P.S.:  I'm not a native speaker. I'll try my best to write clear and clean text and proofread it, but you will still have to forgive the occasional misspell or the odd turn of phrase.

In reply to The Seed (msg # 35):

Kudos to you for how well you write and express yourself in English. I wish that I could do so well in . . . well, any non-English language, really,

I used to be able to write reasonably well in Latin, but since I didn't opt for a job in the Catholic church, that kinda fell by the wayside. :)

I speak a few languages myself, but could never produce anything like the quality of writing that is shown here. So, yes. Much respect.

I can read and write Ancient Egyptian though! I studied it at university many moons ago.

In reply to Anders McNamara (msg # 36):

Thanks! I lived for a while in the UK, which helped, although at a certain point it feels like your level of fluency just reaches a plateau and doesn't improve anymore, no matter how much time you spend in that country.



Ooooh, I am so glad you said that!
...but I won't reveal anything yet.

That and your stage work must make for quite an interesting CV!

Your english is superior to most of the native born English, if you ask me. :P

My CV is unique, yes. I have studied at several different universities. If I get interested in something, I just chase it down! I was studying my MA in Victorian Studies in 2017, until I got very seriously ill. I plan to pick it up again, if I get well enough.

I am really sorry to hear that! I hope you'll get well very soon!


I can understand that very well! I'm a particle physicist by profession, spent so much time around universities. I wish students were more like you, that much driven and interested.
Every year we have so many students who enrol at the university but are not interested at all in the taught courses.

Yes, I wish that too! I've been in classes with students who did no work and did not care. Trying to have an interesting discussion with that is pretty pointless.

I tried to learn Spanish, but only remember a few sentences, and Latin, but I only remember a few words and rules (C is always a hard K sound in Latin)

Also, ships usually have artificial gravity in this setting? (At least inside the ship?)

In reply to Hazel Winters (msg # 43):

I like Spanish, although it is basically cheating learning it if your native language is Italian, since the two languages are extremely similar. It really requires very little effort. Although now that I moved to Portugal I cannot speak Spanish anymore, I keep mixing Portuguese words and pronunciation all the time, so Spanish people look at me weird.

Since I went to Italian school I HAD to learn Latin (for like 5 years). If my teacher would see the title of the game, she would probably kill me since I haven't bothered to check if gender and case agree (I'm pretty sure they don't). In any case in this universe Latin has evolved linguistically, and cases tends to get messed up over time in any language, so that's that :)

Incidentally, I found Latin useful when I moved to Poland and had to learn Polish. All the other people in the class who had never heard of noun cases before had a hard time wrapping their heads around that.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:28, Tue 28 Apr 2020.

Yes! Although I really like the realism of shows like the Expanse (mag boots + pseudo-gravity from acceleration) I'll have ships in this universe using artificial gravity.
The physicist in me gets all itchy over that (if ranked in order of implausibility, artificial gravity in sci-fi possibly goes on top of the list for me), but it's just much easier mechanically for the purpose of running the game.

I have seen things where ships act like a gigantic centrifuge to generate gravity. It's a nice idea, though am not sure people could actually live inside a giant centrifuge for other reasons...

Ancient Egyptian has some similarities to several modern languages. But it also has some truly mind boggling elements that make using it very tricky. For example, this is truth:

Present Tense Negative is written, and pronounced, identically to Paste Tense Positive. So, you read:

djed.n.i

Which means either I am not saying, or, I said. And the only way you can work out which is to read more of the paragraph it is in, and work out which it is from context. Another example: wn.n.i means I am not, or, I was.

It also has an entirely seperate case for plurals. Most languages have singular and plural, which can often influence word endings. My car/our cars. My arm/My arms. His cat/Her cats. We grow up knowing this.

But in Ancient Egyptian, if you have specifically TWO of a thing, you have an entirely different approach. You must specifiy there are two. You would say, for example, My Arm/My Two Arms/Our Arms. "I saw him with my own two eyes!"

Nobody knows why.

And to add the cherry on top of a linguistic cake of oddities, in Ancient Egyptian, there is no word for "No."

There is a word for YES - tiu.

But no word for No.

I have seen several movies where this is clearly not understood. One excellent example is towards the end of The Mummy Returns, where Ankhsunamun cries out "No!"

We had to watch it and translate parts during my course. And when that happened, everyone in the class went "NOPE!!! That ain't right! Subtitle fail!"

In reply to Zen (msg # 47):

Oh, dual tense? I think that appears in the Iliad before it vanishes from Ancient Greek.

Howdy, just jumped on and saw that I got accepted in. I'll have to make this a daily visit, I suppose!

I'll be playing the scientist Franz Bethon. I'm excited to be involved in this.

(Also nice to see a fellow student of ancient languages here! I studied Latin and Greek primarily, but have studied some Biblical Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Avestan. Egyptian is one I couldn't do through my university, though.)

In reply to Hazel Winters (msg # 49):

It doesn't so much vanish as become relegated to largely poetic usage. It still shows up in, e.g., Euripides, regularly.

It's so nice to have some conversation on subjects like these here. Very different to the usual RPoL fare!

Nice to meet you, Franz! Welcome to the game... OF DOOOOM!!!!

Welcome, Franz!

When a skill points to an expert skill on the chart (e.g. Zero-G to Asteroid mining) do you need all the skills pointing to it to get it, or just some of them?

Also, did anyone pick piloting?

I have piloting and first aid, as well as the standard android set. Thus!

Skills:
Computer
First Aid
Linguistics
Mathematics
Piloting

I can keep us going on course, at least.

Welcome, Fanz. It's good that we'll have an egg-head, IC, since Anders ain't gonna be one!

Also, anyone who is so inclined is welcome to stroll up and join Zen's and Ander's IC conversation, insofar as I am concerned.

I'm debating whether intellect or speed should be my strongest stat.

That's your call. IMO. I don't think that there is a right or a wrong choice -- it just depends on how you want to play your character.

And if Hazel (IC) is like Anders, there isn't a *huge* difference between her various Stats, any way.

Intellect is my strongest stat, and speed second, but this is no surprise, as that is where my bonuses end up. :D

In reply to Hazel Winters (msg # 53):

I think that you need the prerequisite skills, but other than that it's just a matter of buying that skill.