What is in a name?

So, I bet some of you are wondering just what's up with the name of the blog. Void Missives? I mean, seriously, how pretentious can I sound, right?

Well, I chose the name for a couple of reasons. First up, I didn't really make the blog for any particular reason other than to try and shake out the mental cobwebs and get me writing for at least a little bit every day. May not be the fiction I'd like, may not be the length I'd like or even the quality, but I just need to actually put some words to the page every day. So Void Missives stands for the fact that I really didn't have any need for someone else to read these: letters (missives) sent out to the void, rather than a person.

Then I also knew that there would be some days when I really didn't have much to say, but I'm trying to say something anyway. Like today, I would guess. So Void Missives covers that another way: letters with no point, and so are void.

And then, because there's always a geeky angle, we come back to Warhammer. Messages sent back and forth between the planets of the Imperium are sent via astropaths, people who connect with each other psychically across the Warp. While it's not canon anywhere I've seen, I thought that Void Missives would be a nice, poetic way to describe the letters sent back and forth between the planets.

And so there you have it. Never just one meaning when three will do, right?

Fiction Fridays: Scene Study

Today I'm gonna give a shot to writing something original. Just a quick scene, nothing too in depth. Hopefully I can get something going with it, but feel free to tell me if I'm failing.

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He stood at the window, watching the sun rose across the horizon, the waves crashing against the stone below. Is this what they were watching last? he wondered as he just took in the beauty of it for a moment, trying to dispell the darkness that he knew was behind him.

"Detective?" one of the technicians asked from behind him, breaking the spell. "Is everything alright?"

Jon turned around to look at the young woman. "No, it's not. If everything were alright, after all, I wouldn't be needed here." At the woman's confused look, he forced a smile on his face and set a hand on her shoulder. "But to answer your question: yes, I'm fine. Just woolgathering, is all. Shall we begin, then?"

She nodded, a spark returning to her blue eyes as she led the older man back towards the scene. Her fellow technicians were already photographing and documenting everything, though they had been careful not to move anything as yet. Jon still needed to do his sweep and see what could be found. So he started like he always did: with the bodies. "So what do we know so far?" he asked the girl as he knelt down beside them.

"Two victims, obviously," she said. "Male is one Timothy Dallop, age 23 and owns the apartment. Female is Jennifer Tews, age 21. Doorman remembers seeing them both come in last night, ID'd the woman as the girlfriend, as if their, ah, situation didn't fill that in already."

Jon looked at her from where he stood beside the bed, the naked bodies lying on it partially covered by the sheets. "Yes," he said simply. "Fairly obvious. Please continue," he asked as he resumed his examinations.

"No obvious cause of death," she resumed, "no weapons found in the apartment." She fidgeted nervously for a moment before adding in a rush, "This is another one of those, isn't it? The murders you've been investigating?"

Jon looked at her and shook his head. "Too early to tell. Could just be a double suicide, maybe a murder-suicide. Still need to run down a lot of information before we can make that conclusion." He stood up and circled the bed. "Though to be honest, who would swallow a poison and then immediately hop into bed with someone? Who called it in?"

"The doorman," the technician supplied. "It being a Tuesday and all, he noticed when Mr. Dallop didn't come down in time for work as he does every day, and so got curious. He tried to ring up here, but got no answer. He eventually came up and tried the door, which was locked. That's when he called us."

Jon rubbed his chin as he began to walk out of the bedroom into the rest of the meager apartment. "So a locked door, two dead bodies, and yet another mystery," he said as much to himself as to the girl. "Julie, I think this is just the start of another long week."

Thankful Thursdays: Here comes the Sun



As a preface: I'm normally a night person. When I wasn't working a job that required me to be at work and ready to go at 4 AM, I would routinely stay up until midnight or 1 AM, though 11 PM to midnight was more usual. I enjoy the night quite a bit. However, I am still extremely thankful for the Sun and the fact that it has finally started to come out more now that we're into Spring.



(c) Royalty-free/CORBIS



Now, quite obviously the Sun is awesome. I mean, it just sits up there giving out free energy to anyone who wants some. I mean, how nice is that? Of course, this mostly comes to us in the form of light and heat, so take of that what you will. But still, nice!

Okay, sorry, gotta a little facetious there. Apologies.

I am really grateful for it, though. After the long and dreary winter, getting back in the sun is a pleasure. There really is something to the notion that the change from winter to spring is revitalizing to the human body. Not only do I feel better after a bit in the sun, but I'm generally happier afterwards as well.

Even just getting the sunlight in the apartment is nice. Makes it feel more open and just generally better. I know, I'm being really descriptive, but I think you all know what I mean. It's such an emotional lift, to feel the natural warmth on you after a long winter that just seems like it'll hold on forever.

Warhammer - Other Armies

So, I've talked about Warhammer in general, but I haven't really talked about my favorite part yet: the stories you can tell. Now, it's fully possible to buy, build, paint, and play an army and not really look at it as anything more than a tool to play the game with. For lack of another term, I'm gonna call it New Deck Syndrome, as it's really more akin to a card gaming mindset.

In a card game, you build and tear apart decks with impunity, restructuring it to deal with perceived meta and your own whims at any time. Warhammer armies are much harder to do that with, at least unless you have a sizable collection. And besides, with as much time as you have to invest in each figure, it can be a lot of fun to build up stories around them, and the army as a whole. So with that in mind, I'll give you a brief overview of each of my armies and their role in the world as a whole.

First up is my very first army, my Tau. They represent the 343rd Rapid Interdiction Cadre, filling a niche in the Tau forces akin to mobile reserves. An armored force consisting of infantry, tanks, and battlesuits in a mixed force, they are designed to be rapidly deployed to trouble spots and tip the balance in the Tau's favor. Every unit is designed to be completely mobile, and each element complement the others, creating overlapping fire heavy enough to bring down any target. Several units have distinguished themselves, with two Fire Warrior Shas'ui (sergeants) carrying trophies for bringing down particularly troublesome targets that honestly they had no business being able to deal with. As well, one of my Crisis Suit units carries a trophy for winning a hand-to-hand engagement against an opponent that should have destroyed him easily. Seasoned but having been on the back lines for quite some time, they're looking forward to some reinforcements and getting back into the thick of things with the new codex release.

Next up we come to my Imperial Guard army. Designated the 1st T'ros Gue'vesa Armored Regiment, they are somewhat different from most Guard armies in that they are not actually Imperial. They work alongside the Tau Empire, having been born and raised under their auspices on previously conquered worlds and believing in their concept of the Greater Good. Outfitted mostly with surplus stock captured when the Empire took their worlds (the primary of which is T'ros, a world detailed in one of Forge World's Imperial Armour book 3, and gives the unit its name) augmented with a few Tau elements and joined by a few Fire Warriors to assist. They have successfully defended the Empire for a couple years for me now, starting not long after the new IG codex, though they languished for a while as I tried to piece them together (and also got distracted by a Blood Angel army that never really took off and is now supplying parts for my next army).

As for my most recent army, I'm fielding a task force of the Alpha Legion. One of the original Legiones Astartes, the Alpha Legion were essentially spymasters and saboteurs without peer. Rather than engage in a head-to-head battle, even though they were quite skilled at them and more than capable (they are still Space Marines, after all), they preferred to fight their battles behind the scenes. Late in the Heresy, they were recruited by an alien force called the Cabal to defeat Chaos once and for all by ensuring Horus defeated the Emperor. Obviously, that didn't happen. However, I believe that the Alpha Legion, though labelled Excommunicate Tratoris, still fight the good fight against Chaos, trying to manipulate both sides to a final conflict and ensure that even if the Imperium doesn't survive (after ten thousand years, I doubt they have much love or need for what the Emperor's vision has become), humanity will emerge victorious and endure. As such, I employ every trick in the Chaos Codex's arsenal to help me adapt and overcome any obstacle my opponent can throw at me.

So there you have it. There are the armies I currently play in Warhammer 40k. I do have a few other forces for other systems, but for the most part I don't really use them much, and haven't gone much beyond a basic force. As such, they really don't have stories to tell yet, though one day they just might.

Stay tuned tomorrow: Thankful Thursday will be back for round 2!

Emotional Responses

I am such a nerd. I freely admit this to any and all who might think to question the fact, not that I think my readers would question it. I am not only a fan of Star Trek and Star Wars, but I also count myself as a Whovian, a fan of BBC's Doctor Who. It's an amazing show that defines a completely different spectrum of science fiction than the other franchises I mentioned, using or ignoring the actual "science" parts in favor of a storyline that is one part children's fantasy, one part complex characters and characterizations, and one part running. Well, maybe two parts running. Well, maybe more. There's a lot of running.

But more to the point, I've recently gotten my wife hooked on it as well, and as we're rewatching the show, I'm realizing just how sad some of the best episodes are. When the Ninth Doctor left, she cried even though she didn't really like him. Just last night, we watched the last episode with Rose Tyler, and she cried. We had started with the Eleventh Doctor, and when we finally watched the midseason closer of series 7 and saw the Ponds leave the show, we both cried. (Yes, I'll admit it. If you didn't cry, you very well could be a dalek.)

So I'm just trying to figure out now, is this a part of how humanity works? Why do we consider stories that can make us weep like that to be superior? I mean, I may be making my wife cry with Doctor Who, but she has openly admitted that she enjoys the show.

It could be that we simply enjoy finding works that can make us feel emotions that deeply. After all, we don't cry for poorly-written characters or badly-executed stories; only detailed stories will do. But by that logic, we should be happy for characters that do well, and shouldn't that be a more desirable outcome, a better way to do stories? You don't want your audience to walk away from your work in tears, do you?

But that would make for a boring story. Who would like a story where the main character is happy all the way throughout? After all, it is in the darkest times that we find out who we are. Conflict and yes, tragedy, define us in ways we can't even name. In the end, I guess the question kind of answers itself: we enjoy these types of stories, the ones that don't always end well, because they are unquestionably human stories. Every life has its ups and downs. And while we may not see the ups very often in our stories (though Doctor Who does have many of them, thank goodness), we come together over the downs because each and every one of us has been there.

I'll just have to remember to keep a box of tissues at hand next time we watch the good Doctor. For my wife, I mean. Yeah...

Spring

Ah, Spring. That wonderful time when everything blooms, new life springs forth from the earth and relieves the barren wastes of winter, banishing all thought of snow and ice in exchange for the sunshine and beauty that will be summer.

Well, in theory, anyway. This spring has so far been colder than the end of winter was, and with all the pollen in the air I could never really enjoy spring anyway. But that's neither here nor there (I promise, I haven't resorted to the weather already in this blog!)

This past weekend, my wife and I spent most of our time doing that dreaded thing that happens every spring in every house: spring cleaning. Just as the earth banishes the clutter of winter, so must we in our own homes. We put up new curtains, a new bookcase, got out new bedding, rearranged a room, and took out quite a bit of trash, and it made me realize just how much junk we accumulate in today's society.

I swear, every time I turn around there are new things to buy, new gadgets and accessories to look at and purchase. We just seem to be a space-filling culture: if there are more nooks and crannies that we can fill, we will. Makes me glad that we had the foresight to protect certain areas of wilderness, lest we build them over completely.

Of course, I'm a prime culprit - I collect little plastic army men for crying out loud. But maybe I should try more to moderate it, and keep it under control. Still more cleaning to do, so we'll see what happens next.

Luck be a Lady Tonight

So, I'm playing in my friend Raymond's Warhammer campaign at the moment, bringing my Alpha Legion into the region of space we're fighting over to conquer and manipulate in the name of Alpharius, my Primarch and lord. Been getting a lot of games in recently, and there's really been one common thread to all of them.

I've gotten really, really lucky.

Now, before you say it: yes, Warhammer is a dice game. All wins really come down to luck, don't they? Well, not usually. Quite a bit of strategy can be employed, and there are plenty of ways to mitigate the dice and make them not a factor. Whether it be sheer weight of fire you provide against your opponent, the strength of your guns, what have you. And most good lists will do their best to do this.

So I'm not entirely sure what it says about me, my army list, and my playstyle that the last three games I've played have been decided because of one die roll: Random Game Length. This roll happens at the end of Turn 5, and has a 2/3 chance to take the game to Turn 6, and then one on that turn has a 1/3 chance to bring the game to Turn 7, which is definitely the last turn.

So my first game would have been a win for my opponent on 5, a tie on 6, and I finally won on 7. My second game was only won by me because the game ended on 5, I would have lost everyone I had on the table had it gone to 6. And my latest game again was only won because the game went to turn 7.

I'm not sure if I need to change my tactics or my list, though I'm thinking a higher concentration of firepower is required, as I ran much the same list in games one and three with much the same result. The second game had a one-off fun list, so I'm not sure if it really tells me much. I'll have to do some experimentation and see what I can come up with.

At some point this week I'll post some army lists and compare what we've got. Stay tuned, if ye be interested.