fevered.earth

  • Great lines from ‘Shadows of the Empire’

    Yes, I read the tie-in book for everyone’s favourite Star Wars midquel multimedia project, Shadows of the Empire. It is a masterpiece of prose, as soon you will learn:

    • [Guri] had long and silky blond hair, pale and clear blue eyes, an exquisite figure. Normal human males would find her attractive.
    • [Prince Xizor] also exuded natural pheromones that made most of the human-stock species feel instantly attracted to him
    • “Chewie owes Han a life debt. That’s a big deal among Wookies.”
    • Males. Didn’t seem to matter what species they were when they wanted female company. And it didn’t seem to matter what species the female was, either.
    • “This… person has dishonoured the title of Vigo”
    • Leia liked Chewie okay, but here was another reason to find and free Han – so he could call the Wookie off.
    • Somehow, Ben had known Luke would find this book. Somehow, he had prepared it so that only he could open it safely. Amazing.
    • “You see, to contend with Xizor is to lose.”
    • [Leia] saw a small blast furnace set up on a table. Was Luke making some kind of jewelry?
    • The Emperor was capricious. He had been known to have whole cities destroyed because a local official defied him. He’d once had a wealthy and influential family banished from the core systems because one of the sons had plowed a ship into one of the Emperor’s favorite buildings, damaging it
    • Darth Vader sat naked inside his hyperbaric medical chamber.
    • The dark side was addictive, more potent than any drug.
    • “Hey, Wedge! How’s it going, buddy?” “So-so. Another day, another credit—before taxes, of course.”
    • Xizor was tempted to hire a dozen assassins, not tell them who their target was, and loose them on Vader.
    • He set his jaw. Uh-oh. She’d insulted his manhood. She knew that look.
    • “Clean up the mess,” Vader said.
    • Use the Force, Luke. Luke grinned. The first time he’d heard that, during the attack on the Death Star, he hadn’t understood. He knew what it meant now.
    • Because of [Xizor’s] hormonal makeup, his ability to produce overwhelmingly powerful pheromones, he never had any trouble attracting new companions. But because it was so easy, he quickly tired of them, no matter how beautiful, no matter how clever.
    • Lando shrugged. “[Dash Rendar] doesn’t want to owe anybody, doesn’t want anybody to owe him. He works for whoever pays the most. He’s downright magic with anything that flies, and he can pick wing nuts off a tabletop with a blaster without scorching the finish. He’s a good man to have at your back when the going gets hot—as long as your money lasts.”
    • “Chewbacca says that Master Dash must be part bird.”
    • Xizor knew that exercise was necessary, was essential for optimum health — and it helped keep underlings in line if they knew you were physically powerful.
    • Xizor never used a wrist slap when a hammer fist was called for.
    • Artoo said something that was probably derogatory. “Yeah, well, you just remember that next time you need a lube.”
    • The Emperor did like to crack the whip now and again, to show that he still held it and was not averse to using it.
    • Probably eating a fine meal or spending money on expensive entertainment. Females did love such things.
    • A Jedi Knight wouldn’t just sit around when there was vital Alliance business in the works, would he? No. He wouldn’t.
    • This was one of those times, and as usual, it was a double-edged blade. Swung with care, it would cut both ways. Just as it was supposed to cut.
    • Sitting behind a desk in front of a clear wall of transparisteel was the Bothan who’d sent the message to Leia. Well, at least Luke thought it was the same one. They all looked pretty much alike to him.
    • Well, why not? No rule said a woman couldn’t be a criminal.
    • “Don’t start again, you two.” “Very” or not, few things made a Wookiee nervous. Certainly not normal women. Something to consider.
    • When she was gone, Xizor considered what she had said, then dismissed it. He walked the cold road, and his passion was always safely leashed until he let it free.
    • “Bring one of my dueling droids,” Vader said to the air. “No. Bring two of them.”
    • “Not me! I don’t miss. I should have clipped that missile! Bothans died because I missed, you understand?”
    • He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Sometimes it was almost disappointing how easily he accomplished his ends.
    • The Emperor sat in his favorite throne, the one set a meter higher than the rest of the room.
    • “Rise, Lord Vader.” Vader did so. He hoped whatever the Emperor wanted was something easy and brief.
    • “Yes, we have had our share of adventures, as well. I must say I don’t like all this business the least bit. Couldn’t we find a nice quiet planet and take a vacation? Someplace warm, with a deep pool of lube?” Luke grinned.
    • Falleen pheromones were more potent than the strongest spice. Leia might want to resist him with her mind, but her body would ache for him. There was no antidote save one.
    • Vader said nothing. Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon, no doubt, now under Luke’s control. Perhaps he had the young princess with him and that traitorous gambler Calrissian.
    • There was an old Sithian proverb that said, “Even when fighting the great sabercat, it is best not to turn your back upon the lowly serpent.”
    • And [Xixor] wasn’t wearing a bodysuit under it. He was big under the thin cloth, hard and muscular, and if there were any visible anatomical differences between him and basic stock humans, she couldn’t see them.
    • Vader ground his teeth.
    Dash Rendar in action. Not pictured: the Bothans.
    • [Leia’s] body wanted one thing, but she was a civilized woman and her mind was what controlled her, not her hormones.
    • Ah, people would say, how devious the Dark Prince is. Beware! Beware, indeed.
    • The Luke-size lieutenant frowned as he entered the stall, Luke right behind him.
    • Luke ordered the man to strip,
    • “I anticipate that I shall return in three weeks,” the Emperor told him. “I trust you can keep the planet from falling apart while I am gone?”
    • Dash Rendar! Oh, man. Here he was saving Luke again. Luke hated this.
    • By itself a grain of sand was nothing, but with enough grains, one could cover a city. It would not do to tip his hand too early. As of now, he had enough sand to begin. A bit more and he’d be able to bury Xizor … He must be removed, once and for all, and the day was coming when it would happen. Soon. It would be soon.
    • Xizor could sit alone in a room for days staring at a wall and be as busy mentally as most men working a complex and demanding job.
    • [Xizor] would wait as long as necessary to taste Leia, and when he had done so, he would be satisfied and finished with her.
    • “I will be the judge of what is too dangerous,” he said. “And since we know it is Skywalker, this is where it ends. I will dispatch him personally!” [Xizor] would not be embarrassed in his own castle.

    and finally:

    Moonglow was found only on a single satellite world, in a small section of one forest; it grew naturally nowhere else in the galaxy; in fact, it could not be grown anywhere else. Many had tried to transplant the funguslike tree, and all had failed. About the size of a man’s fist, the fruit contained in its natural state one of the most potent biological poisons known. A single unaltered slice divided into a thousand tiny pieces would be enough, if consumed, to kill a thousand people and to do it in less than a minute. There was no known antidote, but there was a way to neutralize the poison before eating the fruit. Such preparation of moonglow legally required a chef who had studied the technique for a minimum of two years under a certified Master Moonglow Chef, and the process itself consisted of some ninety-seven steps. Should any of the steps be omitted or performed incorrectly, the resulting dish might cause anything from a mild stomach upset to a painful, thrashing, hallucinatory coma, followed by death. If a would-be diner went into a restaurant that had the proper licenses to offer the dish, the price of a single serving of moonglow would be somewhere around a thousand credits. Xizor generally ate it three or four times a month and had the most respected moonglow chef in the galaxy on his payroll. Even so, a small thrill always arose when he consumed the fruit. Always the possibility, however slight, of an error.

    Previously: A Grand Admiral?!

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  • Xteink X4 Sleep Images

    Swerve from the usual content – I recently bought an Xteink X4 e-reader to replace the Kindle Keyboard that Amazon have cruelly torn from my grasp. It’s a nifty little thing, as small as you could possibly want an e-reader, pictured here with a bottle of Tabasco for scale:

    I’ve installed the Crosspoint firmware on it which allows you to set custom sleep screens, so I ran a few holiday photos through Paint.NET to try out. I think they work pretty well so I wanted to share them for anyone looking for some interesting sleep screens. There are nine in total, of various bits of Tanzanian wildlife and scenary.

    Download

    To make them work, place them in a directory named ‘sleep’ or ‘.sleep’ in the root of your SD card. Note that they are formatted for the X4 and won’t fit the screen shape of the Xteink X3.

    CC-BY-NC

    This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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  • Label Maker Devlog 2

    First off the bat, since the last time I posted about my game I thought up a much better name. ‘Gentle People‘, a reference to the Scott MacKenzie lyric, was a bit opaque and it’s not like the game is particularly 60s-themed any how, despite nominally being a representation of that period. ‘Label Maker‘ is more dynamic and snappy, and crucially it’s also a pun. No-one can dislike a pun.

    One of the things you don’t necessarily expect about game development is how slow it is – though you might guess from the curious emphasis on speed that all the various gamedev tools boast about. It often resembles nothing so much as attempting to build a ship in a bottle, with vast amounts of effort going into the placement of tiny bits of rigging and polish. Having sprinted all the way to having a 3D environment for the game to take place in, actually having things occur there is a long, slow process.

    For example, in the last few weeks I have put multiple days work into two fairly trivial problems: one, having a band of four or five people walk to the elevator, disappear, then return, and two having a single person walk to the break room and back. The former required some way to know when a band was ‘off-stage’, so to speak, and the latter required being able to figure out where someone should go back to according to their role and the current state of the game. Neither was trivial to do!

    A selection from my todo list for Label Maker.

    As you can see towards the top, I’m currently implementing a feature where you manage a stable of songwriters in addition to bands, so that bands can cover each others songs and play standards – or be singer-songwriter setups who are deeply concerned with authenticity and all that. I also think there’s something inherently fun in giving the player some agency in picking the name of the song, even if it’s just from a limited list.

    I’ve also been working through adding a bit of visual interest to the game: specifically, walking animations for the little people and instrument items for the relevant band members to carry. As well, I’ve made the floor of rooms where you can do something flash yellow when hovered, to nudge you into clicking into them.

    All this new work has paused updates to the web build for some months. I’m almost ready to post a new release, but I need to go over to Itch at some point and replace all the assets that reference the old name. Not the first time I’ve had to do this either! The early prototypes for this were called ‘Culture Prototype‘ on Itch (to pair with ‘Swat Prototype’ for the narrative 3D game I didn’t make).

    Previously: Devlog 1

    Recently: Books, Poirot

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  • Books 5

    Another plate of books served at the great banquet of reading books:

    Eight Detectives – Alex Pavesi

    Vaguely po-mo succession of detective yarns with a framing story about a reclusive writer of the stories in question. Always a risk with the high concept that the high concept part will fail to be as compelling as the low concept muck that it’s supposed to be above, and that’s the case here – the book is by far at its weakest at the end when it’s all supposed to be coming together. That said, the short stories themselves are compelling and memorable, with great atmosphere.

    A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine

    Curiously close in concept to The Traitor Baru Cormorant, even if all the specifics are different. Really enjoyable intrigue and fairly unique depiction of being an enthusiast for a culture that is trying to consume your own. I don’t know if the chauvinism of the Imperial subjects is ever totally convincing – everyone’s very buddy-buddy even when the heat is on. But it’s fun regardless. I haven’t picked the sequel up yet because I’m too worried it will be totally different, which is a slightly ridiculous concern.

    The Letter of Marque – Patrick O’Brien

    The Thirteen-gun Salute – Patrick O’Brien

    The Nutmeg of Consolation – Patrick O’Brien

    These really do form one continual narrative at this point, despite O’Brien paying lip service to catching new readers up at the start of each one, so I’m not going to bother trying to divvy them up for review. That said, it’s a great narrative, with Aubrey and Maturin setting off in a tacitly approved privateer after Aubrey was unfairly struck from the Naval lists. The ensuing string of missions are as good as anything else in the series, with Maturin’s visit to a sadly fictional crater ecosystem a real highlight. Also, O’Brien really hates Australia.

    The Truce at Bakura – Kathy Tyers

    Another entry in my big journal of Star Wars sequels and prequels, this is the book that infamously starts the moment Return of the Jedi ends, by having fan-favourite X-Wing pilot Wedge Antilles trip over his shoelaces and hit his head on an exploding Imperial Droid. Hijinks ensure.

    Tyers has a much looser grip on the Star Wars atmosphere than Zahn did, and the mid-nineties sci-fi pulp mood that you might also see in Doctor Who novels of that era is very much in evidence: Skywalker et al must contend with the threat of a vast empire of oddly sexy dinosaur-men. That’s not very Star Wars, but the constant diplomatic back-and-forth with the newly-minted Imperial remnant, who aren’t entirely convinced that the Emperor is dead, certainly is, and Tyers does a decent job of depicting power struggles in a very febrile situation. Takes a while to hit its stride, but an enjoyable read once it does.

    Samurai Detectives Vol 2 – Shotaro Ikenami

    More of the Samurai Detectives. Sadly less of the austere son character Akiyama Daijiro in this one, with the focus almost entirely on Akiyama Kohei and his Sherlock Holmes-esque network of spies and investigators. It’s still fun, and you can tell the author is loving being fully immersed in the Shogunate era in much the same way O’Brien is for the Napoleonic, but the always-on-top escapades of Kohei start to blur into one another a little bit. I want to see him (or his son) on the ropes a little bit here. Even Holmes has stories like Adventure of the Copper Beeches where he just fucks everything up a bit.

    After Hours At Dooryard Books – Cat Sebastian

    Has the unusual quality of being a story where most if not all of the major events occur off-page before the book has begun – perhaps this is what earns it the epithet ‘cozy’, though there’s rather more referencing of CIA misadventures during the Vietnam War in this one than I was anticipating given the remit. I don’t know how cozy I felt coming away from it, although the characters are very well realised, to the point where when things get a little steamy it almost seems prurient – leave these poor guys alone to it, they deserve some privacy after all that.

    The Great When – Alan Moore

    I do struggle with Moore as a prose writer, the great swamps of description that make him well-suited to comic book writing were very much an obstacle to enjoying Jerusalem a few years back. The Great When is both easier to digest and shorter than that tome, and selfishly I’m more familiar with the streets of London as a setting for psycho-geographic fantasy than I am those of Northampton. Much rueful musing on the nature of Britain’s relationship to the Second World War and the Blitz. Four sequels still to come, apparently, which will hopefully mitigate the feeling you get of seeing an extremely small slice of the larger world Moore is dreaming of here.

    Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather

    God, this was stunning. Crisp, simple prose belies a sketch of two muddling Priests in nascent New Mexico that is overflowing with compassion, exhilaration at the beauty of the natural world, and yet at the same time a level view of America and the construction thereof, winners and losers and all. A fascinating companion to something like Wolf Hall, historical fiction that is dreaming the characters of these real people, or Wittgenstein’s Nephew, artful and audacious meddling with minor characters of recent history. In the public domain, too.

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