Don't Panic! Its only Towel Day.

Don't forget your towel today.

Old Miniatures Catalogs (Grenadier, Ral Partha, etc)

Check out this link to Mini Mag's History page, where you can download .pdfs of some ancient miniatures catalogs, like this 1982 Grenadier catalog.

Talk about nostalgia!

Nice to see pics of some of these, many of which I had (unpainted and painted) but have been lost to the vagaries of time...

Gopher Moat

I think we've all learned a valuable lesson.

The Democratically Elected Blog Post

Blogger ate this really cool blog post I did!

No, not really.

I haven't been posting much lately, due to being immersed in writing for two projects at once over the last several weeks. But they are coming to a close, finally.

In honor of this blog's very awesome readers, let me know what kind of post you'd like to see next on BtBG, and I'll either roll one randomly, or let majority rule, whichever makes more sense, and put up the Democratically Elected Blog Post early next week :)

Breaker's Blade

How one of these relics of the ancient Old Country came to Northaven is anyone's guess. Until this one appeared, scholarly consensus was that all of them had been destroyed in the Apocalypse. The swords were crafted by the legendary swordsmiths of lost Gilgaroone, a hundred of them all told, and given to the staggering forces of good in the early days of Apocalypse. They were designed specifically to break the magical shields of the chief agents of Apocalypse: the towering, earth-shattering Dohlem and their enslaved sorcerers. In practice, one sword bearer would accompany each sorcerer on the side of Man, and use the blade to render their genocidal opponents vulnerable.

A Breaker's Blade is a two-handed sword of approximately 5' length. The blade is crafted from steel that appears liquid when examined closely, and is etched with words and phrases in the lost tongue of Gilgaroone that slowly change. The sword is a +3 weapon, and destroys any active sorcery it touches, including illusions, wards, walls, shields, and other ongoing effects. The sword's +3 bonus is also applicable to saves vs. offensive magic. The sword is treated as a +5 weapon against constructs or summoned creatures of any sort, and does double damage against these foes.

The Politics of Pictures

Recently, I added a little gadget to the ol' blog here that puts up a few "You might also like this..." links. Each link has a little thumbnail pic related to the article. One very unusual image caught my eye the other day. It was a blank white image with some red writing across the top. So I clicked on the link, and was a bit miffed by what I saw there.

This was my blog post, by the way: "Al Harron has posted a great article at the Cimmerian about the many and surprising similarities between Howard's Cimmerians and Tolkein's Dunedain. Its a very nice piece, and there's plenty of gaming inspiration to be found!"

Up at the top I had linked a cool Angus McBride pic from the article. That pic had been replaced with a giant white image that read "I STOLE THIS IMAGE FROM THE CIMMERIAN".

Seriously?

Lets sum this up. I come across a great article, and want to let others know about it, so I do so. I don't even copy/paste the text, just put up a link directing others to the Cimmerian blog. Instead of just select/copying the McBride piece, I just link the image, so anyone blowing it up will get a Cimmerian address, send even more traffic their way. And what do I get for that?

"I STOLE THIS IMAGE FROM THE CIMMERIAN."

A website which I am assuming is using McBride without permission, without even doing Angus the courtesy of acknowledging him by name. Al Harron's article is still cool, so I'm leaving up the link, but the whole picture thing is baffling.

So, what gives?

Can anyone explain this behavior? Is this some vestige of the 90's when bandwidth was hard to come by, and servers had less capacity than gameboys? Is it some autobot attack mindlessly assuming any link back to the Cimmerian is a dastardly attack on its IP? Or is it just dickish?

Mjolnir

Thor starts today, so its possible you may be enjoying some Asgardian hammer-slinging tonight.

Taking a look at Marvel's wiki entry of the storied giant-smacker, it appears Mjolnir has enough special powers to make even the Hand of Vecna twitch uncontrollably:

"Mjolnir itself is already extremely durable and nigh invulnerable like the Earth metal Adamantium or the Olympian metal Adamantine, and combined with the various enchantments placed upon it by Odin, is for all intents and purposes, indestructible. It has survived heat as extreme as the heart of Suns, blasts powerful enough to destroy planets, and it has contained energy sufficient enough to destroy an entire Galaxy and even energy sufficient enough to destroy one fifth of the Universe. Mjolnir also grants its user, such as Thor, countless mystical attributes and powers such as manipulation of the fundamental forces of the Universe such as the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity etc. Mjolnir can be used both offensively and defensively. Thor often uses the hammer as a physical weapon, with almost nothing being capable of withstanding a hammer blow or throw. It has been described as impacting with sufficient force to "destroy mountains" and has proven capable of shattering the armor of a Celestial. A rare exception is primary admantium.

A few other examples of the countless abilities Thor has shown with Mjolnir are:

• Transformation: At first, Thor, in his secret identity as Don Blake, could strike the handle on the ground once and become Thor, twice and become Blake again. He lost this enchantment when he gave up his Donald Black persona.

• Worthiness Enchantment: This enchantment surrounding Mjolnir prevents it from being wielded by anyone save those who have been found worthy or anyone Thor deems acceptable to wield Mjolnir for a time; certain Asgardians, such as Skurge, have successfully lifted its handle from the ground, but not entirely lift Mjolnir itself. Thus far, this includes Thor, the Awesome Android, Odin, Tiwaz, Red Norvell, Beta Ray Bill, Bor and Captain America. To anyone else, Mjolnir cannot be lifted from the ground nor wrested from Thor’s grip. The only person shown to be able to lift it with pure strength is The Hulk.

• Mystical Link: Mjolnir obeys Thor’s commands as though it were alive, and if Thor’s will is strong enough, the hammer can pass through nearly any barrier to reach him should he so desire; Mjolnir will even carve its way through the very center of entire planets to get back to Thor. Mjolnir can also transform Thor into his civilian guises. When Thor is a civilian, the hammer most often becomes an old wooden cane. While employing a mortal guise, Thor would transform back into his mortal form should he be separated from Mjolnir for more than sixty seconds. The sixty second enchantment no longer applies.

• Weather Control: Mjolnir grants its user Thor's ability to command the weather. Although Mjolnir's true wielder Thor, can command the weather just as well without Mjolnir, Thor uses Mjolnir to channel and focus his ability. He uses his powers to control the base elements of a storm, ie. rain, wind, thunder and lightning. While he can do so without Mjolnir, he almost always channels the energy through it, which grants him greater control over the energy. He can create giant raging electrical storms complete with thunder, lightning, hurricane-force winds, tornadoes, tidal waves, exploding volcanoes, earthquakes and torrential rains across entire planets at a moment's notice. He can also create any of these phenomena individually. Another aspect of this power allows him to stop any of these weather conditions instantly as well. Thor can create storms on a planetary wide scale, as Thor once did at Spider Man's request to spread a chemical agent around the world to counteract another set of chemicals released by Doctor Octopus that risked destroying the ozone layer. and is not limited to the normal limits of Mother Nature and can go beyond what natural weather can do. Thor can also channel the storm's fury, and magnify it into extremely powerful energy blasts capable of destroying objects of high durability, such as Adamantium etc.

• Undead Lethality: Also a former religious relic, Mjolnir is lethal to undead. Thor once threw Mjolnir at a vampire, with contact causing the vampire to burst into flame and crumble to dust.

• Resurrection: While channeling his power through Mjolnir, Thor was able to ressurect a man he had wrongly killed, Union Jack and also endow the hero with electric generating powers.

• Life Force Absorption: Thor used this ability on the supervillain the Presence, who was forced to surrender before being reduced to a lifeless husk,

• Illusion Detection: Mjolnir distinguishes images and holograms, differentiating illusions from reality: Thor once commanded the hammer to strike the meta-physical villain Mephisto, who was hiding amongst false images of himself.

• Alpha Particles: Mjolnir can harness Alpha Particles from the atmosphere and could use it to atomize any weaponry.

• Negation of Mystic Energy

• Energy Sensing: Mjolnir can detect practically all types of energy. It reacts particularly strongly to evil psychic energy.

• Cosmic Energy: Mjolnir allows Thor to produce and control Cosmic Energy to an unknown limit for a variety of purposes.

• Matter Manipulation: Mjolnir is able to manipulate matter on a vast scale, allows him to create other configurations and even allows him to transmute the elements themselves. This ability was evident when he transmuted the Absorbing Man's wood and iron body to the gas helium.

• Thermo-blast: Mjolnir has the ability to produce a Universe shaking thermo-blast capable of decimating even entire planets and beings as powerful as Ego the living planet.

• Electromagnetic Spectrum Manipulation

• Invisibility and Intangibility: Its wielder can use Mjolnir to turn themselves or others, completely intangible and/or invisible. An offshoot of this ability is that Thor can use Mjolnir to completely disrupt the phasing abilities of super humans such as the Vision, Shadowcat etc.

• Barriers: With Mjolnir, Thor is capable of creating powerful barriers, force fields and vortexes that are impenetrable. These vortexes and barriers are so immensely durable that Thor was able to completely contain the explosion generated by a life bomb, which is so powerful it would have completely destroyed a fifth of the Marvel Universe, without the vortex even faltering, meaning that Thor literally contained a blast that is capable of annihilating millions upon millions of Galaxies.

• Energy Absorption and Redirection: Mjolnir is able to absorb, magnify and return any type of force, directed towards its user. Once the energy is absorbed, its user can redirect it back towards the source and/or use it as a weapon of his own. Mjolnir has been able to reflect the vast and hazardous amounts of energy being emitted by the biological weapon implanted within the Wasp's body by the Skrulls back at her while all of Earth's other super humans were helpless (though possibly aided by Thor's weather abilities). Mjolnir's ability to absorb energy is so powerful he managed to absorb, contain and redirect the entire energy of the Null Bomb, which was powerful enough to destroy the entire Galaxy.

• God Blast: An Immortal such as Thor is capable of channeling different amounts of his Godly energies through Mjolnir for a single massive blast known as the God Blast. His Godly energy is so vast and powerful, that even when reinforced with the Belt of Strength, which should double Mjolnir's fortification and durability, when Thor channeled his Godly energies into Mjolinr to destroy the Brain Dome of the mighty Celestial Exitar, the hammer shattered from the amount of power Thor channeled(This is a testament to the power Thor wields as Mjolnir has been able to contain blats powerful enough to destroy an entire Galaxy without so much as cracking.) The God Blast is so immensely powerful and destructive that it has proven capable of destroying beings as large and as powerful as the Midgard Serpent and even causing such a great degree of damage to a being such as Galactus that he was forced to flee for his life. Thor has used this ability only a few times.

• Anti-Force: Mjolnir is capable of producing an indescribably powerful blast known as the Anti-Force which is capable of annihilating entire planets. This blast is so powerful that with just a single emission, Thor was capable of putting down and seemingly killing the powerful entity known as Mangog himself.

• Transmigration of Souls: Mjolnir hammer has the ability to manipulate and transmigrate souls.

• Interdimensional Messaging: Thor has used Mjolnir to send psychic messages from Earth to Asgard while sending requests to Odin.

• Image Projection: Mjolnir can project images, as Thor shows a glimpse of Asgard to fellow Avenger Iron Man.

• Flight: Thor is capable of hurling Mjolnir with great force and, by holding onto the leather thong, is capable of flying through the air at tremendous speeds. While in an Earth-like atmosphere, Thor generally flies at roughly the Speed of Sound, roughly 770 miles per hour. However, he is capable of achieving speeds far faster than light. He can use the winds to hover and has shown the ability to fly without the aid of Mjolnir. Once airborne, Thor can cahange direction, speed and altitude.

• Teleportation: By grasping Mjolnir by the leather thong and rapidly swirling it, the wielder of Mjolnir can channel energies for the purpose of opening gateways which he and others can pass through. He can open gateways which allow him to travel across locations no matter how great the distance within moments or even across entire dimensions, as he does when he travels from Asgard to Earth and vice-versa. The hammer can also be used to create portals to travel great distances within the same dimension, a feat beyond the power of Odin himself. Mjolnir formerly possessed the ability to enable Thor to travel through time and even turn back entire events through the generation of chronal displacement inertia, but the temporal energies of the hammer were drained when Immortus, possessing mastery over time exceeding that of the Earth deities themselves, asked Thor to use Mjolnir to save the planet Phantus and brink it back out of limbo and into the spacetime continuum, though Thor, as part of the Avengers, has been shown to be able to stop time with Mjolnir.

• Immunity to Other Forces: Even without activating the powers of Mjolnir, Thor's hammer, enchanted by Odin, is impervious to nearly all forms of change, as he himself claimed that no power in the universe but the All-Father's could affect Mjolnir, shown when Amora's magical efforts during her first confrontation with Thor to change it into a deadly serpent availed her naught."

Whew!

Killdozer! Never forget.