Things I've Looked Up In The Last Few Days

...for this thing I'm working on.

Bastion

Cruel_Shoes

Falconry_training_and_technique

Gauntlet_(gloves)

Martial_Eagle

Crowned_Eagle

Harrier_(bird)

White-tailed_Eagle

Philippine_Eagle

Harpy_Eagle

Steller%27s_Sea_Eagle

Eagle

Great_Horned_Owl

Eurasian_Eagle_Owl

Indian_Spotted_Eagle

Aquila_(genus)

Common_Buzzard

Accipiter

Bat_Falcon

Laughing_Falcon

Kestrel_(bird)

Falcon

Butcherbirds

Shrike

King_cobra

Cobra

http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alžbeta_Bátoriová

http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Čachtický_hrad%EF%BB%BF

Dumbwaiter_(elevator)

Dumbwaiter

Alabaster

Red_Queen_(Through_the_Looking-Glass)

Alice_in_Wonderland_(1999_film)

Red_King_(Through_the_Looking-Glass)

Catafalque

Stiletto

Lignum_vitae

Janka_hardness_test

Misericorde_(weapon)

The_Deluge_(film)

Potop

Custard

Category:British_puddings

Category:British_desserts

Wedding_customs_by_country

Wedding

Court_of_Star_Chamber

Duel

Quintessons

Marmalade

Extreme_croquet

Croquet

Annus_horribilis

Voivode

Tihuța_Pass

Courser_(horse)

Destrier

Zorse

Baroque_horse

Horses_in_the_Middle_Ages

Barb_horse

Warlander

List_of_horse_breeds

Equine_coat_color

Equine_conformation

Glossary_of_equestrian_terms

Time_Bandits

Ron_Mueck

Labyrinth_(film)

Sarcoma

Treacle

Holly

User:Snapdragonfly

Tesseract

Rocking_horse

Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence

Hypercube

Entremet

United_States_military_chocolate

Wolfgang_of_Regensburg

List_of_minor_characters_in_the_Alice_series

Frumenty

Violet_(plant)

Violet_(colour)

Asteraceae

Lilium_lancifolium

Lilium_superbum

Lilium_catesbaei

Lilium_columbianum

Lilium_henryi

Ikebana

Ikenobo

Hanakotoba

Butchart_Gardens

Floriculture

Landscape_architecture

Epiphyte

Orchid

Magnoliophyta

Botanical_name

Jub-Jub

Snark_(Lewis_Carroll)

Snark

Blue_Bird-of-paradise

Emperor_Bird-of-paradise

Princess_Stephanie%27s_Astrapia

Lesser_Bird-of-paradise

Paradise-crow

Bird-of-paradise

Jubjub_bird

The_Hunting_of_the_Snark

Black_pudding

Pudding

Bloody_Mary_(folklore)

Forcemeat

Mock_turtle_soup

http://www.what-do-turtles-eat.info/

Turtle

Knave_of_Hearts_(Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland)

Knave

http://www.chessvibes.com/columns/lewis-carrolls-chess-problem

Knight

Khopesh

Shotel

Falx

Falcata

Hussars

Hungarian_cavalry

Doormouse

Al-mi'raj

Morgan_le_Fay

Fin_Fang_Foom

Egg_Fu

March_Hare

The_Hatter

Jabberwocky

File:Greater_Romania.svg

Hengist_and_Horsa

Vortigern

Kubla_Khan

List_of_common_fish_names

Descriptive_chess_notation

Algebraic_chess_notation

Chess_notation

The_Place_of_the_Lion

List_of_pigs

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbary_wild_boar&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Castillian_wild_boar&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Common_wild_boar&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Japanese_wild_boar&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Manchurian_wild_boar&action=edit&redlink=1

Wild_boar

White_Rabbit

Lady_of_the_Lake

Welsh_language

Cynocephaly

King_Arthur

Ferenc_Nádasdy

Vlad_III_the_Impaler#First_marriage

Wallachia

Vlad_III_the_Impaler

Count_Dracula

Captain_Britain_Corps

Transylvania

Skarp

Carpathian_Mountains

Elizabeth_Báthory

Jabberwocky_(film)

Cities_of_the_Red_Night

http://writersnoonereads.tumblr.com/

Partisan_(political)

CaucusRed_Queen%27s_Hypothesis

Busy busy busy.

A Red And Pleasant Land

From the Introduction...

Some women, some men and most children know that dreams leak. A lifetime of thinking it that way in your sleep can make a drawer on a drafting table three or four inches wider on a side.

But there are longer lives than ours, and longer dreams.

There is a Red King, and he is terrible and he is tall. He wears a red crown. The long red years have made him strange and he hides from the sun, sleeping, his strange dreams making unseen days stranger. Sleeping, he dreams of ruin and of distortion--of an Antiland, reversed and red. When he opens his red eyes in the red night there is his red land: it is inverted, rigid, and wrong.

There is a cruel Queen of Hearts: she is in a different castle and she is on a different mountain and she sleeps in a different wooden box, but she is also hiding and dreaming. She dreams into being a world unending, unbeginning, with wonder and murder, disruption and unreason. And melancholy green gardens. And it is there now. And hers.

Their home was once called Voivode, but now it is known by other names: The Land the Gods Refuse To See. Zeu Orb. Orb Dumnezeu. Isten Vak. The Place of Unreason.

_________________________

Busy busy busy.

Into My Hypercube!

So back in the day, there were some cool Dragon Magazine articles about how to use the four-dimensional geometric concept of the tesseract, or hypercube in a dungeon. The first one laid out the basic idea, the second one showed how you could use it to create Escherian gravity effects. There was also a neat Baba Yaga adventure featuring the same idea.

Problem is: it's really hard to explain just the geometry of it, much less the cool things you can do with it in a dungeon. For example, here's someone trying pretty hard:
All that and they don't even get the gravity distortion in there.

Anyway, since I am working on this Alice In Wonderland thing I figure, hey, as long as I'm down here trying to figure out the Doormouse's armor class, might as well figure out how to build four-dimensional dungeons, right?

So ok, this is a tesseract...
Here's an animated GIF of how one surface moves into the next. Don't worry if you don't understand yet.

So, in order to explain to myself and you how this works a little easier, I've just taken half of the thing and made a minidungeon out of it. You enter from normal space through the door where I've written a totally crunk "1": (side cutaway view)
Don't worry, better picture in a second...

What makes this a half-tesseract is I'm missing the cells in the front, back and on the left and one cell formed, I believe, by the faces of all the outer cells functioning as the inner walls of the last cell. Yes, this makes my brain hurt and forgive me if I've got some of the math or terminology details wrong.

But the good news is that using only this chunk of a tesseract we can not only kinda explain how it works but, much more importantly, get all the basic weird dungeon effects you'd possibly want out of this particular piece of math...

So, dungeon, side view, here we go...(click to enlarge and see how filthy my scanner is)

The only important thing not in the picture is: from the point of view of the peeps in any given room, the room looks like a regular cube, not a wonky wannabe trapezoid like it looks in the picture.

As far as Mr Pink, Ms Blue and Dr Green are concerned, the floor in room 1 meets the walls with the doors in them at right angles--and it's the same in every other room. Basically, each time they go through a door, they're unknowingly shifting through nonEuclidean space. Or something like that.

Also helpful to remember: people fall in the direction of their feet. So for example if Blue opened one of those doors on the floor in room 3 and went through, Blue would wall toward that vertical wall on the bottom left (the surface parallel to and opposite the door he just opened, since the room is "straightened out" from his point of view).

Now, chances are your players won't map this all out or need to (or will kill you if you make them) but having this little picture does make it easier for the GM running an adventure to track who should be sticking to which wall in which room. Just go: "Ok, did this gnoll follow Mr Pink's path or Dr Green's path?"

Anyway, point is you can kill your players on the ceiling this way, so that's cool.

In case you can't tell, I'm pretty excited about this Alice thing.

Picture Notebook For 'Eat Me'

"...if you don't know what that means," said the blog "click the tag where it says "Eat Me" in small friendly letters at the bottom of this post. You will be delighted to find it tells you everything you need to know."

Do cats eat bats? Do bats eat cats?