The Space Opera Working Thread

For now page 58 reads:

BIAD
NENO
SILO
BIAD
DAG
DAG CONT
SILO
BIAD
SILO
DAG

Page 59
WILD
BIAD
WILD

Is it worth doing it all in order???

Or summerizing then jumping in?

Any suggestions????

reply to post by silo13


Okay, so we're sarting with BIAD's Courier report about the wedding. Right??
I gotta go run some errands, I'll be back to prepare my templates...

reply to post by wildtimes

Okay, so we're sarting with BIAD's Courier report about the wedding. Right??

Nice segue that! Or BIAD's Post after? Either or it would seem?

reply to post by silo13


I've posted as usual and added a title... is that okay?
I think BIAD has wandered into a 'SteamPunk' area!

Do I need to add my:
Writer =
Page =
Post Number =
New NPC =
New Term =
Pic included?
Quick chapter outline =
??

reply to post by A boy in a dress

But...but but but...You knew I meant here?

~ *~ Space Opera II - Index Thread ~*~

I think I'm babbling too much and not making myself clear. Sorry.

reply to post by silo13


Sorry, all sorted now.
I hope I've done it correctly.

reply to post by A boy in a dress

Great - but you don't need to add the actual post.
The Index thread is only for - what would you call it - like in the front of a book a 'chapter' index to make things easier for us later if we need to go back and check for info.

Originally posted by silo13
reply to post by A boy in a dress

 

Great - but you don't need to add the actual post.
The Index thread is only for - what would you call it - like in the front of a book a 'chapter' index to make things easier for us later if we need to go back and check for info.

ahhhh... I see. Okay!

SORTED!!!!!!

reply to post by A boy in a dress

Perfect.

This will be awkward for the first little bit but after getting these first few posts in line I really think it will pay off.

To get things rolling and so we all didn't have to wait on each other and jump around - (also so we didn't bug the snot outta Masqua to 'fix things' if something got put in out of place) I stuck in a VERY ROUGH INDEX of the new story line to ---> BIAD's first post so we can take it from there.

I hope it works for you all.

reply to post by silo13


Cool. Okay, I posted a new story bit, and a brief on it in the index. I guess we should all go there first before posting anything, right?

I'm on board, btw, so I'll obvi do my own and save anyone else the trouble.
I think it's a good idea, Silo, thanks for working it up for us!!

ETA: As for Adam's brogue....I can work on that. I have a bit of the scots "accent" in my repertoire, I'll try to throw in a few more here and there. Sorry for him "losing" that attribute for a while. Yeah, it was the Carpet infiltration that temporarily dinged it.

So, are we going to leave Chumley et al with Ship for now?

>>>>>>>NENO:: I was thinking of working up a map of Vandalia (based on ones I've found online), but do you have one already in mind for where our new "locales" are? (The temple, the place where Cholla and Gerald work, Neno's location....

thoughts?

Originally posted by wildtimes
reply to post by nenothtu

 

Wow, I'm luvin' this stuff!! Thanks ever so much for the vivid descripton! I'll look online see if I can find a topo map of the area; awesome! (and not a little scary,all these sinkholes and caves and underground river manatee-type ROCK things....)

I'm so excited!! Thanks for inviting us to Vandalia!

No Problem!

It just so happens that I do maps for a hobby. What kind are you looking for? I can crank out just about any kind. I made some shaded relief and some contour maps of the area, but the contour map file size is too big for the upload portal. Made a GIF flashing between the two every half second, but it was too big to upload, too (665 kb). Here is a shaded relief version with chromatic elevation values:



The original is 5 times the resolution.

There is a river running all the way across the map, about half way down. Neno is currently perched on the ridge just below the river, near the side-to-side center of the map. I'll use Beartown Mountain to orient you on, since it's the tallest mountain in that area at 4608 feet elevation. In this map, Beartown it the white capped mountain at lower right.

Both Beartown Mountain, and the one we always called Clinch Mountain (but which is technically 'Brumley Mountain" - Clinch runs from border to border, and includes both Brumley and Beartown) have lakes on the top of them. If you look closely at the eastern end of neno's mountain, which is River Mountain, where the ridge "forks" in the east, you'll see two lakes on the map. There is also a series of 7 lakes at the other, western end of that mountain, but the don't show up here - maybe too small.

A couple more, for orientation purposes. Neno is in the center of the gray circles.

The first is a bird's eye overview, looking from the south. Beartown Mountain is the mountain with the white top on the right. What it's name is in the story hasn't been established, but names do change over time. There is a creek in the area that is now called "Lewis Creek", but on a map I have from the early settlers, drawn in July 1774. it's called "Big Arrod Creek".



This view is from the north. It was made in an older version of Terragen. Beartown Mountain is the far mountain on the left. Compare it with the "panorama" photo in the story, and you will see the orientation between the two. I made a "flyover" animation from this one, flying from the west, along the river, then up over the ridge neno is on, across the valley on the other side, then up over the peak of Beartown, but it was WAY too big for the upload portal - it turned out to be a 28MB Mpeg movie.



Edit to add: Information to help in locating the topo maps... The area is right at a major geographic breaking point (82 deg W, 37 deg N for them that uses Google Earth), so regular maps of the area, like USGS topographic maps, take 4 to cover it - it's right there where all 4 of them come together. The USGS 1:24k quads are - Lebanon, VA, Elk Garden, VA, Big A Mountain, VA, and Honaker, VA. All of the larger scale maps, like the 1:100k and 1:250k also break along the same lines, so it takes four of them, too. Same for the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data that I made these from - it takes four of the HGT files to cover it. That's why I made them - could not find any one map to cover the right area, so I had to make what I needed by merging the data then cropping out just the area I needed.

The rivers and such which are shown come from Census Bureau TIGER data overlaid on the basic terrain data from the SRTM files. The surface in the Terragen picture is a custom surface that it took me 9 tries to get right - then Terragen went obsolete in favor of terragen2, so the surface is just about useless unless I use the older version...

I just checked Google earth - the rock neno is perched on is labelled as "Big Rock or Little Rock, River Mtn." It's actually "Big Rock" - Little Rock is on the peak out the ridge to the west in the panorama photo, and is the house-sized rock I mentioned with the dated inscriptions on it.

Originally posted by wildtimes
Hey, I found a site here (I suspect it might even be nenothtu's!) about a bunch of caves, with info about others as well but including Daugherty Cave,
LOTS of pics.www.pbase.com...
Really cool....I can totally see our entire crew spending some exciting time here;

Yup, that's Daugherty's Cave. It's right on the bank of Big Cedar Creek where Big Cedar crosses under River Mountain Road, SR 640. I also noticed "Bundy's Cave" on that page. Bundy's cave is at the other end of Glade Hollow on route 71 ("Fincastle Road" is what they call it locally). Bundy's cave also has several sinking creeks in the area.

neno, there are a couple pics in the "recent" tab showing two guys; do you happen to know them? I dunno, the style of writing just reminds me of yours. And they look to be about "our" age...

Do you mean the guys collecting bats? I don't recognize them, but they probably wouldn't recognize me, either - I've been gone from there for about 25 years. They're in Wise County, next county to the north, where Clinch Valley College is located. I went there for 2 summers when I was in high school to study computer programming - BASIC was all the rage back then!

also, how do you pronounce "Daugherty"? In my head it's either 'Dordy', or 'Dockerdy' -- but I want to "say" it correctly as per the locals...

The locals pronounce it "Dahr-tee", but "Dordy" is pretty damned close to the way some of them say it, most say it more like "Darty"

which brings up another idea -- Dag has extensive "earth files" programmed into her -- but does she know how to pronounce all the words? It might make for some fun semantic stuff as she gets to know her captors and these elves.

You mean like the difference between "dear" and "deer", which sound precisely the same, but have far different outcomes up in them thar hills?

ETA: After re-reading the link, I realized that the underground river I saw in Gray's Cave is the same "Sinking Creek" that goes underground up near Bundy's cave, and according to the writeup, it emerges at Gilmer's Water Cave just upstream from Daugherty's Cave. I knew that Daugherty's Cave and Gray's cave were connected in the same system, but I didn't know Bundy's cave was connected as well. That's two things I learned this evening about the ground I thought I already knew! 1) found out where that river comes out from under the ground, and 2) found out that Bundy's cave is in that same network. Thanks! Can't ever learn TOO much!

Originally posted by wildtimes
reply to post by nenothtu

 

Out in the middle of the underground river was a big, gray, ovoid "rock". It was about 4 feet long and 2 feet wide, looked sort of like a big gray egg with just the top sticking out above water. I was standing there looking at it, marveling over how much water and how much time it had taken to wear it down to that shape, and playing the beam of my mining lamp over it, when it suddenly SUNK, just submerged in the water leaving swirling ripples on the surface.

Cool...maybe kind of like the "haystack formation" thing? (see that caves link for a pic in Surgeney Cave of a haystack formation)

I got the impression from the way it moved that it was, umm... "mobile".

Have you ever been to Hannibal, MO? There are lots of caves in MO too, and my kids and I toured "Tom Sawyer's Cave" years ago -- reaalllly cool, that. I wanna go back.

Never been the Hannibal, but the Ozarks are pretty dog gone similar to the place I was raised, so I wouldn't be surprised at a similar geology.

I've been on one or two casual (just me and a badboyfriend - no guides, no maps, no ball of twine, no lights even) spelunking episodes; scared the bejeebers outa me, actually. Just creepy...but at the same time absolutely mesmerizing.

Growing up in Coal Country, everyone and his brother had a mining light or two. We had about 5 of them, used 'em for everything from thrashing around in caves to coon hunting all night long. All of my "caving" was informal - just find one, and dive in to see what's in there! There was another one on a cliff above the Clinch River that few people know about, but it had giant rats in it. We went in one time to retrieve one, since no one believed they were there. Couldn't find any rats left, but we DID find panther tracks large and small - a momma had been raising kittens in there. Didn't take us long to vacate, and it was only after we left that I noticed the claw marks on the rocks leading up the hollow away from it, where momma had knocked moss off of them going up the stream bed.

I guess giant rats call for giant cats. Fish and wildlife says there aren't any panthers left there, but I damn well KNOW better. Had one come through the neighborhood not long after that which killed a couple dogs, and tore one of mine up pretty bad she came back home one day with a shredded ear, hanging in ribbons. It took near a whole box of powdered alum to get it to stop bleeding. We made plaster casts of some of the tracks we found around one of the dog carcasses, and there isn't any doubt in my mind what kind of tracks they were.

reply to post by wildtimes

Cool. Okay, I posted a new story bit, and a brief on it in the index. I guess we should all go there first before posting anything, right?
I'm on board, btw, so I'll obvi do my own and save anyone else the trouble.
I think it's a good idea, Silo, thanks for working it up for us!!

If you think it will help to go there first also - that's up to you. Good idea though.
But AFTER posting in the main thread is surely would be a help to pop out a Index post.

Wait, I've got to post more brb.

Originally posted by A boy in a dress

Remember... I'm old, so forgive my question!
'NPC'...? what does that mean and do we post the above on this thread (Working Thread)?

It's a term from the old Role Playing games, like Dragons and Dungeons. It stands for "Non-Player Character", and is any peripheral character that is not one of the primary writers,

Dag and Adam started out as NPC's, but are not any more - they have a primary writer, and are no longer peripheral. Bransom, Sslar, Lt. James, ErnieBen - those are all "NPC's".

NPCs are all fair game to be eaten by monsters, but it's proper etiquette to get the OK of their creator before just throwing them to the wolves.

For example, I might get out of sorts if someone fed Lt. James to the Horta, but Bransom was BORN to be used and die! Now that she's been "brought back to life, we can kill her off all over again once we find out where she currently is! - and no, she ain't in Vandalia. She wouldn't be caught dead there to begin with, and Vandals don't suffer pompous fools very well - she wouldn't last as long as lightning on a limb if she ever "invaded" there!

Originally posted by wildtimes

I just find it helpful to ALSO have an alpha list of persons, places, events, with page numbers. For example, when I wanted to read up on Adam and Dag; I could go there and look up ADAM, and it would show me every post referencing him, in order. Rather than thumbing through 50+pages of threads looking for him.

Question: How do you propose to keep the index listing alphabetized, in order, as new characters/places/events are added?

Originally posted by silo13
To get things rolling and so we all didn't have to wait on each other and jump around - (also so we didn't bug the snot outta Masqua to 'fix things' if something got put in out of place) I stuck in a VERY ROUGH INDEX of the new story line to ---> BIAD's first post so we can take it from there.

I hope it works for you all.

PSSST! Over here! I just was stricken by an idea. I'll have to get a steak to put on the lump in a minute, but before I go rummage around and find one, I thought I'd throw this idea out - maybe include a link to the actual story post in the synopsis posting? - it would make it a lot easier to track it down and get straight to that post without a bunch of thread-sifting.

Originally posted by wildtimes

>>>>>>>NENO:: I was thinking of working up a map of Vandalia (based on ones I've found online), but do you have one already in mind for where our new "locales" are? (The temple, the place where Cholla and Gerald work, Neno's location....

thoughts?

Go for it! The only location I have in my mind is neno's current whereabouts, and a few cave mouths that may be of interest, but really you can pop a cave in just about anywhere and be pretty near to right. If you want a "base map" of the actual area, just let me know what you want on it - contours, shaded relief, whatever sort of terrain representation you want, and I'll stitch one together for you.

I'm no good at all at labeling stuff - can't get the words to run on any angle other than the horizontal, but if you want to throw on the labels, I can supply the base.

I shrank the contour/chroma flashing gif a little more, and got it tiny enough to post:



If it flashes, it goes between a straight contour map and a map with shaded relief and chromatic elevation indicators. Neither has labels of any sort on it - that would be for the writers to name! The full-sized ones are 3003x3728 pixels, giving quite a bit more detail. Both were made from the Shuttle mission elevation data using MicroDEM/Terrabase II, a military mapping program.

reply to post by nenothtu

PSSST! Over here! I just was stricken by an idea. I'll have to get a steak to put on the lump in a minute, but before I go rummage around and find one, I thought I'd throw this idea out - maybe include a link to the actual story post in the synopsis posting? - it would make it a lot easier to track it down and get straight to that post without a bunch of thread-sifting.

Great idea if everyone it up for it - go ahead and add it and I'll ask Masqua to add that part to the 'template'.