The Thing in the Basement, Part II

After I wrote this post on Monday about my childhood neurosis and ongoing phobia about the basement in my childhood home, my wife goes and posts this image to my Facebook page.

 

She thinks she's pretty funny. She got a good laugh out of it. Me? Not so much.

The Thing in the Basement

Dylan Hartwell, the Digital Orc had a post last week that I somehow missed until this morning. It brought to mind a memory from the past.

Some may call it a memory, others may call it "emotional scarring." Tom-ay-to, to-mah-to.

The home where I grew up had a partially unfinished basement. There was the family room at the bottom of the stairs, then the room doubled back, following the stair-wall to a bathroom and my oldest brother's bedroom. Then there was a door that led to the hallway under the stairs. This area, nearly two-thirds of the basement area--was known as "the messy room."

Immediately inside that door on the left was a series of built-in shelves, attempting to make use of the space under the shelves. On the right was the "fruit room." Straight ahead was the furnace, water heater, water softener, and the laundry. The rest of the space was piled with boxes, clothes, old toys, dad's table saw, etc. There were two pathways through and around "the mess" which led to my father's study.

That room freaked me out.

The whole basement did, actually. The family room was where my oldest brother dragged me on Saturday night to watch "Thriller Theater" or somesuch program with him. It's where I was exposed to great, bad horror movies. It was where I later peeked over the couch as I watched my brothers watching Alien on our very first Betamax. (It was rated 'R' of course so I was restricted from watching it.) But it wasn't just the movies. I was convinced that there was something that lived down there...somewhere. (Actually, I KNEW where it lived. It lived under the stairs, in the space behind the folding chairs and card tables. It lived back there between the decades-old cocktail napkins and paper plates. It lived back there and KNEW, somehow, when you were alone in the basement.)

It also didn't help that the stairway itself wasn't square. One wall gradually slanted inward, so that the bottom of the stairway was narrower than the top. It wasn't really noticeable except to your subconscious mind.

The lights to the entire family room and hallway "complex" were controlled by light switches at the bottom of the stairs, but on the family room side of the wall. Very early in life I mastered the art of hitting ALL the light switches at once as the sprint upstairs began. Just typing this, I can feel on my right arm the sensation of "something about to grab me" that I was always convinced was just about to happen. And you know the worst times? When you'd MISS one of those lights and have to go back downstairs to turn just the one off. Because then, you know, the creature was AWARE that you'd been down there and AWARE that you had to come back down and he was closer to the stairway than he normally was and....

Well, you get the picture.

The basement was finally finished nearly two decades ago. I have a wife and kids of my own. The "messy room" no longer exists. Dad's gone now, but mom still lives in the home. And do you know, even now, some 40 years later, I still feel like my 3-year-old self, fighting the desire to sprint up the stairs as I hit all four light switches with my "about to be grabbed" right hand?

Professional Cryptozoology

Image property of Para Abnormal

This morning I'm seriously considering a career change from the practice of law to Professional Cryptozoolozy.

No, seriously.

Part of that decision comes from the fact that I am spending the day at the back of a conference room learning about "The World of Depositions." You see, attorneys are required to participate in a set number of hours of "Continuing Legal Education" or "CLE" in order to renew and maintain their license.

I have a double-digit amount of hours left to take prior to June 30, 2012. I'm in a little bit of trouble and as a result, I'm taking a lot of hours that have nothing to do with my actual area of practice. For example, depositions...it's been twelve years and two months since I took or attended my last deposition. So obviously today's presentation is quite useful and relevant.

But I digress.

Today's CLE is only one reason for my desire to change careers.

The other was the episode of Grimm I watched last night. I've developed a real taste for Grimm. I wrote about it here at the start of the season.

I'm going to assume here that most of my readers know the premise behind Grimm. If you don't, hit IMDB or Wiki. Better yet, go here.

I badly wanted to like Once Upon A Time as well, but as that show quickly de-evolved into a soap opera, I stopped watching after the third episode (or so). Grimm on the other hand has not only maintained the quirkiness and intrigue throughout the season, most of the characters have grown, the story line developed, and even the mysteries and twists have been developed and followed without becoming contrived (see: Lost). While some may be irritated with its "monster-a-week" premise, I believe that we'll see that change once we, as viewers, have an idea of the breadth of the Wesen universe; i.e., as Nick learns, we learn along with him.

It's not exactly young-child-friendly, so our DVR saw great use this season. The wife and I have been squeezing in a couple episodes every couple nights the past week in an effort to get caught up with the story. Suffice it to say, I think most of the fears I had after the pilot have been addressed and countered.

My wife and I have also become addicted to Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet (check your local listings). It's kind of a guilty pleasure. It's where we go to slum, intellectually, when our brains are worn out. In case you don't know, the premise here is that a group of "researchers"--three true believers and one skeptic--go from state to state following leads and rumors of Bigfoot sightings. Much of the program is devoted to a "town hall meeting" where they call witnesses together and invite them to share their stories. Then, having documented the stories, they take the two or three most reputable (or promising) witnesses out in the field to the loci of their sighting(s). Then they spend the night running through the forest with night-vision goggles, cameras, and directional microphones while making various grunts and screeches.

Needless to say every episode ends with the true believers being sure that the state in question has a Sasquatch population, the skeptic still not convinced, and not a blessed piece of evidence or camera footage.

One of the true believers--a man that goes by the nickname of Bobo--may be their best evidence of the existence of Sasquatch. This guy literally looks like a freshly-shaven Bigfoot. Slack-jawed and shaggy-haired, somewhere around 7' tall, Bobo believes every twig-crack and animal-howl is "without a doubt" a "Squatch." In fact, this quickly becomes his catch-phrase: "It's a Squatch!" Of course, the veiwer is (hopefully) saying to him- or herself: Ummm... it sounded like a twig snapping or it sounded just like a coyote.

Yeah, I know, real brain-twisting, hard-hitting, overly-intellectual television fare. It's made me want to play in a good, d20 Modern paranormal game. Heck, a paranormal game of any ilk, actually, if I can find a good one.

So, back to Grimm. The episode we watched last night was entitled, "Big Feet." In the opening teaser/set-up sequence, we see a group of Bigfoot researchers doing guess what? They're out in the woods at night, with cameras and miscellaneous gear, making grunts and howls. Then they come face to face (off-camera) with some crazed being that tears through the researchers like they were paper. On camera we see a hint of the carnage: one researcher thrown at an enormous tree with bone-shattering force. We see the aftermath after the first commercial: one researcher lying on the ground with his torso torn open. Another researcher is transfixed on a five-foot-long, two-inch-diameter branch on a fallen log.

And that's when I turned to my wife and said, "This is what Finding Bigfoot is missing; I want to see Bobo thrown through the air. THAT'S when I will believe it's a Squatch."

But it made me think again: these guys with the BFRO ("Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization"). I want that gig. I want to be paid like that. (Yeah, before you say it, this is their hobby, their side-job. I understand that.) C'mon, who out there will throw me a wad of cash to go camping and looking for mythical creatures?

Call me. I'm your guy.

[A to Z April] G is for Green, Mage (item)

Mage Green

"Can it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand a nugget of purest green?"

"Indeed you do...except, of course, it’s not really a nugget. It’s more of a splat."

~Blackadder II, “Money” © BBC

This alchemical creation resembles nothing more than a lump of hard green material and is a by-product of an alchemist’s failed attempt at converting a turnip into gold. However, it was discovered that this material could be used effectively as a replacement for certain other materials in spell casting as material components.

Specifically, mage green can be used in place of any precious metal or precious stone (or mixture of the same) up to a 500 gp value. The nugget of mage green is consumed upon the casting of a spell. The caster’s hands are colored with a fine green coating which is impervious to any type of mundane or magical cleansing. The coloring will wear off naturally in 1d6 days. While a caster’s hands are discolored by mage green, no additional nugget of mage green may be successfully used. If a caster attempts to use a nugget of mage green while his hands remain discolored by a previous use, the new nugget is consumed, an additional 1d6 days are added to the duration of the discoloration of the caster’s hands, and the attempted spell fails.

Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, polymorph any object, Craft (alchemy) 5 ranks.
Cost to create: 450 gp, 5 XP, 1 turnip, 2 days.

**Image property of and copyright held by the BBC. No copyright infringement or violation is intended by its use.


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Last year's "G": G is for Grick
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Game Night

It's game night tonight and one of my buddies took over the DM screen for the third part of a long-term off-and-on campaign.

Our 3.5/Pathfinder home rules are serving up some battle-damage goodness for our characters tonight. We recently adopted some modified Pathfinder "called shot" rules and walked right into a situation where we could put them into play.

But first, a bit about the new table we have. Our regular game is hosted at a specially-built game room at one of the other guy's homes. We've been playing there on a regular basis for several years surrounding an old dining room table. We've eschewed battle mats in favor of a digital projector mounted on the ceiling shining downward onto the table. The DM projects the map through that onto the table. It's worked well, but the resolution hasn't been the greatest.

Two weeks ago the projector died.

Enter the Mother of Invention. Our current DM donated an old dining room table with removable leaves. We kicked in for a 40" LCD TV which the host then mounted inside the table. A piece of plexiglass on top, the plug into the DM's laptop, and VOILA: instant electronic battle mat. The table is still under construction, with some amenities and niceties being added, but it works for tonight. Pictures forthcoming once the final touches have been made.

So: Called shots. In our party, we have a Dwarven Sonnlinor (a modified specialty priest from 2E house-ruled into 3.x), a Dwarven Knight, a Human Warmage, and a Centaur Ranger.

We entered a room with an undead beholder, a devourer, and some other lesser baddies. All of our beefing-up spells went bye-bye as we climbed up the stairs and entered the beholder's anti-magic ray. My character, the Sonnlinor, leaped on the centaur's back, who promptly charged at the beholder. A called shot on the central eye followed by a natural 20 and 74 HP later (with an Undead Bane weapon, using Smite Evil), and the undead beholder lay in soggy pieces around the room. This was followed by a natural 20 on a ray attack from the Warmage and the devourer was disintegrated. Our Knight then also rolled a natural 20.

I followed that up a few rounds later with a natural 20 on a Shadow.

We're calling it the Blessing of the New Television. Three natural 20s in a row. The DM is calling it a "curse" for some odd reason. The DM, of course, deflated our celebration by reminding us that he could now use the "called shot" against us in the future.

Party pooper.

Found Items Friday: The Grimblade

So last night I was able to steal away for an hour and watch the series premiere of NBC’s Grimm. And yes, this was time when I should have been pounding away at my NaNoWriMo word count. Don't talk to me about that.

I haven’t been able to watch Once Upon A Time yet (broadcast TV’s other genre offering this season) so I cannot compare the two. Grimm, however, was a lot of fun. I gather it won’t be your typical police procedural, full of hard clues and evidence, but still a good romp nonetheless. Hopefully a little bit more of the detective's skills will come into play in future episodes, because I would hate to see him have to rely on what I feel was essentially a deus ex machina solution. That was my first real complaint. Also, the reveal at the end makes it feel a bit too much like last season’s No Ordinary Family from ABC. I stopped watching that one about three episodes in once it was clear that the boss was the villain and he knew who the heroes were and blah blah blah blah blah. I hope that Grimm takes a different direction because I think there’s real potential there. I won't talk about the characterizations because, let's face it, NO series ever gets the characters perfect in the first season; it also takes that first season to get writing style, acting style, etc. down pat as well.