Thalen Speaks

Posts from Thalen on Thalen Speaks site.

#Blaugust Day 18: Butterfly Knives

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Last night was my regular raid night in Final Fantasy XIV. We started out by steamrolling through Alexander to get armor token drops for those of us who hadn't gotten ours this week. I ended up grabbing a bolt from each of the first two sections, and a lens and spring from the last two. Hopefully I'll be able to grab another lens next week and get a hat made, leaving me with just chest, pants and a bracelet to go for the bard job. I guess I need to hurry up and get the paladin job leveled up to 60 so I can gear it next. Tanks seem to be what we're shortest on in our free company, so I've been wanting to help fill that gap a bit.

After Alexander we moved on to make some attempts at Thok Ast Thok Extreme where the Primal Ravana dwells. Ravana is the first Primal we've faced in Final Fantasy XIV that's new for this game and he's pretty cool. He's a giant multilimbed insectoid with four glowing sword blades and is the patron of the Gnath beastmen, an insect hivemind.

#Blaugust Day 18: Butterfly Knives
He won't know what hit him

I don't think any of us were really expecting to defeat Ravana in a single night of attempts; he's widely considered the hardest Primal fight yet, and is fairly complicated with multiple stages and a pretty decent dps requirement to make it through a few of them. The hardest is the butterfly stage, where a number of butterflies start to fly into the arena and begin channeling a spell. Any butterfly that completes the channel dies and causes a sword to drop into the arena. The more swords that drop, the more stacks of a nasty defense debuff everyone in the party gets. This is immediately followed by a massive unavoidable attack; too many stacks of the debuff and you just won't survive. On our first try four swords dropped; way too many. The second time around we managed to only let one through.

Ultimately we managed to at least make it far enough in to experience all the fight mechanics, though not much further. He was at about half health on our best attempt, but then we botched handling his 'charge repeatedly across the arena' attack and all fell down.

#Blaugust Day 18: Butterfly Knives
All but our White Mage, Paragon, who attempted valiantly to avenge us

When we go back in next week, I think we have a decent shot at actually defeating him. He's tough, but his mechanics are managable and all the one-shot kills are sufficiently telegraphed to deal with if you're on your toes. If we can successfully down him we'll have finished the content that went in when Heavensward first went live. Of course, the madness that is Alexander Savage is out there now. That may be a ways in the future yet.

#Blaugust Day 17: Mystara Monday: The Beginning

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Many years ago, when I was but a lad, my best friend came into possession of the newly published Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks. We were fascinated by the system and the concept, and I wanted my own copies. At Waldenbooks an employee suggested I might want to start with the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which would be an easier introduction to the game. I bought it, and the rest was history. It's because of that choice that instead of Faerun, Oerth or Krynn my favored game world, the one that I return to time and again, is Mystara.

#Blaugust Day 17: Mystara Monday: The Beginning
Mystara in its earliest form, from the D&D Expert Set

Over the years, I played and ran a lot of games of Dungeons & Dragons set in Mystara (originally just called The Known World) and I built up a large collection of adventure modules and supplements. I had come in at the perfect time, as TSR had recently begun to actively detail the setting through a series of Gazetteers that detailed each of the major nations of Mystara in turn. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting was incorporated as the distant past of Mystara, prior to a great nuclear apocalypse. The world was revealed as hollow, with ancient extinct civilization preserved within. The great airship Princess Ark crossed the world and even reached the moon (which is populated by samurai cat people). A worldwide calamity stripped Mystara of magic for a full week.

Eventually TSR decided to retire the Dungeons & Dragons rule set and only support Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. For a short period, Mystara continued to be supported and new AD&D supplements were released for it. After only a few however, Mystara was retired as well. It's mentioned every so often in newer editions, most recently in the 5th edition books as one of many campaign worlds that exist, but there hasn't been an official Mystara supplement published since 1995.

Every Monday I plan to bring out an item from my collection and show it off a bit. I'll talk about what it is, where it fits into the setting as a whole, and maybe tell a few stories about games past. Next week I'll be starting with the very first Dungeons & Dragons books I ever owned, the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules.

#Blaugust Day 16: Can You Go Back?

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Yesterday my wife and I watched Mallrats, which she had never seen before. She's not seen any of Kevin Smith's stuff apart from Jersey Girl, in fact. We watched Clerks a while back, and she didn't hate it. She liked the salsa shark.


Watching Mallrats I felt like the seams were more visible than I remembered. The dialogue was more stilted than in my mind, and while it's still a pretty funny movie, it wasn't quite up to the memories I had of it. I find myself wondering how Chasing Amy holds up, particularly since I know it's often criticized for taking a very stereotypical view of lesbianism. Views on sexuality in our society have shifted a hell of a lot in 20 years time, and I suspect a lot of what was edgy in 1997 will seem almost quaint.

It makes me wonder just what it is that makes one thing seem dated and old, while something else from the same era remains fresh, or at least relatable. Clueless is just as much a product of the 90s as Mallrats, but I feel like Clueless holds up much better. Is it because it had higher production values? A better script? Maybe that it's so over the top in its 90s style that the aesthetic becomes almost fantastical?

Asimov's stories are decades old now, and often based on now-discredited science, but I can still reread them and enjoy them just as much if not more so than the first time. Preacher and Transmetropolitan both came out around the same time, and I loved them both back then, but now while Transmetropolitan still fires my imagination, Preacher makes me cringe a bit. Maybe it's simply that I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago. I've grown since then and my point of view is no longer the same.

#Blaugust Day 16: Can You Go Back?
That's entirely possible, Spider


#Blaugust Day 15: Thalen Reads The Stainless Steel Rat

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Now that society is all ferroconcrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps between the joints, and it takes a smart rat to find them. A stainless steel rat is right at home in this environment. - James 'Slippery Jim' DeGriz
Today we begin what I hope will be an ongoing feature; Thalen Reads. Each week I plan to read a book then write something about it here on my blog. A little bit review, a little bit simply my thoughts on the book. Hopefully it'll be interesting to readers, and will spur me to make more time for books. The majority of books I talk about here will almost certainly by science fiction and fantasy as that's where my tastes primarily lie.

#Blaugust Day 15: Thalen Reads The Stainless Steel Rat

For this inaugaral edition, we have an SF classic, The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison, first published in 1961. Like many works of science fiction from the 50s and 60s the first portions of the book were initially published in magazines and later reworked into a full length novel; this does show as the book breaks down into three mostly stand-alone sections that each lead into the next.

I've previously read Harrison's comedic yet biting military satire Bill the Galactic Hero so I had a notion what to expect going in. The humor is much lower-key here and where Bill was a reluctant 'hero' repeatedly thrust into situations entirely beyond his control, Jim DiGriz is a much more capable individual.

'Slippery Jim' is an interstellar criminal in a universe where crime has been nearly eradicated. The majority of those who would become criminals are identified early and 'adjusted' before they can become a problem. Jim is one of the rare few who slipped through the cracks and now takes advantage of the opportunities available to a master criminal in a universe where crime is almost unheard of. Jim is very much a 'rogue with a heart of gold' type; while he's comfortable with crimes up to and including armed robbery, he doesn't kill and when he harms someone he doesn't feel deserves it he does feel guilt and attempts to make up for it.

Plot Spoilers from here until you see the Stainless Steel Rat


As I mentioned, the book breaks down into three sections. In the first, we meet Jim just as the local police have shown up to arrest him for his latest scheme. We get to watch Jim outsmart the cops and escape, then move on to his next plan on a new planet. Jim is quickly established as a brilliant planner who doesn't take undue chances and is always ready to move on when the time comes. Then events start going off plan when the Special Corps, a secretive branch of law enforcement tasked with dealing with the few real criminals still extant, shows up.

In the second section, Jim has been recruited by the Corps. He detects a plot to secretly build a massive battleship of a type not in existence for over a thousand years and is dispatched to run it down. This part of the book plays out more like a secret agent story with Jim able to call on the agency's resources and using his con man skills to track down a criminal rather than committing crimes himself. Ultimately Jim successfully captures the battleship but the mastermind behind the plot escapes, leaving a trail of bodies.

The third part of the book is the bulk of the story and follows Jim as he strike out on his own to chase down the loose end from the battleship case. Away from the Corps, he is once more the criminal Jim we first met and quickly tracks his quarry to a backwater planet. Too bad it turns out be a trap laid by the villain who new he would be on their trail.

The third part is where things get complicated. See, the evil mastermind, Angelina,  is also the only woman in the book and even as he's chasing her Jim isn't sure what he plans to do when he catches her. On the one hand he admires her intellect and the fact that she was able to outsmart him, on the other hand she is a multiple murderer. Eventually it's revealed that she was extremely ugly in her youth and turned to crime to pay for operations to repair her flaws. Crime led to murder and on to her villainous career.

This gave me some pause. "Isn't this a bit sexist?" I found myself thinking. On discussing it with my wife I'm not so sure. She pointed out that we've seen teenagers who were teased and outcast turn to murder more than once in real life. If anything, Angelina has more agency throughout the book than Jim. Where his actions are a result of first being forcibly inducted into the Corps and later outsmarted by Angelina, she is pursuing goals of power and independence which are entirely her own.

#Blaugust Day 15: Thalen Reads The Stainless Steel Rat

All told, I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the continuing adventures of Jim DiGriz. Jim is a likable rogue, and a clear ancestor of more recent characters like Han Solo or the Discworld's Moist von Lipwig. I can definitely see why the series is so well regarded. On occasions the tech is a bit outdated, but in some cases this is explained away as due to a planet being a more recent inductee into the Galactic League (one character is very angry that the League will only provide his planet with robot brains, requiring them to build coal-powered bodies for them as that's the height of local technology.)

For next week, we'll have a little change of pace. I'll be reading a book that my wife's been after me to read for months, Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. According to the cover blurb it's the story of a med school dropout who supports himself by pretending to choke in upscale restaraunts and cruises sex addiction recovery workshops for action. Should be interesting.