Metaplanar Babel

Maybe it’s bizarre but I find caffeine tights to be a bit over the top (well, not literally, but you know what I mean). *boggle*

Oh, and apparently there’s caffeine soap too. wtf, m8

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I have a bit of a hypothetical situation to put before you. This has come up in the mini-SR game Jon and I play together, and I’m curious what other people think about the situation.

Assume we have an individual who can serve as a magical energy source indefinitely, despite having said magical energy siphoned away daily. Now, eight years ago, this person was captured by a rather malicious magician, who perpetuated this siphoning of energy into herself so that she might then use it to seal off a portal leading to some unknown place. It is conjectured that killing her would ultimately end up with the portal being left wide-open. It should be noted that this magician is well-known to summon spirits of great destructive power to aid her. Then, one day, the captive escaped and made his way to a nearby city, where he was aided by several people. In his absence, the magician has begun going out into the city and stealing the power she needs from other people, which usually leaves them dead or insane because they cannot regenerate their life’s energy the way the captive could. The captive, knowing that the magician will continue to seek him out, plans to try to kill her, but he knows nothing of the portal. The captive is already a little disturbed that other people are suffering for his freedom and would most likely return to the magician if it became known that she could not be killed and would continue to steal her energy from individuals within the city.

The question then, is this: in such a situation, do we tell the captive the truth as it is known, and let him make his choice, even if it is ultimately sacrificing himself, or do we keep the truth from him, allowing other relatively innocent people to die in his stead, to prevent his suffering (which is rather great - consider that he would undergo a process, on a daily basis, that leaves all others dead or mad)? Is this a case of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of an individual? I have a feeling I know what decisions will be made in the game, but I’m curious what others might think.

Jon isn’t called the Evil GM for nothing.

Edit: let me clarify something. If the captive returns to the magician, he would most likely not remain there for long. His friends would probably find a way of dealing with either the portal or the magician that didn’t leave the portal wide-open. But it would take time to find such a solution, if there was one to be found.

Just noticed a link to Burst Angel on Mac Hall. Actually looks kinda cool. Hrm..

Ran into this interesting Nelfling NPC in Theramore the other day. I wish her armor was actually available somewhere, even if it sucked. She just looks so awesome. Hopefully Jori will continue to look cool. It annoys me how careful I have to be with her armor to avoid the platemail thong look. There should be more stuff like Pained or like the Might set.

Beccary

Just a site I want to look at a little more thoroughly. If all my templates actually had implemented the spiffy category display thing I was working on yesterday, you wouldn’t be seeing this.

As a sidenote, it’s always a bit painful running into sites like this one. The design is gorgeous. I wish I had that kind of talent/training/whatever it is that she has.

Update: looks like the author of this site is working on a new design and may be releasing her current one as a WP theme. Might be fun to play with it some, if she does.

As I mentioned previously, my husband and I have been working on a character in WoW together, in hopes that I’ll someday have a level 50+ character with which to play with the guild. So far, so good. We created Joriandra, a nelfling warrior, a little over a week ago, and she’s nearly 32. I’ve been having a blast with her, because I don’t have to worry so much about trying to maximize xp/hour in hopes of joining up with my friends someday. I feel free to run around do silly quests again (she’s currently escorting a poor Stormwind orphan about the world).

This morning, I jumped off the Stonewrought Dam, just to see if I could live through the fall. (I couldn’t.) Somehow, it’s very difficult to actually land IN the water; I sort of bounced off the last several feet of the dam and landed atop a pile of bodies of other thrill-seekers. But, as I was to find, the fun was only beginning. See, where I landed is virtually impossible to legitimately walk to (without being level 60), and I was afraid that my wisp would only die again if I leapt from the dam. Thus, my adventure through the Dragonmaw Compound, which is guarded by level 55+ elite dragonkin. Fortunately, they lack the spirituality to see the ghosts of the dead, so I was able to sneak through their mighty fortress, eventually reuniting with my physical shell. Then, I had to figure out how to get down to the marshlands, where I needed to locate a specific root for a friendly fellow in Stormwind who let me use his bonfire to cook up some Wolf Kabobs.

Azeroth is not friendly to waterfall divers. I needed to get the rest of the way down the mountain to the marshes below, so I figured I’d let the water take me down. Bad idea. Once again I hit rock rather than water, and found myself back at the same graveyard for the second time. The spirit healer seemed a bit perplexed, but I ignored her and set off for the falls. Fortunately, this last fall had taken me down the final peak to the Mosshide swamp, so I was able to find the necessary root once I had reclaimed my rather battered shell. Needless to say, I was nearly late for work, thanks to the great adventure.

I’ve been trying to figure out something, but I don’t really know PHP, so I’m having a bit of trouble with it. See, Wordpress innately doesn’t show private posts on the front page; you can only see them from within the admin panel. I just don’t really like that. Livejournal will display private posts if you’re logged in as the author, and I’m pretty sure this is doable in Wordpress too, I just need to figure out the code for it. Actually, what I want to do is specify a category and only display posts in that category if the user is currently logged in. It seems like that should only need a simple
if (!in_category(ID#) || $user-logged-in) check before the display code, but I’m not 100% confident in my programming logic skills anymore, plus I don’t know what the PHP syntax for such a statement, followed by a block of html code, would be. Plus I don’t know where to find $user-logged-in (since that’s a made-up variable). If said statement returns false, it’d need to skip the code that displays the post, and move on to the next iteration of the while loop. Does that even make sense? If you know or have any idea where a good resource might be (I’ve found a few references over at the WP forums, but they’re very old and not exactly what I’m looking for), please let me know~

Update: thanks to a look through some PHP books that sort of crystalized how PHP and HTML code work together, and those useful comments of cruinh’s, I’ve got this figured out. Hooray~