I'm getting there. For some reason, Explorer and RPoL are having communication problems. It's been working fine, but all of a sudden, the Explorer tab crashes, reboots and whatever I was posting is gone.

I'm trying to use Chrome, but I hate it.

Sorry for the technical issues. I will await my opportunity as your conditions may permit.

Oh!  Oh, I say, nice recovery, there, Mercy.  Very nice! Brava! Bravisima!

You actually are taking the "L" out of the clock. Can we assume that it will still be an Alarm...Rooster...among other things? ^_^

Still having some difficulty getting on-line.  I'm not gone, I just can't always get access to a compuiter that can get me on-line -- but I'm still around ^_^

In reply to Denholm Hawkesbury (msg # 71):

Glad you are around.  You are one of our livelier characters.

True that, he's just so.... Dashing! :)

I was away for the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, but now I'm back.
In theory I had internet access in Kalamazoo, but I had to use all my computer time teaching an online class for my university.

They have a "French overlay"??

What, they're wearing blue-and-white horizontal stripped shirts and black berets? ^_^

I will be away from Friday evening to Saturday evening at the AEthelmearc War Practice (SCA). I might miss one or two days posting depending on how things go.

Oh!  Oh!  Take me!  Take me!

Crap.  There's a frigging ocean in the way...

As it turned out, I think you would have been glad not to go. The weather was wildly mixed --there were moments of sunshine, times of bitter cold winds, pelting rains and even a couple of bursts of hail. I did manage to get in some archery and axe-throwing and marshaled the ten-man melee team tourney (with hail rattling on my helm), but even at the royal court we could hardly make ourselves heard from rain and hail on the roof. Ironically, today is beautifully sunny and clear --just the day we needed yesterday.

So, in other words, it really was authentic!

In reply to GM StarMaster (msg # 79):

Well, it was authentic for northern Europe.  I wish it had been authentic for, say, Andalusia.

Hello all, I'm new to the game here, and I figured I'd say hi.

Welcome. I look forward to gaming with you. Will you be joining us in Marseilles?

Indeed, from what the kind GM has told me, he/she's still working on just how I'm to join the story.

Hello! This is rather late, but since I've posted I figured I ought to say something here. Looking forward to the story!

Welcome, strangers.

In reply to Connor Holmes (msg # 83):

It looks as if GM has come up with quite an exciting way for you to join in. I hope Grimsby manages to get involved, though he has a couple of would-be assassins to get past first.

In reply to Bellgrove G. B. Wander (msg # 84):

Welcome. It is nice to see we have several new players.

Okay Folks, time to kick the elephant in the room...

...steps up on a soapbox...

While this may be "Steampunk", it is also "Victoriana", and that means that -- at least peripherally -- we might touch on such subjects as Racism, Colonialism, Nationalism, Religion, and the concepts of "Superior" forms of each.

At least I plan to... ^_^

Spoiler Alert: At the moment, Dash is having a small crisis of both Religion and Race.  Because Connor doesn't LOOK Human, in the Victorian Eye it is easy to jump to the conclusion that he ISN'T Human.  If he ISN'T Human, then he has no Soul, and is only an Animal, not a Person.

In the Victorian Era, and most of the Age of Colonialism, this was a dominant thought pattern among Euopeans, and those of European Stock (that would be us Americans) -- if a People didn't look and act like Europeans, if they didn't have the advancements of Europeans (in other words, if the Europeans could push them around), then they were (somehow) "Inferior Races".  And many zealous bigots took that even further, saying that since these "Inferior Races" didn't act or Believe the same as their so-called "Betters", then they weren't even People, they were "Sub-Human", and could be oppressed, dispossessed, and even exterminated, all for the betterment of the Great Powers and the Glory of God.

Hey, I ain't saying I believe that crap, but back then, a lot of people did, and a lot of the people that didn't, just had too much on their plates at home to do much about it; they just didn't give it any thought.  It took several more generations, and a couple of World Wars, before such thoughts became less dominant.  They still exist -- and many of the Halls of Power around the world still reverberate with their rhetoric -- but more of the rest of us are looking up from our plates at home, and wondering "What the Hell?"

So, anyways, as a good Roleplayer, I intend to play Dash as historically accurate as I can.  Not to worry, though.  While he may be a good (i.e., intollerant) New England Methodist, he's also from that Massachusettes blue-blood Liberal society that was so hot to Free The Slaves back in the Sixties.  So, he'll get over his predjudices fairly quickly ^_^

Tha-a-a-at's right, I said back in the Sixties...as in the Eighteen-Sixties, that whole War Between the States and Free the Slaves thing in America.

What? You thought Social Change was exclusive to the Flower Power generation?  History repeats itself, my friends.  Over-and-over, round-and-round.  Go check your history for the Seventeen-Sixties, and you'll find the seeds of the American Revolution being sown.  And France.  Lots of blood spilled in France over Social Change (*shudder* how not to run a Revolution...)

All through History "The Sixties" have always been "Interesting Times".

Well now that you've given the elephant the bum's rush out of the room(with apologies to the ASPCA of course), I would just like to say that was a pretty decent summation of Victorian attitudes, and I'll say for the record I'm not offended by your accurate portrayal. After all, I'm playing Connor as an oppressed but intelligent minority in the same era, and I am trying to keep him accurate too, as accurate as can be with a cat-man anyway.

I'm a big history buff, so all of the "manifest destiny" mentality is familiar to me already, surprises me that bits of it keep cropping up in our time still. But yes, time has a funny way of repeating itself, what's old is new and much more besides, and yet some things go on almost forever (steam locomotives for one, a real passion of mine).

Anyway, there's my two cents on that....
This message was last edited by the player at 09:47, Thu 29 May 2014.

Stella has wandered far and wide in her life -- Europe, America, Australia, China. She has seen (and experienced) a share of injustice and inhumanity. She's seen slavery visited on those who were as intelligent and moral as their oppressors. It doesn't set well with her.

Grimsby has seen enough of the back side of Asia to be well aware that non-Europeans can be quite as intelligent and moral as Europeans, if not more so.  On the other hand, he is a dedicated loyal servant of the British Empire and quite willing to do whatever is necessary to see that the Indians and other subordinate members of the empire remain subordinate.  As G.K. Chesterton said of  another agent of the Raj in "The Oracle of the Dog", "Every imperial police is more like a Russian secret police than we like to think." However, as Connor is no threat to the British Empire (we are, I just learned, assuming an alternate history in which Ireland is already independent) Grimsby would have no reason not to treat him fairly.

Well to tell you the truth I just winged the idea that Ireland had already separated from the British Empire, the state of the world in-game is so different than what was in our own 18th-19th centuries and with several other nations that didn't exist in our time-frame either that I figured why not a unified and up-and-coming Ireland? I haven't been contradicted on it yet by the powers that be, so I suppose we can assume this is the case.

I don't think the English would've let the nation go out of the goodness of their hearts, mind, they either let the Emerald Isle go because it had become redundant with global trade and the other parts of the Empire were much more profitable, or since the island is unified as one the Irish either lobbied hard for or made some trouble and fought for their independence from the Crown.


Anyway, I don't think Connor would be much threat to any nation really, unless the nations that funded the research that made him want to start it up again, although they did pull their funding for the project at the last minute and we can assume they either destroyed or highly-classified anything linking them to the project. I intentionally left the identity of these nations secret to put down a foundation for a possible future storyline about the whole thing, but for right now, our resident catman's past will remain in the realm of mystery, and he can't or won't talk much about it.