User:Sefet/December2008

12/15/08 – “3….2….1……GO!” (The first words I read upon logging in as the servers come online)

The tale started on the 13th at noon and was off to a breakneck start. Within an hour and a half, I had passed my citizenship test, the tutorial, and was on my way jogging to my chosen campsite. By 4:30pm, I had built my compound, expanded it to a size 16 and passed the Initiation into Architecture.

Later in the evening, I logged back in, built a few things for the compound to make it feel ‘homey’: a couple of distaffs, a flax combs, some kilns, and some chests. Very productive evening.

The following day was mostly spent working on Initiations: passed Body and Leadership as they became unlocked.

Art and Music was… much harder than it could’ve been, but only because of me not reading the instructions. The Art Init was changed to “Build a sculpture, add a few things to it and EITHER tear it down or have 21 people approve of it.” I totally missed the ‘tear it down’ part. So I ran to a popular spot and discovered to my horror I was 5 rope and 50 boards shy, ran back to the compound after doing the Body Init (since I was in the neighborhood), wove more rope, ran back to the center of our region, and spent the better part of an hour trying to make a grass guy lying on the ground, feet propped up, looking at the sky.

The original ‘concept’ for my piece was “Waiting for the grass to dry”. After screwing with it for a half hour, it became ‘Amateur Astronomer’ and another 15 minutes left me with a grass stick figure looking like he was laughing his butt off on the ground. I figured ‘What the Hell’, and left it like that, entitled the piece “ROFLMAO” and went on with my day. An hour after that, I noticed I could’ve just ripped the damn thing down and passed. My stubbornness kicked in and I decided after all that work, I –was- going to get 21 approvals. By the time I logged for the night, it had garnered 18 favorable votes.

The Body Init was scarily easy: click on 35 different plant types in 20 minutes and turn your ‘log’ in to the University/school you started from. I simply followed green areas on my map, running to lakes, encircling them and finished with 10 minutes to spare.

Leadership took even less time: once it was unlocked, a horde of people ran to the school to accept the test, then we all met up for a quick signature party. In short order, we had a mass of people passing in a veritable lightning storm at the University.

A couple of nice unexpected things: got a couple of papyrus from a kind soul planting by my house. Not that I really need any of it yet, but it’s nice to have options. The best surprise came from my first ‘let’s go Downtown’ run, when I stumbled over a group of people digging a hole for rocks. I borrowed a shovel and got to work. After a while, the resources were divvied up and I wound up with a couple of medium stones and 15 or so cuttable stones. These will come in handy later this week—stay tuned.

It will really help when I’m able to get friends into a Guild, so I don’t have to worry about setting very vulnerable items as ‘public use’, so I devoted my entire stock of canvas to taking us within two units of unlocking the Guild Construction technology. It’s been unlocked now, so tonight I shall get a guildhall built.

Current short term goals: Learn guildhall construction, build guild Claim my rights as an Initiate of Art and Music Finish my project boxes for a Dromedary Pen and Sheep Pen Make a lot of straw to lure the camels I’ll be competing for.

Week Goals: Get a camel or a pair of sheep Get a pottery wheel (or 5) Unlock offline onion harvesting (only 4 zillion more onions to grow manually!)

Ah—almost forgot: got to compete in a resource gathering contest: The Heptathlon. Basically, be among the top gatherers of slate, wood, veggies, grass, fish, silt, and flax in 30 minutes. Apparently my score was just beneath the cutoff for grand prize winners, (The cutoff was “190 or 193”, per the Pharaoh…my score was 190) but I did get a little extra canvas for my trouble, defraying (if you’ll pardon the expression) partially my contributions to unlock Guild Construction.

12/16/08 – I ran so far away….

With eager anticipation like a kid at Christmas, I logged in to receive confirmation that enough people had approved of my sculpture. Grabbing some travelling supplies from my chest, I began hiking south to the Town Square. I claimed my rights as an Initiate of Art and Music and set to exploring. Shabbat Ab is coming along nicely and I noted with a gleam in my eye there’s now a rock saw and a good half dozen pottery wheels for public use. This pleases Sefet. I made a mental note that I’d have to return with clay and rocks for processing.

Shabbat Ab still had not unlocked Animal Husbandry, so I decided to run down to our southern neighbor, Saqqarah (formerly hated Karnak). I’ve grown to really appreciate the run speed boost in this Telling. It was still a horribly long run, but about half as long as it could have been. Stopped by their University of Worship and was rewarded with a bit more than I expected: not only did I get Animal Husbandry, but I also learned Agriculture and was given 4 carrot seeds. (Carrots will eventually feed rabbits, which will feed snakes, which produce venom, which…). On the way back home, I picked up Dowsing from our own University of SomethingorAnother and learned Project Management from the School of Harmony just south of the Sefetplex. Project Management allows the construction of construction sites, needed for outdoor buildings like the animal pens.

Returning home, I noticed the time was (in-game) around 10:30. Camels come at midnight to the Pen to the one in the area with the most straw. In some warped fashion, this puts camels in the same league as The Great Pumpkin of Peanuts’ fame. Like a demon, I hastily constructed the dromedary pen. They require sand, so it got built on the only strip of sand in my immediate area… on the water’s edge. At least the camels will have a steady supply of fresh water. I began stuffing the pen with tasty straw as a smirk formed in my mind. Few people in my region possess the knowledge to create such a pen! Sefet shall soon have a camel!

By the toll of the witching hour, I had some 700+ straw tucked away. No camels. I checked the pen and they had been nibbling at the straw, but none came to stay. In annoyance, I ask the region how much the winner spent for his camel. “We just spent about 9000” was the answer. My jaw hit the ground so hard, it would’ve spooked the non-existent camels.

On to plan B: if I can’t have a camel….perhaps Sefet can have sheep? Worked the looms and flax fields to get more canvas for a sheep pen and built it behind the shade of trees. I like my virtual animals to live in virtual comfort.

I built the guild hall for “Flaxation Without Representation” beside the pens and was pleased with the appearance. It can hold three members presently and can be expanded in the unlikely event more friends join up and play.

With my buildings constructed, I craved sheep. Putting out a call to buy one, I had two respondents. A quick haggling session later, I settled on a male sheep hand-delivered from Saqqarah. The price the traveler asked was so low, I raised it just so I’d feel as though I wasn’t robbing him. So for Sefet, 2 canvas, 40 flax, 10 papyrus equaled 1 sheep. The sheep looked happy in the pen, so I dumped a handful of onions with him and jogged off to the School of Architecture and got a mate for him, as part of my pre-order reward.

It was about this time, the Developers chatted globally that they had received calls from stunned/confused/outraged players that “game mechanics had changed from the last Telling” and they wanted to set the record straight: animals will die if you don’t feed them. The last two Tales, they didn’t and that was a bug they fixed. Crap. Starving animals was part of my long-term strategy.

Ok—I had sheep, now I needed onions. A lot of them. To grow the onions, I needed water. To carry water I needed jugs— and ran to the public pottery wheels I spied earlier! In return for the use of the wheels and saw, I made a few dozen jugs for the public, found a free Dowsing Rod (more on this tomorrow), and made my way back to the camp.

I then grew 500 or so onions…enough to keep the sheep busy for a while and unlock ‘offline onion harvesting.’ As long as I keep the sheep to a reasonable number, I shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping them fed and happy.

I would call it a very good day in the desert.

12/17/08 – No onions for Sefet!

I log on in gleeful anticipation—any sheepies born yet? Answer: no. Ah, well….at least I’d have plenty of onions to top off the pens, I thought. It was then that I noticed no onions in my inventory and a proliferation of grass. Although I had unlocked offline onion harvesting the previous night, I had forgotten to enable it! The sheep were just going to have to make do with their current ton of onions.

I took a quick assessment of what was needed at the ‘Plex (nothing) and what was wanted (everything) and decided to meet in the middle. The only really useful things I can build right now requires precious, precious leather, so instead I set myself to gathering resources for some upcoming projects: the Obelisk, about 16 beehives (we may have apiary technology in a few days), and a fire pit. I figured additionally that since fire pits will be available the next day, some limestone would be a good investment. It will be processed into lime when it comes time to make glass, so a little bit now certainly wouldn’t hurt.

To get the limestone, I’d need a flint hammer and a few chisels. Chisels break after a random number of uses… the hammer is eternal. I sifted through a ton of clay and gathered enough flint for a half dozen chisels. Taking a few odds and ends with me, I meander down to the local limestone patch… a good ten minute run away. I figured 100 limestone should do it. The first chisel shattered on the first pull. The second lasted another three. I began to grow worried, as there didn’t seem to be a handy clay supply nearby. Fortunately, the next lasted 90-something pulls and I finished with three chisels to spare. Along the way I also picked up 28 soda (this will make soda glass later).

Gathering limestone is fairly unexciting. Click, wait a while, click again. There was a small pool of water nearby with tons of sand beside it. Since I was still carrying my onion seeds, I passed the time and grew a couple hundred more veggies for “the flock”.

Nearly full, I start loping back to camp… and come across a small random herd of male sheep! Picking one up left me seriously overburdened and left me with a very painful choice. In the end I wound up having to leave every onion (save four) I had grown on the ground to carry off my sheep at the limits of my encumbrance.

Returning to the pens, I dropped off the sheep and noted there were still no babies. I mourned the loss of the onions, but didn’t feel compelled to grow more as the pen was still well-stocked.

I was mildly surprised to find my camp was overrun by a number of fishermen, who spent a couple of hours gathering Tilapia on the banks of the Nile and Lake Sefet (the tiny pond by the Guild Hall).

The rest of the evening was spent gathering resources: slate, wood, firebricks, and bricks (I tried very hard not to tap the camel reserve). I built a large chest (holds 5k resources) I ended with enough for the firepot, a few hundred wood, 8 or so linen , and close to a thousand bricks in reserve.

And a bright spot: just before I called it a night, another female sheep was born, yielding two breeding pair.

12/18/08 – I didn’t start the fire

Controlled Burn came off timer, but I wasn’t in a rush to get it. I had a great deal of flaxxing to do at home first, because I’m going to need a lot linen soon. Beehives will need one piece each and the Obelisk, when I get to it, will require a great need, based on how large it will be. Last Tale, my Obelisk was 75 cubits tall and it ran up a cost of 71 linen.

Here’s the scaled costs, based on a calculator I found online for last Tale:

-- Size in Cubits -- 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 -- --Boards 240 400 600 840 1120 1440 1.8k --Bricks 2.4k 4k 6k 8.4k 11.2k 14.4k 18k --Ash 19 34 52 75 101 132 166 --Linen 15 24 35 48 63 80 99 --Beeswax 51 88 135 192 259 336 423 --Cactus Sap 39 56 75 96 119 144 171 --Small Sapphires 4 7 10 13 16 20 25 (Stupid wikiformatting-- I'm not going to try to fix the table.)

I’m preparing for a similar size this time and if it can be smaller, I’m very ok with spending less resources to pass a Test and linen stays useful regardless.

Flaxxing itself got easier, as I now have a ready supply of Nile Green seeds. They require a little water to grow in addition to the weeding, but they have double the yield of Old Egyptian. One seed = two flax. Yay! My production bottleneck comes in the flax combs, which are a bit of a nuisance with the constant breaking.

All total, I knocked out 25 linen last night, which will be more than enough for the Field of Bees (8 hives will really be enough for now. I’ll expand to 12 eventually, but there’s no rush…I tended to run into an overabundance of wax last time. The wax will mostly be used for casting projects later.

Urbi showed up unexpectedly to flax a little, so I gave her better seeds and about a dozen jugs to help her along. This cut back on my jug supply, plus I want to give more to Kotas, so I decided to take a little clay down to the public wheels, along with a couple of cuttable stones to make into pulleys at the rock saw.

Along the way I came across an amusing lolcat statue (“I can has Egyptian cat food?”) of a kitty in front of a tadpole ‘fish’ bowl and a couple of Empty Hand Puzzles. I’ll go into detail with the Puzzles later, but for now suffice it to say Initiation into Thought has been unlocked.

I made a few dozen jugs and a single pulley—it turns out pulleys take ten minutes each to cut and I didn’t want to hang out that long. I’m just going to have to build a rock saw once leather and oil start rolling in. The sheep are holding steady at 5 total. (I had started to wonder why there weren’t breeding as quickly as I hoped and then I realized they’re wearing sheepskins.)

I wanted to add something to the ‘Plex besides the third distaff so I went ahead and picked up Controlled Burn for the firepot and started the Inits to both Thought and Harmony.

Harmony requires meeting people-- not just any people, but people who have passed Tests in previous Tales and Initiations in the current one. It should be easy to pass the next time there’s a big dig or something. The only ‘hitch’ with it is that it requires level 4 to start, so I’ll have to likely wait until others have passed the other Inits.

Finally made my way back to the ‘Plex and discovered a new neighbor had built next to the bottle trees, near Ft. Kotas-by-the-Sea. He seems friendly enough, so we’ll see how that goes.

I keep forgetting to pick up fishing while I’m out and I also need to trade for leek seeds. I’ve got the firepot built, but nothing to burn on it for ash. It’ll need leeks, dried flax or dried papyrus. I’ll have to check the wiki for Tale 3 and see which gives the best return for time invested. It’s been too long since I stoked a pit myself. End result: I’ve got a fire pit, but I won’t light it for a day or two.

12/19/08 – Let’s Hear it for the Bees

Wasn’t honestly expecting to get very much accomplished, due to other commitments outside of Egypt, but providence smiled at Sefet, even if the camel gods do not.

A neighbor, Trillian, gifted me with thirty handfuls of papyrus seeds. I thanked her and blessed her house and sheep. I’ll grow some papy this weekend most likely—it makes for lovely ash and I could also really, really use a basket of woven papyrus for faster grass harvesting.

Mandisa, my wonderful wife IRL, has been diligently gathering basic resources and dumping them in a nearby chest as the minutes tick down on her trial account. She seems to like the gathering aspects (mmmmm….slate!) and is always happy to count sheep midday, but doesn’t think much of the Tests. I should know in another week or so if I’m going to be starting her up on a ‘full’ account. We shall see.

I noted with some pleasure a dig was underway very nearby…just a couple minutes from the ‘Plex, so I took the opportunity to join in and meet a few people

It turned out that it was a very good idea. In short order I met a couple of people who helped me along the Harmony Initiation. Aside from meeting initiates of 6 and Worship—neither of which are possible yet—all I needed to do is meet a Granddaughter of an Oracle, and I heard that near the Chariot Stop lived one named Shebi (not to be confused with a ‘sheepie’, which gives more leather) I’d go to visit later.

The dig continued and lessons began! Some who had travelled far to the south knew Beekeeping and were willing to share the knowledge. Four lessons and 15 minutes later, I could construct apiaries.

When the dig concluded, I was rewarded with ten cuttable stones and another medium stone. I now presumably have enough for a forge, once that technology is researched.

Back home, I grab nine linen and construct the Field of Bees. Well, placed nine apiaries in a 3x3 grid at any rate. They’ll need to be checked once a day and it’ll be likely three days or so before they start producing wax and honey.

Wove a few linen until I ran out of thread and flax. I’m going to seriously need to flax it up for the next few days to get the linen stock up. I want to be as prepared as possible once Obelisks come online, which I’ll predict will be next Friday. In theory, IF I’m one of the first two people in a zone that builds an obelisk, I can do it without the need for any sapphires, but that’s one hell of a long shot. It’d require being at the University as soon as it unlocks (wherever that is) and Expedition Travel somewhere two zones away. That’s…doable. It also assumes the materials required to construct an obelisk hasn’t changed since last time. That’s a lot of assumptions, really. Fortunately I should have a week to plan.

I decided for fun I’d show Mandisa what a firepit in action looks like: whittled up some pointy sticks for stoking and tinder, dumped my spare dried flax for some ash and a metric ton of wood on it, bent down, tinder in hand… and realized I didn’t know how to light it. Ironically, I managed to do THE SAME THING last Telling. I was going to need Firebuilding.

Checking the map, there was a School of Leadership I could learn the skill from to the north in Stillwater across the Nile from their Uworship (read: Seed Depot). As I ran, I wondered what exactly leadership has do to with setting things on fire. Aside from books and witches, I couldn’t really think of anything else leaders have tried to light up. Cities, maybe? Serendipitously, as I ran I passed a random person ran up while I had my map out. She introduced herself as a granddaughter of an Oracle, putting me that much closer to passing the Initiation into Harmony

Doused along the way, but still no traces of Iron or Copper. Got cabbage seeds from Stillwater’s Uworship, learned firebuilding, and headed back home. It was really too late to get a fire going, so I’ll put it off until tomorrow.

Given how slowly my sheep are reproducing, I’m going to need a second pen to keep the leather supplies steady once I start culling. I’ll make that my highest priority and then construct a charcoal oven. Historically, charcoal makes a damn fine currency for trading: everyone needs it, it’s very portable, and I’m good at making it.

I only hope we get tech for the ovens soon.

12/29/08 Christmas in Egypt or “‘Talkin’ ‘bout my Initiations’”

A bit of time since the last update, I’m afraid. Too busy playing in the Giant Sandbox to write about it. Quite a lot happened in the past ten days over my vacation, so I’ll kind of sum up and expound later on key interest points.

Technology

We had quite the industrial boom with a new tech being unlocked nearly every day: horticulture, basic charcoal production, mining, forging, blacksmithing, and possibly one other I’m forgetting. What this gives us are: mines and ore, charcoal, refinement of ore into metals, simple metal tools and beloved nails. Most importantly, possibly, Chariot Repair was made available and many of the Chariot routes have been repaired, allowing much fast travel between the regions!

Life around the ‘Plex: Mining

The ‘Plex has been buzzing with activity…and not just from the fully operational apiaries. With the advent of metal tech, leather from the three sheep pens first went to building mines.

I successfully found a couple of veins, but my first location was ‘jumped’ by Ovid. I wasn’t too resentful at the time, as he simply had the leather to build at the time and I did not. It was a tin mine, which is rarer than iron and copper, but he gave me some ore in return. (He also helped out with several other things, so I’m completely happy with the arrangement.) Over the course of several days, enough leather was generated and enough pulleys made to allow three mines to be built, fairly closely: two iron and one copper. As a bonus, one of the iron mines also produces rubies.

Life around the ‘Plex: Toys!

Fun new ‘toys’ have been built around the Compound, all of which have been ‘Guilded’, so you can play with them without having to worry about building your own:

Kitchen. Grind up cabbages and carrots (for juices) or seeds (for oil) Charcoal Oven: Convert large quantities of wood into charcoal, 100 at a go. Compression Furnace: 484 Ore + 20 charcoal + 20 minutes = 15 metal Bullet Furnace: 50 Ore + 5 charcoal + 5 minutes = 1 metal (not very practical now that we have the Compression one, but I just haven’t torn it down yet) Rocksaw: fashions cuttable stones into cut stones and pulleys. Mason’s Bench: Cuts medium stones into fly stones and crucibles. Tub: Although you –could- rot flax in it, it really is used for rotting dung into saltpeter, or evaporating sulphurous water into sulphur. Student’s Forge/Master’s Forge: allows various metals to be made into tools, make nails. Hackling Rake: Finally, a flax comb that lasts 90+ uses, instead of 5. Hand Loom: My crowning achievement. A loom that never wastes twine in ‘breakage’.

--I also have a scythe and papyrus basket to make grass picking more productive.

To accommodate some of the new structures, I’ve increased the size of the Compound to 30 squares. To my delight, I found we can change the floor color at no cost.

Tonight advanced brick rack technology comes off timer and hopefully soon, we’ll have casing technology. That will allow us to make anvils and the wonderful tools that make harvesting less of a pain: better axes, shovels, and scythes.

Obelisk Drama

Test of the Obelisk came online and we all queued up to build our obelisks…there was a major change this Tale. Previously, the Obelisk had to be the tallest in your region and stand for an hour unmolested. This time they upped the time factor to about two and a half days. This caused a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. When it came down to it, Shabbat Ab decided to form a queue starting at 8 cubits (the minimum) and people signed up in order 1 additional cubit at a time and we pretty much had to trust there’d be no asses.

Didn’t work out so good. Our ‘queue-jumper’ was a French girl named ‘chris35’. I have strikingly little love for people with numbers in their name to begin with, but the day after the test went online, she dropped down a 15 cubit obelisk and responded to critics by saying ‘no easy test passes’. According to the queue, the next person with resources available to place was me and by an amusing coincidence, my obelisk was slated to be a 16 cubit. The question then became: do I let chris’ work stand or top it and add fuel to the fire? I topped it with my 16 about 3 hours after she built hers. (The only bright spot was that my calculator was for a different kind of obelisk! This one required no gems or sap.)

This, of course, freaked out everyone. People logging on over the next day saw the queue had jumped from 8 to 16 and ran to see who had ‘broken the public trust’. In a proactive measure, I built a sign next to my obelisk to explain what had happened. The region accepted this…mostly. When my obelisk had three hours left to go, the nefarious chris35 again overbuilt…this time to 25 cubits. The public freaked and formed a lynch mob. I took matters in stride publicly, but was disheartened. Chris35, tore down her obelisk to appease the mob, but it was too late…the game demanded the next obelisk be 26 cubits high at the least.

The next few hours passed and no obelisk was constructed. The amount of linen required surpassed what anyone had stockpiled. I was able to disassemble my obelisk at no material loss, but it left me around 20 linen shy. Trillian, who was next in line after me, was also disillusioned and offered to lend me 15 she had stockpiled. I decided ‘to hell with it all’ and ground out the other linen and thousand bricks remaining. My 26 cubit obelisk went up by Lake Sefet-by-the-Nile and shadeking summed up the community’s sentiment as follows: “Sefet rebuilt? Good for him!”

On Christmas Day, just past noon, I became the first person to pass a Test in Shabbat Ab and was decreed a Student of Architecture. Yay!

‘Talkin’ ‘bout my Initiations’

Thought –

Thought’s Initiation can be passed one of two ways: beating three of the hardest Empty Hand Puzzles in Egypt OR by building one of your own and having 7 people beat it and judge it as ‘good’ or better. I originally wanted to take the easy way out and just play the games, but found out to my dismay only ONE puzzle was being ‘passed’ as worthy every week. So, I built my own and was rather glad I did. These can actually be fun little puzzles, if they are designed well. I built and designed what I thought was a fairly challenging puzzle away from town over by where we hold digs.

While I was down by the chariot stop, I played and very quickly beat a dozen or so puzzles that only took 3-5 moves to solve and weren’t challenging…at all. I then became worried that I made mine too hard. It won’t get votes if it can’t be beaten, so I built a sign by it, requesting players and referring them to the solution written on another sign by the Sefetplex, if they were curious. In the end, within 3 days I had achieved 6 votes and bribed the head of the local research guild with 1k firebricks to give me the last vote needed.

Over the days I’ve received a number of complements on the puzzle noting that it is challenging and ‘definitely not a beginner’s level puzzle’. I’m quite pleased. It will never pass as one of the best in Egypt, but it got me what I wanted.

Worship / Harmony-

Someone finally discovered diamonds up in Adn and gave a few to the people to share around to participate in Initiation into Worship. Once a few people passed Worship, it became easy to finish Harmony. I ran into an Initiate of Six at a Chariot Stop, then met an Initiate of Worship about a minute later. Zap!

It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I was able to undertake the Worship Initiation myself and, as always, it was much more pain that I was expecting. My partner was the lovely Mandisa and both small diamond and camel milk was provided by Ovid, with the diamond promised to be returned that evening.

I got back to camp to check over the supplies I’d need…beetle…check. Milk, diamond…check. Tuition for a new skill to learn….check. Grilled fish….crap. I’d no fish left. Hastily threw together a fire in the pit and let it cook away while I checked online to see if I’d need flint or what to light the public ceremonial torch and discovered that torches burn away after one use this Tale and thus, there were no public torches.

I’d need Ritual Construction in order to build a torch…and that required…a couple hundred firebricks (of which I had none), a hundred oil (of which I had tons), and ten…linen. Crap. Spent the whole of the next hour flaxxing my heart out to get everything done by ‘go time’. Well, at least Ritual Item Construction would count as my ‘skill learned’. Ran Mandisa and myself down to the altar and waited til Marie was ready.

The Ritual itself went smooth as silk, with me running around like an idiot and Marie cutting and pasting the intonations to the seven gods and goddesses. With well over 15 minutes to spare, we both zapped. Mandisa is now an Initiate of Six, with Thought left to go. (She passed Art with a Christmas Tree sculpture that got its last vote on Christmas Day and Architecture with a compound I built as her a little north from the ‘Plex where the road turns to a T-Junction.)

Acrobatics –

Attended a couple of Acrobatic-oriented gatherings (including one very impressive Acroline®) Still haven’t gotten my second move yet, but with 88 facets taught and some parts of two dozen moves learned, I’m getting very close on several of them. Needless to say, I passed the Principles of the Acrobat quite readily.

Miscellaneous Fun!

I found a tar patch, so learned ferry construction and built a small light craft that glides across your inlet. Unfortunately, it won’t cross the Nile (cause walking a minute to the north is so burdensome…heh.), but is a fun little thing. When Test of the Singing Cicadas opens, I’ll be taking a ferry kit with me to cross lakes and what-have-you to get at those delightful little cages.

Christmas came to Egypt with freak snowstorms and piles of presents addressed to paid people who logged on during Christmas and Boxing Day. Mind you, they were dropped off in random sections of the map, so some running was involved, but the gifts included pepper seeds and chocolates.

It was a very nice holiday season in the desert.

12/30/08 – I want to a-cro every night (and party every day)…

Made my way down to Queens Retreat and picked up Improved Brick Rack technology, along with half of Egypt. Turns out there was quite the party going on with many dozens sticking around to form the Mother of All Acrolines®.

Ran the gamut and hung out for a while performing my one move: the coveted leg stretch. When all was said and done, no new moves for me, but I did get to 6/7 on 3 moves and 5/7 on 3 others, so it wasn’t a total wash. All total, I danced with 57 new partners and taught a couple dozen facets (112 total taught).

Got back to the homestead, fired up the forge and made enough nails to put together six public never-ever-fall-apart improved brick racks! Each will make 12 bricks at a time (takes double the resources of the old 6 brick models, of course) so given enough straw, many thousands can be knocked out quickly. This will cut my board expenses down greatly…which means less slate gathering and more happiness. I may build another sheepie pen to celebrate in the next day or two.

Finally, someone somewhere did something and triggered the unlocking of the Test of the Vigil. It’ll be a bit before we have the Test opened to start, so more on that camp-eating monster another day.

12/31/08 – Lookin’ for lead in all the wrong places

Received text from Marie mid-afternoon while at work advising me of a large acro party forming in Shabbat Ab. The message came from her AT UBody, waiting for it to start. This was somewhat amusing as she’s gone from “this game pisses me off” to “this game is ok, except when it pisses me off”... which I think is what everyone really thinks. One person once remarked it is a “frustration simulator” and there are times I agree.

Anyhow, I decided I wasn’t going to screw around with acro that evening and instead try out the brick racks and make that other sheep pen I’d been considering. Got home and did so, enjoyed dinner, check back in to Egypt to find the line is still going strong and is now so long it stretches from the University of Body all the way to the School of Body, some several minutes away.

That’s where they got me....I had to check it out and I’m glad I did. Mandisa and I ran through the line, which actually stretched as far as the chariot stop by that point, and I finally got my second move: lunge. Acro’d with a number of people I’d met before and several dozen people that were new to me.

After it was over, I went in search of a public lead mine I read about on the E! channel. Since the text is streamed to the wiki, I can read happily whenever the mood strikes me during the day. Lead’s only been found in one spot: Adn, the northernmost-central region (this was Lower Egypt and my home last Tale). Several long chariot trips later, I found myself in familiar settings. I debated on visiting my old campsite, but decided against it for bittersweet reasons. Instead, I trucked happily South of their UBody to find the precious lead mine. I’m not going to need very much lead—just enough to make a couple of limestone gathering tools.

The mine was collapsed and it looked like the entire vein was covered so new mines wouldn’t have yielded any lead.

This wasn’t that surprising, as lead is still rare and it’s the only public mine for that metal that I’m aware of. I note with some amusement the mine also produces sapphires! The mine has also been repaired eight times. With a hesitant finger, I clicked to see what it would cost to repair and stared in mute disbelief. 27 leather. 14 sheep would have to go to the sausage-grinder to cover the repairs for the one mine. The cost was just too high. I trudged back to the ‘Plex and decided that I’d just have to trade for the metal or the tools.

Now if only I had had the foresight to look at the owners’ names on the other lead mines!