress (as well as Lina and Harold, of course).
I had a pretty annoying blood donating experience this weekend. I had about 35-45 minutes in which to get the donation done, which is typically plenty of time for 09:00 on a Saturday. I ended up with a nervously chatty nurse, though, and was too nice to hurry her along. We talked about dreads and marrying white guys and biracial babies. Before I took my current gig, I could have said that it’s not the kind of discussion I had every day.
I have to admit, however, my politeness was stretched to its limit when she hit my vein wall, kept screwing with the tape, and had to rotate the needle for 10 seconds to relieve the pressure. Or when she scrubbed vigorously around the wound to try to clean off the iodine… which pulled at the hole in my arm. Or when the gauze got stuck (thanks to the iodine) to the hole in my arm, and she tried to pull it free in the wrong direction.
Momentary discomfort, luckily. If I’d also suffered from my usual light-headedness, I’d’ve probably been more… perturbed, but I preloaded with Sprite beforehand. Bleh, HFCS. Took an hour and ten minutes total, which was disappointing.
Any lingering discomfort was forgotten when one of the role-playing geeks (a former military field medic) showed me a video of an intraosseous infusion:
Um, yeah. Ow.
Chapter 9 of Witches, “Pursuit” is live. Actually, it went live yesterday, I just neglected to post here for it. I was busy having my ass handed to me by some type of hydra. Damn D & D 4e hydras. It had seven heads by the end.
“But how do we get you out of here without anyone noticing?” Robert asked absently. Satisfied that her hand was fine, he pulled his hands back out of the attached gloves.
Hardi tamped down a grin of victory. “Nice and easy. You’re going to create a distraction, and we’re going to slip out.”
A small smile played on his lips as he asked, “What kind of distraction?”
No links this week. I’ve been planning hard on the Geist Character Sheet Manager, working with Greg to come up with and prioritize requirements. I’m playing around with the Agile “story” idea. It seems like a good informal way to gather reqs, though I’ve done most of the generation of the ideas. Greg should really be doing the bulk of them, since he’s a prime example of a user on both the game manager and character sheet user sides. He’s been great about helping come up with cases that fit World of Darkness games I don’t play and giving specific examples of things I have to account for.
I’ve got a preliminary feature set for my first iteration of the game manager side, and boy, did it break my proposed timeline. Depending on what my priority cut-off is, it may be late September to mid-October before it’s ready as an alpha. Some things may turn out to be simpler to implement than I’m currently estimate. For instance, either in this iteration or the next, I’ll need to write a rules system to allow the game manager to put in everything from prerequisites to conditional dot cost changes. I’m looking forward to designing and implementing that.
And so I keep moving.
Chapter 8 of The Witches of Ming Ung, “Observation” is up, and picks up right where “Interception” left off:
“Hardi, why in all the worlds wouldn’t we tell Wilder about this?” Robert asked, waving a hand at her comm. He’d just listened to the ransom note for the second time, and was sitting at the desk with his feet propped up.
“Yet. Not tell him yet.” Hardi stood still in the middle of the room, staring at the floor with her hands tucked in her pockets. “And I… don’t know,” she said slowly.
After that deep voice had threatened to go on “vacation” for a week, Hardi had listened to the message again. And again, until the rough voice was etched into her memory. Robert had walked in on her standing as she was now, letting the file loop. She’d looked at him guiltily, but let it play for him.
Robert sat leaned back and balanced his chair on two legs. “Have you had one of your visions? Does it feature you as the heroine, saving the planet from the bad guys?”
