>
>>Anyway, be cool, it's not going anywhere. That's the beauty of this
>>web-based system. It doesn't have to happen in real time. :)
>
>True, but I feel like I'm letting the side down. :)

I guess this would be a bad time to point out that you're actually farther behind than you estimated above, then, because there's been at least one other Mini while you've been away that you didn't mention in your list. ;) And there may yet be another before you're really able to come up for air, but see below.

>I feel like the
>deal is that you (and Phil, and Anne, and well you know how it works)
>provide me with delicious, delicious pulp, and I in turn attempt to
>provide productive feedback while the creative process is still fresh
>enough in your mind to be actually useful.

Well, yeah, that would be the ideal thing, but we live in a world that is habitually un-ideal, so, you know. Do the best you can, and it'll probably work out in the end.

This is an important thing to note for everyone, actually, not just Merc: if for some reason you are unable to take up a piece in depth while it's hot, as it were, and you find yourself later wishing you could've, please, do it anyway - we don't just push this stuff off the cliff and then move on to other things. Just maybe think about making a new thread if it's been a couple of months or whatever. DCF seems to be getting a little cranky about long-thread necros in its old age. Beyond that, though, heck yeah, have at it.

I sometimes wonder how much feedback we've missed over the years because things like Merc's weekend have happened to people, and they've thought, "Oh well, the hell with it, it's too late now." And, well, I just want to put it on record that it isn't. This is an archive for a reason, y'know. :)

>I just
>don't know if that kind of nostalgic naval-gazing is particularly
>useful so many years after the fact, and that comes from a guy who you
>may have noticed loves naval-gazing. :)

I don't know about useful, but it might be fun, and if you check the EPU motto, that's actually what we're ostensibly here for...

... although, that said, the concept kind of gives me the Fear, because so much of what was coming out 20 years ago embarrasses the living shit out of me. :)

>I'll take what I can get. :) Azula the Conqueror makes me happy in my
>head-parts, and I once again take this opportunity to say that I
>dearly hope the girl takes another crack at conquering the Fire
>Nation.

That's... not going to happen. Sorry. If Azula has learned anything in her decades in exile, it's that sometimes you have to change up your ambitions. She dearly wishes to see the Fire Nation again, or at least be assured that it still exists, that it ever did exist; but taking it over? After all this time, and when being in charge of it the first time was the on-ramp to her life coming completely the hell apart? No. Not so much. The galaxy turns; history has moved on.

>Ah, I read you. That's something of a bad on my part, then. I sort of
>envisioned the demonic hierarchy as one of those places where a
>certain amount of plotting and scheming is required just to avoid
>ending up being... discorporated, I guess? however demons die a second
>time?... by an ambitious subordinate who wants accelerated promotion
>or a suspicious superior who thinks you may want his job.

Depends on one's position in court. Beria has to do that kind of thing all the time, but then he did in life as well, and that life ultimately ended because he had an off day and failed one of his regular Plot Against the Others checks. (Nikita Sergeyeveich, if you're watching, I know you didn't do it because he was a vicious and revolting serial rapist, you did it so he wouldn't do it to you first, but regardless, I just want to thank you again on behalf of all humanity for putting one in the back of that motherfucker's head.) Surtur generally doesn't put up with it in the War Department, though. If the heads of his armies were allowed to do that kind of thing, it would destabilize the whole apparatus, and that simply isn't on.

>Although I suppose it is also possible Surtur has a few people about
>whom he has made it known he values them for their competence and
>diligence and they aren't to be harmed in the name of efficiency
>regardless of whether or not they're shit at intrigue.

Basically, yes.

>Assuming this doesn't simply happen on the fields of Ragnarok, may I
>express the sincere and fervent hope that, should Azula decide to pay
>a visit to Muspelheim, there be a Flame Princess team-up?
>
>Because that's another thing I would like to happen. :)

I won't speak to the specific context, but I will say that this is a lot more likely to come to pass than your "Azula the Merciless delivers an ultimatum" thing. Although, it occurs to me, she probably has a better name than that if she's Surtur's daughter (which she may not be).

>Azula must have spent a lot of time giving these people remedial
>combat training, because I don't recall any of them being particularly
>capable of that degree of subtlety and stealth.

Not everyone on the Phoenix Queen's crew is from Mojave, but yes, she's spent a lot of the last eight years or so whipping them into better shape for confronting the galaxy at large. And they've all just generally got a lot more experience than they did when the biggest task on their to-do list was wiping out the Fiends (which, frankly, Azula could've done by herself, but it gets lonely without anyone to turn to and say, "Are we having fun yet?").

Also, keep in mind that we're talking about the Moscow police not noticing anything. That's marginally more difficult to arrange than nobody in Freeside caring that you just annihilated everyone in the Silver Rush, but not by a really wide margin. :)

That said, I wouldn't have wanted to be a few of Beria's minions that day. Particularly the one Fisto was assigned to eliminated. The mind recoils in horror.

>Veronica in particular
>(well, at least in my game) had a tendency to... cause a lot of
>collateral damage.

You know what helps with that? Not giving her the Ballistic Fist variant that turns her victims' corpses into land mines. I'm just saying. :)

>Also to get hung up on the landscape, which is a
>problem I also assume this one doesn't have. :)

The first thing Azula did when they all got to a proper, civilized planet was take her to an optometrist.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.