dan

Ren on waypoint radio pulled this quote from an old etrian odyssey website, and I’m going to be chewing on it for a while yet:

“ When your party stays at the Inn overnight, what do they eat? If you ever catch yourself wondering that, then you know you've formed an attachment to your characters. With Etrian Odyssey's characters. you only give them a name and a portrait, so no matter how you think of the character, it's technically just your imagination. But even in that case, without your imagination, the character is nothing. For example, a landsknecht who uses an axe might eat his meat with his bare hands and no utensils, but one who wields a sword might prefer a knife and fork at dinner. You might think differently, but... If you can imagine small details like that, you might find that you enjoy this kind of RPG even more. The essence is an RPG is using numbers to make calculated decisions, but if you invest those "numbers" with your own feelings, you can spice up the game little. Think about this: In your party of five, three characters are dead. Two of them are alive, but they only have a couple of HP left, and no TP. They're certain to die in their next turn, giving you a game over. Number-wise, those characters are useless, but how do you imagine they feel about that? What kind of people are those 2 characters who are about to die? Try to imagine things like that in the brief time before your game ends. Are they a landsknecht and a ronin, who'll die facing the enemy and laughing? Is it a protector, ordering the weak medic to run with his last breath? The game over screen looks the same every time, but in your imagination, it could play out very differently. The game itself isn't that big of a thing; what you imagine for yourself is much more fun. We hope that the player uses this game as a tool, to create dramatic and fun situations in your own minds.”

Source for image https://twitter.com/Baust528/status/1234294454774910976?s=20&t=sDMqUDsEGubJRo0bsamJdQ

An albino redwood tucked away in Golden Gate Park.

Although albino plants are not an uncommon mutation as far as plant mutations go, most plants that do not produce chlorophyll can not survive beyond germination. Once albino seedlings have exhausted the energy stores inside their seed, they cannot produce more nutrients.

Redwoods, however, have the rare quality of sap exchange through their roots; a parent tree will share nutrients with saplings through its root system, allowing albino redwoods to live in tandem with older, established trees. Because the white leaves of an albino redwood do not survive strong sunlight, this often looks like a small offgrowth or bush at the trunk of a larger tree.

Albino redwoods are generally considered parasitic, but recent scholarship has noted that they are uniquely adapted to sequestering high amounts of toxic materials and heavy metals (the same materials that may cause mutations) because of the higher rate of transpiration in mutated stomata.

Albino redwoods are not a unique phenomenon, but a rare one - roughly 400 are recorded, and their locations are kept a closely-guarded secret. It is this secrecy that makes the botanical garden redwood so special. It is a tree you can visit.

How to find it.

All levels¹ in the World of Assassination Trilogy fall roughly into one of three categories I've just made up.

Onion

Pictured: Sapienza.²

What defines the topology of a Hitman level is mainly two things:

1. How the level divides into zones with different security conditions, mainly defined by which areas can be traversed openly with which disguises
2. How those zones relate to one another spatially.

In an onion, the player starts on the outside looking in and gradually peels each layer to get to the high-security central area. The central 'fortress' features numerous ways in, encouraging the player to poke and prod at the edges.

Ur-example: Sapienza, of course, with its progression from the city streets, to the mansion grounds, to the ultra-secure underground lab.

Best example: Mendoza, more on the strength of its intricate storytelling than anything. In an appropriate series-ending showstopper, it features an extended scripted sequence with four NPCs – a target, 47's secret compatriot, and two characters that may or may not be replaced by 47 in disguise – and multiple possible outcomes.

Most deviant specimen: Dartmoor. One of two levels in the trilogy where 47's suit is not a valid disguise anywhere. It still features a concentric progression of zones: The mansion exterior, then the first floor, then the top floor and the target's office.

Other examples: Mendoza.

Festival

Pictured: Bangkok

The default construction for a Hitman level: The player is on the inside looking out, in a crowded public event that is surrounded by a connected 'backstage'. By inviting the player to cross back through the central public area in different disguises, these levels suggest different opportunities to the player as they explore.

Ur-example: Paris; the fashion show is a central spine that touches all of the different secure areas: The palace basement, the backstage of the fashion show, and the upstairs auction area.

Best example: Berlin. Huge, complex, and the setting of one of the most tense setpieces in the trilogy.

Most deviant example: New York. The only level in the trilogy that takes place entirely indoors, with a small public area crowded with enforcers; once 47 commits to infiltrating the backstage, he isn't really fully safe in most of the level.

Other examples: Bangkok, Hokkaido, Isle of Sgáil, Dubai.

Archipelago

Pictured: Marrakesh

A public area connects several independent fortresses, each one with its own system of disguises and security. Usually, each fortress has its own target.

Ur-example: Marrakesh sets out all the ingredients that would be seen again in other iterations: Two targets ensconced into their respectives fortresses, a secret connection between them, and the ability to draw them out of their hidey holes to avoid having to infiltrate one or both locations.

Best example: Chongqing, with its brilliant verticality and unimpeachable vibes.

Most deviant example: Whittleton Creek; six little mini-fortresses, each one based on the same cookie-cutter suburban house floorplan but populated with completely different security conditions ranging from a public mini-festival, to totally empty, to a claustrophobic rat's nest of enforcers.

Other examples: Haven Island, Ambrose Island, Santa Fortuna, Colorado, Mumbai.

1. Excluding nonstandard tutorial or story sequence levels: ICA Facility, Hawke's Bay, Carpathian Mountains.

2. All maps here taken from hitmaps.com.

reading earthsea has me thinking about magic based on Old Languages and True Names but also trying to build such things based on like, my own preferences and beliefs so i was working out a setup for this like "oh, what if instead of a single true name you had to just describe relationships between things? and that way, anything could have a dozen true names, it could have any true name, as long as you were accurately capturing its relationship to everything else in the spell or whatever, and you could have dozens of different magic languages and people would have preferences and get into arguments and oh god, oh no, i've invented programming, fuck"