Thirty days, Day 20

Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future

I love how this was obviously written by a teenager. Let me think here... ummmm.. I know!

kshandra!!!!

A Dear John letter to an entire universe.

Dear Third Imperium,

It's not you, it's me. I know, we've been together for over thirty years, but I've grown in that time and you? Well, let's be honest. You're still rehashing things that were first published decades ago, trying to make them look shiny in new editions. I remember when we first met. Adventure 1: The Kinunir. How young we were! How naive! The Imperium had Senators? 1200dt was a battle cruiser? Oh, the fun we had! And the fun went on, for a time, but then things started turning. Although I didn't see it at the time, you were already stagnant, already crippled by your inability to grow. You promised me epic games of exploration, and what did I get? A default setting surrounded on all sides by long-established cultures, not a frontier in sight!

What's worse is how mundane you made everything. I'm capable of getting on a plane and going to any number of paces on this planet where the language, culture, religion.. all of it changes and is fascinating. But you, given thousands of star systems and dozens of alien races and variant humans, distill everything down to a pale vanilla. Why travel, when every world is the same? Then there are your alleged "threats." Yes, I'm bitter. Remember the barbarians from the original Battle of the Two Suns? They became the evil Zhodani.. but you couldn't leave well enough alone and hemmed and hawed until Zhodani society began to look a damn slight better than Imperial society did! You emasculated the big threat in the setting! What else did you have? The Vargr? Established that they couldn't organize enough to be a threat. The Aslan? For some reason this allegedly fractious band of clans has saw fit not to launch any kind of attack for several centuries. The Solomani? Dime-store fascists still plotting to get their capital back. The Hivers? Clever idea, but badly executed. And the one race that should have been launching million-ship, epic space opera, damn we need a hero now, crusades against human space, the K'kree, seemed content to trade with species that we were told represented absolute evil in their mindset. A K'kree wouldn't trade with a human just because that particular human stuck with a vegan diet for a month. Humans are g'naack! We eat meat, and deserve to die! The Imperial Navy and Marines should have been locked in a centuries-long war against the unending hordes from K'kree space! But no, they - and you - wimped out.

What's that? "The Rebellion"? Don't make me laugh. First of all, competing factions fighting over the throne is not a rebellion, it's a civil war. Had Dulinor attempted to leave the Imperium, that would have been a Rebellion. But even then you failed. It took about seven books before somebody realized that wars suck, and released Hard Times. Too little, too late. Traveller: TNE failed because instead of a frontier, it gave us established settings that hadn't really fallen that far. Marc Miller's Traveller could have been good, but you filled up too many worlds with space faring cultures! Again, no damn frontiers!

So the time has come, Third Imperium. I've found a new universe. The GrimDark future of Warhammer 40k. I'll admit we've been flirting for a while now, but having read several of the novels (something you never bothered to do more than half-heartedly) and read the rules for Dark Heresy, I'm leaving you. WH40K gives me what I need, endless variety, conflicts with a real bite and reason, adventure possibilities up the wazoo, and with warp storms and the variable nature of the immaterium, frontiers opening up constantly. Aliens that are truly alien, and an over-arching foe in Chaos that can drive campaigns for years. A living universe teeming with culture, flavor, and opportunities for desperate struggles to win fame, fortune, and the future of mankind.

Good luck with the updated material from the 80s.

Douglas Berry, aka Sir Arameth Gridlore
Master and Commander of the Free Rogue Trader Estimated Prophet

My thoughts on 9/11

There's a picture going around of woman displaying a photo with accompaning text reading "Today is ONLY about my sister and the other innocents killed nine years ago."

The problem is, she's wrong.

9/11 was the result of an incredibly complex web of influences and sources dating back to the birth of the Wahhabi sect in the 18th century, Western actions in the region, US support of the Mujaheddin against the Soviets, the establishment of US bases in Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm, and many, amny other things.

9/11 is the result of two centuries of religious thinking, political maneuvering, wars, and cynical actions by governments and leaders around the globe. To reduce it only to the fall of the towers and the resulting deaths is to deny the reality of history.

Studying history isn't just about knowing what happened, but striving to understand why it happened. Mourn those lost. I'm remembering a couple of friends and one man who I'm sure I would have gotten along with like a house on fire (from what I understand, it's likely that Liam and I getting together might well have resulted in that) but I'm not going to reduce the event to a soundbite.

That cheats the dead. They did, in fact, die for a reason. A lousy one, but if we want to understand that reason, we need to learn.