MP: LA Newbie Game: Blood Sacrifices (BS!) [Started] [14/14]

[Legendary League]

I'll postpone the hosting and PM him. If he doesn't respond, I'll go find a sub.

[Anaconda]

Turn off the auto host also.

[Anaconda]

In addition to PMing him, send a "host message" from Llamaserver also. That should go to his email even if PMs dont go to his email. If no response, then just look quick for an outsider / sub who will evaluate his condition and either playes him to the grave or turns him AI depending on his forces...?

[Anaconda]

What up?

[Lunaje]

I thought this weekend hosting was being postponed, and I assumed it was due to the warnings about Jomon. But a turn came in and he is AI. Any thoughts about a classy solution to this? Or just Piñata Party for everyone?

[Anaconda]

At least after having so long dealy we aint gonna roll back, right?

[Anaconda]

East of Abysia the hills dont rise that wild, and one would not find there steep valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. Instead, those gentle slopes and olive-tree groves are crowded with fields and farms, homesteads ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old Riverlands secrets in the lee of peaceful, lengthy seaside; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and Abysians nor foreigners do not like to live there. Caelumians have tried it, Northmen have tried it, and the Monkeys from the east have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps people away. Old Ammi Pierce, whose head has been a little queer for weeks, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads of Riverlands.

When I went into the groves and fields to search a place for a new colony they told me the province was evil. They told me this already in Abysia before I left, but because Abysia is a very old kingdom full of warlocks I thought the evil must be something which rustic grandmas had whispered to children through centuries in countryside circling around the mighty Abysia. The name "blasted cold" seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a heat lovin' fiends. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of those once cultivated fields and dapper groves for myself, and ceased to wonder at anything beside its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy Riverlands wood. It was too silent amongst them, and the fields were now covered with the dank moss and mattings of decay. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the noone would stay, for this was no region to sleep in.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted cold. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the spacious field; for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the prophet had coined the phrase from having seen this particular region. It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of freeze; but why had nothing new ever grown over these five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by ice in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the east of Abysia. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so at last only because my duties took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only glacial, grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay frozen at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark walk on a forest province beyond this province seemed welcome in contrast, and I marvelled no more at the frightened whispers of Abysian people.

In the evening I asked old people in Abysia about the blasted cold, and what was meant by that phrase "strange days" which so many evasively muttered. I could not, however, get any good answers except that all the mystery was much more recent than I had dreamed. It was not a matter of old legendry at all, but something within the past weeks. It had happened in the last month, and the regional guard corps of farmers had disappeared or was killed. Speakers would not be exact; and because they all told me to pay no attention to old Ammi Pierce's crazy tales, I sought him out the next morning, having heard that he lived alone in the ancient tottering cottage where the trees first begin to get very thick. It was a fearsomely ancient place, and had begun to exude the faint miasmal odour which clings about houses that have stood too long. Only with persistent knocking could I rouse the aged man, and when he shuffled timidly to the door could tell he was not glad to see me. He was not (yet) so feeble as I had expected; but his eyes drooped in a curious way, and his unkempt clothing and white beard made him seem very worn and dismal.

Not knowing just how he could best be launched on his tales, I asked vague questions about this province and of those beyond this one. He was far brighter and more educated than I had been led to think, and before I knew it had grasped quite as much of the subject as any man I had talked with in Abysia. He was not like other indies I had known in the parts where usefull land for new colonies were to be found. From him there were no protests at the miles of old wood and farmland to be blotted out, though perhaps there would have been had not his home lain outside the bounds of the possible future presence of Abysian settlers. Relief was all that he showed; relief at the doom of the dark ancient slopes and fields through which he had roamed all his life. They would be better under protection of Abysia—better under protection since the strange days. And with this opening his husky voice sank low, while his body leaned forward and his right forefinger began to point shakily and impressively.

It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again spite the summer day. Often I had to recall the speaker from ramblings, piece out scientific points which he knew only by a fading parrot memory of professors' talk, or bridge over gaps, where his sense of logic and continuity broke down. When he was done I did not wonder that his mind had snapped a trifle, or that the folk in Abysia would not speak much of the blasted cold. I hurried back before sunset to the capital of Abysia, unwilling to have the stars come out above me in the open; and the next day returned to the royal court to give up my position. I could not go into that dim, freezing chaos of old fields and groves again, or face another time that grey blasted cold where the black well yawned deep beside the tumbled bricks and stones.

The new Abysian colony will not be build there, it turned out. All those secrets the earth holds will be safe forever. Neither do I believe I would like to visit that province by night—at least not when the sinister stars are out; and nothing could bribe me to drink water of that province.



BTW, if you havent seen it yet, get Die Farbe from Netflix or buy it... its awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0lRP-00BgI

[Kungfoo]

Since it looks like a sub has been found for Caelum ( AlbertTheObscure by a nose), I'd like to see a ~12h extension to the current turn to allow the changeover to happen smoothly.

[mattyburn7]

I agree.

[Lunaje]

What about Gath? He staled last turn, and it is a really bad time for him to be unresponsive in-game (starting a war, if i'm not wrong).