I am working on a story featuring a young woman with a pair of prosthetic legs. I know that skin irritation, socket fit issues, phantom limb pain, mobility limitations, and psychological adjustment are issues.
What do these issues look like?
What are other likely issues?
This is the dark lord of a Spelljammer domain I sketch out here.
Meet my prospective Dark Lord: Severin von Dire, proof that the road to damnation is paved with office politics, professional jealousy, and stealing someone else's sandwich.
Before he doomed an entire spelljamming expedition, Severin had already established himself as that guy.
You know the one.
He always took the last donut without asking. He'd raid the break room fridge and eat someone else's lunch—even when "PROPERTY OF THADDEUS" was written across the paper bag in giant letters. If confronted, he'd shrug and claim he assumed they were "saving it for someone important." He made finger guns when talking to people. He corrected everyone's magical calculations, interrupted presentations to explain what people really meant, and somehow managed to begin every third sentence with, "Actually..."
As Chief Arcane Engineer of the fleet, Severin genuinely was brilliant. Unfortunately, he also possessed the emotional resilience of wet parchment. Any criticism, no matter how mild, became a blood feud.
His latest obsession was revolutionizing spelljammer helms by routing them through Limbo. Why sail around the planes when you could cut through infinite primordial chaos? What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a few things, according to every other wizard on the project.
The senior arcanists politely pointed out that his equations ignored several catastrophic variables, including the fact that Limbo is, well... Limbo. They suggested more testing.
Severin heard only one thing:
"They don't appreciate my genius."
To make matters worse, the project leadership promoted another engineer to lead the expedition. Severin was officially second in command. In Severin's version of events, however, the entire project had been his idea from the beginning, everyone else had merely copied him, and history would surely vindicate him.
Naturally, he decided to make a few "minor improvements."
Without informing anyone, he secretly replaced several safety mechanisms with his own "superior" designs. They looked elegant on paper.
Then came the maiden voyage of the Götterdämmerung.
The helm engaged.
Reality screamed.
Every warning glyph on the bridge erupted simultaneously.
The emergency systems tried to disengage.
...except Severin had quietly disabled half of them because they were "unnecessarily conservative."
The ship plunged deep into Limbo and stayed there.
When the crew desperately tried to escape, the emergency mechanisms failed exactly as everyone except Severin had predicted.
Then the slaadi arrived.
Chaos toads poured through the fractures in reality, overrunning the Götterdämmerung.
Here's the part that earned him a Darklord's throne:
Severin knew exactly why the ship couldn't escape.
He knew exactly which systems he'd sabotaged.
He knew that fixing them might save hundreds of lives.
Instead...
...he hid.
He barricaded himself inside an engineering compartment while the crew fought, screamed, and died outside. He listened to people pound on the hatch, begging for help, and quietly convinced himself they were failures who would only ruin his masterpiece anyway.
By the time the slaadi finally found him, every other soul aboard was dead.
The Mists found him before the monsters did.
Now Severin rules a Domain where every failed experiment is always someone else's fault, every subordinate is an incompetent fool, every success is mysteriously stolen from him, and every escape plan almost works—until one tiny overlooked flaw, inevitably of his own making, traps him all over again.
He's still absolutely convinced the project would have worked if everyone had simply listened to him.
Also, somewhere in the Götterdämmerung, there is always exactly one donut left.
It is impossible for Severin to eat it.
Here's the rough concept I'd go with.
The PCs already know about spelljammers and Wildspace. While traveling, they enter what seems to be an isolated pocket of Wildspace—a Ravenloft domain adrift among the stars. At its center hangs the shattered flagship of a once-mighty fleet. The vessel appears abandoned, silent, and lifeless.
It isn't.
The Darklord is the only surviving human aboard. He wasn't the captain, but the fleet's arcane engineer: an ambitious, amoral spellcaster whose experiments with extraplanar forces went catastrophically wrong. He reached beyond the stars for power... and the Mists answered. He fucked around and found out
His curse is particularly horrific. The ship has become infested with slaadi, who continually use him as a living incubator for their tadpoles. They erupt from his body over and over again, but he never dies. He heals, only to endure the process again. Eternal agony is his punishment.
The domain itself would lean heavily into Alien and Event Horizon. Vast, echoing corridors. Flickering magical systems barely holding together. Strange planar phenomena. Organic infestations growing through the hull. Constant paranoia that something is moving in the darkness.
When the party first boards the flagship, the Darklord doesn't appear to be the villain. Quite the opposite—he seems to be the lone survivor desperately trying to stay alive while the characters are hunted by slaadi. He becomes an uneasy ally, guiding them through the ship and helping them survive.
Only gradually do the characters discover the truth: the infestation exists because of him, the ship's fate is his doing, and escaping the domain may require confronting the very man who first seemed like their only hope.
Have you used a pressure cooker to gelatinize the grain? If so, how did it go?
In theory this should be simple, but life provides surprises. Also, I am worried about the scent and taste - mine still smells of the rice curry I made.
I wrote Liches: Danse Macabre, so I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about liches and what makes them compelling villains. This is my current interpretation of Azalin.
The first point is that Azalin's famous curse—that he cannot learn any new magic—is, in my view, largely self-imposed. It isn't simply something the Dark Powers are doing to him; it's something he continually does to himself.
A useful comparison is Strahd. His curse is his endless pursuit of Tatyana, yet nothing in Barovia or among the Dark Powers literally forces him to chase her. He chooses to. His own obsessions perpetuate his torment.
Azalin functions the same way.
To my mind, Azalin is neurotic, narcissistic in the toxic sense, and profoundly anhedonic, all in the clinic DSM senses of the terms. He is vain, emotionally brittle, paranoid, convinced that only he is capable of making decisions, and incapable of finding genuine satisfaction in anything. He is consumed by bitterness and pride.
Most importantly, he cannot accept that anyone else has something worth teaching him.
The tragedy is that there is no shortage of magical knowledge available in the Domains of Dread. Azalin simply cannot bring himself to learn from anyone he considers beneath him. His ego prevents him from accepting instruction, collaboration, or even the possibility that another wizard might know something he does not.
His obsession with personally controlling every aspect of Darkon—even to the point that the domain rewrites its inhabitants' memories to reinforce his authority—is another manifestation of this flaw. Between ruling the kingdom, plotting impossible escapes, pursuing elaborate magical schemes, and nursing centuries of resentment, he leaves himself neither the time nor the mental flexibility required for the painstaking study that real magical advancement demands.
Worse, he never admits mistakes.
Every failure convinces him that the solution is an even grander, more complicated plan. His schemes become increasingly baroque because he cannot acknowledge that the underlying assumptions are flawed. As a result, he repeatedly engineers catastrophes of his own making.
On some level, I think Azalin knows this. Deep down, he understands exactly what he is doing to himself. But he lacks either the humility or the will to change.
His relationship with his son, Irik, is the purest expression of these failures. It illustrates not simply his cruelty but his absolute refusal to acknowledge his own limitations.
I would even alter the backstory slightly. Rather than simply executing Irik for negotiating with the rebels, I would have Firan deliberately send his son as an envoy. When Irik returns and reports, "The rebels actually have some good arguments," Firan flies into a murderous rage. The betrayal is not that Irik failed—it is that he suggested someone else might possess wisdom that Firan himself lacked.
That single moment encapsulates Azalin's defining flaw.
My current interpretation also treats the wandering Firan as literally Azalin's younger self, pulled forward through time by yet another of Azalin's impossibly elaborate magical schemes that exploded in his face.
Firan is probably still arrogant and unpleasant. But he has not yet become Azalin. Faced with the lich he is destined to become, he would be utterly and hopelessly horrified. In many ways, Firan becomes the only person truly capable of understanding Azalin's damnation—because he is witnessing his own future, and realizing that every step toward power has also been a step toward becoming a man incapable of learning, growing, or experiencing joy.
Edit to Add: Think of dealing with Azalin a bit like dealing with Anatoly Dyatlov in the HBO series Chernobyl; an arrogant and unpleasant man who berates people under him and pushes a situation until the power plant explodes.
Does anyone have experience with "NicetoMeet"?
According to the website;
>NiceToMeet is a platform designed to help individuals over 45 years old form new friendships through in-person meetups. The service emphasizes meaningful connections by matching compatible people based on shared experiences and interests. Users can participate in weekly gatherings without the pressures of modern dating apps, focusing instead on genuine interactions.
It's a variation on a dating app. Rather than swiping on individuals, you apparently go to a group dinner to meet a set of strangers with similar temperaments, based on a personality test from the site. And you could start dating someone you meet at a dinner, if everything goes well.
I'm not pitching it. I'm skeptical. But then I'm a bitter old man and am skeptical of everything.
So, does anyone have experience with "NicetoMeet"? If so, it is worth it?
What kind of water do you use?
Have you ever used rainwater?
The ideal pH for making whiskey mash is between 5.2 and 5.4, which promotes better enzyme activity and higher mash efficiency. The natural pH of rainwater is slightly acidic, typically around 5.6. Tap water typically has a pH between 6.5 and 8.5, with an average around 7.5, which is considered safe and slightly alkaline. So rainwater is (theoretically) better for mashing than tap water.
The challenge would be collecting enough clean rainwater. The rainwater draining off a roof would be dirty from the roof.
I am just curious about rainwater.
And what kind of water do you use?
So has anyone used an automatic pot stirrer?
While cooking the mash, you need to stir it so it doesn't scorch. This is time consuming and you are standing over a pot of hot water, maybe boiling water. An automatic pot stirrer would (in theory) make this easier.
Have you ever used one?
Is it worth the money?
Does this subreddit ever discuss anything except "Obsession"?
Norah Vincent (1968–2022) was a journalist and writer best known for Self-Made Man (2006). In the early 2000s, she spent about 18 months living and presenting as a man as part of a journalistic project, then wrote about the experience in that book. I haven't read it myself yet and only recently learned about her.
She also wrote Voluntary Madness (2008), which focused on her experiences with mental illness and time spent in psychiatric institutions. Vincent struggled with depression and other mental health issues for much of her life, and she ultimately died by assisted suicide in 2022.
Many of her views on gender and transgender identity would be considered controversial today. She was critical of transgender ideology and did not believe that gender identity determined whether someone was a man or a woman.
The reason I became aware of her was through posts and videos arguing that her eventual death was somehow connected to trauma she experienced while living as a man for Self-Made Man. That explanation seems too simplistic. She appears to have struggled with serious mental health issues long before and long after that project.
Regardless of where people stand on her views, I find her story interesting and somewhat tragic. As someone who has dealt with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts myself, I can't take any satisfaction in how her life ended.
I'm curious:
Would you kindly recommend at least one of two books;
First, a book on the lives and challenges face by people with physical handicaps?
Second, the lives of modern rich people?
Thank you.
...distill four to five gallons of mash?
Edit to Add: I had been using an electric burner for a 3-gallon pot, but it didn't produce enough BTUs to boil give gallons in an old beer keg. Today I used my propane grill on the keg. And it worked.... very slowly. Completing the run took almost nine hours (limiting my ability to do anything else and I had a list of chores). I think I will get myself a propane burner, like the kind used for frying turkeys.
This isn't to suggest a bastard, but to suggest a guest host; Chris Newman, of the "Farming while Beige" YouTube channel and of Black Bird Coop.
Newman owns a chicken farm and works it as regenerative agriculture, he is black and Native American, and sometimes does silly videos and voices and sometimes does serious one's discussing issues of race and/or argriculture.
He's got a real positive energy, is articulate and I think and and Evans would vibe together in some interesting ways.
They could just talk about some evil bastard farmer or something.
A few years ago, there were Twitter accounts roleplaying various Ravenloft characters; Strahd, Azalin, Lord Soth, Anhktepot, and others.
One April Fool's Day, the account owners pretended that all the characters had somehow switched bodies. Strahd was posting as Anhktepot, Anhktepot was posting as someone else, and so on.
What amused me was that everyone familiar with Ravenloft immediately assumed Azalin had caused it.
Not because there was any in-universe explanation. Just because Azalin is constantly attempting massive magical schemes and accidentally making everything worse (fucking it all up). The fanbase's collective reaction was basically, "Yep, Azalin tried some grand spell again and screwed it up."
Anyways, I've been thinking about Firan Zal'honan.
What if the Firan of the setting isn't a clone, magical construct, fragment, or anything like that? What if he's literally Azalin's younger self accidentally pulled into the present by one of Azalin's failed magical experiments?
Azalin has messed with time travel before during the Grand Conjunction. So, imagine he attempts some elaborate spell to alter his own past and prevent himself from ever being drawn into the Domains of Dread. Maybe he miscalculates something (forgot to carry the 2), creates a catastrophic temporal event, and ends up freezing himself in the process.
But in the chaos, he drags his past self forward through time.
So, the Firan we know would actually be the real, historical Firan Zal'honan from before he became ruler of Knurl and long before he became Azalin Rex.
He'd arrive in modern Darkon with fragments of Azalin's memories and knowledge, but only fragments, and filtered through the lich's own narcissistic worldview. That could explain why Firan knows some things about the setting, knows who Strahd is (and tends to blame Strahd for everything), while still lacking a full understanding of what happened to him, Darkon, or Azalin's role in any of it.
The resulting paradox could also explain why Darkon's history and reality seem so fractured and unstable.
To be clear, I'm not seriously arguing this is the intended explanation. It's just a fun thought experiment that occurred to me today.
What do you think? Could Firan actually be Azalin's past self-displaced in time?
I am waiting on the reviews and general consensus before I really consider getting this book. But I am curious about the status of everyone's favorite OCD, make things too complicated, terrible father, evil overlord, Azalin.
The last book left his fate mysterious, though it seemed he had been split into at least two (possibly more) NPCs, including a "living" wizard who to me looks like actor Ben Barnes.
So, please spoil me here. What is the situation with Azalin in "Horror Within"?
I came across an interview with Dr. Debra Soh, who has written and recently published a book the book "Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy."
I am posting this here because Dr. Soh discusses men and women, their roles and social dynamics. And human sexuality (at least heterosexuality) is certainly an issue that concerns feminists.
I've not read the book, and so my response here is just based on the interview (there are others than the ones I posted here, just search google or YouTube). But she's right about how social media has isolated us and made a lot of interactions toxic and miserable, and she's right about the dangers of porn and how it exacerbates problems and bad behaviors.
But I am having some problems with what I am hearing. I think she is too forgiving of men and the patriarchy. And I do not see any problems in a decline in sexual activity and intimacy - so much of it is toxic and poisoned by capitalism and the patriarchy that I can't see a decline as a problem.
But are you familiar with her works?
Have you read this book? If so, what do you think of it and the case she presents?
Who are podcasters and YouTube celebrities you avoid? Who would you suggest people avoid. Some easy ones include; Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Candace Owens, Steven Crowder, Andrew Tate, Pearl Davis, Fresh and Fit, Scott Galloway, Jordan Peterson, and Lauren Southern.
I would add to this list; Harris O’Malley (he’s a fake feminist ally and sexually assaulted a woman in 2017), and Kait Willett (a YouTuber who blames male loneliness on women and feminism).
But what are names, if you heard them, would make you at least shake your head?