Contents
Reading
Playing
alChandler's Halls
Spreading joy since 1999
The Dragon of Brodda's Hill
I used to have a thing on this page called Writing of Mine That doesn't Suck. The stuff there did suck, most of it, but I had an affection for The Dragon of Brodda's Hill and I was sad when I thought Carnifax and Sir Sardok were gone for good. So I'm glad I was able to pull the story from the Internet Archive and post it here again. And with that the reconstruction of alChandler's Hall is at an end, at least for the near future. I may repost one or two things later but for the moment I'm done.
March 20, 2025
Problem Solving
I'm not good at solving puzzles, never have been, keep that in mind. When I moved this page to Bluehost, Chrome had no problem but Firefox kept flagging it as insecure. It's taken me a month but I think I solved the problem. Of course, most people didn't notice a thing. Chrome's has a 66.3% market share, followed by Safari at 17.99%, Edge at 5.33%, Firefox at 2.62%, Samsung Internet at 2.3%, and Opera at 2.09%. I suspect I'm the only one using Firefox as my web browser in my small circle of friends (I switch between Chrome and Firefox every so often).
Still, figuring out the problem (I fucking hope it's figured out) made me very happy.
March 19, 2025
Peggy Moon
The Legend of Peggy Moon is back up. I was going to use a picture from one of the Fallout games to show Peggy in her power armor, but after search I found a picture of Neocron's power armor that wasn't too bad. Neocron had a very small team, it did its best and we did have fun in that world back in the day.
March 19, 2025
I'm an Idiot
Earlier this year I had a massive panic attack and ended up losing a lot of stuff from this page. It took me until today to hit the Internet Archive and do a search for alChandler's Halls. So then, some older stuff will be showing up here from time to time. I should have hit the Archive earlier but to be honest I didn't think of it until today.
I got back from my trip to New York yesterday and that means that this week will be a lump week, so don't expect to see anything new in the contents until next week at the earliest.
March 18, 2025
Careless People
Careless People is a book written by Sarah Wynn-Williams. She used to be Facebook's global public policy director and her book about her time in the company has just been released. The book's publisher didn't do the usual pre-publication publicity shtick probably because the expected that Meta would try to prevent the book from ever being released. But it is out and Meta can't do anything about that. However they got an arbiter to ban Wynn-Williams from promoting the book on the grounds that the book violates the severance agreement she signed when Facebook shitcanned her.
But the book has been released into the wild and there's nothing Meta can do about that. And I might not have heard about it except for an article in the Times about Meta's attempt to suppress it; that's normally how these things go. And that's why Careless People is next on my reading list.
March 18, 2025
Doom (2016)
Nine years ago I bought the Doom remake. I managed to make it to Hell and there I was foiled by a boss. He had an attack that required me to hit the control key to crouch and then hit the space bar to jump and I just couldn't get the timing right. Since then I'd occasionally put the game back on my system but I never made it to Hell again. But this year, I made it to Hell once more and I'm going to try to make it to that boss again and see if I can get past him. I'm not sure that I'll make it but I'm going to give it my best shot. And unlike 2016, I'll have edibles by my side to calm me down.
By the way, The original Doom came out in 1993 and if you're interested, here's a link to a pdf of the July, 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World. That issue had a preview of Doom. It really was a remarkable game for its time.
March 13, 2025
Atomfall
On 3/27/25 Atomfall drops. It's a cross between Far Cry and Stalker and the devs felt comfortable enough to release a 90 minute demo to game reviewers. It's set in England in the wake of the Windscale fire. Windscale was a nuclear power plant and in 1957 a fire there caused one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. In the game the area around the plant is quarantined and your character wakes up in the quarantine zone with no memory. Not the most original idea, I'll grant you, but reaction to the demo is pretty good.
March 10, 2025
Avowed Finale
If you're planning to play Avowed sometime then be advised there are spoilers here.
In Avowed you're an envoy from the Emperor of Aedyr, tasked with ending a plague that's slowing down his plan to annex an island continent called the Living Lands. Aside from the plague the annexation is also stymied by the fact that the place was settled by various groups trying to get away from the Aedyr Empire. So the game is, among other things, about colonialism. As the Envoy, it's your job to enforce the Emperor's will. However the Emperor is far away and you can pretty much do as you like, although not without consequences.
So then, on one hand you have the Steel Garrote who want to bring the settlers to heel. And on the other hand there are the settlers who bristle at the prospect of becoming part of the empire. On top of all that you're a godlike, a person marked in the womb by a god. Other godlikes know who thier patron is, but not you. It's not until you get to the Living Lands that your patron reveals themself, it's Sapadal a nature god who has been imprisoned for centuries by the god Woedica, the god of vengeance.
Sapadal indicates that they were attacked and their followers were slaughtered. On top of that they might be responsible for the Dream Scourge, that's the plague afflicting the Living Lands.
So then you've got Sapadal, they're the god that touched you in the womb and they're able to communicate with you in spite of being imprisoned. They want out and they swear that while they're responsible for the Dream Scourge, they can't really control it until they're free. Of course after several centuries alone Sapadal might be crazy.
On the other hand there's Lödwyn, head of the Steel Garrote. She wants to end the plague by killing Sapadal, that would make it easy for Aedyr to conquer the Living Lands. And that's the choice I had to make, free Sapadal and hope they were honest about their intentions, of kill them and allow the Steel Garrote to kill everyone who tries to resist the Empire.
With that in mind, here's the ending I got.
By the way, I was a little too harsh on the companions. Part of the reason I found them useless is that I wasn't using their special attacks. I do dumb shit like that in games from time to time.
March 8, 2025
Lödwyn
That's Lödwyn, head of the Steel Garrote and one of the antagonists in Avowed. The Steel Garrote is a cross between special forces and an inquisition and Lödwyn has been a pain in my ass for most of the game. Now that she's dead it's a sign that the game is coming to an end. With that in mind I have a few thoughts.
The developers made some weird decisions. For instance your companions don't level up when you do. They get abilities from time to time but they aren't intelligent enough to use them on their own, you have to trigger them. And while you gain a lot of weapons and armor in your travels you can't give them to the companions. It's annoying and at level 24 I feel like I'm being followed by a couple of talking roombas with swords.
There's also the inevitable moral dilemma. Your character is a godlike, that is a god marked me while I was in the womb. In this case, my patron is a forgotten nature goddess named Sapadal. She's been imprisoned for ages and she's pretty much crazy, although I'm coming to the conclusion that she means well. She wants me to free her and she swears that once she's out of the god dungeon she'll get her shit together. Lödwyn, before I fought her to the death, argued that we should team up and kill Sapadal. But Lödwyn is, or was, a bloody psychopath so I'm not so sure about killing Sapadal on her say so.
It's been a while since I've had a game kick me to desktop like Avowed has. When that happens you get this message.
I'm going to assume that was a place holder message that was left in the game because the devs thought it was funny. I'm not laughing.
In short, I'm having fun but I feel like I paid $69 for a $49 game. And as always YMMV.
March 7, 2025
Speech
That was how I planned to watch Trump's speech tonight, but tomorrow is BLT day at the Tilton Market so I'm going to watch the thing stone cold sober.
March 4, 2025
A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with One Step
March 4, 2025
This has been a Whenpigsfly production.
Any questions or comments can be directed to kaliban13@comcast.net.
Logo courtesy of Mrs. Silverman.