RemusShepherd

The scenario said that the Marines win if any of them sit on the emperor's throne. As soon as you take Rome, you've met your victory condition.

As I said before, the Marines would take this in a walk if they began the campaign as soon as they appeared. Every day they delay means more legions in Rome, more suicides in the Marine camp, more water-borne diseases, less fuel and less food. If the Marines delay a week then the outcome is in doubt; if they delay a month then the Romans will win with little trouble.

5, anti-crime, in a heartbeat. My girlfriend is the only one who needs to know.

My first order of business would be to make friends with a police commissioner, ATF agent or president of the United States and get their recommendations on people that need punching out.

I'm more worried about the fact that the Marines need to boil all their water, and they probably can't eat any food but what they brought with them. Also consider the morale difference. The Romans are fighting for their home and their loved ones. The Marines have to be thinking that they'll never see home or their loved ones again.

The fiction writer is correct that there'll be a rash of suicides in the Marine camp.

If you read the fiction so far, the Marines are being given a helicopter squadron, but with only enough fuel for about a month of operations.

It's a nicely done fic. I think the author is making it too much of an even match by having the Marines dither about for a while before launching an assault. If the Marines go into Rome with shock and awe tactics, they'll win. The longer they sit on their *****, the less fuel and food they'll have and the larger the legion recruitment will be. I have no doubt that the Romans will win a long game.

I don't do these draft things. But maybe I can help define some swords for people.

Historical swords:

Durendal was the sword of Roland, the greatest of Charlemagne's paladins. It was said to be indestructible, and using it Roland held off a hundred thousand Moorish invaders all by himself. Durendal still exists -- it's sticking out of a high cliff wall in a little french village, where Roland supposedly threw it to keep anyone else from using it.

Joyeuse was Charlemagne's sword. It was said to have the tip of the Lance of Longinus inside its hilt. Aside from looking pretty it didn't have any special powers. A sword said to be Joyeuse exists in the Louvre, but it's widely regarded to be a copy made after Charlemagne's death.

Tizona was the sword of El Cid. The more powerful the wielder, the greater the fear this sword caused in its opponents, and when El Cid wielded it entire armies surrendered rather than face him. A sword that is said to be Tizona exists in a museum in Spain, if I recall.

Crocea Mors ("Yellow Death") was the sword of Julius Ceasar. It killed everyone who received even a scratch from it. It's lost. (And who would want to find it?)

The sword of King Goujian of Yue is the most beautiful bronze sword ever made. It was discovered in an underwater crypt, yet was still untarnished and sharp after nearly two thousand years. It is kept in a museum in China.

The Grass Cutter sword is a japanese 'chokuto', a double-bladed broadsword that pre-dated the katana. This sword could control the wind and cut entire fields of grass in a single slice. It is supposedly kept in a shrine in Atsuta, but nobody is allowed to see it.

al-Battar ('The Beater') was the sword owned by Goliath, David, Solomon, and eventually by Muhammad. It is said to be the sword that Jesus will use when he returns to Earth to defeat the anti-Christ. It resides in a museum in Turkey.

Western Fiction Swords:

Gram was the sword of the Norse hero Siegfried. It slew the dragon Fafnir and could cleave an anvil in two, but Siegfreid threw it away when he found a better sword.

Stormbringer was the sword of Elric of Melnibone. It gave its wielder great strength and stamina, but it had to be fed with the souls of those it cut, and if you didn't feed it it would come after you.

Graywand was the sword of Fafhrd, and Scalpel was the sword of the Gray Mouser. They weren't anything special, they just had cool names.

Sting is the sword of Bilbo Baggins. He gave it to Frodo eventually. It glowed blue when orcs or goblins were about.

Narsil was the sword used to cut the ring off Sauron's finger, but it was smashed into pieces during that fight. When it was reforged and given to Aragorn, the sword was renamed Anduril.

That's all I've got right now. You'll have to fill in the Eastern Fiction swords yourself; I'm not big on anime.

I forgot to avoid DXP weekend. So I logged on my level 40 stalker in the hopes I could get her some levels in a Mothership Raid. The lag was so bad it was nearly unplayable, and I don't think I ever took damage -- or if I did, it was healed before it appeared on my screen. She got about six bars of xp. I didn't log on anyone else.

The devs use DXP weekends to test new server configurations. They should call them 'stress test weekends'. I used to stay far, far away from the game on DXP weekends, and I need to remember to do so in the future.

It matters, but it's a third or fourth consideration after gameplay, graphics, and community.

Messy. They've gotten rid of most of the contradictions, and it's not badly written, especially the later stuff. That's assuming you overlook the fact that every character goes through essentially the same storyline.

No. I don't care about Praetoria, not one bit. It was cool at first as something new, but now that it's the *only* new lore being written and it's invading Paragon Prime, it's impossible to ignore.

The Prime game feels immersive and enticing because it's not that far away from real life. Take any city, put up war walls and throw a bunch of superpowers in, and you'd have Paragon City. But Praetoria isn't immersive and it's not fun; it's a weird post-apocalyptic dystopian world, with no heroes or villains but only shades of grey. Fun for a brief time, but it doesn't interest me for long.

And after seven years I've grown attached to the Primal Earth cast of characters. I want to see them interact with each other and hear about their exploits, and maybe join them. For awhile we got that; no more. Now all the stories are about the alternate universe and our interactions with it.

To put this in comic book terms, it's like Silver Age DC going into Final Crisis, only the crisis Will. Never. End. And I'm just tapped out. I don't care about alternate universes anymore.

Not many fixes need to be done to the old lore. The new lore isn't fixable; it just needs to go. And that isn't going to happen. The game is going somewhere I don't like, no one will listen to me about it, and there's nothing I can do.

That's not a good situation for someone who wants to pretend to be a hero.

As far as the brane theory is concerned, the answers are maybe, no, and yes.

But I agree with Durakken in that we should be talking more about how awesome this movie was.

Flat universe implies infinite *expansion*, but the amount of mass in the universe is finite, which means there is no infinite universe. Just a hot universe that cools and eventually reaches a heat death.

If you're going with the Many Worlds interpretation then yes, we get infinite timelines and possible copies and clones. But they aren't in this universe. You can't reach them by rocket ship and you can never come into contact with them.

If you're going with the Brane model, then yes, you have (possibly) infinite universes...but it's very likely that they all have different laws of physics, so you won't find a clone of yourself in any of them. You probably won't find human beings in any of them, and it's likely you won't find anything resembling planets and stars.

It sounds to me as if you're mixing a whole bunch of non-related theories together and coming to a false impression of what they all predict. That's okay, I know how complicated it all is. But no scientific theory I know of says that we can get into a rocket ship and find clones of ourselves.

As a scientist, I have to say that no, nobody believes all that.

When the magnetosphere switches, it goes through a few thousand years of complicated behavior. During that time it's very weak and it has a lot of holes in it. (It actually goes from being a dipole to a multiple pole field. Those multiple poles eventually migrate back together and re-form the north and south poles.) So it's effectively 'off' for a while.

But that wouldn't affect us very much. It's not the magnetosphere that protects us organic life from the sun; it's the ozone layer that does that, and the fact that we have miles of atmosphere between us and the solar wind. Life would barely notice the disappearance of the magnetosphere. There would be some increased storm activity (holes in the magnetosphere are correlated to increased cloud production from ionic seeding) and terrific auroras, and that's about it.

On the other hand, electronic devices would be screwed, from electrical transformers to consumer appliances...and orbital satellites may as well be in a microwave oven. We humans would survive, but we'd also be reduced to a pre-industrial age. Whether that counts as 'survival' for the species or not is up to you.

It's a retcon. Not all retcons are bad.

If you're emotionally attached to the timeline of the classic 1970s movies, then yes, this film will disappoint you. 'Rise' is an updated Planet of the Apes movie, and it rises above the rest of the series. (It also rises above the crappy 2001 remake, fortunately.)

If you want to cling to your bellbottomed slacks, your disco ball and your 8-track tape player, then hey, I won't stop you. But if you just like good movies you could do a lot worse than to see 'Rise'.

The term 'original remake' may be an oxymoron, but this film deserves the title. It has almost nothing to do with the other Planet of the Ape films. It's a new and original story, completely plausible, with excellent characters.

It's a shame the other films gave people such prejudice against this one. I thought this was a great film. I hope Serkis gets an Oscar; he deserves one.

We've already been told that Korra begins the series knowing Earth, Water, and Fire bending. She can't learn Air bending because Aang was the last; that's supposed to be a plot point.

She looks very serious in this trailer. I'm guessing that the secret to Air bending will be to have levity in one's soul, and Korra's character arc will be her learning to lighten up.

Reed and Sue are an *awful* couple. Sue has had at least two affairs, and Reed is a total dick. They should have divorced long ago, and someone big and green should have thrown Reed into the sun.

The superhero genre, in general, does not do steady relationships very well. Maybe monogamy just doesn't ring true in worlds with oversexualized costumes and infinite possibilities.

All my future AE arcs would be narrated by Pinkie Pie.