Zen Master: Blog

This may have happened on schedule yesterday. The site considers this a minor thing and does not announce it on the home-page stream or even send me an acknowledgment email. I asked about it last night and they told me 'Yeah, we don't do that. It's up.'
You have to actually open the essay up to see that it is, in fact, different text than the day before. Sorry, I thought it would get announced like a new chapter.

(Several readers have posted huge comments for my current story, "The Missile 2v2". If we keep that up, I think that some of the comments will get longer than the comment section can handle. I've suggested taking these writing discussions to email, either here on SOL's internal email system or out in 'real' email. However, Mementh posted his comments in a public place and he deserves a public answer. So, unless you're following the comments at the end of M2, this won't make a lot of sense to you. Just...go read my best-seller "Independent Command".)

Mementh,

Re: Black helicopters - The point here is that the people in them cannot be identified by outsiders. I agree, if that started happening, every Weapon in the country would descend upon the Pentagon and take it apart looking for the missing people, but would the people behind this be that stupid? No, the kidnapped people would be in a secret lab under a mall in St. Louis or something.
And, who is to say it would be the government? Corporations, organized crime (and it's getting harder all the time to tell THOSE two apart), the too-wealthy-to-have-a-conscience, foreign governments, foreign corporations/criminals/billionaires... The list of possible culprits is endless. Better to sidestep the whole mess by making a 'Weapon' not that powerful on Earth.

Re: Cancer - You are making the claim that alien magic/technology that we don't understand cannot possibly help with a particular class of ailments. I don't see it that way. We have no idea how this magic works. Why would we say it cannot do something? _WE_ may not be able to do that (yet), but to claim that magic cannot, either? I can't support that claim.
I accept that Lazlo Zalezac wrote a series of connected stories about an Earth-based magic system that could not cure cancer. I enjoyed them, too, and you may see me listed as a proofreader/editor for his Jade Force series. However, what is the connection here? This is not 'Druid' story, continuing LZ's legacy. This is an 'Axeman' story, continuing Shaddoth's legacy.
You may be right here. You may be wrong here. We'll see who publishes a story first that settles that question.

Re: Knowledge before entry - BlacKnight also brought this up. Did the Black Axe wake up one morning knowing that he had been granted a magical weapon, but with absolutely no idea what it was? Should he practice with nunchucks? Or a sword? Or a trident and net? No. He saw a huge battleaxe. He could do whatever training he thought was appropriate to gain the skills he'd need to wield that axe effectively. Why would the system grant the warriors that much clue, but at the same time not grant the mages any clue about what direction their specific skills would be in?
I submit that, unless the creators of the System really hate mages, they would level that playing field by letting them know what sort of mages they would be. And, if the creators hate mages, why even have them at all? Let this just be a warrior world! I conclude that there is a purpose here that we don't know. Jason was probably right, we're being prepared for something. And the way we do that is to support the interested. Let the helpful people know they will be Healers. Let the angry know they will be Fire Mages. (And, as BlacKnight _just_ said in the comments, it says something about Humanity that we got a lot more Fire Mages than Healers.)
And, yeah, let some unfortunates know that they will actually be wielding unbreakable quarterstaffs in close combat with monsters while everyone else gets swords and axes and spells. I don't think I want to be that guy.

Re: Experience on Earth - From a straight 'Axeman said..." viewpoint, you are correct. However, Shaddoth stayed away from giving us any sort of coherent info on the magic system. What little he gave us doesn't seem to work together, it's not self-consistent.
Axeman shows that all Experience gained is shared equally among all survivors. If a team stays together, when they have totaled 6000 Experience, each one has 1000 Experience. All the warriors will become 2nd level. They will get health, points, etc. The Mages get nothing. They won't get 2nd level until they have 2500 Experience. That's only 500 Experience before the warriors reach _3rd_ level.
It's too hard. For a team grinding their way up the ladder from easier Portals to harder ones -which I'm trying to show here- it takes too long. Accidents will happen. So, for my 'Missile' series, I'm saying that Mages get some experience on Earth for using their skills in a way that has useful results. If an Ice Mage puts out a fire in a hospital before it reaches the generator that is keeping the ICU patients alive, she gets experience. If a Fire Mage...well, I haven't come up with a believable example of how a Fire Mage could save someone's life by burning something, but I keep trying.
It's only the Healers, the absolutely MOST helpless of all the Weapons classes, that get any sort of real benefit from this. It's not much, healing a cat or dog at the local animal clinic only gets her 1 or 2. Healing a human gets her more. Even keeping a heart attack victim alive until the paramedics arrive will only get her, well, I'd been thinking a max of 40 or 50 but that may be too high. A max of 25? Saving 100 lives would get her 2nd level.
Anyway, if Cindy spends her three Heals per day at a hospital and saves three lives, she would get a maximum of 75 Experience. Faced with the need for 2500 and then 5000 more for the next level, it's not much.
But, even 25 a day for healing people on Earth is better than the 30 or so she gets each weekend for risking her neck in a place where she can't even defend herself. Once the numbers sink in, she'll be at the hospital every afternoon after school, looking for people to heal.
Warriors are allowed to use their Portal-granted health, strength, and magical weapons to fight crime and help people. They don't get System Experience, but they get meaningful real experience. Combat Mages don't have much opportunity to use their spells on Earth, but they can at least defend themselves in the Portals by killing whatever is in front of them. Healers can't defend themselves in Portals, but they can earn Experience on Earth.
It levels the playing field a little, and that's why I put that in. Of course, it also lets me add a fun side-plot to my 'Missile' series.

Re: Dates - If, somehow, all the people who had told me I had the dates wrong had gotten together in a conference and hashed out the One True Calendar and then passed it on to me four years ago before I started noodling with an axeman-story, I probably would have adjusted my scribbles to comply. At this point, though, it's too late. Too many changes that would affect the plot.
I may be wrong, but that horse is dead. You may as well stop beating on it. I accept that I may have fucked up, but you-all can't even agree on what 'right' is. You-all should accept that I'm not making all those changes.

Re: Invisible Portals - Where does this come from? The original source, Shaddoth's 'Axeman', STARTS with an extremely clear description of all the chaos created when the Portals first appeared. Visible to all humans, apparently not seen by animals, not detectable by any sensors, and having absolutely no effect on anyone or anything. Except those who had seen phantom weapons when they woke up six days earlier. _Those_ guys, well, those guys got sucked into them. Many never came back.
I mean, that's the entire premise, isn't it? I can't support your assertion that only Weapons can see them. What about the monsters that come out? Can only Weapons see them, too, in this scenario? No, that would be a different story, where everyone is eaten by invisible monsters.

Still, I thank you for having the courage to speak out. You make me think it over and justify my decisions. Someday you're going to write something, and I'll enjoy reading it.

The last chapter of M1 went up in the middle of the night. Since it was less than 24 hours after the previous chapter, it wasn't shown on the home page 'stream'. The story is now completely posted.

The webmaster saw what I was trying to do with graphics, and found another way to deal with the problem. Apparently what I originally wanted to do _should_ have been possible, but the code to allow it has been broken for a long time. Certainly, for as long as I've been here. It's fixed now, and the final chapter of M1 should show Sam's status screen at the end. It should work right no matter how you access the story, whether on a regular monitor, a tablet or phone, or even through a text-to-speech converter.
Still, getting everything working right took some time, and the last chapter of M1 didn't go up until after midnight last night. And it didn't show up in the 'stream' or anyone's lists of updates.

I have pushed the start of my repost of M2 out to tomorrow. With the 'leave my formatting alone' code working right, I should be able to post chapters that are all text, no pictures, with them showing up at 8AM (Eastern time? Not sure.) every morning. After that's been reposted with all the corrections, I'll post M3 and M4. I'm doing everything I can to get M5 done in time, but I won't promise that. M6 is gonna be awhile.
-ZM

...beyond any reasonable expectations. The site doesn't allow text formatting, using spaces to place words in specific places. But, it DOES allow imbedded pictures, so I made a screen-shot of the text I wanted set up the way I wanted it, and attached that PNG as an imbedded picture. Today's chapter -The Missile 1 v2 Chapter 4- was the first test. It looks great!

Actually, it looks a lot better than it should have. I suspect that the management team here went a bit farther than simply plugging my picture in where I asked for it. Dunno what they did, but it looks like it belongs there, just some more text only with formatting. Thanks, management!

I think I have all the bugs worked out on the graphics, or at least we've got a functional work-around. So, I'm starting to re-post M1. Chapter 1 is going up as a 'new story' immediately, with the rest of the chapters scheduled for 0800 each day until done. Once it's up I'll take down the original and do the same thing with M2, then M3 and M4. Assuming nothing goes wrong, of course. I'm still working on M5 and M6.

Hope you like it!
-ZM