DestinyBlog

Sorry for DestinyForge being down. I had a little problem with my host. DestinyForge should be completely back up.

In the month of February, 2005, the typical site for downloading a Dilbert RSS feed expired. In a mad scramble…
I really do need my dilbert fix…I wrote my own feed from a small perl example I found. Anyone can link to it at
http://www.destinyforge.com/rss/dilbert.pl.
If you are interested in the perl code, send me an email.

I found a solution to a BSOD xp2 problem I have always had on my laptop. After I installed sp2 on my laptop (an Inspiron 8600) it would blue screen on every boot with BAD_POOL_HEADER. The problem seemed isolated to the 8600 when my boss, who had the same laptop as myself, tried to install sp2 and it also blue screened. Installing a new bios, disabling every piece of hardware I could think of (NIC, video, bluetooth, you name it!), and absolutely no startup options didn’t seem to help. It would, however, boot into safe mode.

So, after many months of installing and uninstalling sp2, I finally found the problem. The TAPI drivers for the NBX phone system (ver 4.0). These drivers are needed for a TAPI softphone as well as a WAV driver. After uninstalling the TAPI drivers, everything is working smoothly.

I finaly caught up on a little blogvertising battle. I installed a great little wordpress plugin called Hashcash. If anyone else is interested, you can find it here. It adds a javascript md5 hash mechanism that a normal user will never see, but the spambots won’t know to follow. I suppose someone may eventually program for this, but I think it is a great solution for now!

It was long in coming, but I have finally upgraded DestinyBlog to WordPress 1.2. I know they are already working on 1.3, but 1.0.2 was so stable, there wasn’t a need to upgrade until recently.

Due to various (I won’t justify their intrusion on my site by naming names!) online casinos posting advertising, or blogvertising as I call it, I have been forced to lock down comments on this site. From now on, comments will be moderated before being posted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

AtlantisAL

– Session Recap –

**Tink…Tink..Tink…**
Exiting through the only door available in the room, we found ourselves in a 10ft wide hallway going left and right. We all heard a tink…tink…tink like metal hitting metal (obviously a smithy) and we decided to follow the direction it was coming from, so we chose to go left. We found ahead a 45degree bend in the hallway. As each of the party passed, we had to make a fortitude save. Obvious to our players, this was a trap, but since everyone was making the save, there was no physical effect to make the characters pause until Isthmia passed by. She failed her fortitude save and dropped to 1 hit point as her skin almost appeared to be boiling. A quick heal by Thogar and some of her own brought her back to near full health. This sudden pain caused Isthmia to scream and the party no longer heard the tink…tink…tink…

**Unfinished Amulet**
As we expected, we were not able to continue unchallenged. A little further down the hall, 2 small creatures (what appeared to be gnomes but were more shadow than physical…later known as 2 shadow gnome zombies) appeared out of a side wall. Sometimes battles go quickly and appear rather uneventful. This battle was one of them. The 2 gnome zombies were quickly dispatched. The wall they had appeared from was just an illusion, and there were 2 fiends inside the room. Since these fiends were not immune to critical hits, Avriyael made them into big pin cushions **Note: This was the start of some tremendous d20 rolls for the day**. More specifically, there was a fish-like fiend (The DM may post exactly what these fiends were) that had Acid covering its body. It caused a little damage to the weapons of Thogar and Shawnee, but was quickly dispatched afterwards. Inside the room was a workshop with anvils. Shawnee quickly went to work fixing her sword. The rest of the party searched the room and found a round amulet of some kind in one of the fires. Being fairly resistant to fire, Isthmia reached in and grabbed the amulet. It was obviously unfinished as there was a hole in the middle just begging for something to be put in. We figured this was important so we cooled it down in water and let Thogar hold onto it.

**Energy Shield**
We continued down the hallway only to find it blocked by some type of energy shield. Every once in a while, a white glow would appear in a circular shape towards the center, expand, then disappear. Not sure as to its effects, we ran a few tests with various items. Rocks, pebbles, etc. went right through, but we couldn’t see through and didn’t know what the effect was. We tried a live summoned creature by Vystal, but it was simply sucked through without another word. Thogar decided to try and touch the amulet to the white glow when it appeared. It reflected off with a lightning type effect, bounced up nailed Thogar in the forehead for some minor damage. Obviously, this wasn’t the way to get through, so we decided to backtrack towards our starting point for the day and head down the right side of the hallway. Passing by the same bend in the hallway caused fortitude saves again, but this time Isthmia was ready. She had a protective ward on her giving her a heavy bonus to her next save.

**Graz’zt**
Down the hallway we found a door, and as all good adventurers, decided to open it. Inside we saw a large 7 foot humanoid statue of a man with 6 fingers on each hand. An easy knowledge religion check later, we knew this was a statue of Graz’zt. The religious members of the group felt very uneasy in this room. It was obviously some sort of religious chamber for the 6-fingered cult and it had been recently used (within the last 20 minutes) due to the incense still burning. A quick check over the room revealed a gem semi-hidden between the legs of Graz’zt. This was such an unbelievable trap…Hmmm…gem between the legs of an evil statue??? Well, what else were we going to do. We were fairly positive this was the gem needed to complete the amulet, so Thogar climbed back in to get the gem. As soon as he touched it, the statue came to life and stomped on Thogar. Unlike the last battle, this one was VERY memorable. Everyone joined the battle, but since it was a construct, we weren’t doing too much damage to it. Avriyael was fairing OK with her adamantite arrows, but it was going to take a lot of damage to take this construct down. It was fond of 2 types of attacks. The first was sundering items, which at one point in the battle it did a large amount of damage to Shawnee’s shield. The second attack was spitting blood. This caused whoever was hit by the blood to save vs. some effect (not sure what all possible effects were). Eventually it was Avriyael’s turn to make a Will save, and she failed big time. The DM took me aside and basically explained that I must attack the nearest ally with everything I possibly can and with good tactics while screaming that I hate them/etc. This was a potential death to a character member. If a lower hit point party member were close, I could easily kill them in one round. Luckily, it was Thogar. While screaming at him, Avriyael put 4 arrows into his back causing massive damage. It was close to killing him, but Thogar is a Tank. The next round, the rest of the part was unable to concentrate on the construct and Vystal was forced to move his summoned earth elementals against Avriyael to pin her knowing that she could kill any party member in her next round if left un-checked. They weren’t able to pin her, but at least they were able to force her to use 2 of her 3 attacks to get out of the grapple leaving only one shot left for Thogar. The party was then able to kill the construct on the next round leaving all of the resources available to stop Avriyael. They were finally able to pin her when she went unconscious.

**Isthmia’s Revenge**
There are certain things players will remember for years to come and this session was full of them. Only 10 seconds after Avriyael went unconscious, the party heard a low moaning and shuffling coming from down the hallway. Peaking around the corner, Shar saw a mummy coming down the hallway. He backed off and called out “Mummy!” Vystal moved the 2 elementals away from Avriyael, since she wasn’t moving anyway, an moved down the hall towards the mummy. This wasn’t an ordinary mummy. Later we found out it was a Mummy Lord. It moved past the 2 elementals, both getting an attack of opportunity, but missing. Still in the first 6 seconds of combat, Isthmia moved towards the door, saw the Mummy Lord, and did a greater turning. Not only was it a success, she rolled a natural 20 giving a 37 turn check for her. This was exactly 5 greater than what was needed and automatically destroyed the mummy. That was a shining moment for Isthmia.

**Vystal’s Death**
As we continued down the hallway, we saw a pair of doors (one on each side of the hallway). Opening the first door, we found nothing. Shar then began to open the second when he was paralyzed. 2 pairs of creatures, all of which “appeared” to be undead, got the jump on the party. In their surprise round they were able to cause severe strength damage to Thogar and surround the party. Shar, once free from being paralyzed, found himself quickly ineffective with physical attacks due to the creatures incorporeal forms and lack of magical claws. Before the second half of the party was able to find out how effective they would be, a stone wall appeared in front of them, blocking them from entering the combat. This, and the fact that he heard someone mumbling a spell from down the hallway, led Shar to seek out the spellcaster (drow cleric) and destroy her first. This wasn’t too difficult of a feat for Shar since the cleric had no plans to fight a shadow dragon and therefore was very ineffective in damaging him. Before being completely annihilated by Shar, the cleric plane-shifted out of the plane of shadow. Thogar & Vystal were being slowly sucked to death as 1 of the pairs had latched onto them in a grapple type fashion. Unfortunately, since they were undead, there was no way to get out of the grapple. We would find the means to detach them a little too late. Meanwhile, Avriyael and Shawnee were working frantically at making a whole through the stone wall. After a few more rounds, Shawnee was able to bring down 1/2 the wall which gave an opportunity for Isthmia to turn the creatures. I previously mentioned these creatures appeared to be undead, but as Isthmia found, only 2 of them were. She destroyed one immediately and stunned another. Unfotunately, the creatures that were not undead were the ones sucking on Thogar and Vystal. As players, we knew that missing the creatures attached to Thogar and Vystal would cause a hit against the characters they were attached to. Since we didn’t know how to remove them, we chose to attack. Avriyael decided to attack the creature on Vystal first, since he had the least number of hit points. The hit normally would have hit the creature, but the incorporeal miss-chance missed. This caused a hit on Vystal, but he was still alive. Unsure as to the effect of another arrow towards Vystal, Avriyael decided to make her second attack on the creature sucking on Thogar. This was almost fatal. She rolled a natural 20 and confirmed a critical hit on Thogar (since the incorporeal miss-chance missed). This dropped Thogar to the ground with negative hit points. He was unconscious, but he was atleast alive. Knowing that another arrow would kill Thogar, Avriyael decided to take another shot at Vystal’s creature. Vystal’s player kept saying not to, and I agreed as a player, but Avriyael couldn’t just let these creatures continue to suck the life out of other party members, so she decided to take another shot…This was a mistake. She critted again…but as had happened on the last 2 attacks, she missed the incorporeal miss-chance. We knew this to be a character killing shot. 57 points of damage to Vystal with a single arrow when he only had 32 points remaining…He did not have a 25 constitution, so it was an automatic death. The next round, we found out that a simple healing of the party member the creature was attached to forced the creature to unattach…Unfortunately, this was one round too late. A few rounds later, all of the creatures had been dispatched, but the party mourned the loss of its druid. Deciding that Vystal could be resurrected later, we put his body into one of our bags of holding. A few moments later, we heard the sound of footfalls coming down the hall. Almost ready to attack, we realized soon enough that this creature was living and that Shar was calling to it like a pet. It was a shadow gnome Shar called Kith. We assumed it was some kind of servant. Continuing down the hall, we entered a larger room that contained another part of the energy shield. This time, there was a couple patterns on a raised platform opposite of the shield. In the center of the circular pattern, it appeared to match size and shape of the amulet, so Thogar put the amulet up to it and it fit like a key. This seemed to activate a mechanism for the other pattern which was 3 squares around each other from small to large. A darker light appeared in a position on the outside square in the lower middle position. This was obviously a game we needed to play to continue. We found it to be some sort of inverse 24 position tic-tac-toe. The DM had recently visited a game store in Europe, which he promptly pulled out the actual game board for us to play with. After a few rounds of play, we were able to beat the mechanism which caused the energy shield to slowly fade away.

**Mok-Lorn (sp)**
Once the shield was down, we saw an extremely bright light in the center of a room. Across the room was obviously the other point the party had contacted the shield. Looking around the room revealed 3 things. First, there was a door leading out that was blocked by some black energy shield. Second, we had found the Mok-Lorn. Third, the light in the center was the Star of Elishar. We didn’t know it yet, but I believe everyone knew deep down this was the demon we had been told out in the previous session. This demon was different. It didn’t attack us straight out, but instead chose to back away and attack from afar. It was able to do a dispel on a few of our spells we had in place, such as Death Ward. All of the fighters quickly approached and engaged in the battle. Since Shar’s claws were still not magical, he called for someone to throw him a weapon to use. This was answered by Shawnee throwing a +1 wavy longsword we had found earlier. At least now Shar could do some damage. (we would find out later, Shawnee also had a potion of magic fang that would have helped tremendously) Isthmia quickly ran to the star and picked it up. When she did, she gained some insight into what the demon was and how to defeat it. Though it didn’t help too much, she yelled to the party to use silver weapons…Unfortunately, only Avriyael had silver. And, as many players will attest to, rolling the dice tends to correspond to the mood your character is in. For Avriyael, this applied rather directly. Out of the next 16 arrows she attacked with (which she happened to have 20 available silver arrows), only 2 found their mark, and even then, didn’t do too much damage (This was primarily due to the incorporeal nature of the demon, but there were a couple natural 1 rolls as well). Obviously, killing one party member and seriously maiming another twice caused some internal strive for the character. While Avriyael was horribly missing, and Isthmia attempting to turn the demon multiple times (it required a higher roll than she was capable of), the party was fairing badly as well, but eventually were able to defeat the demon.

**Return to the Prime Material Plane**
After a quick Restoration on Thogar, Shar told us to “leave now” and told his Kith to go with us. Nobody could pass through the black energy shield, so using the Star of Elishar, Isthmia walked through the black energy shield which caused it to be sucked into the Star of Elishar. We hiked a long way up winding stairs and eventually popped out fatigued at the top which happened to be right next to the gate. This was fortunate since we probably wouldn’t last a battle against 100s of shadows. We then saw a huge Shadow dragon diving toward us and make a swooping landing right next to us. It opened a claw near Shawnee, which opened her hand to receive a ring, which had been promised to Vystal and Shawnee upon accepting this task in the first place… We all jumped into the gate and found ourselves falling 50 feet to the desert floor in the Prime Material Plane. A few seconds later, the gate collapsed on itself. At this point, we all realized that Methkarten was standing next to us. What had been a few days for us had only been a few hours for him. He was now dressed in black robes, but a quick detect evil from Thogar confirmed he had not become evil. Remembering the legend lore, Isthmia quickly cast a consecrate on the area. A huge beacon of light came down from the skies and lit the area as the consecrate was completed. It pushed all the shadows away, but only outside of its own light. It soon became a long stretch that moved away from the gate so the party followed. We then noticed that this light was removing the desert and creating a pathway into what was a previously covered temple of some sorts. This was obviously the original temple we had been looking for. Not believing we were quite ready for entering, the majority of the party used a scroll to return back to Avriyael’s keep. Avriyael and Methkarten stayed behind to scout the temple so a future teleport would be easier. Not that this was really necessary because Methkarten is now high enough level to cast greater teleport, he just has to buy it.

**Item Investigation**
With Methkarten back, we decided to analyze a couple of the magic items we had received in the plane of shadows. One of particular interest was an amulet we had found in the remains of the Mok-Lorn. We found out this was a gift to Parisha’s father…Which, we deduced that the Mok-Lorn was probably not wearing just anybody’s amulet and that Parisha must have been this Mok-Lorn’s daughter. So, we are now proudly wearing this amulet to spite Parisha. It may come back to bite us someday, we’ll have to see.

– End of Session –

I subscribe to the Lockergnome RSS feeds, and I came across an article here that missleads people into despair about some new technologies used to help with current email problems. The article was referenced via Lockergnome by Matt Hartley, so I decided to write a comment back to Matt. Here is what I wrote.

I just wanted to mention how poor of an article this is from the BBC. I also feel the name of this article “spammers exploit anti-spam trap” is VERY missleading. The article focuses on the SPF. From the beginning, the SPF has never been about anti-spam. The whole purpose, which the article at least mentions it is good at, is to verify a sender is actually who they say they are (or more specific, they are where they say they are). The purpose behind this has never been anti-spam. In the US, there are laws against spammers as well as laws spammers must use for removal lists/etc. The SPF can be used to track back exactly who sent a message and fine and/or take legal action against those individuals if they do not conform to the law. I know from personal experience that over 90% of all the spam that hits my inbox comes from spoofed addresses. Since I receive over 200 spams per day (more on a bad day), that takes my viewing for false positives in my spam filters down to 20 emails…That is an improvement in my time and well worth implementing SPF (which, BTW, I have already added the SPF DNS entries for my company excelsiorsoftware.com). I also must state that SPF creates a realm for legitimate spam, and I have much more tolerance for spam that comes from companies willing to say they actually sent it, even if it is for v1@gr@ or p3n1s enlargement.

I’ll post again if I get a response.

I am in the process of testing XP sp2 for issues within my network. While reading some links, I found the following on an M$ website:

Limited number of simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts

Detailed description

The TCP/IP stack now limits the number of simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts. After the limit has been reached, subsequent connection attempts are put in a queue and will be resolved at a fixed rate. Under normal operation, when applications are connecting to available hosts at valid IP addresses, no connection rate-limiting will occur. When it does occur, a new event, with ID 4226, appears in the system’s event log.

I know of many projects and/or potential projects that would like to use Windows as a firewall. I believe M$ is even constructing a toned-down version of XP for this exact purpose (or as a file-sharing box). Am I mistaken, or will this limited simultaneous incomplete outbound TCP connection attemps completely mess up any attempt at creating a real firewall on Windows? Now, obviously, this is an end-consumer OS right now, but if they have this update in XP sp2, why not in 2k3 or any other newer M$ OS?

This week’s recap may feel like something is missing, and there is. Within the past two weeks, the other 1/2 of the party has adventured throughout the weeks with the DM via email. I will leave it up to them, if they feel like it, to post any comments to fill in the gaps.

I am also starting to name sections within the recaps. It will help with reading the posts later.

– Session Recap –

**Shadow War**
While walking to the location of where the shadows converge, suddenly Avriyael and Isthmia are swooped up by some huge invisible claws. With an obvious futility of struggling, we decide to wait and see what happens. With a bend upwards of the claws, we find ourselves on top of a colossal shadow dragon. The immediate thought is, oh shit, but it quickly turns to curiosity when the fact emerges that we aren’t dead. We also find ourselves on the shadow’s back with Vystal and Shawnee. With little more than a brief description, the regrouped members of the party (Avriyael, Isthmia, & Thogar) are told that we must help the shadow dragon’s reclaim an ancestral pyramid from a demon that has taken it over. Apparently the colossal dragons are too big to enter the location needed to reclaim the pyramid so they have requested (this term is used lightly) the help of the party to dispatch the demon. A quick religion check reveals the demon to be one of 12 that were originaly humans from a quiet and peaceful village. For some reason, they cracked and performed evil tortuous rituals on some of the other villagers and were eventually hanged for their crimes. The powers that be in the abyss chose to give them a live back as demons so they could travel from plane to plane wreaking havoc and chaos. At this point, one had chosen the plane of shadow and may be the “power” referenced earlier that is keeping the gate open. So, even though we were forced into helping the shadow dragons, it would lead to the same goal, and apparently the same location. Throughout the next few minutes, we all noticed that we were not with just a single colossal dragon, but rather what appeared to be an army of shadow dragons phasing in and out. A single out of place shadow dragon was flying beside us. It appeared to be a wyrmling. As we would find out, this wyrmling named Shar would accompany us into the pyramid, being the only shadow dragon capable of fitting where we were headed. (Note: Since Methkarten had died, the player would control Shar for the duration of the day). As we neared the pyramid, we noticed an extremely bright light eminating from our destination. This was to be expected since the shadow plane appears as a negative of the prime material plane. Normally, the shadow gate was a void of pitch-black, so therefor in the shadow plane it was a beacon of light. The pyramid there was obviously our destination and was also obviously a beacon to all of the shadows of the plane. This shed light (no pun intended) on why all the shadows were converging here. Suddenly the colossal dragon we were riding, and Shar, took a deep dive straight for the pyramid entrance. At the same time, the shadow dragon army went on the offensive against the enormous lines of shadows. We approached the ground and were stopped by what the DM called a “3g landing” and were quickly shaken off by the dragon. It then turned and started to fend our position off as many shadows (of specific types we were not sure) started to attack. Not wanting to allow ourselves to remain in the middle of a shadow war, we quickly entered the pyramid.

**Within the Pyramid**
As was expected, early down the first corridor within the pyramid we were attacked by 4 greater shadows. They were able to get a single round off before Isthmia and cause some minor attribute damage to a few party members. Then Isthmia pressed forward with a Greater Turning. She was able to stun 2 and destroy another. (non-standard rules are used for turning. Maybe the DM will post some comments on the turning rules we use). Unfortunately, this left her as the obvious target for the 4th. The next round came for the remaining free shadow and Isthmia was its target. Making it through various attacks of opportunity left it still capable to deliver a blow of 6 con damage and cause her to lose concentration on the stunned shadows. It was then quickly dispatched by attacks from the rest of the party, and the 2 no longer stunned shadows were also dispatched quickly after. Knowing they would be fighting this type of creature, Isthmia and Vystal had memorized numerous restorations and lesser restorations. After restoring all of the party’s attribute damage, we continued down the corridor. As we arrived at a 4-way junction, we were led by Shar and Thogar. As the two lead characters entered the junction, a forcecage appeared around them blocking all access into and out of the junction. A smaller demon also appeared within the cage which the combined strength of a shadow dragon and a dwarven paladin dispatched quickly.

**Without the fighters**
Unable to remove Shar and Thogar from the forcecage, the rest of the party decided to find a way around. A huge earth elemental was summoned and was given a quick task of removing rock around the cage so the party could pass by. It was also given the task of using that rock to close up the entrance so no enemies could come in from behind. I didn’t feel like telling them the obvious of “shadows can pass through rock.” So, our party, reduced by 2 decided to procede forward. A bit down the forward corridor we found ourselves in a room with a huge sarcophogous and no exits except the entrance. Avriyael moved close to the door and peaked around to scout for any enemies. Two skeletons were lining the door but they did not appear real. Their bones were calcified in an odd manner. So the party decided to proceed forward. Avriyael and Shawnee moved closer to the sarcophogous and were forced to start making fortitude saves. We thought it was some trap on the sarcophogous. After a few checks, we found ourselves with constitution damage again. We both backed off and then Vystal and Shawnee decided to scout the outside of the room. They started making fortitude checks as well and we soon found out there was a huge 3foot worm hiding behind the sarcophogous. It immediately attacked Vystal and was successful on a bite attack. This caused Vystal to start calcifying, causing 8 points of con drain. Shawnee and Isthmia assumed it was a standard energy drain, and Isthmia decided to cast death ward on Shawnee. Unfortunately that didn’t help since it wasn’t an energy drain. It was a different effect and therefor death ward had no effect. After Avriyael punctured it like a pin-cushion, and a quick fierce battle later, we stood with constitution woulds and an almost dead Vystal. A heal brought Shawnee back up to full and a restoration was required for Vystal. Again, it was a good thing we memorized restoration. With the worm threat gone, the remaining party put all effort into removing the lid from the sarcophogous. In one half, there was a small pile of loot, and in the other half there was a large hole leading down into the darkness. Not wanting to continue down without the fighters, we chose to explore the right and left passage around the force cage first. Both passages, right and left, led down about 150 ft with various alcoves on the side until they each turned 90 degrees. At the bend in each passage, the alcoves continued, but a few feet down, the ceiling turned into a smooth black. A detect magic spell revealed it was transmutation. A few tests with arrows also revealed that anything entering the ceiling didn’t come back. Each passage looked like a trap so the party chose not to go down either remaining passage. After almost giving up and waiting for the forcecage to run its course, the party came upon an idea to remove the forcecage. They summoned another earth elemental and dug out a small trench in the ceiling next to the black ceiling (obviously some ceiling of disintegration). To our luck, and surprise, the ceiling started oozing into the trench. We started to dig a river towards the forcecage, but once the black reached the bend, it dropped and fell 1/2 way to the ground before disappearing. Obviously, the river itself wasn’t going to work, so we had the elemental build a quick bowl out of the surrounding rock (the rock that was containing the black disintegration) and had it catch the ooze in it. Keeping it at a higher level, the elemental moved the bowl full of the black towards the forcecage and dribbled it down the side of the cage. This worked and was able to make a hole big enough for Shar and Thogar to exit.

**Into the Pit**
With the fighters removed from the forcecage, a quick debate rose about resting before continuing. The party chose not to since time seemed critical and decided to go down the hole. Dropping a light stick down the hole for distance, we decided to tie a rope to the lid of the sarcophogous for support and started down the hole. Shar was first, not really needing a rope. When he arrived at the bottom, he saw a small room with one apparent exit and what appeared to be some sort of metal minotaur. The minotaur wasn’t moving, but Shar was still cautious and stood in place. Party members decended. Thogar, Shawnee, & Vystal made it to the bottom, but were still bunched up right at the bottom. Isthmia was on the rope above and needed room to get down so Shawnee moved 5 feet further to the side which caused the Minotaur to spring into action and attack. As we expected, this was a construct of some sorts (Brass golem as we found out later). We knew it had high damage reduction, but our only means of winning was to continue to hit it hard and fast. Avriyael was still on the rope some 150 ft above. Vystal summoned a large earth elemental hoping its strength could help, but it had such trouble hitting in the first place, it was rather ineffective. Getting heavily hit by the construct’s axe of wounding, Shawnee was having troubles continueing in the fight having been hit 4 times, so Isthmia stepped up and cast lesser restoration defensively to heal the con damage. About this same time, Vystal had summoned another earth elemental, but this time it was huge. Unfortunately, the spell requires the amount of space available for the summoning, otherwise the summoned creature gets shunted to the nearest open space. Since this room was too small because of the large elemental already there, this new summoned elemental was shunted into the hole above the room. Realizing that this created a basically useless summons, Vystal ordered the elemental to quickly retrieve Avriyael, still 120+ ft above. 2 rounds later (much quicker than coming down the rope) the elemental dropped Avriyael into the room. After a complete many-shot miss of adamantite arrows, the next round of rapid shot adamantine arrows (and the magic lightning attached to the arrows, which we found slowed the construct) dispatched the construct easily.

**Out of spells**
After the construct, we realized we were in a fairly good location to rest. There was still a quick debate about the urgency needed to continue, but the party realized that a party with casters that have no spells and clerics with no restorations or healings is as good as dead if they continue, so we decided to rest.

– End of Session –

– Session Recap –
After the week of waiting, Lord General Tyronne. Discussions basically lead nowhere, but further researched information lends us a direction the party should follow. Apparently it may not be an evil force that maintains the gate. Normally the gate would have already closed, but some of the Academy’s sages agree that it may be of possible god-like levels. They also agree that in order to close it, whatever is holding it open must come through. After teleporting back to Queenstown, the party notices the beacon (see previous sessions) has been lit. Since Thogar was not with the rest of the party, he had already left for the beacon a day before, but since there was no easy way to get there, a teleport by the rest of the party matched the timing of Thogar to arrive at the beacon. We find that a quetzalcoatl (sp?) has lit the beacon and asks for our help to stop the spread of the shadows from the desert. It also tells us the shadows will overwhelm this world within only a few weeks. Since this was the party’s intention anyway, we agree, but we first decide to find some additional information about the various artifacts we were pursueing. Casting a few legend lores tells us that we need to enter the shadow plane (where the gate is open to) in order to continue our quest. For the first time, the party is actually capable of such a feat and the decision is made to have Isthmia cast Plane Shift to take the party to the shadow plane’s side of the gate. Unfortunately, Plane Shift is not exact and the party ends up over 300 miles away still in the mountains. As is normal in the shadow plane, everything is in greys, but we see something very unusual. There are lines of moving black in the sky, obviously moving towards the gate. Before we can do much, 2 dread wraiths attack, but are dispatched after only a few seconds with minor injuries to the party. Without horses, it is deemed impossible to travel by foot since it would take too much time. It is decided that Methkarten and Avriyael will try teleporting the party to the temple next to the gate. Unfortunately, this ended up in the party being separated. With bad teleport rolls on both sides, and as we will find out later that the temple doesn’t exist in the shadow plane, Methkarten, Vystal, & Shawnee arrive in a “similar” temple and Avriyael, Isthmia, & Thogar arrive about 80 miles away from the gate. Hearing chanting coming form down the hall, Meth scouts around in the temple with a greater invisibility spell on and discovers they are in Parisha’s temple. Parisha, Rhyla, and 2 clerics are performing some ritual. Seeing they are not necessarily prepared for battle, the three of them decide to pro-actively attack Parisha rather than reactive like the party usually is. While the temple battle is commencing, Avriyael and her group simply start to trudge toward the gate. At the battle, Vystal makes great use of huge earth elementals and tries grappling and pinning Rhyla and Parisha. Becuase of a botched dispel magic by one of Parisha’s clerics, Rhyla escapes a pinning but is soon pinned again by another huge earth elemental. The elemental then runs head-long into an acid pit in the center of the temple (common to these evil temples) taking Rhyla with it. Elation is given by the party in thinking that we had finally killed an arch-nemesis, but our celebration was short lived. We found out that creatures in gaseous form are unable to move through or enter liquid. When vampires die, they turn to gaseous form. We thought we had Rhyla, but we forgot vampires can turn into gaseous form at will, so she did and the earth elemental lost track of her in the acid. Thinking not everything was lost, Methkarten caps the acid with ice for 12 rounds in a hope that Rhyla would be dead by that time. It was not long enough. Parisha had left and returned with the relic crossbow they had and in a last effort was able to mind-control Methkarten. She gave him a simple command, teleport, which he did. Where he is, and what his fate is, we do not know, but we assume he will be back to try and kill us as a vampire any session…Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, Rhyla comes popping up out of the acid (damn rings vs. acid) beats up on Vystal and Shawnee a little and then leaves…Adding insult to injury. We were down a wizard and the party was separated. When Vystal and Shawnee exit the temple, they find they are nowhere near the desert, but rather many hundreds of miles north of it. They are far enough away they do not even see the black line of shadows. Fortunately they do know where to go and we hope to meet up as a party again somewhere near the gate.
– End of Session –

I recently downloaded Release Candidate 18 for ultravnc. It had a vnc proxy/repeater in it but the instructions for setup were VERY poor, so I decided to post a few of my own. These are for the “external” mode only:

1) Download the working repeater. The one released with RC18 doesn’t work. Download the RC16 from ultravnc’s sourceforge files download. It is called repeater.exe.
2) Run repeater on some accessible computer (not on the viewer or the server box). This is often some sort of computer in a DMZ so everyone can access it. My example will be test.destinyforge.com
3) Start the ultravnc client. **NOTE: The client and server must be at least RC16 as well (I am using RC18).
4) Configure the client as follows:

• a) Set the VNC Server: to be the following without quotes “ID:####” where #### is some number. It can be pretty large, view the ultravnc notes for the exact numbers. It can be 1 up to some large 9999999 number. My example will use ID:1234. Make sure that ID is capitolized.
• b) Click the Proxy/Repeater checkbox and enter the IP address/FQDN to the repeater. example: test.destinyforge.com
• c) Click the Connect button.

5) You should see on the repeater that a “viewer” was added.
6) Configure the server as follows:

• a) Turn off the System Hook DLL and the Video Hook Driver. They will cause a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death for those of you who don’t know the acronym) if you use them with the repeater. I haven’t posted anything about this BSOD on the ultravnc bug forums yet, but it is repeatable on multiple hosts.
• b) Run “Add a New Client” from the service helper. If you do not have an ID field then you are not running a new enough version of ultravnc.
• c) For the “Host Name” type in the repeater address, FQDN, etc. plus add a colon and 5500. So, my example would be test.destinyforge.com:5500.
• d) Enter the “ID code” identical to the viewer setup (4a above)
• e) Click the “OK” button.

At this point, everything should be working as normal. A few notes:

1. DSMPlugins are not intended to work yet, though I believe the encyrption plugin is currently getting attention.
2. Make sure the order of connecting is client then server. Even though the instructions state either may connect to the repeater first, I have found that connecting the server first doesn’t work.
3. I have tested file transfers and they work fine through the repeater.

Hope all of this helps!

Try to isolate the physical location of the problem. For instance, if one location of a building is having network troubles but another isn’t, it may point to a specific switch. A good example is my recent changes to some fiber networking connections. I only added a switch in a server room so I wasn’t prepared for where the problem actually occurred. Data was still traveling across all connections, from computer to switch1 to switch2 to server or from phone to switch1 to switch2 to phone server (VoIP), but everything seemed dog-slow and all the phones sounded like a bad cell phone. Obviously with fiber, the speed should be very fast. After most of a friday afternoon, some time on Saturday morning, and a Sunday evening, I finally figured out the problem. If I had followed my own tip, I would have noticed the problem occurred only when flowing through switch1. Even though a link light on switch2 indicated a good connection to switch1, a physical look at switch1 indicated no link. After a reboot of switch1, everything came back up to speed.

Missed a couple of DnD sessions so I’ll just recap them.

- previous/previous session recap -
After spending time in queenstown resting (see previous blog entry), the party decides to follow through with the information the sages gave them. They chose to proceed to the desert where a large gate was being built. The magic from Methkarten’s school gave us quick teleport passage to the desert. We are introduced to a new character Da’ud al’Shidda who has seen the gate and had his tribe slaughtered because of it. He quickly agrees to show us the location. On the trek there, we encounter a nomadic tribe and are greeted fairly and spend a few minutes talking with the head of the tribe in the main tent. Outside screaming is heard. The party heads outside only to find itself face to face with a gargantuan scorpion. After a fairly quick battle, and almost 2 deaths in the party, the scorpion is dispatched. After much thanks for saving the tribe, the head of these nomads tells Avriyael that he has seen a bow with the same symbol as her circlet. Very curious, the party sends a magical message to the bearer of the bow and teleports a few members to talk. During the discussion that ensued, a huge titan (the sultin of the desert) enters into a battle in the distance. The battle is many miles away, but the titan is clearly visible and clearly turns the tide of battle in his favor. Discussions continued with the owner of the bow and it was determined that the party must destroy the source of power for the gate (found to be a “Titan” gate) and return. Then we would barter Avriyaels current bow and some armor made from the scorpion for the new bow. Teleporting back to the party and continuing, with a minor battle with some guards, till we could view the gate, temple, and an encampment of tents in the distance ended the session.
- end session -

- previous session -
Being very impatient, and not waiting for the rest of the party, Methkarten decides to head straight towards the gate/temple. He quickly finds himself stuck in quicksand to his neck. Quick thinking by the party rescues him and Vystal is able to guide the party the rest of the way through the quicksand. Avriyael notices something strange about the the encampment, but isn’t able to pick up exactly what it was (basically the whole thing is a trap, but she rolled too low on her military tactics check to determine that). Approaching the temple entrance revealed a few guards that had to be dealth with. Everything still seemed too easy. We were to find out that was for a reason. Entering the temple cause two dread wraiths to appear. Isthmia figured it would be an easy turning. Unfortunately, a low roll on a turn check caused no problems to the dread wraiths, but seeing her as their biggest threat quickly attacked. Isthmia was no match for two dread wraiths and fell in one round. The rest of the party dispatched the wraiths, but the toll was hard to swallow. Then, without much rest, the party’s arch-nemesis Perisha appears with a few characters by her side. She acts very much like the emperor in Empire Strikes Back “witness this fully operation gate.” We look outside and see what we thought to be a titan gate (more on the thought to be titan in a moment) start to pulsate with dark light and magic. The battle quickly grows sour when a wall of force isolates the fighters inside the temple away from the spell casters outside. With only 1/2 the party in the battle, we thought all was lost. Thogar went down and the battle seemed over when Vystal pulled out a virtual miracle. He summoned a huge earth elemental and grappled Perisha. With only 3hp left, Perisha teleports out of the battle to safety. Just prior to that, the spell casters had all gotten into the temple. We were hoping for a reprieve when the party notices a huge shadowy figure appearing from the gate. This was obviously no titan gate. With little time to spare, and two more dread wraiths appearing, the party teleports back to Avriyaels keep. Licking their wounds, the party discusses their next move. It is determined that research is required to find out what this gate is. We also determine that the “Titan” gate may still exist somewhere else because a previous vision showed the temple to be next to a large lake, but there was no lake to be found near this shadow gate. Time is taken to visit Balance (sp?) to get Isthmia resurrected and to find out more information. Balance would be the first nation to be attacked from the desert if a shadow/undead army appears. Avriyael discusses trade issues with the King, but feels it is not right to tell him about the gate at this moment. She agrees with one of the heads of the training academy that Lord Tyronne (a character from a previous campaign, now Lord General Tyronne of Umbria) is a better person to inform. The head of the academy promises to get a word to Lord Tyronne and hopes he will be at Carth Balance (the capitol) within a week. The head of the academy also urges the party not to discuss the gate with the local clergy (whose head is a man of great power and could disrupt the balance of the government in the region). Avriyael also determines this to be a good course of action and mentions nothing while getting Isthmia resurrected.
- end session -

Just a little rant, I’m starting to get really ticked at businesses with an anti-open source attitude. Most of the attitude stems from a complete lack of understanding of how open source works. I have to deal with people who “just can’t understand why people would give software away.” There is also the attitude, “you get what you pay for.” Well, you know what? That is BS. I believe some of the best software I have ever dealt with is open source. Code is clean, interfaces are well thought-out, bugs are fixed quickly, etc. etc. Working in a proprietary shop has really made me think about my ideals/morals about software, and my take is this:

I will support open source with whatever means I have available to me.

In my rummage through bind and DNS, I made a simple change. I had a two records. The first was ftp. and the second mail. They were both pointing to the same IP address, but mail. was a CNAME for ftp. I needed to change mail. to be the A record and the ftp. to be the CNAME. Simple changes to the configuration, viola. Oops. After a few hours, when the TTL had expired, mail. and ftp. were both considered CNAMEs within our resolution DNS server. It would loop back and forth and simply give no IP address. Simple fix of removing the cache, and when both records expire over the internet the problem will be fixed, but still. Live and learn

We had a very long time betwen sessions and had ended the last session in a fairly stable location, so the characters took a few months off. The following is the DM’s account of activity during theses few months.

Almost 3 months after starting the Fey’ric Revolution of 1273, you find yourselves in the spring of the year 1274, within a massively different political terrain. A council has been formed, a government created. Although there will no doubt be problems, the Fey’ric are well on their way to forming a nation.

Thogar vanished after the bulk of the fighting was finished, and noone except him knows where he went… Although there were periodic reports from rangers of a mysterious loud bellowing from time to time in the deep mountains South of Queenstown. One day, Thogar shows up, looking gruff and quite well-worn. Just as he shows up, the Sages call for the lot of you, announcing that they are ready to report on their Temple findings. For the most part, they’ve been sequestered for 2 months straight, and little word has come… Except from the guards posted outside, who reported periodic yelling matches between the two sages, usually over some symbol and what it meant. Paraphrasing, they report the following.

The temple is a temple to an ancient god known as Tritherion, a good God of Freedom primarily. Hidden in the recesses of the brilliantly and divinely preserved woodworks were many ancient symbols, both mundane and divine, dating to almost 10,000 years old. Essentially, they tell the story of Tritherion’s involvement with the hiding of an artifact called the “Shield of Celestia”. This is much like the Axe of Pelor, they say, in that it is to be used by a champion of good for some ultimate purpose in the fight against evil. Tritherion was chosen by the Pantheon of Good to help hide this artifact until the time was right for it to be found. His faithful followers thus built a sacred place and dubbed it the Monastery of the Two Suns, for the two Sacred Stars held inside… The Star of Elishar, and the Star of Calinthor. Supposedly, if the two stars are used in the correct ritual by a mortal champion of good who is aware of their true purpose (the sages don’t know what that purpose is), then the Shield of Celestia will form from their essence.

The tricky part, say the sages, is that the symbols appear to indicate that the Star of Elishar was destroyed. Their best guess places that destruction at 8,000 years ago… About the time that the Desert of the Sha’ir formed, according to some theories. Not all of the 3 sages completely agree with that precise date, but they do agree it was millenia ago if the Star of Elishar was, in fact, destroyed. Seeking out the Monestary will likely offer more clues into the current whereabouts of the two Stars.

Then, the sages found more symbols, from a different ancient language that they date as being more recent.. Perhaps only two thousand years ago. They talk of the Archpriest Dmitrius Godrick, a devout follower of Veran, and his Grand Counselor Nahrad, who was a known wizard of reasonable power in the period. Specifically, the writings speak of how their forces successfully invaded the monestary grounds, taking it from the holy defenders which held it and sacrificing them all to darkness. His god then cursed him and his personal cadre with unlife, as a reward of sorts, and charged them with the perpetual defense of the Monastery against any who would dare try to enter.
The sages feel it quite likely that the Archpriest, if still there, is now some sort of Lich.

(For those not familiar, Godrick is the northern state of Umbria… You don’t know if there is any relation.)

These more recent writings speak of the location of the Monastery, placing it somewhere in the Desert of the Sha’ir. Not much is known of this area, as very few attempt to cross it, but it is believed that a large and somewhat savage city lies in the center of it near a lake. The State of Ballance believes there to be a fairly large population of nomads, as well.

The sages say that the Monastery was likely either built on an existing nexus of strong mystical power, or it would have created such a nexus after completion. Such a nexus is rare, and its presence in the vicinity would be a very strong indicator that the monastery is nearby. They recommend consulting with someone who might be familiar with such a nexus, and determing the best method with which it can be found. Glorfindella Mithrandír (the grey elf sage of Languages and Scripts) of course recommends the many arcane guilds of Ěl as a good place to start asking questions.

The sage of Religious History, Anton-Léon du Ballance, notes that there was also a partially destroyed segment of symbols speaking of something called only the “Unholy Reverance”. It is apparently an item of some sorts, probably evil, possibly of great power considering the context. He believes the symbols indicate Dmitirius either has or knows where this item is, and therefore it is likely that once the forces of evil learn this (if they have not already), they will likely attempt to pay a visit to the Monastery as well.

A couple of tips I saw on Lockergnome for WinXP…

If you liked the old Windows Media Player (WMP6), you can still use it. Type mplayer2 in you run box and an old version of WMP will launch (version 6.4 for me).

Quick and dirty self-extracting install file can be created using IExpress (included with WinXP). Type iexpress in your run box and follow the wizard. CAB files can be created using this app as well.

If you’re into looking at the underlying xml for word files, press Alt + Shift + F11 while in MSWord to open the MS Script Editor. The xml for the current document will be displayed.

Boy did I make things difficult. You learn something new every day, or at least I strive to…My previous post about an alternate way of locking a workstation was unnecessary for Windows XP. All you have to do is press the Windows key and L at the same time…How simple can that be

I have released a new piece of software called Office File Extensions Reset Utility (OFERU). This utility will correct any file association problems MSOffice 2003 might have. These problems may have been caused by installing a program like OpenOffice, which associates itself with extensions such as .doc, .xls, or .ppt.