https://www.comicartfestival.com/about

This year's festival promises to be better than ever, with the best comic artists, writers and creators heading to the Lake District for a packed comic art weekend spectacular.
Kick-ass superheroes, future worlds, fantastical creatures, zombies, crime fighters, politics, satire, documentary, comedy, manga and much more. The world of comic art is a diverse and spectacular place, bursting with creations that transport us to other dimensions and stories that explore the world and our place within it.
The family-friendly festival will see a weekend of wonderful events, activities and workshops for all ages.
So, whether you’re a comic art addict, new to the world of comics or just love exceptional art and storytelling – get a date in your diary for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival 14–16 October 2022.

RPG Elite:

https://artdaily.com/news/132264/A-literary-trailblazer-s-solitary-death--Charles-Saunders--73#.YAsM7S3pNpQ

"Before Alpha Fold cracked [the problem of how proteins fold in 3d space], you'd watched human gamers trying to get to grips with it. And to some extent that inspired you, right?

That's right. I first came across it as an undergraduate, 20-plus years ago.

But then it came back on my radar in about 2009, where there was this game called Foldit, where some people had created a puzzle game out of proteins.

Gamers played it - and what they were doing was actually trying to turn the protein into a particular shape.

It turned out that through playing this game... they actually discovered a couple of very important structures for real proteins.

Firstly, it was a fascinating use of games in science - and games is another one of my interests."

They typically form like stars, out of a collapsing disc of gas, rather than planets, which form in the residue left after a star has formed. They cannot sustain fusion but do manage to have a reasonable temperature - anywhere from a little under 0 Centigrade to a few thousand degrees. Many are of a temperature which could comfortably sustain water clouds in an atmosphere, and surface water on the ground (whatever the ground might look like).

So my wild thought, partly harking back to Mission of Gravity, which we read together back in March last year, was to speculate what it might be like to live on such an object. I've thought about planets around red dwarfs before, which could make quite a comfortable home, but never about the possibility of actually living on a cool star. Of course, there might be conditions that would preclude the whole thing from the start, like radiation or whatever, but I wonder at what stage of development an intelligent being living there would begin to speculate that there home was a star rather than a planet?

Any thoughts?

On May 25th, I posted a big list of Ancient Near Eastern Fiction (and yes, even made a mention of @RichardAbbott !)
http://egunnu.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-books-can-i-read-to-inspire-my.html

On June 7th, I posted the first part of a report, immortalized in song in part by Vangelis, of the Mythic Babylon campaign run by John of Patmos back in the day. I mentioned @clash_bowley in this one. Hope to get to you all, one day. Part 2 "Apocalypse" is coming up this weekend.
http://egunnu.blogspot.com/2020/06/campaign-report-john-of-patmos-mythic.html

which I thought might interest some club members, either because of their own history - maybe @Apocryphal - or because it might be some handy stuff for game or book background design...

Some extracts are:

Nel Unlit are a group of songwriters, storytellers and musicians who have their roots all over the North East of England and Northern Ireland.

...

They have written a concept album, “Wake for the Dreaming” based on the graphic novel “World’s End” by Neil Gaiman. The album is a celebration of storytelling and it’s power to soothe and inspire in times of crisis. Various methods of storytelling are used to achieve this, including stories within stories (and even stories within stories within stories)

Sadly (I think) I shall be unable to go as I have to toddle down to London that day, but maybe we'll hear more about it sometime.

I've been poking around this site this morning, and it has some really nice maps, e.g. Boston

BC

First, on Hadrian's Wall you get Turret 44B, commonly known as King Arthur's Turret, overlooking a gap in the ridge. Not sure I can visualise Arthur himself propping up the wall here, but it's easy to imagine one of his men...

Soon after, just on the Cumbrian side of the border, you get Birdoswald Fort ("Banna" to the Romans), thought by some to be near the site of Arthur's final battle, Camlann, somewhere along the twisting valley of the Irthing.

And finally here are two of different parts of Ravenglass, which at least in Jack Whyte's conception of events was a key location, being a port linked to the Roman fort up in Hardknott pass, and with its own minor settlement including baths...

So here are a couple of particularly cool things about the Solway which struck me. First, you have to remember that at high tide the entire Solway estuary, which is fed by several rivers and not just the Solway itself, is a broad and deep waterway offering navigation for decent-sized vessels. In the mid 19th century there was a move to create a port on the southern shore which would be "a second Liverpool" - only a few decaying staithes and dock areas survive. At low tide most of this whole estuary consists of open sand and mud flats, heavily occupied by wading birds.

Now back in the day (before the act of Union which combined England and Scotland) the custom was for people on both sides of the border to raid each other's property, livestock, crops, women etc. These were the reivers and were most active and important further inland. Generally they rode from place to place... but to cross Solway they used footpaths called waths across the sands only accessible at low tide. Now of course both sides knew about exactly the same waths, which must have caused some interesting confrontations. But also the exact path varies from tide to tide and season to season, and the end result was that a fair number of reivers drowned or were otherwise lost by going the wrong way. I suppose it was worth it in the end?

But also as a more peaceful pursuit, in a custom going back to the Vikings, there is a local practice of fishing called haaf-netting. You wade out into the water at the turn of the tide in a line with your fellow fishermen, each holding a beam of wood (traditionally a Viking rowing oar but without the blade) with nets suspended from the oars on vertical strakes. You drew lots to find out who went where since (I suppose) the fish prefer one place to follow the tide in or out, and drawing lots is fairest. Then you wait, with the tidal water rushing past you, for some hapless fish to end up in your net. Whatever you catch, it's yours. I find it hard to think of a more dangerous and demanding form of coastal fishing!

There re a few videos if you like that sort of thing, eg

All the ones I have seen were taken on a reasonably fine day with no swell on the water... I suspect these are the minority up there...

At the extreme south of Cumbria, separating said county from Lancashire, you have Morecambe Bay, which also has its own low tide tracks (and its own share of fatalities over the years as people have wrongly estimated the tide) and its own forms of fishing, especially for shellfish.

Maybe it'll inspire someone.