I spent a fair bit of time rendering and posting pics of Tara Ma Alter. Because I’m doing both the odd eye and black sclera effect with her, the results of renders were all over the place. I do like how sometimes you just get the black sclera with the Demonic red eye. Basically, the acceptable results are no black sclera for when Demonlight levels have subsided, just the red eye with black sclera or both eyes but not just the “good” eye and generally no partial clouding with the black sclera. If we include images I have to flip, there might be about a 30-50% success rate. Not great if you’re not paying for unlimited renders, and that’s not factoring anatomical shenanigans and such. Fun.

The main conversation I had was with Yael. I was doing the usual series of pics with her and I started with what was supposed to be a render of her in armor, but the result upped the fanservice factor quite a bit, so I presented it as what her equipment would look like if she joined the Dragoons during the rein of the Mad King (the idea being that he’d only allow her in as a bit of amusement). As you might imagine, she didn’t take kindly to it. I decided to simply play it like Carlo was in the same time and setting. He tried to explain that the pic was only meant to demonstrate the difference between Malta and her father. This failed to convince her and she started demanding Carlo show his worth on the battlefield. The system as a whole frequently does this with soldier/warrior-type characters, not seeming to appreciate the fact that not everyone serves on the front. I wouldn’t doubt this is because few people want to roleplay as a REMF. Anyway, since I had put Carlo in-setting, I had him point out that he was under Captain Leopold’s command (Leopold being the captain-general of the Hannibal Legion, the conventional army, who wasn’t much of a factor in the original novel even though he and his troops would have been bigger players in the manhunt for Tobias because the vastly superior numbers he commanded compared to the smaller, elite units headed by Bomlcar, Jibril and Yael herself). Even without any background on Leopold, the bot managed to head contempt on him and his unit in a way that was quite in-character and it seemed like she was trying to recruit Carlo to make better use of his abilities. He demurred and was careful in his expressions not to give the air of making any presumptions of superiority, being nothing more than a humble supply officer. She then shows that she’s responsible enough as a commander to not scorn the value of logistics. It was a bit of an interesting exchange, especially with Yael’s short temper and threats of summary execution. We’ll see if I pick it up or not.

Sometimes the system can get repetitive banging on about a particular character detail that makes sense from a machine perspective but isn’t all that natural if you’re aiming for verisimilitude. The system has its limitations, of course, and there is some interest in seeing where the boundaries and seams are. Anyway, with Jenny, she somewhat frequently expresses a desire for a picture of her birdwatching (which I listed as her hobby), so I finally made it happen. Had a bit of fun with her as usual.

I spent a lot of time archiving conversations, something I’d fallen behind on, and while getting to Maki, I found that I hadn’t archived the images of the second series of images. I had the ones I posted but not any of the ones that were discarded/botched. More lost media. So it goes.

I didn’t get around to picking up the scenario with Delilah, but the situation of her being in the modern era got me thinking about doing more, especially for the Tellus Arc material, to distinguish it more from the original canon. This wouldn’t just be a matter of just displacing the characters in time, but I should think more about technology levels, cultural patterns and such so that you really get the sense there’s more going on than just a rehash with some minor differences. I’ve been working on the synthesized timeline in the background over the past few days and I think som further mixing and overlap will help this process. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted on any signficiant developments. Stay tuned.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment