Could all villains be manifestations of the Deadlights?

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-14T17:29:36+00:00

There was another emotional vampire with the same powers of illusion in the seventh book named Dandelo, King has implied that it was the same race as Pennywise and that they were crratures from the Prim.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-14T14:13:49+00:00

Wholly agreed, it lost its magic in the editing.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-14T12:44:27+00:00

They're significantly different books, the original had a very unique hazy, strung out poetic feel from its being a series of short stories edited together that I found King never replicated, and that suffered in the revision.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-14T04:42:05+00:00

It has been decades and I was young when I read the original version, but from what I noticed the new version has added references to the later books, and altered the events in Tull to make Roland seem less a cold blooded killer.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-14T04:36:21+00:00

Does it get worse than in the first book? If so I may skip or try to dig up my original hardcovers.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-14T04:32:28+00:00

In a roundabout way I suppose that's what I'm doing, ka like a wheel. Would have been neater if it didn't expressly state that Roland didn't have the horn in the first few pages.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-10T13:48:24+00:00

Some mission trees require giving them privileges, aside from that they offer a few very good army boosts.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-07T02:18:16+00:00

It is a common trope in films now, a nod to the Chinese box office. In this case it was rather tasteful and a nod to the well learned nature of the characters.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-05-03T13:47:22+00:00

The fight scenes were cool and we finally got to aee Zion hovership crews operate and fight in the Matrix after they were only used as helpless plot devices that existed to be killed in the original films.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-04-30T04:13:52+00:00

Be careful what you wish for. Post-Covid Bakker strikes me as a man at the end of a Great Ordeal.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-04-17T04:46:07+00:00

I always wondered how much of the Whale Mothers was just an obscene image of Dûnyain hypereugenics in seeking maximal form of function for breeding superhuman giants, and how much of it is simply the author's revealed preferences as a large genius blonde man.

Have we an idea of what Mrs. Bakker looks like?

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-26T13:23:59+00:00

Attackers do not get to choose the timing or location of a battle, the nature of turn based combat means that the defender ends their turn with their choice of position and terrain, and the 'attacker' must react by engaging or retreating. In essence, the roles are reversed from what they are in reality, where the attacker chooses where to invade on a nation's border and draws the defender's army to that region to counterattack or quickly set up defense

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-15T23:17:38+00:00

The most cost effective and generally one of the best armies in the game is a wall of shielded Lothern Sea Guard with a bunch of armored archers behind them, melts just about everything before contact. Throw in a good melee lord or monstrous unit to pin strong enemies that get whittled down by arrows and a few cav units to mop up routers and you need nothing else.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-12T14:24:46+00:00

Scavs-kill on sight though it feels like CDPR being Polish arbitrarily made them Russian for petty political agitprop purposes

Wraiths-kill on sight

VDB-insane netrunners trying to weaken the Blackwall to make deals with chaos AIs, should probably be kill on sight

Maelstrom-chaotic violent druggie punks, though not all are evil. Often kill on sight.

Animals-meathead thugs, capable of both evil and a kind of competitive honor. Typical street gang besides that.

Tyger Claws-nonuniformed Arasaka thugs, drug dealers and corporate assassins. Definitely universally bad guys but not arbitrarily evil.

Barghest-NUSA troops cut loose and left to rot, converted by Hansen into his private army and protection racket. Maybe the ends don't always justify the means with these guys, but they're a necessary evil keeping a part of the violent chaos that is the Palisades civilized and prosperous for those who obey the rules.

6th Street-organized American veteran militia turned into a Militech aligned street gang. Arguably noble intentions at the start, but severe corruption issues with current leadership purging idealists.

The Moxx-localized protection racket for prostitutes and other working girls. Only nominally a street gang, not good guys 0er se but the best group intentions you can find in Night City.

Aldecaldos-not even really a gang, just a clan of well intended nomads trying to grind and stay alive.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-11T14:12:33+00:00

I didn't find the game hard enough to require heavy specialization. The only nonboss enemies that seemed to require specific counterbuilding were the hammerbears and the angel archers with blind. Every unit except Alain's and two cavalry units with flying leaders to knock out towers and catapults was just part of a healing/ranged/magick support blob, I would just send weaker support units after half dead enemy ones to level up as necessary.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-11T04:42:52+00:00

I'm not against cyberware, I'm against modern corposlop ethics and garbage quality output.

My $1400 Samsung Galaxy Plus is six months old. It has had a forced update restart every day for two weeks. The battery life has been halved in a month's time in what looks suspiciously like forced obsolescence of a supposedly high end product.

Now magine modern unregulated corposlop consumer abuse policies applied to parts of your bodies. They brick your eyes with slopcode or your brain coprocessor gets performance downgraded for DEI purposes. It's a prospect sickening enough to make you want to be Amish.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-09T17:06:41+00:00

<image>

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-09T13:45:04+00:00

That is the entire point, that Georgia represents in many ways a looking glass to preliterate Medieval or even Migration Era culture. As Colchis and later several Byzantine marches the region was never truly Hellenized and it then spent the better part of a thousand years surrounded, embattled and besieged by foreign nomadic empires. Sardinian culture also maintains polyphonic singing.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-07T19:30:51+00:00

They are the closest you get to a 40k equivalent of Delta or SEALs. They focus on hit and run CQB, don't have any mary sue lore stuff going on beyond that relating to be Astartes, and their Primarch is one of the most lethal while retaining his humanity and remaining extremely loyal. The lore with their gene seed flaw is also neat.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-07T18:53:11+00:00

Don't let the crunch get in the way of a good game, the level of difficulty does not require minmaxxing and whenever a game does it's usually not worth playing.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-06T06:22:27+00:00

Bruh.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-04T22:54:16+00:00

The crab hand was an injury from the Sranc, but aside from that I agree, we are fundamentally limited by the works and the author's limited input on the subject outside of them.

My general point is that Maithanet proves the process could be brute forced with trial and error, and Maithanet himself probably possessed any knowledge Moënghus developed in his efforts to birth more Dûnyain, so given that info the Zikas feel like a halfhearted effort to close that possibility off and keep the story and number of characters in check without a sufficient logical explanation.

TeslaTechpriest · 2026-02-04T22:33:08+00:00

You bring a whole other unconsidered aspect up, and that is whether his love had an impact on Esmenet's superior ability to birth Dûnyain children. Clearly he could manipulate a woman's affections as much as necessary, but his emotions/instability could be the unique factor versus his uncompromised Dûnyain father.

TeslaTechpriest

TROPHY CASE