The Caliber of Magic Part 2, Isseria's Surprise

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Isseria asked too many questions about the 22nd floor and the shopkeeper released the giant carnivorous plant which poisoned her and swallowed her whole.


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Isaac looked at the chomper. It was back in the cage, larger than normal, but to an untrained eye, the chomper appeared to be restful. It fact, it would spend the next twenty-four hours swallowing its prey. The neuro-poison had knocked out that woman cold.

4SS didn't hire receptionists, and they certainly didn't have a lot of business. They had one customer, and only one. Isaac was well acquainted with the security guards on the 22nd floor. He had gone up there a couple times, and even though they were friendly, the guards there were never at ease. She was after the Staff of Oblivion, but she was in way over her head, having shown no signs of any fighting ability. She was in way over her head if she wished to take on the staff.

Isaac had no desire to see a heist occurring in the skyscraper. That would draw way too much media eyes and attention down upon the place, and surely someone else would think something was out of place in his shop. Protection money can only protect you when you live in the shadows. The gangsters that demanded his money every month would not help out if the media was onto the place.

He would call the guards later, inform them that the heat was on. The lady was just a scout, friendly, talkative, and good at getting information out of people, most likely. He picked up the Venus fly trap and placed it back on the shelf.

"So predictable", he said. He was always recommending the more unorthodox varieties of predator plants, but few ever took him up on the offer. Just the more refined customers, the ones who really allowed him to keep up rent in such a prime location. Hiding in plain sight.

When questioned about the giant chomper, he told authorities that it was animatronic, and just for fun and ambience for the shop. Protection money meant that story was official, but still there was an occasional customer who got scared by the chomper and went to city hall. Luckily, Chicago Police were owned by the gangs, and so they stayed away from the place, and never asked to see the back room.

The door chime rang. Isaac looked at this new customer uneasily. Would they send another so soon. He would be wary. He approached the customer. “Hello, welcome to Plants from Venus.”

The customer was about six foot two and wearing a Bears sweatshirt. “Hi, I ordered two dozen sundew last week, but you were out and promised to order them? Are they in?”

“Of course,” Isaac said. He had set aside the order, and went in to the backroom. A second chomper was growing back there, in a glass isolation chamber, with grow lights. There was a counter with a variety of other plants. The order was also on the counter. He picked up the crate of plants and walked out into the main store area, placing them on the counter.

Ringing up the order, he said, “84.65”. The man gave him a Visa. Isaac preferred cash, but he made no complaint and processed the order. 

“These are some of the best plants around, and they can keep an area free of the smaller bugs and insects as well.”

“That's what I was hoping--” the man started to say.

The muffled sound of three gun shots rang out. It sounded like they were coming from a half block away.

“Quick, in the back room,” Isaac shouted to the customer. The customer complied, and Isaac opened the backroom door for him and then closed it. Shootings in this part of town were rare, and usually a sign of horrifying gang battles. He jogged towards the door, looking outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shooter.

Then he heard another gun shot. This one was louder, and it terrified him. The gun shots were coming from INSIDE the chomper. That was impossible neurologically. Chomper neuro-poison was guaranteed to knock out any human—unless they had magic. Someone sent for the Oblivion Staff was likely to have magic. But he had sensed no sign of any magical talent in her.

Another shot rang out, and the chomper opened its mouth involuntarily. The attacker was doused with dissolving acids and slime, but the two pistols she was now wielding were completely clean. She dove out of the plant and landed in a roll, then shot Isaac twice, before he could even react.

The shots thudded against his vine armor. It was his personal bulletproof vest, made from a thick threaded patchwork of vines. He summoned it by habit every morning, as he never knew what would happen. He raised up his hands, and the stranger went flying backwards by the force of an enormous wind spell. She slammed into the glass on the far wall, but the glass was strengthened, and withstood the impact. Shaking it off, she aimed her pistols at him again.

But Isaac was ready. He summoned tough vines to constrict her movement. Poisons from the vines knocked her out once again. He walked over, and took the lady's pistols away from her. The vines wrapped around her pistols offered no resistance to him.

He was out several hundred bucks because of the dead chomper. He would get his pound of flesh and find out for sure if she was working for Lucius.

The Caliber of Magic, Part 1: Plants from Venus

(This is the first post in a series based on my NaNoWriMo 2010 novel. It is about two people: a martial artist specializing in dual pistols named Isseria and a master of dark nature magics called Isaac.)

The sidewalks were crowded with workers heading to work. Skyscrapers surrounded her, and gusts of wind roared through the city streets. Her pistols were tucked safely away invisible to onlookers. The gun laws in Chicago were strict enough to make her paranoid, especially in the heart of the city. 

"2380 Park Avenue" was her destination, and she identified it a few blocks away. She was working for Lucius Blaque, the infamous gang leader, who also happened, by no coincidence at all, to be a very powerful Dark Mage. She wasn't working for him of her own free will.

“You only have two choices,” he had said, “bring the Oblivion staff to me before two weeks’ time, or leave my city and never return.”

The staff was on the 22nd floor of the building, protected by a group of powerful mages working for Lucius' competition in this town. The two gangs ruled the city, and fought with each other for control of each neighborhood and city department. Even the Police were divided in their loyalties to the two gangs.

Lucius had dropped one hint before he sent her away. He mentioned the Plants from Venus store which was on the first floor of the building. The owner/shopkeeper might have a few hints on breaking through the defenses, he said.

As she approached the building, a pedestrian ran into her, knocking her down and losing his own balance. He brushed himself off and stood up.

“Sorry,” he said.

The fall knocked one of her holsters loose, and it was on the sidewalk. The pistol's grip stood out to the stranger, and he reached for it impulsively.

Isseria drew out her other X-Five. She had trained with many pistols, widely varying in quality. But the P226 X-Five was the most impressive and well suited to her purposes. She initially used it with .40 round, but had lately become a master of customizing weapons, tweaking her weapons to be one of a kind. Her pistols had characteristics that would befuddle any ballistics detective. She owned a veritable cache of pistols, and very little else.

“Not a good idea,” she said to him, menacingly.

He abruptly withdrew his finger from the other pistol, and Isseria snatched it up.

Was he a plant, she wondered. He could have been sent by just about anyone who had somehow found out about her. Lucius already knew about the weapons, it couldn't be his gang, but who...

The stranger ran off, and Isseria stowed her pistols again. The window displays of Plants from Venus were just ahead. The shop was on the corner of the building. On one display side. there was a giant vicious looking plant. In the corner of the display a sign said, “For display purposes only. Not for sale.” In the other corner window, safer plants were on display. Venus fly traps and other popular species were shown.

Isseria looked back at the large plant. It was dark green with a “mouth” that was about six feet across. Isseria spotted glass on the far side of the chomper, separating it from the rest of the shop. She took a deep breath and walked in. A door chime sounded, and the shopkeeper, a man in his late twenties wearing a grey T-shirt, came out of the back room.

He walked over to Isseria. “Anything I can help you with?”

“I've always been curious about these kind of plants, what do you recommend?”

He nodded agreably and said, “The Venus Fly Trap is the most known and most popular, however another interesting variety are the Sundews. The temperate sundew grows across much of the US, however, I also have some rarer, Australian varieties.”

“How does the Sundew work?” she asked, with fake curiousity.

“Easy, its leaves look inviting to insects, but they are very sticky, and the Sundew responds to its prey, developing new growth to trap them.”

“I think I'll stick with the Venus Fly Trap,” she said.

“What size would you prefer?” he said.

She pondered it for a second, the smaller the plant, the more inconspicuously she could dispose of it afterwords. “Small would be best. I don't have much room for them.”

The shopkeeper motioned her over to the register, which was one of the new computer-based checkout systems. He started typing.

“Being careful with the fly trap is very important. Avoid movement near or touching the sensitive trap areas of the plant. A venus fly trap is not a toy, treat it like any other plant—That will be $23.50.”

She pulled out some cash from her pocket and counted out 25 dollars.

The shopkeeper took the money and entered it into the computer.

“I'm starting work on the 22^nd floor next week, thought I'd scope out the place. What's your impression of the building. Good heating system? I hate when its cold.”

He raised his eyebrows, and handed back the change, “one dollar, and fifty cents,” he said. “Its a good building. Good security. I keep my own temperature controls to keep the plants in good condition, so I can't say much about the heating system, but I'm satisfied. 22^nd floor, that's Four Star Storage, didn't know they were hiring... honestly, didn't think of you as the security type.”

“I'll be working as a receptionist. Lots of business for 4SS right now, they told me.”

The shopkeeper muttered, “yeah right.” Before she could blink, he picked up a remote control from the counter, pressed a button on it, and the glass between the giant chomper and the rest of the store swivelled out. It was a glass door not a wall, but the hinge was practically invisible.

She was astonished, she went for her guns, but the chomper got there first, biting her in the back of her neck and swallowing her whole. She was fading, it was some kind of neuro-poison, she guessed. What the hell just happened, she pondered briefly.

She lost consciousness.

Story: Operational Nuclear War, Intro

The widespread use of operational nuclear weapons has twisted conventional war strategy beyond its breaking point. On the New Earth colony, total war has not lead to the much predicted scenario of Armageddon and global Nuclear Winter, because of the peculiar circumstances to be found there. Instead, a protracted campaign of use of tactical nuclear weapons at sea and in the cities and battlefields, has caused a slow decline amongst all the major powers, who struggle to keep up with the military production needed to stay in the war.

The following schematic gives a visual overview of the New Era world political map and major players:

Long range strategic nuclear weapons are no longer effective tools of war. Nuclear defense systems have locked down the orbital launches, and coastal systems are almost as effective against submarine launched ICBMs.

If New Earth had Earth's uranium and plutonium reserves and Earth's production capacity, it would be a relatively simple matter to flood any system's defensive capacity and wipe out New Earth entirely. Luckily, that is not the case. The war has made finding laborers difficult, and the rioting, radiation sicknesses and oppressive societies make controlling workers an important and intensive job.

Operational nukes can be launched from land sources, but increasingly these weapons are being hosted in submarine platforms, except that now the subs have to get in pretty close to their targets, inside the range of a carrier's air wing. Of course, carriers have not been fielded in significant numbers for decades. Air power is still used in many places, but not at sea. The carriers are too expensive to field when they can be wiped out by a nuke or two.

175 years ago, the New Earth project reached the planet previously known as Habitable Sequence Catalog #84. This planet was identified as the nearest likely habitable planet to our solar system. A multilateral and peaceful effort was put together, with help and support from twelve of the largest nations on Earth. Most significantly, China put aside its differences with a number of western countries and put its support by the project. Also, Russia, France, Germany, England, the USA, Korea, Japan and Iran supported the project. There were some other smaller countries that also contributed along the way.

It was a truly monumentally difficult project, but the group set a goal of launching a successful long term habitation module with the expectation of at least a 90% chance of surviving the trip to #84 by the year 2200. They succeeded in that goal, and reached the planet in the year 2285. According to the original charter of the New Earth program, certain passengers were given the task of settling a number of landing sites in the name of the various nations that had supported the program. These landing sites were the foundations for New China, New Germany, New USA and so on.

New Earth was strange in that there were four continents, no Antarctica (the south pole was just ice, like the north ), and the four continents filled four compass points from the oceans between them. One of the oceans between the east and the west was smaller than the other, so it became natural for the center of that ocean to be seen as the center of the world. You could go west by heading through the narrower inner ocean, or by taking the longer journey east, thus reaching the two sides of the south and north eastern continents.

The north and south continents on both sides of the world were close together at some points along their coast lines, while the east and west were separated, both philosophically and physically. Perhaps it is natural that the war was split by east and west. There was only one exception to the geographical rule: Iran, which resided on the northeast continent, joined the Chinese coalition and thus was considered a western hemisphere power.

The first fighting in the "New World War" took place at sea, with conventional weapons, and naval fleets from  Earth's past. New Earth's industries were not yet capable of producing the most advanced ships from home. These first battles looked like something out of World War I, as battleships and cruisers duked it out on the high seas. Unfortunately, the use of ICBMs to take out fleets ended all that, and many ships were in the exchange of nukes.

After the naval forces on both sides of the war were largely destroyed, the war shifted into its next phase without a clear winner in the naval conflict.

With the loss of many ships on both sides, the Nuclear war era began in earnest. Strategic defense nets were not yet in place, but luckily, uranium was rare on the planet. Russia launched more ICBMs in the Nuclear era than any other country, and set back much of the NATO powers for years. The capitals of many nations were hit, and eventually the NATO powers hit back, attacking New Moscow and a few other Russian cities.

But Russia was ahead in strategic defense, and it had a period of five years where it's strategic defense grid was in place, but the Eastern powers did not have their defenses in place. But that defense gap did get closed, and the nuclear crisis accelerated the development of formal alliances. And both sides worked feverishly on their defenses, leading to a short period of relative quiet in the war.

Calling upon memories of old Earth, the powers in the eastern hemisphere declared that they were the New Earth NATO. France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the USA and England all agreed to create NATO. Iran declined to join, and instead joined the other bloc.

Russia, China, Korea, Cambodia, Iran and Mongolia created the New Asia Pact. This began the Proxy War era. With Iran's intent to join the NAP made clear, the New Earth NATO moved swiftly, and Italy mobilized for the first fighting on land of New Earth's short history. At first supplying merely war material, soon many powers were deploying their forces in the Northeast.

The Proxy war in Iran saw a lot of fighting, and advances and retreats on both sides. When the war began, it looked like Iran was going to take over Italy, but things started to go the other way, as Italy mobilized its reserves.

On both sides of the battle lines, air transports brought in troops daily from America, from Russia, from France. The airlift operations were extensive, but eventually not considered enough. Sea transport began to take over for the emergency airlifts once it became clear that the war would not end in the time it took to bring troops by sea.

America had it easy on the sea lines, being just to the south, on the Northeastern tip of the main NATO continent. On the other hand,  America was constrained by their limited manpower, but of what forces they could send, they did. The sea lines were filled with GIs and Marines, tanks and mobile artillery, mechanized infantry and anti tank vehicles. New Era's infrastructure was advancing but the war resembled World War II technologies on the ground.

Most research and development was focussed on the navy, the nuclear weapons programs and the air forces. Jet fighters joined in battles predominated by world war II style tanks. However, this was one in the early phases of the proxy war. Before too long, mechanized infantry replaced the ground troop, and tanks improved drastically.

The proxy war saw the first use of what we now call operational nuclear weapons. Like tactical nukes, but better! Less detectable, more focussed. Advanced technologies allowed a nuclear weapon with less fissionable material and thus a lesser yield, which was key to keeping your own fleet or your own army safe. With a smaller but still good enough blast, spotting could be done at an operational scale of battle, and the minimum safe distance was much closer than with the old tactical nuke. This was now a tool in the general's toolkit, but few of them were available. Whenever they were available, they were extremely effective in destroying the enemy's order of battle.

Any organized concept of ground war before that moment in time was dashed into pieces with the development of the operational nuke. Dispersion of force became the philosophy of the day. Unfortunately, highly dispersed militaries are difficult to control, and difficult to achieve anything with. So this philosophy didn't stick.

The proxy war ended because it was not going anywhere for either side. Whenever a significant force was assembled to take on a city, it was nuked into oblivion. By the end of the war, neither side would come close to an enemy city, for fear of being nuked. The silos needed for launching operational nukes could be built away from the cities, but only if a team of engineers could operate for months unhindered. That was not the case. Early attempts failed, and both sides built their silos in cities instead, and a few began to toy with the idea of retrofitting submarines for operational nukes. By the end of the war, this was possible, but neither side had invested in the idea, because nukes were in very short supply, and they were needed on land.

The cease fire allowed both sides to study radiation and nuclear sciences extensively. A vast cleanup effort began on both sides of the Iran - Italy border. Dirt was dug up and buildings were destroyed in the devastated areas, and these materials were moved to isolated unsettled areas, then fresh dirt was trucked in.

Both sides also focussed on recovering from the war and rebuilding their exhausted armies, navies and air forces. War would come again, it was a foregone conclusion, because neither side tried to cooperate or pursue openness with the other. They remained separated from one another. Within the two alliances, there was much discussion on the future, but ultimately, they could only speculate.

Russia, or alternatively America, were considered responsible for the war beginning again. America spotted a large Russian fleet approaching its coastlines. There were a large number of troop ships in the flotilla which entered US waters flagrantly. The US made a preemptive strike on the flotilla, using ICBMs against the Russian fleet.

The fleet intercepted and destroyed the ICBMs, and Russia responded by wiping out the entire American fleet with operational nukes on-board its new op-nuke subs. The Russians landed their invasion force in America, and the war began anew, this time for all the marbles.

As of the current day, January 18th 2475, the war has been ongoing for 65 years, with periods of lesser and greater intensity. Modern technologies and the fact that the war has been mostly at sea and in the air are the only real reason that the people of both factions have not overthrown their leaders. There have been invasions, but most were short lived, and in fact, the map of 2475 is largely the same as that of 65 years ago, except for the loss of Iran's old lands.

In the next post, I'll cover several invasion attempts by Russia prior to 2475, only one of which was a complete success. Later on, I'll cover two NATO invasions of Russia that the Russians barely managed to defeat. Here is a map of coastal New Russia in 2475, focusing on radiation heavy areas that have not yet undergone soil-replacement.

Crusader Kings AAR (After Action Report), Part 1

I've written a couple of stories related to the Crusader Kings game in the past, previously on the forums for the game. Crusader Kings is one of my favorite games, which manages to blend the personal life of a early medieval nobleman, including marriages, family management, courtiers and all that, with an amazing and huge map encompassing Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Crusader Kings seems to generate realistic but new stories for the ages between 1066 and the 1400s, and I love seeing how to historic struggles play out and are replaced by other, different struggles. In the only game I played all the way from 1066 to the end, I took some time to find all of the first ruler's descendants, and I discovered a whole branch of muslim "nobles" descended from my first king because of a strange sequence of marriages and intermingling of Spanish muslim and christian lineages. I also discovered a duchy lead by distant descendants of my first ruler.

I've played long games as Bavaria, and as the Western Isles, a set of islands off the coast of Scotland, and this time I searched around for an interesting duke to take the reigns of. Starting with a kingdom seems too easy, and I don't want to start with a count this time, so duke it was. I ended up drifting towards the area of the map that was once greek and picked the Principality of Hellas. My domain is Greek Orthodox, which is also a new challenge for the game. Because of that, dukes become princes, and duchy's principalities, but apart from the different names, its the same thing.

I forgot that I was under the thumb of the very scary and powerful Byzantine, but it did lead to an interesting start to the story of Nikephoros Argyros.

When I loaded up the game, I noticed that he only had one land in his demense, but he had three vassals. Later I noticed one of the three was a bishop. Next I noticed that I don't have the nice and handy Primogeniture laws to follow. Those laws are the sort that govern how kings and dukes and such pass down their titles in places like France and England.

Instead, the Greeks use another system (can't remember the name), based on the strongest son, or grandson, etc, instead of the first. So I give land to two of Nikephoros' eventual sons, and the second son becomes more powerful than the first, then he will inherit Nikephoros' title. In much of Western Europe, the first son inherits regardless of the power of his holders prior to inheritance.

I can see downsides to this new system, which I haven't used before, but on the plus side, I can deliberately support a more competent 2nd or 3rd son over their brothers by giving more land to the later sons.

Third, I noticed that Nikephoros is young and unmarried. I looked around in the nearby courts, and arranged a marriage with Anastasia Kabakes. She is not related to anyone significant, but she is very competent and can help fill out my court. Also, its important to have descendants asap, in case Nikephoros were to die suddenly. Nikephoros' succession chart was empty, because he seems to be an only child with a dead father.

Nikephoros' father was a renowned theologian, and his wife Anastasia is pretty good with churchy stuff too.

 
Before long, Anastasia and Nikephoros are married, and the Prince seeks out "donations" to fund a grand wedding. He collects a decent sum from the people and petty nobles.

Unfortunately, his army has to march off to war under the Byzantine banner. The Byzantium empire is at war. The muslim nations to the east of the Empire are seeking to take lands, while Byzantium is eager to try to take the holy lands. Nikephoros tries to keep up with the news of where his men are stationed, but before long, they are absorbed into the larger effort of his liege.

He had hoped that the empire of Byzantium would return his men in a year's time, but Hellas remains defenseless for two years, before the strangest of diplomatic manuevers established that this alternate history will be one to remember.

A vast number of Byzantium's rebels were declaring independence and often fighting the emperor as well. There numbers were sufficient to even achieve gains in Northern Greece. Nikephoros' community of equal vassals of the mighty empire was falling apart, but the Prince held onto his loyalties for longer than he might otherwise, when he discovered that he was third in line for the succession of the empire.

But the dismantling of the old order became too much when the Aegean Isles, friend and ally to Nikephoros, declared its independence from Byzantium. Let's call him Nike from now on. The Aegean's even wanted Nike to join the battle against the empire, but Nike considered this folly.

He sought a third option, to follow a new King, a wiser King who held his lands under a more stable environment. The nearest Kings, such as Croatia and Venice, were Catholic and culturally incompatible for Nike. He eventually found the King of Georgia, and offered his allegiance to that Russian Orthodox King. Russian Orthodox ways were different, but close enough.

Georgia is pretty puny for a Kingdom, but it is not so distant as might be supposed. No more distant than from London to Madrid, at least.

With a King to offer allegiance too, Nike also knew he had someone to stand behind him if and when the empire went after him for leaving. If Hellas had gone out into the cruel world on its own, it would be cut down within a few years, but now there was a chance.

A heir was born to the Argyros family. Michael Argyros was the name chosen for him.

It should be pretty obvious that history will take a different turn.

My long term goals for this game are:

1. Unify as much of Greece as possible into my rule.
2. Defeat Byzantium, and try to prevent it from recreating.
3. Keep the Kingdom of Georgia alive, and possibly try to inherit title to it legitimately.
4. Become a powerhouse nation in the areas around Greece and Georgia.