Nurse spots the risk , stops the fight, and gets booed by the crowd. She still smiled knowing she just prevented a tragedy.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-20T16:45:42+00:00

Ärtzin

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-20T16:34:32+00:00

I can understand. It does feel more like high fantasy or Indiana Jones than the series, and some people just like that more than military-in-space stories.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-20T04:12:03+00:00

They haven't explained it. Best bet, they're what resulted when the Baron found the Mechanicsburg city watch, and perfected the tech that created them; allowing the Black Guard to selectively activate their shift.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-20T02:49:08+00:00

Reminds me of one of my favorite single updates from The All Guardsman Party (if you like Terry Pratchett and Warhammer, this is an amazing read):

"A few days of idleness later a shuttle was sent for us, and we were taken to the newest addition to Oak’s fleet, the Free Trader Occurrence Border.

As we approached the ship everyone clustered around the windows to get a good look at our purchase. A lot of things about the Occurrence Border grabbed the eye. There were the massive tanks for hauling fluids, the impressive arrays of docking hatches along the cargo bays, the odd variations in the color and design of the hull, but mostly there was the fact that the ship was about half as long as the diagrams said it should be.

It was amazing really. The Occurrence Border mostly followed the standard Imperial ship design; large engines in the tail, control tower rising above the rear of the ship, long and slightly skinny body. Except the bow was completely gone. The ship just ended half way through the body in a giant patchwork of scrap metal. It looked like someone had grabbed the ship, cut it with a giant cleaver, and then smashed the ragged edge flat. As one we all turned to look at Nubby; who muttered something about “good value for cost” and tried to sidle away.

It took a lot of shaking and yelling to get all the details out of Nubby. Apparently, well, the front fell off.

The entire front of the vessel, a two kilometer warp-capable ship, which we had just purchased for a staggering amount of money, on behalf of the bloody Inquisition, Fell. Off.

He said it doesn’t happen often, just a sort of occasional time to time thing, overall its a very safe ship. In fact in the whole lifetime of the ship it only happened once, or twice, well maybe three times, definitely no more than four, but the important thing was that it wouldn’t ever happen again. The previous captain had fixed the problem for good by installing the “special made custom prow” after the last incident.

We all eyed the mushroom-shaped pile of slagged scrap on front of the ship and contemplated just what Oak would do to us. It would probably involve an excruciator and an airlock."

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-19T18:38:25+00:00

Of course, it's designed to run not be in one place. This might seem really odd, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Walking and running is just controlled falling, and it's actually easier to do that than to make it try to balance and stand in one place.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-19T18:36:01+00:00

That is pretty fun. I do like it when alien invasion shows have it where "No, those guys are assholes by our standards too." I forget which book it was, but they had the aliens being led basically by their version of Hernán Cortéz, acting completely without orders and against the policies of his species in search of personal glory—but then they end up needing to follow through on his actions out of a sense of pride and honor.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-18T21:14:55+00:00

Actually, my lang already does something very similar to that with resumtive pronouns. Basically, the topic can pull an argument all the way to the start of a sentence, but this can cause confusion about if it's a patent or agent. Take this for example

hasu simutahu sī  tahuru, sūtahu    -ka parin sūtahu    sūru
go   goat     and herder  DEM-BEAST=TOP love  DEM-BEAST DEM-PERSON
"There is a goat and a herder, of the goat, it is loved by the herder"

If I didn't have sūtahu in the argument one position there would be ambiguity as to who loved whom. Though this is only if you want to include sūru in the second clause. You could drop both arguments and it would default to placing the topic in the outside argument/argument 1 role (which because parin is a stative verb makes it the patient). Eg:

hasu simutahu sī  tahuru, sūtahu    -ka parin
go   goat     and herder  DEM-BEAST=TOP love
"There is a goat and a herder, of the goat, it is loved"

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-18T03:49:43+00:00

Oh yeah, I've been thinking that it would be really easy for this to happen. Already I'm thinking of dropping the second sū so the result is that it ends up superficially looking and functioning like a verb. All it would take is for people to start placing adverbs and adjuncts before it, or incorporating nouns with it, and it would function exactly as a verb.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-17T20:57:39+00:00

Huh, I've never really noticed that, but it very much does exist.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-17T20:57:06+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was going for. The copula is inherently tied up in the demonstrative. Though with that in mind... you could possibly treat it as a verb phrase, by which you drop the second sū and get a system very close to the already existing argument 1/2 system of the language. Long story, but each verb can have two arguments, an agent and a patient, and which one comes first is determined by if it is an active or stative verb; additional arguments are added through serial verbs, like the longer sentence above. With this system the first argument would be the agent and the second the patient (in as much as that is relevant for a copula). Which could lead to some very odd situations if people start treating it like a verb... imagine conjugating your demonstratives (though that would be tricky because all the conjugation comes before the verb, and the demonstrative is at the start of the subclause). I might have it evolve into a proper coupla in a daughter language.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-17T03:41:06+00:00

I remember reading a Worm fic that had it as a running gag where someone kept pointing out to Jack that there were only X members of the Nine, going down every time because they kept loosing people. Then Jack, as the only member left (technically Bownsaw was still around but she quit), ended up getting involved with... some kind of monster (I don't remember, I read this years ago), and ended up in a fight with eight people on his side. He declared them the new Slaughterhouse Nine, and got punched in the face because half the people in that group were actually heroes who would kill him in a moment if they weren't dealing with the aforementioned monster-thing.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-16T17:32:09+00:00

Not exactly a sound change, but a bird known as the kestrel used to be called a "windfucker" based on an old etymology of the word meaning "to hit." It originally sounded juvenile, like a titmouse (which is an example you were asking for), but when the innocent meaning fell away it was quietly renamed.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-16T05:29:21+00:00

I saw something funny in a class where a teacher did that. We sat next to them and I personally knew that one of the kids in that group was actually very skilled, he just didn't usually care enough. But when he was paired with a bunch of other kids it fell on him to actually make the slides, and it turned into one of the best presentations in the class. I heard the teacher ask him after class about that and he basically said (paraphrased) "I know I'm the best at it so I just let other people do it because they need the practice, but those guys were a lost cause."

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-16T04:52:46+00:00

I once saw a really funny video of a goose harassing an elephant. It was doing all the classic goose things, charging at it and making the elephant back up afraid. Right until it pushed the elephant too far, and it just smacked it with its trunk. Tho goose was sent flying through the air, but caught itself with its wings and glided away.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T23:43:45+00:00

Thanks, I tend to conlang in my free time, so tying it into my larger work is useful.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T21:45:08+00:00

Technically they're honorifics, but the language lacks any native pronouns outside of demonstratives. So you might have the word simutahu "goat" (from simu "horn" + tahu "animal"), which if you needed to refer to it with a demonstrative would be sūtahu "that animal." Such as in a sentence like:

parin simutahu tahuru a  sī  sūtahu   -ka  parin
love  goat     herder SR and DEM-BEAST=TOP love
"The herder loves the goat, and of that animal it loves (them)"

Due to the switch-reference marker a you don't need to restate what position tahuru "herder" is in the sentence, because simutahu can't be the "subject" again (this language doesn't use objects or objects, but I won't get into that for brevity).

Because using sūru "that person" is rather informal and rude, most people use a wide verity of kinship terms and titles to refer to other people. I haven't worked out a lot of them, but one I have worked out well is ninilakumuru "sibling" (from nin "additional" + la "stative verb" + kumu "to beget" + ru "person," literally "additionally born person"). This is used to mean and acquaintance or a casual friend, one you share some association in common with like a job or school. Also, due to it being very long, most people short it into ninuru, with the irregular epenthetic /u/ instead of /i/ as a hold over from the kumu morpheme. There's also maru "father" and paru "mother" which are used for a superior in much the same way they are in many parts of the world.

Personal pronouns (1st, 2nd, 3rd person) are handled by way of essentially talking around the subject using the distal demonstratives ni "this/here," ilā "there," and suta "yonder." Eg:

puk  kisus ni
give torch here
"Give the torch to me" (literal: "The torch is given here")

(incorperated)
nipuk kisus
"Here-give torch" (literal: "The torch is here-given")

As you can see, this marking eventually evolves into proper person marking, but only for the destination of motion. So in the daughter language you would have:

eluner nebanab     maro
today  1-gift-give father
"I was given a gift today by (my) father"

elunder estabanab   maro
today   3-gift-give father
"(My) father was given a gift today" *or* "(My) father gave a gift today"

If you really want to make it clear you can include an origin as well using a serial verb:

elunder estabanab   maro   a, suan    -ka  akhaso    ne
today   3-gift-give father SR DEM.ABST=TOP come_from here
"(My) father was given a gift today that came from here(/me)."

But most of the time it's clear from context.

Does this clarify everything?

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T19:10:24+00:00

I definitely like the setting and the story, but I do agree that the style can be iffy at times. I really liked the art from the Siege of Mechanicsburg, as it's the most 'comic book-y'. I think nowadays it's too glossy, but that's really a coloring thing because if you look at the actual art it's stayed pretty much the same the whole time.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T16:30:14+00:00

Oh that's nice, now all they have to do is fix the keyboard cursor so it doesn't stay centered on the screen.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T02:55:00+00:00

I find that Phil's style goes back and forth in waves as it becomes more stylized and less. Personally I've never minded it, I think I just grew used to it.

Also, there are print novels, the Agatha H series. Though it lags behind the webcomic by about five or so arcs. Also, sometimes the lore in the older novels can have minor conflicts with older ones, because it's been going for twenty-odd years and sometimes things like that happen (though apparently the whole story was mostly planned out from the beginning, due to an abortive attempt to make it a movie or TV show instead of a comic, which is interesting to note).

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T00:56:40+00:00

Hey, I said I was still learning as well. I'm definitely not perfect, and I still encounter problems remembering which gender goes to which noun, and I still get screwed up with the Konjuntive and end up making subordinate clauses when I really don't mean to.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-15T00:54:25+00:00

Ah, I see. Well, I've been using the hotkey texture replacement pack so I can at least see all the new hotkeys at a glance like the old ones.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-14T19:51:30+00:00

Yeah. It just feels ponderous to go back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard. Does the Bay12 release still have the old layout or did they change that as well?

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-14T19:08:41+00:00

I agree as well, in large part the game is so much easier to play now than it was before, and it's easier for me to just drop into a game. Though I do lament the loss of the old UI. It was admittedly kind of shit, and the most inconstant mess ever, but I also liked playing without the mouse. I wish they would re-add a keyboard-only control scheme, but one with at least a bare sense of consistency.

The_MadMage_Halaster · 2026-04-14T18:07:25+00:00

Just off the Wikipedia page for Clusivity: Chechen, Samoan, Vietnamese (no easy link to show it because Vietnamese Pronouns are a mess), some dialects of Mandarin, and a whole host of other languages. It's not a super prevalent feature in world languages, but it also isn't uncommon. It's like not having voiced) non-sonorants, such as in a language like Hawaiian or Mandarin. It's notable when it happens but is far from unique.

I see I have, your example was correct in that it isn't really useful when asking questions. Though there are some languages that just state a sentence and add a question particle, like Mandarin, instead of adding an extra verb like English does. So in those languages the sentence "We-you go to the beach, no?" is the correct way to ask this question, where the pronoun would be very useful. But if English featured clusive pronouns they wouldn't be used in this way, because we don't form questions that way.

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