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Terrinoth #30 - The Book and the Spring Part II
The party is separated by a wall of fire
Campaign Diary
The party made its way down the flight of stairs that led to the basement. Here, unlike the rest of the palace, the walls are unadorned.
(Click here for PC profiles)
The first part they came upon were the cellars and storage areas, but everything of value here must have been looted centuries or millennia ago.
Passing through this area, they then came upon the prison cells; one larger room had a plinth in its centre, with a groove that ran around its base - there were red-brown stains upon the plinth that looked like it old blood.
The passage then led to another flight of stairs, descending deeper into the bedrock that the palace stood upon. As they descended these stairs they felt a warmth in the air that came from the far end, which grew hotter as the further they descended, until at the last few steps they could see a glow at the end of the stairs.
A short passage led to a cavernous hall, its ceiling held up by tall pillars. In front of our heroes three stone bridges spanned a narrow chasm filled with fire. In the far end of the hall was a dias, at the centre of which was a round pit from which a glow was seen. Standing next to the pit was a tall man in fine robes; he held a staff in one hand. Next to the man, on bound and lying on the floor next to the pit, were two men dressed as the Medjani.
When he noticed the party the man spoke arcane words, and flames wreathed his form, but he appeared unharmed by it. Percy and Gio charged towards the man, but before Entana, Strigoi, and Finaz could follow, the man raised his hands, and a wall of flames rose up between them, cutting the party into two. To make things worse, beasts made up of flames leapt out of the chasm of fire, and began to attack our heroes.
Finaz spoke a spell and three simulacra of her appeared, confusing her attackers.
Strigoi doused himself with the water from his waterskin, and made ready to dash through the wall of fire.
Gio and Percy struck at the man, but even as they wounded him, they were themselves burned by the magical flamed that sheathed him.
Gloating, the man kicked one of the Medjani into the pit. Percy reached out, trying to save the man, but lost her footing and fell in after him, but was able to catch the edge of the pit in the nick of time. But even as the screams of the Medjani died, Percy saw a form emerging from the flames below her.
Strigoi charged through the wall of fire, his hair and clothing singed, and set upon the man before he could throw the second Medjani in.
By now the form in the pit had risen, and showed itself to be a creature of fire, in the shape of a giant. It raised one hand, and flung a ball of fire at our heroes, which caused grievous burns on them.
With her grasp slipping, Percy called upon the aid of Kellos, and her body de-materialised to reform a short distance away, on solid ground. Together she and Gio dragged the other Medjani to saferty behind a pillar, while Strigoi kept the man busy with his sword.
On the other side of the wall Entana channeled the magic of his Force runebound shard and caused a force to emanate from him - it struck the fire beasts with such force that they dissipated. Finaz copied Strigoi and doused herself with water, preparing to charge across the wall of fire too.
The man now called upon the fiery giant to life him up in its hand so he was out of reach to Strigoi - this however made him visible to Entana behind the wall of fire! Entana cast magical missiles at him, causing him to lose his balance - he fell off the giant's hand and clung on to its arm. Gio tried to use Fortuna's magic to pry the man's fingers loose from the giant's arm, but he managed to hold on until the giant placed him on the ground.
But by now Strigoi was ready: dropping his sword and shield, he pulled the two hand axes from his belt, and hurled them one after the other at the man; the first one struck his forearm, causing his staff to fall from his hand; a split-second later the other one struck his face, killing him instantly.
With its summoner dead, the wall of fire vanished, and the fire giant began to shrink, until at last it disappeared back into the pit.
The party now took time to heal themselves, and Strigoi claimed the head of the summoner's staff, then together with the Medjani they returned to the surface, and taking the men's camels and gold as loot, they started back for the Medjani camp.
The sun was setting when they were near the Medjani camp, and the Medjani, observing their approach from a distance, came out to welcome them back. Though sad at the loss of one of their own to the summoner, they were still grateful to our heroes - tomorrow they would enter Eresh, the Scented House, and try to make the spring of Essilim flow again.
Prepping and Running the Game
As I mentioned in the previous post, this encounter was the final part of the palace location in the module. I have reduced the whole "dungeon level" to a single location, and changed the features of the encounter area and the enemies based on the mat I had in my Giant Book of Battle Mats, and the fire-themed figurines I had in my collection.
Most of my sessions have the party going through two minor fights, before ending with a 'boss fight', and this session was no exception. It's rather formulaic, and I try to make things interesting for them by giving them some clues to the nature of the 'boss', and making the terrain and opponent tactically challenging.
This particular fight was challenging for two reason: the summoner had the ability to case fireball or wall of fire, which are both spells with high damage output capacity, and I also gave him immunity to fire-based attacks, which was important as most of Entana's damage-dealing spells were fire-based. I did this not to screw my players over, but because I decided that the summoner was a warlock who dealt with djiini, specifically efreeti.
The whole thing ties in with my interpretation of the history of Al-Kalim.
To me, the period during which the people of Al-Kalim were ruled by the djinni must have corresponded to the pre-Islamic era in our own history, and the period before then must likewise correspond to an even earlier period in our own history.
I looked at the various possibilities, and decided that in ancient times the humans of Al-Kalim must have developed great Bronze Age civilisations, and perhaps this civilisation then spread part of itself to the other continents too. Then must have come the Bronze Age collapse, which may correspond to a period of internecine warfare, during which the kings, desperate to obtain victory over their enemies, took to the summoning of demons or djinni. The djinni brought with them magic which allowed the kings to gain temporary advantage over each other, before the djinni then turned on their summoners and became rulers over humans. The wars between the djinni and their human armies must then correspond to the (relatively) short-live Mesopotamian empires that rose and fell and rose again, until at last they were conquered by the (successive dynasties of) Persians, which would correspond to a period of relative stability in the stage before the people overthrew their djinni overlords.
In the next session I will be able to reveal more of this to the players, and they may see themselves being written into the history of these people...
Posted by captain arjun at 10:25 pm 0 comments
Labels: RPG, Terrinoth
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Posted by captain arjun at 8:31 pm 0 comments
Labels: RPG
Terrinoth #29 - The Book and the Spring Part I
The enemies are unable to get through the force field Entana created
The lost city of Essilim sat in a valley about two miles wide. At the middle was a large dried-up lake. On both sides of the lake were hundreds of ruined houses, most worn down by the desert winds to their foundations, and all but a few had lost their roofs.
On top of the southern slope of the valley stood the ruined palace. On the northern side a series of terraces led from the lake to a large structure with a domed roof mid-way up the hill. Further up the slope was a giant structure cut into the stone of the hill itself.
Surmising that the building with the domed roof was the source of the sacred spring, our heroes decided to make camp at one of the houses with an intact roof near there.
Arriving there, they found themselves challenged by several armed men dressed in black. Declaring themselves to be guardians of the royal tombs, they accused the party of being tomb robbers and demanded they depart immediately.
Through Finaz, our heroes explained that their mission was one of mercy, and after some deliberation the men agreed to let them rest in one of the houses while they discussed the matter with their leader.
Soon the leader of the guardians returned. Having heard the heroes' tale, he apologised for the manner of his men - they had just yesterday clashed with some tomb robbers, and two of them had been captured and brought to the ruined palace, where the robbers had made their base.
Once, he explained, the spring of Essilim was renowned for its healing powers, and the Sorcerer-Kings of the city grew in power and glory with each succeeding generation, until Edu-Ellikinu, the last of the line of Sorcerer-Kings, turned from the worship of the old gods to courting demons for more power. A civil war ensued between those who remained faithful to the old gods and Edu-Ellikinu and his supporters. The faithful, or the Medjani as they called themselves, called upon the old gods to curse Edu-Ellikinu, and they caused the spring to dry up. Men began to desert the city, and the priests would not serve Edu-Ellinkinu, and at last he was overthrown by his people, and fled into the royal tombs, where the faithful could not pursue, for the demons have placed monsters there to protect the king. Since then the Medjani had kept watch over the royal tombs, so that no man may enter the tombs and rouse Edu-Ellikinu.
Our heroes assured the Medjani that their goal was solely to restore the spring if they could, and offered to rescue the two captured Medjani in exchange for access to the domed Building, which the Medjani called Eresh, or the Scented House. The Medjani agreed.
Leaving the elder Vernier and Bram at the house, our heroes and Finaz proceeded to the old palace. It was mid-afternoon when they arrived at the opposite shore of the lake and began ascending the hill which the palace was built on.
Near the top, they were once again challenged, this time by men who declared that they had claimed the palace. An attempt to parley was greeted with a shower of arrows. In response the party charged up the hill, but their attackers fled back behind the fallen walls of the palace, and entered it.
Our heroes entered the palace through it broken walls, and found themselves in the foyer. Once more they were assailed by arrows, shot at them by archers on a balcony overlooking the foyer. Once more our heroes charged up the staircase to engage them, and once more they fell back into a room behind and barred the bronze doors behind them.
Gio climbed through the window in an adjacent room and attempted to enter the barred room via a window on the outside, but was discovered and chased off. Percy and Entana then decided to weaken the hinges of the door with the use of magical acid and fire, and once they were weakened Strigoi broke one door off its hinges, and holding it before him like a shield, charged into the room. One of the men were caught in the onslaught and thrown out of the window. The other heroes charged in after Strigoi, and a few more were cut down. The last survivor then charged at Strigoi's door, and together they both fell through the window and landed on the sandy ground below.
While the party busied themselves with recovering Strigoi, Finaz noted that the floor of the room was littered with hundreds of clay tablets, which suggested that this was the palace library or archive. Recovering a few tablets which were still legible, she used the statuette she had brought from the fort to decipher their writings. From these, they learned about a dungeon built below ground, and of dark summoning rites.
Entering an adjacent room, they found it contained two tables with grids upon them; small drawers on the sides of the tables contained playing pieces made of semi-precious stones - this was the king's games room. Ever curious for more knowledge, Percy copied the patterns of grid on the table, hoping to one day learn what games were played on them.
With most of the party injured, our heroes decided to take a rest in the games room. They pocketed the playing pieces, set the tables against the door leading tot he room, and Enatana used his Force runebound shard to throw up a domed shelter.
However, before the party could take a breather, more men arrived and started to attempt to break into the room. Leaving the shelter, Gio took a peek through the door and saw six more armed men, along with a warrior dressed in fine clothing. The men soon broke through the door, but could not break through the magical dome. The party attacked the intruders with spells, and they too fell back in disarray.
For a while the party could hear the men speaking behind the door, arguing on what to do next. Then Entana exited the dome, opened the door, and threw a fireball into their midst. Cries were heard, and then footsteps running away. Our heroes gave chase, and soon caught up with the survivors and cut them down. Searching their bodies, they found that the warrior held a golden statuette of a winged demon in one hand, which Strigoi claimed.
The party then searched the rest of the floor, but found no more enemies. It seemed that these men had taken up quarters in the rooms of the former palace dwellers. In one room they found clothing that matched those worn by the warrior. Then in the largest room, which must have been the king's own bedchamber, they found clothing belonging to a taller man, a chest of coins, as well as manuscripts with ancient cuneiform writings as well as Al-Kalim script on them, and an annotated sketch map of a compound. Once more Finaz translated the writings - it seemed that the writer was planning to enter the royal tombs after all! Annotations on the map mentioned the use of two keys, and had a cryptic reference to bull's horns... what did that mean?
Returning to the ground floor of the building, our heroes found that the men had used the level for stabling their camels and storing their food and water, but there was no sign of the captured Medjani.
Then they spotted a flight of stairs leading underground... could this be the dungeon spoken of in the cuneiform tablets?
This session is based on the module The Book and the Spring by Christopher Letzelter. It is a big module in the vein of the early days of D&D, and contains three major multi-level "dungeons", several smaller ones, all populated by various monsters and several factions with different goals.
What makes this module special, and what led me to finding it, was the fact that while the background to the story is about an ancient city in the desert, the author had chosen to base the fluff on Mesopotamian mythology instead of the more commonly used Egyptian one. The way this is presented is not just in the names used, but also in the unique monsters, and the many pages of art used.
The module comes in two parts, one with the "plot" and location information, and one with the maps and art. They are sold separately, but you need both to play the module.
There are almost 90 pages of material, and it would take several sessions for a party to play through all the locations. As I bought the pdf version of the module, and as the location descriptions and the maps were on different pdfs, and a few of the maps spanned two pages, it was a little difficult to read through the whole module to get a sense of what the whole story was about. Ample description and read-aloud texts are provided, which unfortunately made picking out the important details like where a special key had to be found less easy. It would have been easier if the author had provided an overview of the whole module and what players are expected to achieve at each location, but the author had intended the module to function a bit like a sandbox. To me this was an error, as there is a definite quest in this module: to reactivate the spring (so that a cursed item could be destroyed). And how this was to be achieved was also rather fixed, although the order at which the players visited each location was less fixed.
As usual I decided to reduce the number of encounters, but I expect it will take another two sessions for my players to complete the module.
The actual game was rather brutal, with Strigoi taking a lot of damage from arrows due to looking most threatening among the party members. I decided that the enemy fighters were trained and had planned their defences, so I had them fall back to a different position each time they were losing. By the time they had defeated the first group of enemies, the PCs were in pretty bad shape.
They made a good decision to cast Leomund's Tiny Hut and try to rest, but given the noise the first fight would have generated there was no way the other enemies did not hear them. The second group that came actually had a leader NPC character who had the Leadership trait, which would have made the encounter even deadlier, and I gave him a magical artifact which gave him Advantage on saving throws against magic. Unfortunately for the bad guys, my players were smarter at using the Tiny Hut as a base of attack than I was at defending against it, and I was surprised by the fireball, and the leader failed his saving throw (with Advantage!) and they were quickly defeated. This was the first session we played since most of the PCs had reached level 5, and I guess I wasn't prepared for how much damage they could put out now that Entana can cast Fireball and Strigoi had two attacks per turn. I will have to recycle this encounter for another day.
This part of the module could have just been a series of fights, but the author had made things interesting for the players by planting clues and description of what each room was used for, all of which helped pace the adventure and give the players a sense of the size and scope of the palace compound. The clues foreshadow encounters that they will have later on in the adventure, and make them suitably paranoid.
We actually played through to the dungeon level of the palace, but I will write about that in a separate post so this one will not run too long.
Gripping Beast Plastic Arab Infantry and Cavalry
I have actually been interested in Gripping Beast's plastic Arabs figures for a long time, but did not have an excuse to get some until the players in my RPG campaign decided they wanted to go to Al-Kalim, the Arabia analogue in the Terrinoth world setting. I didn't need a whole box, so I was glad to find a seller on eBay who sold sprues, and I bought one of the infantry, one of the light cavalry, and one of the heavy cavalry one.
I decided on a very simple, probably unrealistic paint scheme for six of the figures, since I needed them for the table soon, and since I wanted them to be generic enough to use for armed civilians, militia, bandits, guards, cultists, etc. I did give them differently coloured headdresses, which will make it easier for me to track hit points in combat.
I built four of the figures with face masks, in the Almoravid Black Guard fashion. I've always wanted a unit of these figures since I first saw some in an all issue of a wargaming magazine decades ago. They will probably be used to represent elite units or cultists in my games.
They are very nice figures which paint up nicely with my usual block-and-wash technique. I am not planning to get more of them for the time being, but if I ever want to expand them into a full force for my skirmish wargames, they will give me good core of troops.
Posted by captain arjun at 8:00 am 2 comments
Labels: Fantasy, RPG, Terrinoth
Terrinoth #28 - The Heist at Nimressa
The party arrive at the fort at Nimressa
Having learned of the location of a magical artifact which will help them decipher the text on the cursed obsidian tablet, our heroes set about finding a way to get their hands on it. Iwan was sent to obtain more information regarding the fort and its guardians, and the party learned that the fort was garrisoned by some two dozen guards, led by a captain. The fort also had a staff wizard. The vault of the fort was underground, carved into the rock of the cliff upon which the fort was built, and the door was guarded by a key held by the captain, and a magical lock set by the wizard.
Seeing the formidable security measures, our heroes decided that force or stealth were not the best approaches here, and decided that guile would be required.
They learned from Iwan that Captain Sorya owed a gambling debt to Shazar, a local crime boss, and that Finaz the staff wizard was an ambitious young wizard who aspired to rise in the hierarchy of the Academy. Armed with this knowledge, they had Iwan arrange a meeting with Shazar.
Having explained their situation to Shazar, they first proposed to buy Sorya's debt off him, but was unable to pay the price of 1500 Gros. Shazar then offered a proposal of his own: that they acquire for him one of the treasures from the vault, a small wooden ball, which he claimed held a sentimental value for him. Confident of their ability to access the vault, our heroes agreed to the deal, and were given a 'letter of introduction' to Sorya, a (crude) replica of the wooden ball in question, and the letter of debt (which amounted to 750 Gros - but the value of leverage over the captain of a royal fort far exceeds the value of the amount in coins, you see...).
Entana then visited the Academy at Al-Madena to seek Finaz's professor, who turned out to be an expert in the field of Comparative Arcana, and the two wizards had a lively discussion over the similarities between rune magic and djinni magic, much of which was lost on the other party members. Impressed by the young wizard, the professor likewise furnished a letter of introduction to Finaz, and also discussed his student's thesis with him.
Armed with the letters of introduction, our heroes made their way to the fort at White Dune pass, called Nimressa in the Al-Kalim language, accompanied by Iwan, who assumed the identity of Najar, gentleman-interpreter. They handed over the letter from Shazar to the guards, and were brought to meet Captain Sorya after handing over their weapons (although Gio used the magic from Fortuna to disguise his shortsword as a flute).
Captain Sorya was not pleased to see the party, and when presented with the offer of allowing the party to access the artifact to translate some ancient texts in exchange for the canceling of his debt, fumed and threatened them, but finally relented. There was, however, he said, the issue of convincing staff wizard Finaz, for she held the password to the vault, and was the only one who knew how to use the artifact.
The party found the staff wizard in the fort library, where she was teaching a soldier how to write. Unlike her professor, she was less impressed by Entana, but agreed to help them nonetheless. Entana, Percy and Gio, accompanied by Captain Sorya and Finaz descended to the basement of the fort, while Strigoi kept the guards distracted in the mess hall with tales of how he won the various trophies which he wore around his neck, as best as he could with no knowledge of the local language.
When they reached the vault door, Finaz spoke the incantation that removed the ward on the door, and Sorya unlocked it with a large key which he kept on a chain around his neck. Inside the vault the party saw several large chests on the floor, and a few smaller ones on shelves against the walls. Taking another bunch of keys from his belt, he selected one, unlocked a small chest with it, and removed from inside it a small statuette of a scribe, and handed it to Finaz. The party then brought the statuette to the table at the guardroom, while Sorya locked the door again.
While the rest were poring over the transcripts of the texts that Percy made, Gio once more used the magic of Fortuna to lift the bunch of keys off Sorya's belt, and made an excuse to leave the room.
The texts which Percy had copied off the walls in the tomb of the Sand Lord spoke of an ancient king called Eschardon, who turned from the worship of the old gods to Anzu, who was depicted as a lion-headed eagle. The text which she had copied off the cursed tablet read that to break the curse, the cursed must bathe in the holy spring of Essilim on the day of the equinox.
Meanwhile, sneaking back to the vault, Gio called in the magic of the brooch which he had taken from the Sand Lord, and turned into a gust of wind - in such a form he passed through the keyhole, and rematerialised inside the vault! Gio set about trying the keys on the various small chests on the shelves, and just as he found the wooden sphere, he heard the others approaching the vault - there was no time to return the keys! He quickly pocketed the wooden sphere and put the replica in its place. Then, in a moment of brilliance, he inserted the key into the box which held the statuette, and hid against the wall.
Captain Sorya entered the vault, reached for the keys at his belt, had a moment of panic when he realised they were not there, looked around frantically, and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the key still in the keyhole of the chest. He returned the statuette to the chest, locked it, shook his head at his own forgetfulness, and bade everyone to leave the vault. In the excitement he did not notice when Gio emerged from behind the door and joined the party.
When they have left the vault, Captain Sorya asked for the letter of debt from Gio, and bade them goodbye. Finaz meanwhile invited the party to join her in the library, where she said she had a book which had information of Essilim. Once she was alone with the party, Finaz confronted them and demanded to know the story behind the texts - she did not buy their cover that they had come upon the text in a library. When the party revealed the truth to her, she demanded to join them in the search for the lost city of Essilim, and the right to first pick of any magical artifact which they find there. As they knew no other means of finding Essilim, the party reluctantly agreed.
The party collected their weapons and left the fort, and after an hour Finaz joined them, and together they traveled back to Al-Madena. There, Bram and Iwan made preparations for the expedition to Essilim. It would be nearly a month till the Spring equinox, and our heroes kept themselves occupied: Strigoi practised at his martial skills, Entana made visits to the Academy, while Percy visited the markets and learned the local language.
When the day came to depart the party left Al-Madena on the pretext of journeying to Irram. For three days they traveled west into the Great Sand Sea, with Finaz navigating using a series of landmarks detailed in a book which she guarded jealously. Then on the fourth day at last they came upon the lost city of Essilim...
This session was based on the module The Heist at Nimressa by Jeremy Tuohy, available at DMsguild. The module as written was for a low level party, and covers an invitation to the heist, a short journey to the site of the heist, and a subplot which adds drama to the whole narrative.
I took the premise of the story and some of the NPCs for my game, but for the actual site I needed one with a battlemat with 1" grid. For this I used the Clifftop Keep from Seafoot Games, which I bought from Drivethrurpg.
I failed to prep adequately for this session, and I think it showed when I had to shuffle through my notes to find the relevant information and the NPCs' names. I had decided to leave the session pretty open, and became too complacent in the process.
I had no fixed idea on how the players would pull off the heist, but I did make it clear to them that garrison of the fort were competent and outnumbered them, that as foreigners they could easily be identified and located if they showed themselves (an orc and a gnome would stick out in Al-Kalim), that it would be difficult to smuggle anything they stole out of the Al-Madena region if it was known they took something, and that any killing of the guards will bring massive and swift retaliation not just against them, but likely against all Terrinoth merchants.
It was clear that they would have to take the stealth or the guile/blackmail approach.
When they realised that they could use the statuette without actually taking it out of the vault, it made things much easier. However, when they decided to seek the help of Shazar, I decided that he would ask for something in return; I had populated the vault with a few other magical items which I thought were appropriate and likely useful for them in the near future, in case they got greedy, and I decided that Shazar would ask for one of them to be brought to him as a price for his help.
Had they taken the stealth route, things would have been challenging, as opening the vault door required a physical key and a password (both of which I was prepared to let them bypass with lock-picking at a high DC or magic), and I had placed an Alarm spell on the inside of the vault, which would have alerted the garrison to anyone entering it without authorisation.
The players discussed sneaking into the fort inside supply carts, scaling the walls, and even getting arrested so they would be held in the jail cells in basement of the fort, but eventually decided to take the diplomatic route. This worked so well, we ran the whole session without a single combat.
Gio's player really shined this session. The players' plans entailed them distracting the captain and the staff wizard so Gio could "do his thing", and he acted on his own initiative after hearing me describe the layout of the vault and where Sorya kept his keys. While he had a magical item that allowed him to effectively cast Misty Step, he could only do so once per short rest, and once he got inside the vault there was no way he could get out in time and return the keys. When he decided to stick the key into the keyhole and hide behind the door, we all cheered at his brilliance, and I mimed the whole scene of Sorya getting shocked when he could not find his keys, and his relief and confusion afterwards.
I had Finaz fully statted out, and was prepared for the party to fight her and the rest of the garrison if things went that way. However, Entana's player surprised me a little when he asked to visit her professor, and he rolled a '20' on his Charisma check, so I had to develop her character more on the spot. I decided that she was a competitive wizard who wanted to make a name for herself, and that she was hard-boiled. I had initially intended for Iwan to serve as the party's guide to Essilim, but as there was already tension between Finaz and Entana, so I decided that it would be logical for her to want in on the expedition for her own ends, and this would let me further develop that tension in the next few sessions.
The whole reason for this session was based on the need to decipher an ancient language. By D&D rules as written the whole thing could have been solved with a Comprehend Language spell. While I understand that D&D is primarily a resource-management game where spells known and prepared are a limited resource, and such spells reward players who invest in them (at the expense of another spell), I find such spells ruin the mystery of the narrative; as such, I made the ruling that this spell did not exist in my world.
I feel the same way about spells that allow PCs to track quarry unerringly, or create food and water out of thin air, or teleport, which essentially negate the challenges of wilderness travel. I guess I want to see my game world as one where despite all the powers of magic, it is still a dangerous place and you can never be sure that you can know everything and be safe from everything.
Anvil Industry Heavy Weapons with Mad Robot Miniatures Crew
I've always wanted to add a few heavy weapons to my Warzone Trencher force, but have not found any that fit the WW1 British look I wanted other than a mortar.
Then a few weeks ago I received news that may mean that these figures may see some playtesting action in the near future, so I started searching for suitable pieces again, and found some excellent ones at Anvil Industry. I ordered a Maxim gun and a Howitzer, and some Mad Robot Miniatures crew figures again.
The Anvil Industry models are excellent: clean, crisp casts with no mould lines and no flash to speak of, and they come with a number of accessories that let you make a mini-diorama of your base, which I have tried to do. The model is very WW1 in style, down to the canvas ammunition belt.
I did run into some trouble with painting the crew - I have forgotten which paint I used for the uniform, and had to just go with the closest one I could find; you can see the difference in the two crew figures above if you looked closely.
The howitzer model also comes with nice bits like a case of rounds and empty casings, which I've always liked to see on dioramas. For some strange reason, even in the far future they have chosen to make the ammo case out of wood and gave it a handle made of hemp rope. The gun itself is of course multi-part, and you get the options of a closed breech and an opened breech, which would be cool used with a "loading" crew figure.
Both the Maxim and the howitzer are beautiful pieces on their own. However, a slight problem emerges when you put them side-by-side: the two weapons have a similar size. The Maxim is oversized compared to its historical counterpart, and the howitzer is much smaller than a real one would be in that scale. This is of course so that both pieces would fit nicely on the standard wargaming crew-served weapon base. I would have preferred the Maxin to be a little smaller, but then being made of resin, it would have been more fragile as a result.
Over all I am very pleased with the models, and if I want to expand my force again, I will definitely look at Anvil Industry again.
I hope to have more news to report on the playtesting in the near future...
Posted by captain arjun at 10:38 am 3 comments
Labels: sci-fi
Terrinoth #27 - Curse of the Sand Lord
In the tomb of the Sand Lord
Sensing that the dust devils were approaching them with sinister intent, Strigoi, Percy, and Gio charged towards one, while the other one went for Entana.
The whirlwinds fought as though they were living beasts, abrading the skin of our heroes with whirling sand, but were soon destroyed.
While they took stock of the situation, our heroes noticed the skeletons of the dead rising from the ground, and then slowly stumbling towards the north. Unwilling to suffer the undead to... live, Percy began calling on the flames of Kellos to destroy them, but were eventually persuaded to allow one to survive, that the party may follow it to whomever had created and were probably summoning them now.
After an hour, they arrived at a large stone structure in the middle of the desert, resembling a stone house built atop a ziggurat. The skeleton climbed the tall steps of the ziggurat, and disappeared into the doorway of the building.
By now the sun was close to setting. The party hobbled their camels, Percy took her bearings once again, and they then followed the skeleton into the doorway.
When they have ascended the steps of the ziggurat, they realised that the strong stone doors of the doorway had been broken as if by a great force, and that a gentle wind blew out from the doorway, and trailing on the ground was a thin stream of sand that flowed out within the doorway, like a layer of water.
From the doorway stairs descended to the darkness below. At the bottom of the stairs some 60 feet below the party found themselves at the start of a long gallery. On both walls of the gallery were bas relief with the figures of men and inscription of an unfamiliar language.
The first six reliefs depicted what appeared to be the coronation of a king, his battles against his enemies, and finally their subjugation. In between the panels they saw depiction of a lion-headed eagle battling and triumphing over a bull with the face of a man. The final two panels, however, were unfinished. Percy took tracings of the relief and script, hoping to study them later. As she did so, she noticed that fine lines were scoured across the surface of the relief - could the sand once have covered much of the walls?
The gallery led to an archway, the lintel upon which once more showed the lion-headed eagle clutching two bulls in its talons. The archway led into a large hall. The floor of the hall appeared to be covered with sand which streamed slowly outwards. On both sides of the hall, standing against the walls, stood dozens of skeletons, silent and motionless.
Strigoi stepped into the hall, only to sink into the soft sand, and was promptly pulled free by the others. Probing with the shaft of Strigoi's axe, they soon determined that the hall resembled a pool that had been filled with sand, but there was a ledge on the sides, which the skeletons stood on. The party gained the ledge on one side with the aid of rope and pitons, and as the proceeded along it they burned the skeletons, which did not put up a fight.
At the far end of the hall a corridor continued. The party investigated a door on the left of the corridor, which was a large room with shelves carved into the stone walls, but it was otherwise empty.
Moving to the far end of the corridor, they entered yet another hall. At the end of this hall was a raised platform, upon which was a plinth. Standing before the plinth was a figure they recognised: it was the king from the bas relief!
The king spoke to them in an unknown tongue, and when he did not receive a reply, repeated himself twice more. Our heroes tried to appease the ancient king by their gestures, but he raised his hands, and in an instant two sand devils formed, and he himself took the form of a whirlwind, descended the platform, and then took human form again as he moved to attack them. Up close, our heroes now realised that his body was made up of a shifting mass of sand.
The ancient king was a formidable foe, as many time just as their weapons looked sure to strike him, the sand that made up his form parted, causing the weapon to cut through only air, or he would turn into a whirlwind and passed between them when he pleased; yet when he struck our heroes, it felt like they were hit by a bag of sand. Entana tried to cause his form to disperse with a spell of wind, but found to his frustration that he could not do so.
In the chaos of the battle Percy noticed that the brooch upon the king's headdress did not appear to be formed of sand as the rest of his form, and called out to the others. Now they focused their blows upon the brooch, until at last Gio struck it with his sword, causing it to fly into the air - the form of the king and the two dust devils collapsed in an instance.
As the party tended to their wounds and recovered the brooch, they noticed that sand was beginning to seep through the cracks in the ceiling. The raced through the gallery and hall which they came through, and when they ascended the stairs and passed through the doorway it was already dark. The camels bellowed as the ground trembled, and the stone house which the party had just exited began to collapse, sending a cloud of dust into the cool night air. At the same time the sand around the ziggurat sank, as if it were filling the space beneath it.
Exhausted and disorientated, it took the party several hours before the managed to find the camp. Their fellow caravaneers were curious about their wounds, but our heroes remained tight-lipped.
Two days later the caravan arrived at White Dune Pass, which led to the Blessed Valley. Passing through the customs, they noticed a white stone fort in the cliff above the pass.
The land beyond the pass was like a different world from the desert they had just left: here the land was green and lush, and filled with the sound of birds. Picking up their pace, the caravan arrived at Al-Madena by the next day.
Much of the city of Al-Madena sat at the valley floor, but carved into the cliff on the west side of the valley were the homes of the nobles and the wealthy, while at the top of the cliff, next to a waterfall that plunged for hundreds of feet to the valley below, was the palace of the Caliph, the building to meet the rising sun each morning, as befitting the residence of the son of A'tar.
The party made their way to the Terrinoth traders' compound, where they were led by a worried servant to the Veniers' quarters. They were greeted at the door by Bram, the elder Venier's bodyguard, and led to his room. The merchant lay in his bed, pale and gaunt. He explained that he had sent for Entana several months ago when he had obtained a map to a lost tomb, hoping that father and son could explore it together. When the weeks passed without sign of his son, he decided to go with Bram and a small party to find the tomb himself, before the weather turned hot. They managed to locate and enter the tomb, but the only grave good he found that appeared to be of value was an obsidian tablet, engraved on one side with the figure of a beast-headed man and animals, and on the other an unfamiliar script.
Returning to Al-Madena, the elder Venier soon became ill and his sleep became haunted by nightmares monsters and fire. When neither Terrinoth nor local physicians were able to make a diagnosis or find a cure, Bram decided that the tablet must have been cursed, and attempted to destroy it; however the tablet seemed indestructible. When he attempted to discard it by throwing it into a river, it mysteriously appeared back in the quarters again.
Examining the tablet, our heroes found the script to be similar to those which they have found in the tomb which they have recently explored themselves, but were unable to decipher them. Entana had the suspicion that the inscription on the tablets held a clue to how the curse may be broken, and upon his suggestion the elder Venier sent for Iwan, an Al-Kalim man who was his local 'fixer', and whom Gio recognised to be someone familiar with the workings of the criminal world as he himself.
Having heard their tales, Iwan ventured his opinion: the script was familiar to him and his... associates, who had knowledge of ancient tombs (the exploration of which, it may be worth noting, was forbidden by the court for fear of releasing hidden djinni) for... various reasons. In the course of their work, he had surmised that the ages of the tombs spanned many centuries, and the dress of the figures depicted in reliefs found therein, the form of the grave goods, and indeed the variations in the scripts found within each of them indicated one thing: that despite the official account of the court that the people of Al-Kalim were all one people, in the days before the djinni they must have comprised of different cultures and nations. When he shared his insight with his associates, he learned that there were stories of magical artifacts created in the days of the djinni, which would allow those who wielded them to understand the language of any nation - why would such artifacts be needed if all the people of Al-Kalim spoke the same language, as they do now, he mused?
Since they needed to know what was written on the tablet, and since they could not just go to the nearest arcane college and reveal that they possessed grave goods, perhaps such an artifact was what they needed, Iwan ventured.
Fortunately for them, he then revealed, it was rumoured that one such artifact was kept at the fort at White Dune pass, not two days from Al-Madena...
The first part of this session was based on the Hellfrost Land of Fire module The Curse of the Sand Lord.
While looking for modules for a Arabic setting, I decided to look at the Hellfrost Land of Fire modules (I had previously looked at some of the Hellfrost modules and found them interesting), and found that they actually had a lot more fluff than Realms of Terrinoth had on Al-Kalim. Interestingly, they also seem to have had a period in history when djinni ruled over mankind.
I took the background story from the module plus a couple of the more interesting encounters as the basis of this session's plot. The dust devils were just reskinned Dust Mephits from the Monster Manual, and the Sand Lord was a fusion of the Mummy Lord and the titular Sand Lord from the module.
I had decided against basing the tomb on an Egyptian one, and went the Mesopotamian way instead. The Mesopotamian mythology is less familiar to most people but certainly no less interesting, and to me their demons have always had a more bestial, atavistic horror to them.
Of course the Mesopotamian cultures are not known for the scale of their tombs compared to their Egyptian neighbours - the overground structure I described in the game was based on the Persian model. The players gathered from the description of the tomb that it was incomplete, and that it once may have been completely filled with sand. They were correct, of course: the background here was that the tyrannical king who worshiped the Lion-headed Eagle demon - a wind demon - was overthrown by his own people and buried alive in sand in his tomb. In his dying moments he called upon the power of his patron, and was turned into an undead whose form was composed of sand. Over the centuries his power had slowly grown, and with the power of the wind he had slowly emptied his tomb of sand, and only recently he had sent out dust devils to gather skeletons for him, with which he planned to create an undead army out of. Typical mummy stuff, you understand. The players may never learn of the whole story, but I supposed this was realistic as the PCs may never find out either.
I was not too happy with the way I ran the dungeon-crawl. I had made the wrong decision of having a large number of relatively weak opponents in the form of the unarmed skeletons. I had initially counted on the players leaving them alone, since I decided that they would not actively attack the PCs, but I had forgotten that Percy hates undead and would destroy any that she came across. This left me with the choice of either playing through a massive combat against forty or so skeletons, which would drag, or having the situation of them being able to destroy the skeletons at their leisure, without the skeletons or the Sand Lord retaliating - a situation which would almost certainly cause a total party kill. Lesson learned, I guess: do not place opponents within reach of the PCs which you don't want them to fight.
The second part of the session set the scene for next week's module, which I will discuss in the next report. Here too I am not too satisfied with what I have done: essentially a hackneyed "mummy's curse" plot with an obvious and too convenient solution, leading to a heist game. The players seem to have taken it in good humour though, so hopefully next week's game will make up for this deficiency on my part.
Despite all that, I learned a lot prepping for the session.
As with the other regions the party travels to, I tried to find its real world geographic counterpart so I could have an idea of the climate, daily temperatures, and sunrise and sunset time. Other things I learned prepping for this game were Mesopotamian history, mythology, and languages, how oases are formed, and we all learned at the table how to hobble camels.
In the sessions after the next one we may be seeing more elements of Mesopotamian mythology incorporated into the game, so do stay tuned if they are your cup of tea.
Martin El Grande
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Confessions of a Wargamer
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Fresh from her Nike Cortez x A.L.C. shoe collaboration, label owner and womenswear designer Andrea Lieberman merges high-fashion with sneakers. She offers an intimate look at some of her quintessential contemporary A.L.C. pieces and insight into how she styles each look with sneakers.
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text:
John Ronan is an Irish businessman and property developer known for establishing Treasury Holdings in 1989 along with Richard Barrett.

Following the Irish property crash in 2008, the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) took over the loans of Treasury Holdings resulting in its ultimate demise. While the company itself was liquidated in 2012, many of the assets were later rolled into a residual entity named Ronan Group Real Estate (RGRE) owned by Ronan and Colony Capital while Richard Barrett went on to establish Bartra Capital Property.

Early life

Ronan was born into a farming family in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. He was educated at Castleknock College before going on to train as a Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He initially became involved in property deals with his property developer father before setting out on his own in the late 1970s.

Treasury Holdings

Ronan teamed up with his former school friend Richard Barrett from Mayo to form Treasury Holdings in 1989. The company grew to become one of the largest Irish commercial property developers and was known for landmark buildings on Dublin's skyline. Among Treasury Holdings' high-profile developments were the Montevetro (later to become Google's European Headquarters) and Alto Vetro buildings on the Grand Canal Dock basin, the Convention Centre Dublin, the Ritz Carlton in Powerscourt, the Treasury building which housed the offices of the NTMA and the Irish headquarters of PwC at One Spencer Dock.

Real Estate Opportunities (in which Treasury Holdings had a 60% stake), was responsible for building and agreeing with the sale of the Montevetro office building on Barrow Street in Dublin to Google for €99.9m. It was Dublin's tallest commercial office building at the time of construction and was sold via a receivership process.

Battersea Power Station
In November 2006, Real Estate Opportunities purchased Battersea Power Station and the surrounding land for €532 million (£400 million). This was Treasury's biggest single scheme and in 2012 it secured the largest planning permission ever granted in central London – approximately 8.5 million square feet of residential, office and retail space masterplanned by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly. The scheme also included an extension of the Northern Line Underground. On 30 November 2011, it was officially announced that the scheme's lenders Lloyds Bank and NAMA would put it into Administration. It was subsequently sold to a Malaysian consortium led by S P Setia, which had been in negotiations with Treasury Holdings prior to the Administration to buy the scheme. Setia later hired the Treasury management team to manage the construction of the scheme.

Decline
In October 2012, following the effects of both the collapse of the Irish property bubble and the Great Recession, the High Court appointed liquidators to Treasury Holdings and 16 related companies. The move followed a decision by Treasury not to resist a winding-up application by one of its banks, KBC, over a debt of €55m. Treasury had debts of €2.7bn, €1.7bn of which was owed to NAMA.

Ronan Group Real Estate
Ronan retained substantial assets outside of Treasury Holdings and in April 2015 these were refinanced in a €300 million deal with backing from Colony Capital, M&G Investments, and Deutsche Bank. Ronan repaid his debts at par and exited NAMA. The refinancing for the deal was secured on RGRE's portfolio of 24 assets in Dublin - including three Grafton Street retail properties, the Treasury Building, a number of other buildings in Dublin 2, Kilmore House in Spencer Dock, and Connaught House in Burlington Road.

RGRE was soon involved in notable ventures with a combined worth of more than €1bn including restarting the planning phase of the mothballed 23-storey Aqua Vetro skyscraper adjoining Tara Street station in Dublin.

Other projects include the €150m Vertium office building on Dublin's Burlington Road and a €350m Facebook office campus in Ballsbridge on what was previously the head office of AIB. RGRE also signed off on a €600m deal to develop Spencer Place, on Dublin's North Docks which will be Dublin's biggest property development since 2008 and will be adjacent to Treasury Holding's earlier Spencer Dock development.

In 2021, RGRE submitted a planning application to build a 155 metre, 45-story building in Dublin's north docklands.  This would be almost twice the height of Capital Dock, and more than twice the number of stories as Capital Dock, Dublin's current tallest building.

Waterfront South Central
In October 2018, Ronan Group Real Estate and Colony Capital formed a joint venture to acquire a 4.6 acre site in the Dublin's north docklands for in excess of €180m, being held by the National Asset Management Agency. The site had planning permission for the development of four office buildings ranging in height from six to eight storeys, comprising c. 300,000 sq. ft. of net office space, and two residential buildings of six and eleven storeys comprising 420 apartments.

Following the commencement of construction on the site in 2019, Ronan Group twice sought planning permission from Dublin City Council to increase the height on the property from nine to eleven storeys, however this was rejected. This was followed by a third planning application to increase the height of the property from nine to thirteen storeys, however this was again rejected by Dublin City Council. Despite this, the design was awarded the title of the "greenest" Salesforce Tower in the world.

In July 2020, Colony Capital appointed Eastdil Secured to dispose of its interests in Waterfront South Central and the separate, fellow Ronan Group development Fibonacci Square. In 2021, Colony Capital now rebranded as DigitalBridge, entered into an agreement to dispose of €2.7bn of non-digital assets to private equity firm Fortress Investment Group, which included the 70% interest held in the Waterfront South Central joint venture. This resulted in Ronan Group obtaining a High Court injunction against DigitalBridge in October 2021 to prevent the sale of its stakes the above mentioned schemes to Fortress Investment Group. The injunction was then resolved in November 2021, with the interests in the joint venture being acquired by US private equity firm Blackstone in July 2022 for €500m.

References

External links
Ronan Group Real Estate

Living people
Post-2008 Irish economic downturn
Irish businesspeople
Irish businesspeople in real estate
People educated at Castleknock College
1953 births

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Gold for photonics; organic electronics send body signals for pain relief; autonomous semi trucks.
A new method developed by Rice University researchers for tuning the light induced vibrations of nanoparticles through slight alterations to the surface to which the particles are attached could open doors for new applications of photonics from molecular sensing to wireless communications.
The researchers at Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) collaborated with researchers at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia and used ultrafast laser pulses to induce the atoms in gold nanodisks to vibrate. These vibrational patterns, known as acoustic phonons, have a characteristic frequency that relates directly to the size of the nanoparticle. They found they could fine-tune the acoustic response of the particle by varying the thickness of the material to which the nanodisks were attached.
The team lead said the results point toward a straightforward method for tuning the acoustic phonon frequency of a nanostructure in the gigahertz range by controlling the thickness of its adhesion layer.
Heating nanostructures with a short light pulse launches acoustic phonons that depend sensitively on the structure's dimensions and thanks to advanced lithographic techniques, experimentalists can engineer plasmonic nanostructures with great precision. Based on the results, it appears that plasmonic nanostructures may present an interesting alternative to conventional optomechanical oscillators.
Researchers at Swedish universities Linköping University and Karolinska Institutet have developed a small ion pump in organic electronics that can stop pain impulses in living, freely moving rats using the body's own pain relief signals.
The implantable "ion pump" that delivers the body's own pain alleviators with exact dosage precisely to the location where the pain signals reach the spinal cord for further transmission to the brain, could be in clinical use in five to ten years.
The researchers said the device gives hope to the seven percent of the world's population suffering from nerve pain for whom no other cure has been found – until now. But the pump could also be used to supply therapeutic substances to the brain and other parts of the body in addition to the spinal cord.
The ion pump can be likened to a pacemaker, except for alleviating pain, they explained.
While a pacemaker sends electrical impulses to the heart, the ion pump sends out the body's own pain alleviator – charged molecules of what are known as neurotransmitters – to the exact place where the damaged nerves come into contact with the spinal cord. This means that the pain impulses never reach the brain. In this case, the device delivered the neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), whose natural task is to inhibit stimuli in our central nervous system.
The implant is constructed using organic electronics – a class of materials capable of easy translation between electronic and biochemical signals.
Last week at Hoover Dam, Daimler Trucks North America unveiled the Freightliner Inspiration Truck — the first licensed autonomous commercial truck to operate on an open public highway in the United States.
It promises to unlock autonomous vehicle advancements that reduce accidents, improve fuel consumption, cut highway congestion, and safeguard the environment.
The company stressed this is not a driverless truck—the driver is a key part of a collaborative vehicle system: they can optimize their time on the road while also handling other important logistical tasks, from scheduling to routing. The autonomous vehicle technology not only contributes to improved safety and efficiency, but allows for improved communication through connectivity and integration.
The truck operates on highways at what the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration defines as Level 3 of autonomous vehicle capabilities, enabling the driver to cede full control of all safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions. The autonomous vehicle system is responsible for maintaining legal speed, staying in the selected lane, keeping a safe braking distance from other vehicles, and slowing or stopping the vehicle based on traffic and road conditions. The vehicle monitors changes in conditions that require transition back to driver control when necessary in highway settings. The driver is in control of the vehicle for exiting the highway, on local roads and in docking for making deliveries.


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With preparations underway for the first Premier League in 1992, Ribero announced their arrival as a top-flight kit manufacturer in an eye-catching fashion.
The company had taken the Coventry City and Norwich City contracts from Asics and they used the same style for both clubs' home kits. However, while the white flecked design blended somewhat against the sky-blue base of the Coventry shirts, it was rendered in green and white on the Canaries' shirts and so couldn't be ignored.
With Asics having also been Norwich's sponsors, it was all change as Norwich and Peterborough Building Society was now promoted on the front of the shirts, with the deep blue of their logo and the Ribero in black adding to the mish-mash.
Norwich had finished 18th of 22 teams in Division 1, just three points off relegation, little was expected from them and they were given a tough opening-day assignment, away to title favourites Arsenal.
It all looked to be going to plan when the Gunners went 2-0 ahead in the first half, but a second-period turnaround saw Norwich win 4-2 with new signing Mark Robins instrumental.
That set the tone for an exciting season. They were top at the end of September and a 7-1 loss at Blackburn looked set to signal the end of their good run but they bounced back and were eight points clear at the summit in December.
Eventually they fell away in the spring but still finished third behind Manchester United and Aston Villa, albeit with a goal difference of minus-four. Incidentally, they didn't have to wear their away shirt in the league at all that season – it wasn't until we got Merlin's 1994 sticker album that we even found out what it was.
That third-placed finish qualified them for the Uefa Cup, and after a win over Vitesse Arnhem in the first round, they qualified to meet Bayern Munich. A stunning Jeremy Goss volley at the Olympiastadion helped them to earn a 2-1 win – he had done similar against Leeds earlier in the campaign – and they drew 1-1 back at Carrow Road.
They would exit in the next round against Inter, and while they couldn't repeat their third-place heroics in 1993-94, they were still comfortable in 12th place – ironically, their goals record was the exact opposite of 1992-93, scoring 65 and conceding 61.
One kit change during the season came in January. With Ribero in financial trouble, their logo was replaced by that of Mitre, placed on a patch over the originals, with the same shirts and shorts still used.
While subsequent kits in the 1990s and 2000s would be more restrained, this strip is still fondly remembered thanks to the exploits achieved and in 2016-17 Norwich wore a white, green and yellow version of the design as a third shirt, while the current home for 2018-19 references it without being a direct copy.


text:
Q: Need to resize textarea when new text added by click I'm struggling to make a textarea adjust its height if needed after some text is added to it by click.
So, I use eventlistener for my textarea in order to determine when some amount of characters is added and a new line is needed further so that textarea is resized vertically. It works fine with manually added characters, but I want to use the so-called "bb-tags" as well for formatting reasons. Say, I use a button that adds red color formatting tag: [color=red][/color].
The problem is that when I add [color=red][/color] by click, my textarea won't add new lines automatically.
I made the following snippet for testing my codes.

// Autoresize textarea
const textarea = document.getElementById('shoutbox-comment');

textarea.addEventListener('input', function () {
 this.rows = 2;
 this.rows = countRows(this.scrollHeight);
});

function countRows(scrollHeight) {
 return Math.floor(scrollHeight / 18); // 18px = line-height
}

// bbtags formatting
function bbtags(h, a, i) {
    var g = document.getElementById(h);
    g.focus();
    if (g.setSelectionRange) {
        var c = g.scrollTop;
        var e = g.selectionStart;
        var f = g.selectionEnd;
        g.value = g.value.substring(0, g.selectionStart) + a + g.value.substring(g.selectionStart, g.selectionEnd) + i + g.value.substring(g.selectionEnd, g.value.length);
        g.selectionStart = e;
        g.selectionEnd = f + a.length + i.length;
        g.scrollTop = c;
    } else {
        if (document.selection && document.selection.createRange) {
            g.focus();
            var b = document.selection.createRange();
            if (b.text != "") {
                b.text = a + b.text + i;
            } else {
                b.text = a + "REPLACE" + i;
            }
            g.focus();
        }
    }
}

// insert bbtag on click
bb_red.onclick = function() {
 javascript:bbtags("shoutbox-comment", "[color=red]", "[/color]");
}
#shoutbox-comment {
  width: 270px;
  line-height: 18px;
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<textarea id="shoutbox-comment"></textarea>
<input type="button" id="bb_red" class="bbtag-color-red" value="red">

I wonder if I need to specify something for eventlistener or else.
Jquery may be used.
Thank you.

A: replace code of function bb_red.onclick with this :
bb_red.onclick = function() {
    javascript:bbtags("shoutbox-comment", "[color=red]", "[/color]");
  textarea.rows = countRows(textarea.scrollHeight);
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Home » Afghanistan » Insurgents Shoot Dead Nine Wedding Guestsin Afghan
Insurgents Shoot Dead Nine Wedding Guestsin Afghan
JALALABAD - Insurgents shot dead nine wedding guests and wounded five more in Afghanistan's turbulent east, local officials said on Thursday, the latest attack on revellers who engage in what militants say is un-Islamic activity. Ahmadzia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, said the guests were shot dead in their sleep late on Wednesday after the wedding party in the Dur Baba district on the border with Pakistan.
The groom, his father and cousins were among the dead, district chief Haji Hamesha Gul said, adding that some were also his own relatives.
They were sleeping outside, common among Afghans in the hot summer months, when the gunmen opened fire, he said. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.
The bodies of the nine dead were wrapped in white sheets and lined up under the blazing sun before their burial on Thursday, Reuters pictures showed. Scores of male villagers, many bearded and wearing turbans, gathered by them to pray.
A year ago a suicide bomber killed at least 40 people, a quarter of them children, at a wedding party in Afghanistan's south. Though the Taliban denied responsibility, they have made it clear they oppose music and dancing.
During their austere rule, which was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, the Taliban banned television and music as un-Islamic.
Also in the Nangarhar province two years ago, insurgents snatched five Afghan musicians from a wedding party, shaved their heads and tied them to a tree as punishment. The musicians were made to swear they would find other ways to make a living before they were released.
Violence is escalating in Afghanistan in the tenth year of an increasingly unpopular war. Afghan and foreign security forces, as well as government officials, are often targeted in attacks by insurgents.
The Taliban said last month they had begun their long-awaited "spring offensive" and senior U.S. commanders said they expected a significant spike in violence.
Despite the presence of up to 150,000 foreign troops, violence in Afghanistan hit its worse levels of the war last year, with record casualties on all sides. This year is following a similar trend.
Analysts say this is potentially worrying in the light of a gradual security transition by the NATO-led force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, which starts next month in seven areas.
That will coincide with a gradual U.S. troop drawdown, also pencilled in for July. NATO wants to hand over all security responsibilities to Afghans by the end of 2014. (Reuters)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Thirdy Ravena hit a dagger triple with 22.6 seconds left to tow the Ateneo Blue Eagles past the San Beda Red Lions, 62-56, in Game 3 of the PCCL President's Cup semifinals Saturday at the Ynares Sports Arena in Pasig City.
Fielding in a complete lineup for the first time in the UAAP-NCAA champions showdown, Ateneo relied on its balanced attack to advance to the finals and arrange a knockout battle with the University of Visayas Green Lancers.
After a slow start for both teams, the Blue Eagles pulled away by pouring 24 points in the second frame. The lead ballooned to as high as 17 points early in the third period after a 7-0 opening blast capped by a Matt Nieto basket from downtown.
The Red Lions struggled to catch up but they bridged the third and fourth quarters with a blistering 17-2 run to tie the game at 55-all in the last three minutes.
Angelo Kouame finally stopped the bleeding for Ateneo with an and-one play for a 58-55 edge. Evan Nelle had a chance to force another deadlock but his open 3-pointer bounced off the rim. Donald Tankoua split from the line to keep the score close, but Ravena knocked down a cold-blooded three to seal the win.
Ravena top-scored for the Blue Eagles with 14 points, six rebounds, and two assists, while Kouame finished with 13 points, 18 boards, and eight blocks.
For San Beda, James Canlas and Tankoua combined for 24 points.
ATENEO 62 -- Ravena 14, Kouame 13, Wong 10, Andrade 8, Ma. Nieto 5, Berjay 3, Mamuyac 3, Navarro 2, Go 2, Mi. Nieto 1, Tio 1, Belangel 0.
SAN BEDA 56 -- Canlas 14, Tankoua 10, Nelle 9, Doliguez 7, Soberano 5, Etrata 4, Cuntapay 3, Oftana 2, Alfaro 2, Abuda 0, Bahio 0, Carino 0, Visser 0, Obenza 0.
Quarters: 10-7, 34-24, 53-42, 62-56.
- The Blue Eagles failed to convert a single field goal for more than seven minutes in the fourth quarter, which allowed the Red Lions to erase the lead.
- Ateneo was severely undermanned in the previous games because several players had to attend classes.
- According to Ravena, they are still unsure of the players' availability for Monday's finals game.


Young FBI agent, Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey), infiltrates a cunning team of thrill-seeking elite athletes - led by the charismatic Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez).
The athletes are suspected of carrying out a spate of crimes in extremely unusual ways. Deep undercover, and with his life in imminent danger, Utah strives to prove they are the architects of this string of inconceivable crimes.
Renowned extreme athletes performing stunts in the film include surfers Laird Hamilton, Sebastian Zietz, Makua Rothman, Billy Kemper, Brian Keaulana, Ahanu Tson-dru, Ian Walsh, Laurie Towner, Dylan Longbottom, Albee Layer, Bruce Irons, Tikanui Smith and Tuhiti Humani.
Directed by Ericson Core, and inspired by the classic 1991 hit starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves.


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Tenement Jazz Band
Since the band's formation in Edinburgh in January 2018 the Tenement Jazz Band has built an instant reputation for old-style New Orleans jazz played with youthful verve. Initially a six-piece, the band has now settled down to a five-piece, with the band's founder, trombonist Patrick Darley, joined in the front line by fellow-alumni of Edinburgh University, Charles 'Chuck' Deerness and soprano saxist Tom Pickles. The drums-free rhythm section consists of bassist Simon Toner and John Youngs doubling banjo and guitar. Already last year the band played the Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and Islay Jazz Festivals and had a short sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe with The Red Hot Roots of Jazz, to be repeated in 2019. The band is particularly popular at swing dance festivals in both Scotland and England.
Thu 25th 18:00 Lee Longlands
Fri 26th 12:30 Cathedral Square
Fri 26th 20:00 The Village, Moseley
Sat 27th 14:30 New Square Shopping Centre
Sat 27th 19:30 Holiday Inn
Sun 28th 14:00 Haden Hill House


Verse 1- Forsaken by God (Mark 15:34).
V. 2- Praying without ceasing before His death (Matthew 26:38-39).
V. 6- Despised and rejected by His own people (Luke 23:21-23).
V. 7- Mocked (Mt. 27:39).
V. 8- Evil people will say, "He trusted in God, let Him now deliver Him." (Mt. 27:41-43).
V. 11- "None to help" because His disciples abandoned Him (Mark 14:50).
V. 14a- Blood and water came out of His body (John 19:34).
V. 14b, 16b- Death by crucifixion, hands and feet pierced (Mt. 27:35).
V. 15- His thirst while suffering death (John 19:28).
V. 16a- Gentiles (Jews called them dogs) will be present at His crucifixion (Luke 23:36).
V. 16b- "A band of evildoers" refers in this particular case to the religious Jews that hated him and saw to it that He was crucified (Mt. 27:41-43).
V. 18- Casting lots for His garments (John 19:23-24).
Wow! That Psalm is so precise and so clear that you have to have help to misunderstand it! It was given through David 1000 years before the Messiah hung on the cross. Again, WOW!
Listen to this anointed podcast and PLEASE forward it to all your family and friends. Glory to God!


A specially designed Badge was issued on the occassion of the the Tenth Anniversary of the founding of the Film Institute. It was a very small one of about an inch in height, and of interesting design. Many might not have seen it or aware of such a thing. In the earlier days I used to pin it on to my cap while shooting. Even now, I still have it with me as a memento.


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Lady Texan Records
No. 15 Lady Texans use late defensive stand to down Midland 67-62 Wednesday at the Texan Dome
Midland College (8-4, 0-1) 16 7 19 20 62
South Plains College (11-1, 1-0) 21 10 16 20 67
Pts: Ogechi Nwodo - 16
Reb: Ogechi Nwodo - 7
Ast: Grace Beasley - 4
Pts: Sarah Shematsi - 18
Reb: Keke Hunter - 12
Ast: Caroline Germond - 4
LEVELLAND — Keke Hunter recorded her eighth double-double of the year netting 15 points and 12 rebounds as the No. 15 ranked South Plains College women's basketball team opened conference play with a 67-62 win over Midland College Wednesday at the Texan Dome.
South Plains improves to 11-1 on the year and 1-0 in the WJCAC and will return to action on Saturday at 2 p.m. against Frank Phillips College in Borger. Saturday's game will be streaming live at spctexans.com and Michael Wiiest of KLVT Radio Levelland will call the courtside action with pregame slated for 1:45 p.m.
"The 3 wasn't really falling for a lot of people and at times we settled for 3-pointers, but we were able to drive and find some shots throughout the game," Hunter said. "Having a nonstop mentality helped us tonight, and coach Petree always tells us to not stop and keep going."
Trailing by nine late in the fourth quarter, Midland used an 8-0 run capped by a 3-pointer from Annilia Dawn to trim their deficit to 63-62 with just 11 seconds remaining. South Plains sophomore Gabbie Green was immediately fouled on the inbounds play, giving the 5-foot-7 guard from Bellville, Texas a chance to put the Lady Texans up three with seconds remaining.
Green would do just that as she knocked down both free throws giving South Plains a 65-62 advantage. Following a timeout by Midland head coach Ron Jones, Petree drew up a defensive masterpiece over the next 60 seconds as Caroline Germond stole the inbounds pass for the Lady Texans and was immediately fouled by Midland's Grace Beasley, sending the freshman from France to the line. Germond would sink both free throws as South Plains would hold off the Lady Chaparrals(8-4) in the closing seconds to extend their win streak to eight games.
"We really wanted to win this game, and all I was focused on was stealing the pass and scoring for our team," Germond said. "In our minds, we weren't panicking when they came back, and we just focused on winning the game and knew what we had to do. Every day we work extremely hard, and doing that every day makes us feel prepared for every situation."
South Plains' Sarah Shematsi led all scorers with 18 points, four rebounds and a pair of assists in 34 minutes of action. Hunter finished 5 of 7 from the floor and also recorded a team-high seven assists. Germond was 5 of 15 from the field and tallied four assists, four steals, and three rebounds while Green finished with seven points, two boards and two assists and Chantel Govan provided six points coming off the bench for South Plains.
Ogechi Nwodo led Midland with 16 points and seven rebounds while Lana Marov finished with 11 and Dawn netted 10 points and four rebounds. South Plains shot 35.8 percent from the floor and forced 25 turnovers in the contest leading to 24 points on the offensive end. Midland shot 39.7 percent from the floor and were 10 of 25 from the 3-point line.


Day 11 – Fixing HTML!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 at 1:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to Day 11 – Fixing HTML!
Woo hoo Kathy!!! You're my hero!!!
It was a quick fix! Thanks to that post I found in the forum.


During its first two years, the Trump Administration has made numerous regulatory and policy changes in the environmental and energy arenas. What are the most significant of these? What can we expect to see from the Trump Administration in the next two years? What role have the Courts and Congress played? How will the recent Congressional elections affect developments? Three distinguished journalists will address these issues.
Pre-registration for this luncheon is encouraged. Feel free to share this invitation with colleagues. D.C. Bar membership is not required to register. Food is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 11:30 am. Lunch and networking begins at 12:00 pm. Program content will begin at 12:15 pm.
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Obtain information about the Fire and Police Commission.
Gather information about the Fire Pension Board.
Acquire information about the Library Board.
Find meeting information for the Police Pension Board.
Meet the members of the Tourism Board.


Congratulations to the U16 Netball Team and their coach Mrs Sparrow for successfully qualifying for the Regional Final! In the eleven years Mrs Sparrow has taught here, the teams have come close on many occasions but this is the first time that the team has made it to County level. This year the U16s played some superb netball throughout the group stages and were group winners ahead of Norwich High, Lynn Grove and Greshams. At the semi- finals they met Sheringham High school and after a tough match the score was equal at full time. They battled through their fatigue to win in extra time, earning their coveted place in the finals! A fantastic result for this team and we look forward to their performance in the final matches. We will keep you posted about the final as the team would really welcome your support and encouragement by coming to cheer them on in person.


Qualubs is doing a fandub of the 2001 "PaRappa the Rapper" anime. We're in search of voice actors for the cast, I'm going to be adding more characters later. The opening is in the video below. We look forward to having you!
You must have a decent mic.
You must get lines sent in by the deadlines we designate.
You don't have to sound as close as the orginal with her, I'll give you full freedom with this one. Just be sure to keep her with a feminine sounding voice.
What do you expect to do without a cake? A birthday party without a cake is like a dance floor without me!
Sound like his voice from the game.
In the rain or in the snow, I've got the funky flow!
Sound exactly like he does in the game.
Kick, punch! It's all in the mind!
Sound like he does in the PaRappa 2.
That was a battle! Let's move on!
Alright, PaRappa! It's practice time!
You also have complete freedom with his voice.
You have complete freedom with his voice as well.
This town better prepare its self!
Sound a bit close to how he does in the anime, but you can also do your own interpretation of him. You have full freedom with Matt as well.
You sure do have some strange friends, PJ.
You can't do it for yourself?
As I said with Katy, you have full freedom with her voice, but be sure to make her sound feminine. She is a generally sassy character.
The "P" is for "Paula," try to remember that.
Aren't you gonna start the game or what?
He has a very monotone voice. Sound as close as you can to the PJ from the game.
I Know! I Gotta Believe!
The only thing that gets me going, is the lovely Sunny Funny and her sweet smile. I'll do anything for her.
As it says for PaRappa, try to sound like the voice of Sunny from the games.
PaRappa, I didn't know you were such a baby.
You know, this is really a lot of fun! Wouldn't it be nice if we could just keep driving and go some place far, far away?


True Love Slot Machine - Wins Won't Buy You Love, But Everything Else!
Fall in love with this new slot machine by Playtech software, featuring 5 reels, 15 paylines and the chance to win up to 10,000x the value of your line bet. This lovely video slot is perfect for all of you romantic spinners out there, with its heart-throb Valentine's Day theme.
Even if you have the coldest of hearts and don't believe in true love, you will at least be able to potentially line your pockets as you reap the rewards of this slot machine's bonus game of 15 free spins with a x3 multiplier. Money can't buy you love, but it can buy you pretty much everything else!
Ah love. Lovely lovely love. No matter how much you try to deny it, you can't beat a bit of love. Of course, every one's idea of love is a little bit different. Some people believe that love is the unbreakable bond between two immaterial souls, forever entwined through the trials and tribulations of life.
Other people believe that love is simply a chemical reaction driven by our hormones with the ultimate goal of prolonging the survival of the human species. We prefer to believer that love is the sight of a video slot spinning on all 5-reels with the promise of some big payout when the symbols land!
The symbols involved in this slot machine are all designed to represent some of the most popular images of love – we're talking about heart-shaped boxes of chocolate, diamond rings, white doves, violins and blossoming rose flowers. The game also features a couple of adorable characters – one beautiful blond lady and cheeky little cupid.
For a new slot machine, this game is quite disappointing in the visual graphics department. That is because the overall aesthetic is slightly basic with its use of two dimensional graphics. In fact, the overall look of the game is a little bit predictable and cliché. Of course, a pink colour scheme and hearts-a-plenty is to be expected with a game of this theme but, with so many similar slots already out there in the market, it wouldn't have been completely unthinkable for Playtech to shake things up a bit.
Not every spinner is going to fall in love with the design of this slot machine. We're quite confident that most players will be falling head over heels for this game's 10,000x jackpot, however. That top prize will be applied to the line bet that is chosen by players from the wagering options ranging from €0.01 to €5.00 per active payline.
Cupid was known for using his bow and arrow to make the all important connection between two potential lovers. Well, this wild symbol will help spinners to make some very important connections between symbols to complete payline combinations. When this happens, the win will be doubled – you've got to love that!
There is one icon that is immune to the wily ways of the wild Cupid symbol. That is the lovely lady scatter which pays wins of 2x, 5x, 20x and 500x whenever two, three, four or five appear in any position on the reel. What's more, if three or more of these scatter symbols appear, players will be treated to 15 free games with all wins tripled in value.
The Supremes once sang that "you can't hurry love, you just have to wait." Well, you don't necessarily need to wait around for some big wins to come your way in this slot machine. That is because players have the chance to double their wins from the base game in a simple gamble game.
All that punters need to do is select a card that is higher than the dealer's and they can double their wins up to a gamble limit of €1,000.
True Love is one of those slot machines that keeps it nice and safe when it comes to the theme and the gameplay. Sure enough, the lovey-dovey theme is going to appeal to a wide number of players, especially during the month of February. That said, there are similarly themed games out there – such as Blueprint Gaming's Cupid: Wild at Heart – which offer much more uniquely designed reels with more exciting bonus gameplay.


The Udawalawe National Park lies on the boundary of Sabaragamuwa and Uva Provinces in Sri Lanka. The udawalawe national park was created to provide a sanctuary for wild animals displaced by the construction of the Udawalawe reservoir on the Walawe River, as well as to protect the catchment of the reservoir. The reserve covers 30,821 hectares (119.00 sq mi) of land area and was established on 30 June 1972.
The average temperature is about 27c - 28c and the annual rainfall is about 1,500 millimeters.
94 plant species, 21 fish species, 12 amphibians, 33 reptiles, 184 bird species including about 33 migrant species, and 135 butterfly species are recorded from udawalawe national park.
The park is 165 kilometres (103 mi) from Colombo. Udawalawe is an important habitat for water birds and Sri Lankan Elephants. In fact, Udawalawe National Park is an important habitat for Sri Lankan Elephants, which are relatively easy to observe in its open habitats. It is a popular tourist destination and the third most visited park in the country.


The Emery | Thinking outside the box: How to start your entrepreneurial journey and multi-task like a pro.
Workshop Pass Thinking outside the box: How to start your entrepreneurial journey and multi-task like a pro.
Thinking outside the box: How to start your entrepreneurial journey and multi-task like a pro.