| Weather forecast: Occasional snow and hail in the northern parts. Rainstorms supposed to hit around mid afternoon - so don't forget your umbrella. |
 Editors momentWelcome to september's edition of the Aldara Chronicle. And what an edition. Our dear Trysa is once again busy helping out the lost and stranded of Aldara - this time you get excellent advice about what to do when there's just 'to much' going on around you, as well as how to end a drought - and that's always handy to know. We have ventured behind the scenes and learned more about Wickedelf. Remember if you would like to be 'featured' in the Chronicle, send a post hawk to the editor. Also details about the giant Ape-Man is described in this edition, so now you won't be mistaking a giant ape-man with the local village idiot. Sipwick has unfortunately gone missing in action - he was last seen going down hill on the Sipwick Cycle. Hopefully we have found him again, before October edition. But never fear, the esteemed Dr. Zafudius F.Q.R.P. Nitro, Doctor of Demonology has kindly agreed to write a tiny guide to Practical Magick. We look forward to more exciting articles from this well known persona. So lean back, relax and enjoy! |
| Trysas Column - Where all your questions have answers | |
| Dear Trysa, I am so tired of people. My village is crowded beyond belief. Even my house has 9 kids running around. If they aren’t yelling and screaming my wife is nagging me. There is just no place for privacy. I just want to be left alone, What can I do?? Signed stifled Dear Stifled, Well, what did you ever get married and have kids for? There are easier ways to get a ball team together. And if you made me have nine kids I am afraid I would be nagging at you too. Well, the most logical thing would be is to look outside the village for a piece of land with room enough for the kids to play and a house big enough to keep the wife busy. If that is impossible you could always these steps 1.Skip all personal hygiene. 2. Never ever take a bath. 3. Don't brush your teeth, either. 4. Don't wear perfume. Perhaps Ode-de-Skunk Cologne is an exception to this rule. 5. Be rude and obnoxious and disagreeable at all times! 6. Eat lots of garlic, beans, and cabbage! This should take care of your privacy problem as well as ever having more kids. Might even help with the nagging. Just promise me you will at least wash your hands before writing me again to fix THIS problem. Dear Trysa, A while back I wrote and asked how could we end the drought plaguing my village. You gave me a spell, which worked great by the way, but it hasn’t quit raining since. Help!! Signed Drowning Dear Drowning, Hey, you never said you wanted a back up plan. Here is one way: 1. Chant 2. 1. "Rain, rain go away, come back another day." 2. Say three times. 3. When saying chant walk in a counter circle. 4. You might have to sit down so the room stops spinning. Seriously though. When it starts getting dark, go outside and start chanting this spell. "Water of power, Water of might, I beg you now, stop this plight, Ease the rain, we need no more, Let it fall, no more! No more! This should work nad remember, if a drought hits use the other spell and make sure you leave these to someone in case anything happens to you. |
 Do you have any questions for Trysa? Then call her magic hotline at here. |
Wickedelf - behind the scene: I'm not used to opening up so well. Bare with me here.I've been drawing for as long as i can remember. Really. I don't remember not being able to draw. My parents were really supportive, and even bought me a tracing table when i was five. I used to want to do comic books, but in my teens, I learned how much helll that can really be. I didn't want people telling me what i had to draw and how to do it, so I kinda gave up. Eventually, i decided i wanted to be a videographer. I wound up getting a degree in computer graphics arts through correspondance with PA. I have produced a couple of commercials locally, and one short film that has been rejected from at least two different film festivals. One day, not too long ago, a friend of mine gave me his old copy of poser5 which I thought might help with storyboard renders for my films. I have long been a fan of fantasy art, and role-playing games..ie D&D, and HEROES. Mostly D&D. I began my sessions as a DM when I was seventeen. MANY YEARS AGO. I still play the game, and still DM from time to time. I was always complemented for my storylines, and kept running with my ideas for storytelling. Sorry, I digress. Any ways, I played around with Poser5, and realised that the realism I had been searching for in my art was here. I liked drawing, and still do. The difference is that with 3D art, I can now capture a realism that a pencil and pen just cannot match. It bacame an obsession. I downloaded every freebie I thought I might use.(I have four children, and a wife. I'm a little on the poor side.) Then, I came across the Aldara Project. It sounded like a really cool idea. I had never joined in on anything like this before, but this one reached out to me. A chance to tell my stories without the PC's having their say. A chance to have my art critisized by a community that cared about art for art's sake. My wife, now, grumblingly, supports the aldara project that eats at our time together, but she understands my NEED to create. Maybe one day, I can convince her to take hold of some lands, and create for herself. Unfortunately, if she does, we will have share the computer. We both love art, and have two computers. Mine and hers. But hers is the one connected, because I am afraid of connecting my video and graphics computer online. So, there you go. A somewhat shy guy from MS reaching out to the world for acceptance of a vision that the corporate world will always refuse to see |
| Talk of the town - stories you can't afford to miss: Calabria Updated - by Kayjay97 Dragon Isles Awaken - by mavericks_ghost In the still of the night by athor Prelude 2 - by Skygirl |
 The Giant Ape-Man  Giant ape-men are one of the few 'fantasy' creatures that persist into the modern world as 'possible'. Called variously Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, and Abominable Snowman, these creatures are described as large, human-like beings with fur-covered bodies. They are frequently encountered on their solitary wanderings through remote forests and mountain ranges, where they are characterized by their general timidity and frequently awful smell. |
| Dr. Zafudius Nitro’s Guide to Praktikal Magick Literally thousands of volumes have been written on this subject, largely by so-called “practicioners” or “seers” who can’t tell a horoscope from a hole in the ground. It’s a real short list of them who have their pointy hats screwed on straight enough to tell you the subtle differences between necromancy and thaumaturgy, and a shorter list who can do it in plain ol’ Commonspeak. Yours truly is at the top of that list, because I’ve STUDIED it. I don’t claim to have the special revelation for the third son of the fourth order of the tenth angelus of 667th level of Gehenna, nor am I in possession of the single surviving fragment of the Great Old Gritty Grimoire of Mahutus Rutus Tutus. No. I have made a fully modern scientific survey of the many methods, practices, and belief systems, along with exhaustive testing of their efficaciousness, so I KNOW just what I’m talking about. But I digress. Herewith beginneth a series of articles on the aspects and functions of that peculiar art and science known in the common parlance as Magick. We shall begin. . . um . . . at the beginning. While it is well known that elves, dragons, faeries, and certain species of chickens (i.e. those apt to spontaneously burst into flames when beheaded) are immortal, or nigh immortal, and ageless, the myriad other creatures that inhabit our little rock (including its seas, skies, caverns, swamps, and other “icky” places) have not always been so advanced and erudite as they are presently. That is, once very very very long ago, the creatures frequently called “people” lived in a world of dark and primitive superstition ruled by invisible and nameless forces. I know this sounds silly to us, now, with our advanced understanding of benign and malevolent spirits, mischievous gnomes and pixies, and goblins and demons, but I swear to you it’s true. There’s plenty of evidence for it in the less sophisticated parts of the world, where they still believe dragons have the slightest interest in virgins. Yet it was in this backward world that the roots of Magick took-er-root. Early man believed that he was constantly at the mercy of unseen powers, and the only way to control these powers was to emulate them. This is the beginning of the simplest form of magickal practice-sympathetic magick. The magick of sympathy is based on a very simple doctrine-like acts tend to promote like results. That is, if you want to get a big scary unseen power to do what you want, you have to show them what it is (again, this sounds very silly, but believe me, they did it) by acting it out in some small way. So if you want the thing up in the clouds to give you water, then you sprinkle some water on the ground and hope it rains. If you want the thing that lives in the wind to cool things down a bit, you go outside your hut and blow or whistle. And if you want the thing that lights the big fire up in the sky to remember to light it again tomorrow, you have to keep him . . . her. . . it thinking of that by burning your own fire all night long. Those are the basics, of course, but as our primitive ancestors got some sense about themselves, they found other ways to influence their environment. For one thing, he got tired of following the herd (well, don’t we all) and decided that perhaps he might apply magick to keep the herd close, or at least call them to him when he wanted a steak dinner. Now, the trick was, how might he influence something like the herd. Surely there was some big scary unseen power that told the herd what to do, just like the ones that made the rain fall and the wind blow. But it wasn’t quite so obvious how to get the message across to it. What was required, was an image of the thing sought-a bull or a cow, or a deer or doe, or duckies and bunnies. If one had that image, he or she could make it “walk” to the place of steak-making. Or even better, one could just show the big scary etc. etc. the act of spears piercing the bull, it being butchered etc. and make absolutely clear what was wanted. This is where sympathetic magick gave birth to its most recognizable manifestation-image magick. Although image magick is used in a variety of other practices, it is, and really always remains, a slightly abstract version of magickal sympathy. The beautiful thing about image-based magick is that it can be so flexible. You can use a two-dimensional or three-dimensional image. It can be made of stone, wood, wax, clay, dung, wicker, or chicken fat (not the flaming kind)-just so long as it looks “reasonably” like the thing being affected. And it’s not limited to the herd, either. It’s good for beasts, birds (even the flaming kind), flowers, trees, shrubs, enemies, friends, lovers, acquaintances, and annoyances. It might even be possible to make an image of the big scary unseen power itself (though we’ll come back to this concept in a future article). Suffice it to say that image magick took off like a hut on fire, and our lack-brained predecessors were all quite happy with it. Everyone was running around making images and sticking pins (and –um- other things) into them. And it’s just a wonder that humanity survived this barbaric period at all. Can you imagine the havoc created by everyone sticking things into images of everyone else? I mean if it had ALL WORKED, there’d be no one left (tragically this did happen to n’Nuru-Gomo tribe whose sad tale is recounted in the Big Red Book of the Blue Chickens-but I haven’t the heart or space to tell it here). Fortunately, the subtleties of magickal sympathy were often lost on early man. As diplomacy had not yet been invented, more often than sticking pins into a likeness of your enemy, you just picked up a spear and stuck that into your actual enemy. The guy who did the last sticking survived, and went on to propagate the species. Propagating the species was another area where the big bad scary whosunwatsits were thought to have control. There wasn’t a mental connection between the –erm- act and the results some months later. Ergo, there was a whosunwatsit that could be consulted for getting about the act, and another whosunwatsit who made the babies grow in mommy’s tummy. And also ergo, the means of showing the respective whosunwatsit was in line with the particular function being sought after. Thus one finds images of pregnant ladies and birthing ladies and nursing ladies throughout early culture, along with more –ahem- explicit depictions of that other thing; its various parts, positions, permutations, and paraphernalia, etc. Yet quite clearly these were as important a function for sympathetic magick as the more commonly recorded destructive uses. As advanced technologies like the fence have allowed us to more readily control the herd and have our steak on a fairly regular basis, the beneficial side of sympathy has tended to fall out of practice. Even love and fertility magick are now most often handled with more intelligent and certainly more scientific potions, amulets, and charms (which are also the subject of a later chapter), produced by a properly trained and duly licensed medical magician or nurse alchemist. Only in the most backward regions do you still find carnal imagery for anything other than purely artistic or religious purposes. And they’re still trying to get that dragon to take the virgin instead of the much tastier sheep. Yet the simplicity and commonality of image-based sympathy still makes it a favorite for surreptitious and clandestine violence for all classes and professions. One does not even have to be a student of the arts in order to make a wax figure of his mortal foe, hold it over a flame, fill it with needles, or let the dog chew on it. And while poison may certainly be the surer and quicker path to inheritance, it is still a fairly expensive one, and there are all those witnesses to think about. Sympathetic magick is a hobby you can do on your own, with bits of an old candle, some sharp pointy things lying around the hovel, and a happy measure of spite and ill will. In our next article, we’ll examine how the basic practice of sympathy gave rise to more formal and complex structures called “Ritual Magick”. I look forward to seeing you then. Dr. Zafudius F.Q.R.P. Nitro, Doctor of Demonology. |
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Grandma Carolines Kitchen
In another bowl combine hellhound beef and the 2 tablespoons of salsa; mix well. Shape mixture into six 1/2-inch-thick oval patties. Grill patties on an open fireplace directly over medium coals for 13 to 15 minutes. Arrange shredded lettuce on individual plates. Top with burgers, remaining salsa, and cheddar cheese. Serve with sour cream and/or guacamole. Makes 6 servings. |
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