superguy | Notes on Trail Boss #2

Just in time for no holidays, it's notes on Trail Boss #2.

The opening's set before "Yesterday's Hero," and details something Bill touched on without going into detail -- the -Yesj- was found and commandeered by Satan the same way it would later be commandeered by Stetson Tyler, and just like the current situation the ship lacked weaponry, a power source, and a main drive initiator. Which meant a lot of demonic and damned soul manpower was devoted to refitting and arming the ship. Argthor the Reaver was one of those engineering demons.

Note the references to 85 mile thick armor and the -Yesj- being 2,000 miles in diameter at its thickest point. This doesn't match up with the description we saw in the last post, which suggests the armor is many miles thick and in the neighborhood of 900 miles in diameter. This is a discontinuity between "Yesterday's Hero" and now. As mentioned several times and places, the -Yesj- did a sundive beyond the photosphere and sloughed a huge amount of armor -- how that led to the sleeker current state without any breeches of the hull -- even the divot the -Alamo's Revenge- left in its Conning tower -- is one of those little mysteries we all love so much.

For a while after incorporating, Hell, Inc. was largely in the food service industry, with a series of improbable restaurants under the blanket name Fong's. Rob Furr (as I recall, though it may have been Dirk or Ben) finally brought it to its logical conclusion: Fong's Happy Belly of Mongolian Food Yurt. Apparently they got their fish from this Altiverse. Fong's closed forever at the start of "Yesterday's Hero."

The -Noj- was the Author Pickle's personal ship, found in the same mysterious altiverse as the -Yesj.- There was also the -Boj-, which was of comparable size but shaped like a harmonica.It may seem short sighted to not actually try and figure out how to repair damages to the -Yesj,- but then Satan's demons aren't known for their attention to detail. It's worth noting there were plenty of damage control demons on hand to fix problems with the equipment -- be it the reactors, the drive initiator, the weapons, the linkages, the IT infrastructure and so forth. However, repairing the hull seemed unnecessary since what could possibly damage it. It's not like they would fly the damn thing through the sun.

The armor is very durable as well as thick -- but it wasn't indestructible. We saw this in "Yesterday's Hero," when the Xolchipalian Defense Forces and Ottsamattawidu Empire military were able to burn long furrows in the armor. They just couldn't generate enough power to breech the hull or do more than cosmetic damage -- even on the conning tower (which was honestly the only real target worth attacking besides the engines.)

A reminder that the size of the -Yesj-/-Alamo's Revenge's Revenge- was such that the only practical way to move around the ship was teleportation. Transmission stations indicate the means by which they did that teleporting.Iaonthia Demon of Bedwetting is a Balseraph, which is a band of demons specifically from In Nomine. (I forget if 'Bal-Seraphim' come from antiquity, but a quick check of Gustav Davidson's "A Dictionary of Angels" -- my go to primary reference for the fel and dark as well as the exalted and high -- doesn't include it, so I assume it came out of the game. Which is fine with me, because there's going to be more than a little In Nomine satire in all of this.

Anyway, the Balseraphs are fallen Seraphim -- the Seraphim being the highest form of angel devoted entirely to truth, and the Balseraphs being twisted into demons who impose their own truths -- which is to say lies -- on the universe. Keeping one's internal narrative consistent is key to keeping the self-delusion necessary to be a Balseraph.

Also on Iaonthia -- she is 'Demon of Bedwetting.' This means Iaonthia is a demon with a Word -- which is to say an ineffable concept she is tied to by the chords of the celestial symphony, greatly increasing her power. Her Word is Bedwetting. If you go home with her, don't stay the night.Linda Madison did in fact once end up in the garbage bay of a garbage scow that was matter-converting garbage into chicken kiev. She also fought in a war in Heaven and was at the center of plenty of cosmic calamities, but that's to be expected.

People who are thrown or transported through altiversal barriers always throw up when they get to the other side, unless their transition is powered by spam or theoretically other means which transitions through Netherspace (the infinite grey between altiverses. It has a beach.) Linda's done her share of throwing up.Linda is a Space Paladin. She can heal things. Over the years, she's gotten much better at it -- which means Linda's healing is no longer an aphrodisiac. I wasn't kidding about the sexism, last time.In case I was way too subtle when dropping plot anvils, the destruction of 001SF's Texas came when Stetson Tyler and crew launched the original -Alamo's Revenge,- which means that Linda is wrong here -- they are in fact responsible for the death of her family. Though if she becomes Batman, Linda will probably still wear a sweater over the batsuit.

The real Matt DeForrest was in fact the President of Danielson Hall his freshman year at Boston University. And he really did take it very, very seriously. And we really did make monumental fun of him for it. And as you can see, we still do.

The Trident Booksellers and Cafe on Newbury really is a lovely cafe, though it does reek of incense.

Despite my being a proud son of Maine, it still creeps me out that our major export is sea bug which is prepared for eating by torturing it to death. Even as we speak, lobster is available at our local McDonalds as of this writing. Also, Bean Boots are awesome, last a long time, and can be replaced or repaired literally forever.Fort Kent isn't quite as inconsequential as I make it out to be. It's my home town, it's quite nice, and it's got amenities and a fort (thus the name) and the like. They did in fact put an Olympic Biathlon training facility in the town after I moved away (there's great cross country skiing in the airea), and in fact my old Physics high school teacher and all-around awesome skier and human being is on its board of directors. No, we have not won a Biathlon medal since the facility went into place.

Clair, New Brunswick really *is* as inconsequential as it's made out to be. Also, Fredricton is my wife's home town, and I think I capture its je ne sais quoi here.

As I said last time, the name 'Xolchipalia' comes from Matt DeForrest originally. The Tihorn (Tire-Iron -- get it? Yeah, it's not a great joke) is my stand-in for the Green Lantern ring in Superguy, back when my ALU hero the Masked Bruce was going to be a direct parody called the Red Crowbar.

Yes, the prefixes Xolchi- and Xolcha- get used a lot. For the record, 'Xolchi-' refers to something natural, like Xolchipalium or Xolchipaliax radiation, where Xolcha- refers to an artificially created effect, like Xolchapulses or Xolchaportation. I am literally the only person on Earth who cares.

Wonder Grunion is indeed the original superhero of Superguy, created in the very first post by Chris Wilcox, aka the Creeper. "Scaly Sorcerer Supreme" is an Accreditation, which is a mystic thing which increases your power and thing. Other known Accreditations include the Magestrate, the Sorstrata, the Sorcerer Superlative, the Sorcerer Superfluous, and the Sorcerer Subternatural.

The Defense Squad was Bill Paul's superteam, led by Smartman (Dan Quayle -- don't ask). When all this happened, it was in the middle of a plot where something had warped Smartman's brain and made him concerned only with corporate profit. As I recall, there was never a resolution of that storyline.

I needed a reason for the XDF to not just throw the -Yesj- back into the sun, beyond Stetson's claim. Thus, environmental concerns.

In rereading the Industrial Revolution before starting back up posting, I realized how closely it paralleled the structure of "Civil War," which came out over ten years later.

I wanted to make it clear that Radar Vogel had in fact beaten many, many people up and was only still in this predicament because of numbers.

São Paulo is in the *Atlantic* hurricane alley, not the Pacific. Geography is hard.

Why does Linda's scientific basis mean she generates or attracts Higgs Bosons when she uses her powers? Because it's the God Particle. Ahh? Ahhhhhh?

Linda has gone through a lot. She sometimes forgets that being in space is awesome.

GATES was once Altiverse 000SUPERGUY, claimed along with the Microsoft Redmond campus by Satan. Bill Gates was forcibly transformed into a demonic form, then encoded digitally and made into the AI that ran the -Yesj-. This created a massive upgrade in the ship's response time, which caught the XDF by surprise. He was still on the ship when it did the sundive, and returned to the computer because he couldn't exist outside it and didn't want to perish and return to Hell. I don't really plan on doing a lot of Bill Gates jokes, since he spends his time these days working to eradicate Malaria and that's pretty chill. Thus, he just ends up being GATES. Which is also funny because GATES runs the Transmission stations -- in other words, the gates between parts of the ship.I wonder if anyone would possibly pick up on a turn of phrase that Linda made in the interview...

Once again -- Zelda had been depicted as elderly (even by name) before, though her daughter's age would indicate there was only so old she was likely to be. I chalk this up to a bunch of twenty-somethings having a different view of middle age than a middle aged dude. Needless to say, as of 1994 Zelda is only a few years older than I am. Stetson's about her age, and Captain Majors is maybe ten years younger.

Captain Majors gets to do the briefing -- and makes it sound like he's at least part of the operational planning stages. Because he's the Captain. It's his ship. Really.

I pretty well cover the ABPSARI -- the original ABPSARI was the macguffin of early Sfstory, and its misuse pretty much caused every problem in the universe. Now they're going to have hundreds of them, along with hundreds of SSRs, all in one place. This is a *good* plan.

The Intern was and is a Doctor Who parody. Thus the Sonic Crowbar, the TARDIS stuck in the form of a beer keg, yadda yadda yadda. It worked better back in the days when Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy were current. He used to be a much better space hero, which means he was way more boring.

I owned that Realistic brand Radio Shack phone from 1986 until about 2000, when it finally died after many moves. I'm not sure it isn't still sitting somewhere in my apartment, waiting to be brought back to tinny life.