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Dice chambers
Made from reclaimed 1×6 lumber found in firewood pile.
Xeon D with all the networking
This is an impressive little motherboard.
I can think of a few tasks for it…
[DnD] Geography South of Sing’jar
The islands south of Faroth start with Belgar island. Belgar is populated with sea elves, and they trade mostly with the eastern shore, the Burati valley. Burati is populated with elves and humans, bounded on the north by Burati mountains and to the south by the Burati river. The mountains are enough of an obstacle that overland trading is uncommon at best.
On the south side of the Burati river, is the kingdom of Kyln. Kyln is ruled by hobgoblins who have an amicable peace with the elves to the north and an active defense to the west against the Ogres of the Whitechalk cliffs. This far south, the southern end of the Sing’jar mountains curves west and ends as the Yil range, holding the Yil valley. Kenku and hobgoblins freely mix, under the rule of the Kyln kingdom.
The Whitechalk cliffs are a giant slope from north to south, with giant chalk cliffs on the south side facing Danclar bay. Not only do communities of ogres protect the peninsula, other accursed beasts and undead inhabit the chapparal of the region. Deep canyons hide communities of lycanthropes and rumors of dinosaurs have been heard, too.
At the western tip of the cliffs, the Danclar islands are a dangerous place for sailors to stop: Yuan-ti have occupied these islands once peacefully occupied by lizardfold sahaugin. Trade is sanctioned in official marketplaces and tourists are arrested and deported if they are caught away from the marketplaces. There are no inns on the Danclar islands. Any ship sailing south is obligated to pay for permits for access to the south. The Yuan-ti navy patrols the islands.
If a crafty trader sails south east of the Danclars, heading into Danclar bay is frought with challenges that often take rituals and sacrifices to avoid. Elasomosaur, chaotic aquitic elves and merfolk populate the bay. Sirens camp on the rocky shores beneath the chalk cliffs. Navigating to the Yil valley, you would meet the last free lizardfolk and kua-toa, that are ostensably policed by the yuan-ti Yaan’bu empire. Since the lizardfolk are unable to escape, they are the only effective kelp farming and fisherman for the Danyil bluffs region, and given some latitude of freedom.
Yuan-ti bougeoise live above the Yil valley in the rocky bluffs in the Danyil bluffs. These snake peope own the trading companies that operate out of Dardan City, in the bay to the southeast of the bluffs. Dardan city is the heart of commerce, with a healthy population protected from the dinosaurs and other sea monsters to the northwest.
Off the west shore of Danyil bluffs is Egza island, the largest prison island of the yuan-ti. Egza island used to be the prison island of the previous despots: the Naga nation of Bundash. Egza island is now a prison for the remainder of the Bundash naga. The waters around Egza are policed by sahaugin and other aquatic races allied with the yuan-ti.
The other island on the south side of Dardan bay is Fylwen island, another yuan-ti prison. Fylwen is the ancestral home of the region’s minotaur. Six hundred years ago, Sing’jar straight saw a fleet of minotaur refugees travelling north. This was the wave of refugees displaced by the Yaan’bu empire. High elves and sea elves were also displaced by this yuan-ti expansion hundreds of years ago.
[DnD] Fall Season Adventure Setting
Shane and I worked up a setting for the Fall season: we’re sailing south! South of Sing’jar we have other kingdoms that have run many races out of their borders. The minotars and many sea elves came from the south seas. What drove them north?
Geography plays a part in separating the west coast of the continent. South of Sing’jar, the Whitechalk Cliffs are an accursed ridge that splits the currents of the ocean and defy overland travel. Kingdoms of ogres and oni defend the the ridge.
South of the ridge there are dramatically warmer currents and climates. Strange sea beasts, like elasmasaur and giant kraken patrol the islands and bays. Escaped lizard folk tell of snake people who held them prisoner. Black bird people and hobgoblins live behind the Ogre kingdom. South of them is an even stronger empire, possibly entire of snake people.
Islands can be traps and prisons. Remnants of previous societies remain isolated on some southern islands, unable to sail off or trade because of the brutal marine animals swiming in the surrounding waters. When Crimskill traveled south, what did he see? Did his giant’s hand play an unfair card to the nacent evil nations in the south?
(D&D) End of the spring season
Last game at BUF this season is 10 June. I know many will not be present. We will be discussing Fall seasons options.
Would like to have a BBQ D&D day sometime on/after 21 July, weekend preferred. Please contact me directly about your availability.
[wallpaper] Deception Pass
Deception Pass 2018, 3640×1080
ZFS Rebuild Script
I’ve rebuilt my zfs modules often enough that I’ve written a script to do a clean build that should avoid old kernel modules and old libraries.
#!/bin/bash
sudo find /lib/modules -depth -type d -iname "spl" -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo find /lib/modules -depth -type d -iname "zfs" -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo find /usr/local/src/ -type d -a \( \
-iname "spl-*" \
-o -iname "zfs-*" \
\) -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo find /usr/local/lib/ -type f -a \( \
-iname "libzfs*" \
-o -iname "libzpool*" \
-o -iname "libnvpair*" \
\) -exec rm -f {} \;
cd spl
git reset --hard HEAD
git checkout master
git pull
git tag | tail -1 | xargs git checkout
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j13 && sudo make install
cd ../zfs
git reset --hard HEAD
git checkout master
git pull
git tag | tail -1 | xargs git checkout
./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j13 && sudo make install
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo update-grub2
[D&D] Amroth’s accord with G’ning-ar
Amroth Cavepool, a young 70, was a bright miner and good with his fellow dwarves who lived deep below the Sing’jar mountains. Almost since his birth under these mountains, he had been present either defending the clan against the Cult of Ulexnil or repairing dammage to the tunnels from purple worms. Everyone had been busy for years, people were constantly being hurt, but they were saved by two things: the passages between east and west slopes of the mountains that brought trade with the surface, and plentitude of fungus that grew in the old passages left by the purple worms.
Uncle Harnig Ruktite had spent many years leading ore cars up to the elves on the east and out to the humans on the west to trade for game and wheat. On his latest trip he was late, and Agus Cavepool, on patrol, found him slumped against the wall, unconcious from a stab wound in a tunnel on the west side. This was unusual, because the Cult would not have used blades, it would have been magic. The humans were too loud and typically repelled by the traps near the entrances to get so far. Some malicious cavedweller was on the loose!
Amroth, Agus and aunt Elinke stuffed their packs with jars of pickled mushroom slices and salted deer jerky, hefted their picks and set out to find the culprit. First, the connector tunnels between the family areas and the mining viens: normal. Next the ore discard paths that lead east: interesting lone tracks on the gravel. Then the discard paths that lead west: more tracks by the same foot prints and signs of dwarf scat. A new tunnel was found dug to the mushroom grove and it had regular footprints. No one would notice stealing fungus from the back of the cave. The team retreated to watch the path.
A single young dwarf appeared, climbing over a bolder they hadn’t considered had any room behind it, and started walking the path to mushrooms. As he approached, they noticed he was bald with barely a beard. Was he burned? He barely stood out from the darkness as if he was also the color of shadow. Agus signaled and they all jumped down from the walls and surrounded the fellow. Amroth felt a jab below his eye and immediatly fell backwards, but Agus and Elinke both struck him with their picks and he went down.
The prisoner was clearly foreign, and appeared to resent the sight of them. He was gray skinned and had a few spines as wiskers on his chin. This was a Deurgar, but none had been seen in this land…ever. His name was G’ning-ar, and he didn’t now how to get home. He liked how dark it was in the caves, because where he came from it wasn’t dark enough. But wherever that was, he couldn’t find a way back. He was lost from his family and doing fine by himself, thank you. The shook G’ning-ar down and found almost a sack’s worth of daggers, gems, and stolen jerkey from their pantries.
There was no way this Deurgar was going to live among the Cavepools, he was a thief and an unrepentant one. No recognition of good dwarven god was about him…this was a rogue from another world here for no apparent reason. Agus, Amroth and Elinke tied his hands and lead G’ning-ar up a dozen levels, nearly to the surface, and left him there on the floor, without his daggers. “Go any lower,” they said, “and we’ll break your legs and leave you on the surface, you thief!”
G’ning-ar hated the Cavepools. Hated them more than the other wierdo magic using dwarves he met in the south that kept shooting magical arrows and fire at him. That wasn’t comfortable, but at least he didn’t get a chance to be insulted and humiliated. These Cavepools were all dicks. Any chances to steal from them would be welcome!
And for the next 200 years, G’ning-ar make a trip every week to wreck something owned by the Cavepools. Not always successfully, but enought to keep them constantly cautious. No dimwitted knuckle dragging pick swinging dwarf would find a rogue deurgar in a million years, right?
[D&D] G’ning-ar’s Long Walk
Gruuden’kar son of Gnuden’tik, slayer of Shivvek, was always full of stories, and constantly derailing conversations with a “one time, you know…” and a “that reminds me of,” to the point at which granson G’ning-ar son of Pubshan son of Gruuden’kar learned to just say “that’s right, grandpa,” and go on swinging his toy hammer when being toted about on Pubshan’s back.
They, Pubshan and Gruuden’kar, would take G’ning-ar scavenging in the old city Tatus, once home to a hundred-thousand Githyanki. Old buildings would be stacked with abandoned weapons, magic wands, staves and bows decorated in many manners. Not all of them were safe, either. Before touching any appealing item, it would get collected into a blanket and not directly touched until cleric Tru’de-gar could determine if it was cursed.
G’ning-ar, when he was a young thirty or so, decided to wander off while Pubshan grandpa were moving a pile of fallen bricks away from a big door. Duergar are hardy, but any chanse of slipping away and finding some silence always appealed to G’ning-ar. It became very quiet, very suddenly…and he couldn’t hear his clothes rustle, he breath, or his heart beat. He looked down and found himself in a glowing circle of runes.
The next place he saw was nothing but endless sky. In the far, far distance was a floating island that looked like a corpse covered in tiny buildings…just floating in the sky…getting smaller. Turning around, he saw an short, iron banded house floating about twenty steps away. He was twisting to the left, the house was slowly twisting to the right. He waved his legs and started twisting backwards.
This was trouble. Shouting wouldn’t help, he knew. Duergar common sense told him that he was probably doomed. But Gruuden’kar might have told a story about something like this. So he spun and thought. And got more and more hungry. Grandpa Gru once told a story about how he followed a Githyanki through a portal onto a field of air. It didn’t make any sense to G’ning-ar at all at the time. But Gru said he figured out that in the field of air, if you thought in unison with your feet, your intention would wisk you along. Gruuden’kar finally cought up to the Githyanki and stabbed him in the back, stole his purse and satchel of onyx stones that he then threw away becuase they would only be useful to a filthy wizard.
The iron-banded house was slowly rotating into view. G’ning-ar purposefully swung his leg and opposite hand in stride as if we were walking to the house. And he got moved closer. In a few strides he even felt like he was walking on a path. In a minute, he grabbed the handle to the door, swung it open, and stepped through.
And his back smaked as if he fell twenty feet onto a tallas slope. He slid down and crumpled up against a rock wall. Welts and scratches along along his back, arms and legs were stinging madly. And it was much darker than he remembered seeing in a long time. Grampa Gru tended to wander about the city in it’s dim light so frequently that the total dark of a cave was rather rare.
Letting his head spin, his ears ring, and his welts throb…slowly the shape of the tunnel, the rubble, and the pick marks of the mine he was in became clear. This tunnel was crap dwarven work! Their tools were dull, the idgit bastards! They didn’t clear a path on the floor so they could keep clearing. Sigh–he got up, shook himself a bit and found his balance, and decided that he brought this exile on himself. He would miss his dad and grandpa, but clearly, this place was entirely new…
