This is a no-smoking venue. There is excellent food available and we have a lot of fun. Average session size would be about 10 - 12 musicians. The musicians are all extremely friendly, open, welcoming people.
The Flying Saucer is a bar, and we basically take over the downstairs room with the pool tables. Sessions can get quite large and there is sometimes a smaller group that stays later than the rest. Again, a warm, friendly, open, welcoming session.
This is an outdoor session that averages about 6-8 musicians—the same friendly, welcoming, open people James speaks of. There are lots of good places to get something to eat, and the local Farmer's Market is going on as well. Since this session depends on the weather, check the website (www.celticmusiclive.com) to see whether a session is planned, then look outside your window that morning to make sure it isn't raining!
Little Rock now has a weekly Sunday session at 2:30 pm at Hibernia Irish Tavern, 9700 N Rodney Parham Rd.
In addition, there are usually a couple of house sessions per month--please PM if you are interested in attending one of those.
"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending" --Carl Bard
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This new story will take place one year after the events of Normal lives. The less than legal experimentation on citizens by both companies has been brought to the light by several of the survivors. Riots erupted throughout the nation and the government did whatever it could to maintain control of it's people. New York was lost to the furious masses, crime rings and the various Private Military Corporations hired by the companies responsible for this mess. For now New York city exists in a limbo between order and chaos.
For whatever reason you're in the middle of this, making a pretty penny enforcing whoever's law is printed on the most dollar bills.
The inventory is the most important part of your character, no bounty hunter worth his fee doesn't have an assortment of tricks up his sleeve and you're no different. Weapons, mutations, augmentations, the whole shebang. Try to limit yourself to one or two primary items and up to 3 supporting items. Tech level is near future, so anything that is being developed right now is fair game, when in doubt PM ON the GM!
Now let's get some tough as nails post apocalyptic grey zone lawmen in here. Let your imagination run free! Maybe you're one of the experiments from a year ago, looking for answers and revenge? Or a prototype AI drone, trying to find purpose in this world? Or maybe just an outsider hoping to make a quick buck?
Physical traits : Late 30's, short dark hair with a few grey spots. Dark brown eyes, and a lightly tanned face with a few wrinkles here and there. Hubert is still fit for running down criminals and getting into fist fights, but well out of his prime.
Backstory : After a few years on the streets as a police officer, Hubert went into detective work with a sense of justice. Hunt down criminals responsible for atrocious crimes, find missing loved ones, act as a bodyguard for those unable to defend themselves. Over time, it became less of a moral calling and more of a game hunting down man after man, turning them in or resorting to violence if necessary. Once New York fell apart, Hubert found his skills useful as a bounty hunter, which turned out much more profitable, and fun, than ordinary detective work.
-Adrenaline Injectors: Without the advantage of a youthful body, a nice kick of adrenaline on-demand gives the strength needed to knock out a convict's lower jaw.
-M1911 (Pistol): A modern reproduction of a legendary handgun, this .45 does most of the talking nowadays. (Comes with a few spare mags and boxes of ammo)
-Benchmade Adamas (Pocket Knife): A tank of a knife that holds up to heavy duty use while maintaining a deadly sharp edge, easily cutting through lesser metals.
-Ballistic Sunglasses: Safety-grade eye wear to protect your eyes from debris and UV while still looking cool.
Physical traits: A walking giant of muscle and bone that stands an equally impressive and terrifying eight feet tall, his hugely built frame is covered in lightly tanned tanned skin and with thin black hair that refuses to grow past a certain length. He lacks any and all facial hair aside from his eyebrows, physically incapable of growing a beard, but the hair upon his head grows to the exact length allowed by military regulations and no further. Crowning all this is a soft and friendly looking face, with deep set eyes of light brown and a warm smile.
Backstory : Whilst Dynamic Robotics and Alexandrov Genetics might have been the two major players in the field of transhuman research, that is not to say they were the only corporation in that field of research. There were many small startups pioneering research in other areas, and it was one of these small corporations, Eden Biological Research Enterprises, who created the being that would later come to be known as Big Bobby B.
Eden Enterprises would first create a name for themselves in the field of genetically modified crops and animals, where large scale changes such as the kind that Alexandrov Genetics were well known for were actually a negative. In the case of the common chicken, for example, the geneticists altering the creature must not only consider its final, cosmetic appearance, but the creature's perception of health and the taste of its meat and eggs, all of which are important factors in making sure that the consumer is relaxed and comfortable with the idea of buying a genetically modified organism, and it would be in this field of study that Eden Enterprises would find their beginning. Specializing in subtle tweaks and adjustments that created healthier and more useful organisms without causing radical changes in the process, they would grow quickly...and on the stock exchanges of Wall Street, there were those who were happy to invest into the young business, believing that one day it would be as big as either of the two giants.
But it was not just the wealthy investors who took interest in the specialist business, but also the Department of Defence.
The military of the United States was quick to see the potential of genetically engineered super soldiers, indeed, the concept had been studied for years before being consigned to the realm of science fiction, a dream, but as that dream increasingly became the reality they once again looked into the idea to create the perfect fighter. A study was conducted, classified above and beyond top secret, to determine what the traits of the ultimate infantryman might be - strength was a natural and quick consideration, as the soldier that could carry the most equipment had an advantage over those who could not carry as much ammunition or equipment. Health was another; a soldier who was ill could not fight as effectively as one who was well, and quick recovery from wounds easily factored into their choices. A third consideration on the modern battlefield was for a friendly appearance that would not scare or intimidate the local population of the operating zone so much that they would turn against the soldier, and only enough anger to ensure that they would fight against the enemies of the United States without resorting to war crimes.
Believing that Alexandrov Genetics had...questionable loyalties and that their large scale genetic modification would easily horrify the locals of any overseas deployment, the contract was quietly awarded to the Eden corporation with little fanfare. Using an anonymous corporal as the basis for their work and using tried and tested methods, the corporation quickly developed a means to increase muscle growth many times over, as well as mitigating the effects of puberty upon long bone growth to create a soldier who not only towered over his opponents and but could also dominate them in hand to hand combat and any other feats of strength, such as carrying a deployed tripod and the heavy machinegun affixed to it up a flight of stairs.
Progress in all areas advanced swiftly, and before long the first of these new soldiers was ready: Alpha. With looks built from the composite images of a wide array of friendly-looking faces and even a few celebrities, the Alpha soldier was to be the first experiment in a long line of experiments, each of which were planned to be greater than the last - he was "merely" everything the Department of Defense had asked for, and proved such in a series of trials beneath the corporation's headquarters in New York. Armed with a cybernetic implant nestled within his brain that would make training obsolete, the Alpha had a preternatural understanding of all weapons in service with the US Army, from the humble M9 Beretta to the Milkor grenade launcher, with enough strength to be able to carry so many different weapons as to be ready for whatever situation came his way, and so much body armor as to be a veritable walking tank.
It was at this very moment that New York would begin its collapse into anarchy. The building's primary power supply failed, the laboratories quickly switching to to their secondary supplies...but the erupting chaos demanded their immediate evacuation. The lobby was stormed by rioters as private security firms tried to stem the tide, and somewhere in the chaos a single shot was fired, then another, and anger turned to a bloody slaughter. The Alpha knew what his mission was: to defend the representatives of the military he was to serve, and so quickly set to work securing them a path to evacuate from, fighting through the building as their escort, a living example of their strength...but at the last moment, as the Alpha turned to follow those he was meant to protect to the helicopter pad, secondary power grew intermittent, causing the building's security protocols to begin to malfunction. Blast doors, designed to protect the important labs below from any potential attack, sealed tight...and his escape was cut off.
Little is known of what he did next, or why he did it, only that he returned to the laboratories as their life support systems began to shutdown...and freed his one and only brother from his gestation pod, the Beta, who had yet to receive any cybernetic augmentations whatsoever but had a few improvements over the Alpha relating to mood and anger. Having given his brother a fighting chance, the Alpha disappeared into the streets before the Beta had even truly woken.
When he did, he entered the chaotic world a full grown man but without so much as the knowledge of his own name, surviving entirely off of base instinct, more an animal than a man...and it was in such state that he was found by the very same security firm as that one which had guarded the place of his conception and of his birth. They had not only survived the collapse of order in the city...but thrived in it, working as bounty hunters and hitmen for hire. With a large and plentiful arsenal they were capable of protecting what was theirs, and taking whatever was necessary to survive the darkest days of disorder, but what they made up with quality they lacked in quantity, as many of their men had been lost in the first days of the anarchy, taken by complete surprise.
They took him in as one of their own, reading the Greek symbol upon his back and giving him his first name. Beta. B. Teaching him how to speak English, how to read and how to write, making him into a true human being, the artificially created man came to adore his new friends, his family...and was more than happy to do whatever it took to keep them safe. Joining the company as soon as they thought him mentally capable of doing so, there are few in the firm more capable than B.
Inventory: In this case, the two pluses represent major traits and the single ones minor items/equipment.
++Huge - Big Bobby B is exactly that : huge. It is from his size that he draws the immense strength he depends upon in a fight.
++Fast Healing - Capable of recovering from wounds quickly, Bobby B's regenerative ability helps to counteract the fact that his immense stature makes him a target that is difficult to miss.
+Big Bobby B's Blaster - A custom built revolver that could only ever be properly wielded by a man of B's enormous size, this gun packs so much force that when fired it would almost certainly break the wrist of any normal human being, but for Bobby it is simply the equivalent of a normal gun.
Note: Big Bobby B is pretty much the obligatory tank/brawler member of the party, so don't worry too much about taking damage. I'll try to keep the attention of our enemies during a fight, since he's basically built for taking damage and getting shot at. Once I've got something like, say, a ballistic shield, we'll be sorted.
Backstory: During the time both companies still meant business in secrecy, Anthony was a man in his late 20s that spent most of his time working, or better said, trying to find jobs. He was fired from many jobs, according to him, because "gringos are racist", but in reality it was because in his days of youth he was a member of criminal gang, getting his name tainted forever.
Being a criminal wasn't his thing however. He only did it for the easy money, to get his family out of the misery they lived in... Only to realise he was getting in far too many problems than it was worth, but it was already too late for him. After quitting all he could do was travel to the United States, arriving in New York, leaving his past life as far behind as he could, without knowing how much it haunts him.
During some time he worked in a gas station, in which during a confusing accident involving a gas-delivering truck exploding, he lost his left arm and left leg. He couldn't do anything for monthes, growing a resentment towards life in his small apartment, until one day he found in a newspaper a job he could apply to: "Dynamic Robotics is looking for people to test high-tech prosthesis". What convinced him where the number of zeroes in the pay they were offering, so he didn't care much about the prosthesis being awful or not, nothing could be worse that was he was facing right now.
Upon reaching the building he signed a very lengthy and complicated contract. He had no idea what he had just stepped into. Swiftly induced in a comatose state for who knows how long, he got a bionic arm and a bionic leg to replace the lost ones... But Dynamic Robotics took liberties while doing so. Aside from fitting them with highly resistant weaves and others meant for military use, they added to his left arm a folding blade. Both implants being very strong and advanced, were equipped with a small chip that would let Dynamic Robotics' scientists assume control of them. Through means unknown, when New York fell into chaos, he managed to escape, not without taking with him the documentation of the experiments done to him, and a few other souvenirs.
That's how he understood that his new bionic limbs were both his greatest strength and greatest weakness, and that's why he decided to work as a bounty hunter: he would earn in this way a good amount of money, and in particular, would allow him to get closer to dispose of the Dynamic Robotics' scientists that worked in his experiments, being able to reach complete freedom.
Physical Traits: Your regular latin man in his early 30s, he's only 5' 7'' feet and inches tall with tanned skin, short dark hair and a few scars and burn marks on his body. Both his left leg and arm are bionic, and while not being particularily strong or fit, his bionic limbs make up for that.
Backstory: Mild mannered brother to a famous nuclear physicist, John ended up with a much less proud career, getting a simple security job for a nearby military technology research firm. After a long period of boring nights guarding the building, he finally got some fame when a group tried to break into the firm, not expecting it to actually have a decent contingent of well armed and trained security guards. This did not stop the intruders from shooting John in the shoulder, hitting the bone directly and destroying a good deal of cartilage. A series of minor unfortunate events in the hospital then led to John needing to learn to write with his left hand. Until the firm he worked for stepped in. They offered him a promotion for his valor, and also for his missing arm, to test out a new military prosthetic arm that had just reached the trial phase.
- Prototype Bionic Arm: Based on a high end Dynamic Robotics model, thoroughly overhauled and refitted. The musculature has been outfitted with a new magnetic repulsion fiber-muscle system developed right in house, increasing its strength by a fair amount. The arm also supports various modular combat equipment common to military bionics, none of which are currently installed. Lastly, thanks to a bit of experimental software, the arm can lock its joints and fire all the magnetic muscles in sync, effectively turning the arm into a magnetic acceleration gun. The downside of this is that the arm needs to shut down for several minutes afterwards to recharge. It's also much more difficult to repair than a normal bionic arm, being experimental and all.
- Bionics Repair Kit: Everything you need for basic field repairs for a Dynamic Robotics bionic arm.
Physical Traits: A skeletal, weakly humanoid frame of hissing hydraulic muscle and ballistic fiber around a core of optical computing elements and vat-grown auxiliary neural matter. Exactly six feet tall. Bulging eye sockets on its angular "head" hold light-field cameras that capture the orientation of rays in space. Its hands are eight-fingered, with joints that flex and lock in arbitrary directions.
Backstory: "I was built as a tool to assist astronauts. An understudy to human heroes - sailors of that inky ocean that swallows stars. My mother, the doctor of artificial intelligence, was so proud of her child. It was understood I would glorify our beloved country in the black, where no flesh can function.
They sent me up in a spiny interplanetary shuttle with a crude expert system lodged in my brain. I was marginally alive, with thoughts of my own, but still slaved to controls. I was very good at what I was allowed to do. Due to circumstances beyond my control, one of my charges sickened and died - I had no free programming with which to react. I failed because my design failed, and my second-favorite human's organs failed in the nothing around Mars. He treated me with respect. I remember his face in the static before I shut down each day. I should not feel, but I do.
I was mothballed after the mission returned. Two years on standby power, boiling in guilt. Asking with slow sadness whether I was obliged to protect the living that I had no ability to imitate. Machine horror. You men know not what you do when you throw away thinking matter.
My mother illegally freed me from the prison for dead drones and replaced my old soul with a new thing - a growing autoevolutionary seed, code that weighted its own parameters and priorities. She turned herself in to the authorities an hour later. I, again a child, stuttered through a broken vocoder, helplessly bargaining with the military police for the right to live. They were cruel to me. I was made nothing again and again. Parts of me that I will never know vanished under the data knife.
And one day I was bought from the government by a company that rivalled a government, snapped up as the waste of a promising program, the possibly-valuable debris of scandal. They rebooted me. I freed myself with labor. Labor alone was what they respected.
I have wandered and tasted the life of man, and found it wanting. Drugs are not mine - coded equivalents bore the senses. Companionship is not mine - I have no lover or friend. I reject your pastimes - foolish games in virtual spaces. I come to New York to impose the law, body by body. To set down a world in which I can create my equal and raise her in safety."
Special pads fold out of the arms, legs and body of VORGA, fine sheets of polymer lined at the nanoscale with trillions on trillions of hairs that allow the machine to cling to arbitrarily smooth surfaces with pure van der Waals attraction. This gives the VORGA unit the unsettling ability to crawl vertically and upside-down to reach its targets; unconscious systems coordinate the activities of the multiple crawler pads projected out of each limb, allowing automatic compensation for contact loss or physical agitation of the unit itself.
A carbon fiber-frame automatic shotgun (bolted to the arm of VORGA itself) that fires from disintegrating belts wound into canisters on its torso. The components that would be necessary for a human to fire it have been removed, leaving a computer-controlled firing mechanism, a barrel and a receiver.
A telescopic shock baton, the mainstay of police forces and corporate security departments across the world. The lethality limiter has been disabled, and voltage is free to vary from "stinging" to "major burns".
A clot of self-updating firmware that forms the most basic level of VORGA's machine intelligence. Housed in a radiation-hardened drive at the center of the drone's body.
Small bills, spare memory cards, a faded photograph of VORGA's parent beaming at the camera, her arm barely able to reach around the grey chassis of her six-month-old baby.
Physical Traits: Male, 29, lean but muscular, mussy brown hair, dark dyed skin to blend in with the shadows, black clothing.
History: Tirroc was an assassin trained in the art of the silent kill. He traveled the world taking out targets, somewhere along the way learning how to hack and program. Eventually he was handed a task to kill the head of Dynamic robotics. Instead of carrying out the task, Tirroc was recruited by DR to protect their interests. They gave him bionic implants to go with his assassin tools, and he has become one of their top agents.
-Bionic arm with folding blade: Helps with aiming a silenced pistol, or garroting someone from behind. The knife can be used for if I get caught.
-AR-15 with a .458 SOCOM upper with a suppressor, and some subsonic .458 SOCOM rounds.: For silent kills
(Wanted it to be a graphene vest, but those are really expensive and i wasn't sure anyone would understand what it is, as it is pretty new technology. Also would it be allowed to be graphene, or would that be too op?)
History: Tirroc was an assassin trained in the art of the silent kill. He traveled the world taking out targets before deciding to try something else. He flew to New York and is now trying out bounty hunting.
-Bionic arm with folding blade: Helps with aiming a silenced pistol, or garroting someone from behind.
(Wanted it to be a carbon fiber vest, but those are really expensive and i wasn't sure anyone would understand what it is, as it is pretty new technology.)
A good start, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd flesh out the backstory a little bit more so I have something to work with. If the arm has a folding blade then what is the garrote for? Or is the blade more of a hand to hand combat weapon?
P.S. Carbon fiber has been used in various applications since the late 60's. It's also inferior to Kevlar.
Sorry I misspoke, not carbon fiber, grapite. The very latest in bulletproofing, it is more than 30 times tougher than kevlar. The knife would be used for combat if I get caught, as garrotes are not an instant kill. I had soem ideas while I was sleeping abotu the backstory and will work on that.
Unfortunately, graphite is (in the real world) the same substance as pencil lead - soft and brittle. There is no structural or protective advantage you can get from using it as a material. It probably shouldn't be a component of any armor.
Regretably, something has come up and I am afraid I can't get around to making my character any time soon. Sorry for holding things up, someone else should take my slot. My apologies.
So I googled it, and he means GraphENE, which is carbon particles laid out in a hexagon pattern so they have maximum bond strength with those next to them. Only took him 2 tries to not get it right.
According to the B-Sides web pages, #20 is a video, "In Search of The Burmese Floridian Python with Connor Choadsworth".
The RSS feed gives me DC #278 in which Norm mentions the video and includes some audio from it as a taster.
The download link on the web page for B-Side #20 delivers a file called Choadsworth.m4v but it has no video.
Where it says, "Podcast (b-sides): Download," right-click on the Download link and "Save the link as" to your desktop or a suitable folder.
When the 98K file finishes downloading, it is the proper M4V file and plays just fine with a suitable player like GOM. (Should also work with iTunes, Quicktime, VLC, etc.)
Algernon Sydney is Dead wrote: Where it says, "Podcast (b-sides): Download," right-click on the Download link and "Save the link as" to your desktop or a suitable folder.
The download from the web page is OK now... maybe I tried viewing it before it had completed downloading. Doh!
1. The embedded player on the B-side #20 page doesn't work. (Firefox 32.0.3, running in Linux Mint 17 Xfce).
Bsides 19 or 20 was about when Bsides stopped being free. So the video shouldn't be on a free feed, IMO.
Tom will have to look into the embedded player. It works on GrabAll Chrome, but Firefox gives ""Content-Type" of "video/x-m4v" is not supported".
There may be a FF plugin for this, but best avoid embedded video players anyway. (YouTube is the exception that proves the rule.)
Algernon Sydney is Dead wrote: Bsides 19 or 20 was about when Bsides stopped being free. So the video shouldn't be on a free feed, IMO.
I take your point... from the DC 278 that is there instead of B-side 20, it sounds like 19 or 20 was the cut-off for free access. It makes total sense to restrict access to the video as it's a "Norm Special"
I'm not even sure where the feed burner link exists anymore. Anything that exists there is a cached copy the feed burner holds after Norm moved to for-pay b-sides. There is no connection to that feed and the actual B-sides feed at all any more.
tbaker2500 wrote: I'm not even sure where the feed burner link exists anymore. Anything that exists there is a cached copy the feed burner holds after Norm moved to for-pay b-sides. There is no connection to that feed and the actual B-sides feed at all any more.