Stew and Starships.
The Wife was out the other evening so had to fend for myself dinner-wise. Decided to do an old recipe I've not done for a long while. It's very simple and insanely tasty. Take a few onions, a few peppers (red, yellow or orange, preferably a mix), a couple of courgettes, an aubergine, a few large field mushrooms, 4-5 medium sized tomatoes and a whole load of garlic. Dice it all quite coarsely (2cm chunks) and bung it in to a pot with a bit of olive oil. Get it all hot and add a sprinkling of salt to get it sweating and stick the lid on for five-ten minutes or so. The steam from the veg at the bottom will percolate up and cook the veg higher up, the juices from the veg (particularly the mushrooms) will drip down and start generating a cooking liquid at the bottom.
After a while bung in a glass or two of red plonk, a bit of season all and a good lot of rosemary, then bung the lid back on, turn the heat down so that it doesn't catch and just let it, well, stew. 45 mins or so is good, allow all the veg to get soft and luscious, let the flavours of the garlic and rosemary to percolate through. While this is happening you can have a glass (or two) of the aforementioned red plonk. Once ready serve in a bowl along with some good crusty bread, ideally oven ready focaccia or ciabatta, but any decent crusty bread will do, whatever you like really.
It's delicious, the wine and mushrooms produce a rich dark broth and the veg are succulent and full of flavour. I made it that evening 'cos The Wife doesn't like courgettes. It was one of the first vegetarian recipes I ever learned to do and I still love it. The one disadvantage is that I positively REEK of garlic for hours afterwards. Still, I made enough for two so there's another helping in the freezer for another day.
After eating I amused myself by rolling up a character for the "Hostile" RPG. The Cepheus Engine has now had a print release! Finally! That arrived the other day so I thought I'd make use of it. It was quite interesting to see how the character developed. He was only average physically, very smart, reasonable education and socially just below the bottom rung of the corporate ladder (in Hostile SOC is corporate standing, not aristocracy, the lowest rung being Vice President). So I had him as the younger son of an aspiring company man, fed up with the older one being groomed for entry into the corporate elite and him being relegated to just his brother's aide or PA, defying his fathers wishes and becoming a corporate spacer.
Did 6 terms of the character generation sequence, ending when he was 42 years old (to those that don't know, with the Cepheus Engine, like it's Traveller predecessor, your character is generated with prior experience and skills in various professions, picking ups skills via general work, getting a commission or advancing via promotion, you do have to roll for survival every 4 year term though and it's quite possible for your character to die during the process).
Anyway he ended up with quite a decent skill set. Comms (communications and sensor operations) seemed to be his speciality, clearly he was seen more as a console jockey than a deckhand, one thing from his upbringing was a 0-level Administration skill which, with the bonus from his high intelligence, would have helped smooth thing over with the corporate echelons (zero level skills confer no bonus to your dice roll, but you don't get the -3 penalty for being unskilled in the subject). He picked up Pilot skill in his 5th term, one that he only just survived by the skin of his teeth. I rationalised this as a serious mishap, perhaps the first officer went berserk on Polydichloric Euthimal (the illegal work boosting amphetamine in the film "Outland", it's in Hostile as a potential drug) and he had to take over after several crew deaths. Term 6 got him promoted to 1st Officer (with a subsequent automatic boosting in his piloting skills, the one "freebie" skill in the Corporate Spacer career). However, wary of his experiences on board he quit after that term, the one age related downgrading of his characteristics was balanced by the same characteristic (Endurance) having been boosted during his first term. Mustering out benefits gave him a good load of cash, a gun and then another gun roll got him a skill in that gun. Also boosted his Education and two boosts to Intelligence (up to 14, almost as high as you can go).
So in the end- Computer-1, Admin-0, Comms-3 (very useful with the crappy comms and sensor systems civilian starships get), Bribery-0, Gun Combat (pistol)-1, Loader-0 (forklifts and "Aliens"-style powerloaders), Broker-2 (buying and selling goods, very useful for a commercial starship operator), Vehicle-0, Vacc Suit-1, Navigation-1 and Pilot-2.
Not bad, and interesting to see how the random generation of characteristics and semi-random selection of skills plus all the rest of the procedure built up a believable life story of this individual to the point where I ended the sequence.
Now, anyone looking to hire a commercial spacer? Good with comms, decent pilot, handy in getting a good deal? Preferably a nice quiet colony supply run. What's that, first officer on a cargo ship supplying the mining colony of Hadley's Hope on LV-426? Great, I mean, what could go wrong...
After a while bung in a glass or two of red plonk, a bit of season all and a good lot of rosemary, then bung the lid back on, turn the heat down so that it doesn't catch and just let it, well, stew. 45 mins or so is good, allow all the veg to get soft and luscious, let the flavours of the garlic and rosemary to percolate through. While this is happening you can have a glass (or two) of the aforementioned red plonk. Once ready serve in a bowl along with some good crusty bread, ideally oven ready focaccia or ciabatta, but any decent crusty bread will do, whatever you like really.
It's delicious, the wine and mushrooms produce a rich dark broth and the veg are succulent and full of flavour. I made it that evening 'cos The Wife doesn't like courgettes. It was one of the first vegetarian recipes I ever learned to do and I still love it. The one disadvantage is that I positively REEK of garlic for hours afterwards. Still, I made enough for two so there's another helping in the freezer for another day.
After eating I amused myself by rolling up a character for the "Hostile" RPG. The Cepheus Engine has now had a print release! Finally! That arrived the other day so I thought I'd make use of it. It was quite interesting to see how the character developed. He was only average physically, very smart, reasonable education and socially just below the bottom rung of the corporate ladder (in Hostile SOC is corporate standing, not aristocracy, the lowest rung being Vice President). So I had him as the younger son of an aspiring company man, fed up with the older one being groomed for entry into the corporate elite and him being relegated to just his brother's aide or PA, defying his fathers wishes and becoming a corporate spacer.
Did 6 terms of the character generation sequence, ending when he was 42 years old (to those that don't know, with the Cepheus Engine, like it's Traveller predecessor, your character is generated with prior experience and skills in various professions, picking ups skills via general work, getting a commission or advancing via promotion, you do have to roll for survival every 4 year term though and it's quite possible for your character to die during the process).
Anyway he ended up with quite a decent skill set. Comms (communications and sensor operations) seemed to be his speciality, clearly he was seen more as a console jockey than a deckhand, one thing from his upbringing was a 0-level Administration skill which, with the bonus from his high intelligence, would have helped smooth thing over with the corporate echelons (zero level skills confer no bonus to your dice roll, but you don't get the -3 penalty for being unskilled in the subject). He picked up Pilot skill in his 5th term, one that he only just survived by the skin of his teeth. I rationalised this as a serious mishap, perhaps the first officer went berserk on Polydichloric Euthimal (the illegal work boosting amphetamine in the film "Outland", it's in Hostile as a potential drug) and he had to take over after several crew deaths. Term 6 got him promoted to 1st Officer (with a subsequent automatic boosting in his piloting skills, the one "freebie" skill in the Corporate Spacer career). However, wary of his experiences on board he quit after that term, the one age related downgrading of his characteristics was balanced by the same characteristic (Endurance) having been boosted during his first term. Mustering out benefits gave him a good load of cash, a gun and then another gun roll got him a skill in that gun. Also boosted his Education and two boosts to Intelligence (up to 14, almost as high as you can go).
So in the end- Computer-1, Admin-0, Comms-3 (very useful with the crappy comms and sensor systems civilian starships get), Bribery-0, Gun Combat (pistol)-1, Loader-0 (forklifts and "Aliens"-style powerloaders), Broker-2 (buying and selling goods, very useful for a commercial starship operator), Vehicle-0, Vacc Suit-1, Navigation-1 and Pilot-2.
Not bad, and interesting to see how the random generation of characteristics and semi-random selection of skills plus all the rest of the procedure built up a believable life story of this individual to the point where I ended the sequence.
Now, anyone looking to hire a commercial spacer? Good with comms, decent pilot, handy in getting a good deal? Preferably a nice quiet colony supply run. What's that, first officer on a cargo ship supplying the mining colony of Hadley's Hope on LV-426? Great, I mean, what could go wrong...