Lord Fell

Fireworks on the Fourth Having never really felt at home at the condo Randolph had arranged for Pompadour, and having come into full possession of his long awaited law-suit payouts, Pompadour had moved into a posh manor-home on the Lake MacKenzie estates. His old condo had come furnished, so 'moving into' the new place was as simple as ordering furniture, and throwing his few suit-cases from New York into the back of his car. He opted to have an Independence Day-House warming. Mandy Karlson, and her office people came... Cassie, the eager receptionist, and her new office-boy Nicholas. Trevor "Tank" Hancock and his art associates from The Ink Tank; the androgynous Mickey-Z and the very butch Buick. His lawyer, Gerald Case showed up with his boyfriend. Pompadour also had some newer associates from the music world he'd been working with more and more. Mandy had tracked him down a pair of session musicians he could record and tour with. The two women were chosen for their sex-appeal as much as for their musical talent (which they most certainly had); Tamara Meadows and Chelsea Blackwood. Tamara had brought her boyfriend, and Chelsea was hoping to interview Pompadour for that position. Pompadour's producer also showed up, a surprisingly bland fellow with the moniker Chas Smith. Pompadour played host, happily showed the guests around his new digs. There was a recording studio in the basement, but not yet operational. Mr. Smith excused himself to mess around with the various decks and mixing boards. He had hired a caterer, and there was far too much food for the dozen or so people that had come. The diverse groups of people were able to mix together quite well, once liberal amounts of alcohol had been applied to the situation. Later in the evening, Pompadour found himself on the deck sipping scotch with his best friend Tank, while they overtly watched Chelsea skinny-dipping. "How's business, Trev?" "Pretty damn good, actually. How's super-heroin' treating you?" Pompadour scowled. "That's over with now." Tank nodded. "I sort of thought so. I hadn't heard you do, or say anything about that biz since the party." "Yeah... I don't think that's the right world for me. Someone I talked to there sort of made the point to me that no matter what I do, my origin as a supervillain is always going to follow me." "I didn't hear much about that party. I saw you going in, your red-carpet moment, but almost nothing about you once you got inside." Pompadour considered the agreement that Mandy had worked out with Fletcher Beaumont, and the limited value of rehashing the unpleasantness of the party for his friend, and decided that there just wasn't any point. "I left early. Super Heroes just aren't my kind of people, I guess." The two men returned to sipping their scotch, and watching the lithe, buxom Chelsea flaunt her nudity in the pool. Later, the guests who were still standing gathered on the balcony to watch the fireworks. Mandy maneuvered in close to chat with Pompadour. "So... I was only ever billed once for training with Thunder. When were you planning on getting back to see her?" Pompadour had a pleasant amount of scotch inside him, smiled happily. "Don't need to." "That's odd... I got the impression she felt you could benefit from a lot of training." Pompadour nodded, "Musicians don't need to fight too much. I think I could already take the Gallagher brothers, anyways." "...and superheroes?" Mandy prompted. Pompadour pointed out the first of the fire-blossoms exploding over the bay. "Let's enjoy the fireworks."

I'm going to need you to NPC me for the wrap-up on this thread. I think we've loosely planned on grabbing the demon, and running him down to a Church for an 24 Hour Exorcism and All-you-can-eat Buffet.

...and a post exiting Pompadour from the thread.

Pompadour reluctantly followed Duncan out of the private rest-area. In Victorian times, such a salon was called a 'sulking room.' Pomp lurked in the recessed doorway for a few moments, his eyes followed Mr. Summers to where he now chatted with the Scarab. Glancing around the room, Pompadour's eyes came to rest on a podium set up on a dais for making announcements and such, and tapped his fingers against his thigh for a few moments. Allowing his gaze to continue to wander, he spotted a discreet doorway that led to a service hall. He nodded to himself. One swing of his hair brought him to the service door, and two strides took him into the corridor beyond. His Italian leather shoes clicked on the tiles, and he was already speed-dialing his agent.

Just cleaning up my threads. Thunder is now free for her next victim.

The two combatants continued to circle around the ring, trading 'tags' for almost 10 minutes. Mostly Thunder tagging Pompadour, but that was to be expected. It became apparent to Thunder that Pompadour had the fighting skills of someone with good reflexes and who watched a fair bit of Pro-Wresting or a few chop-socky movies. A lot of natural talent, and a long way to go. Later, with a towel over his shoulders and sports-drink in hand, Pompadour listened to Thunder outline an exercise an training regiment. He nodded and seemed agreeable, but remained elusive about setting a time for his next appointment.

It's now a moot point, but as I said, I seem to have problems with the PM system here. If there's a way to forward messages, I'll be damned if I can figure it out.

I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that a pbp site of this magnitude is just not the right place for me. Partly, it's because of the rigidity required by the Ref team here. That's not a complaint, it's a statement of simple fact. In a small campaign, with 4-5 players, a single GM can bend rules for his players on a case by case basis (like my Monk that had the Familiar feat). In a world like this, the Refs need to keep the rules consistent, because opening the door a crack for one player opens the flood gates for all players (Monks may not have the familiar feat). Partly, it's personality. I can be a difficult person to like... the corollary is that it can be pretty easy for me to decide that I dislike someone else. I usually get along well with my small game groups; I only play with my friends. Here, I've found myself gaming with ...at least one person that I don't think I'd be friends with. ...if spending time at Freedom City is supposed to be my relaxation time, lately it has been the opposite of. Just a simple example; I adore Ecalsneerg as a person and a player. A few days ago in chat, we had a discussion that was getting a bit heated... and then he said something that set me off and I completely raged on him. That's not cool. I felt really bad about that. People who know me in real life wouldn't say I have anger management issues, but I wondered if I shouldn't sign up for some after that. In any case, if your relaxation time is a source of stress, you're doing it wrong. I'm pleased to have put up some good writing, and pleased to have made many friends here... I think I would like to pop in to visit from time to time, but I no longer think it's a good idea for me to play here.

I find that to be a very odd statement, Dr. Arche, since the very first paragraph of my PM to you explains why you were the only recipient, and invited you to share it with anyone you felt should read it... Since the Ref team seems to prefer all of this to be posted here in public anyways, why don't I just re-post it here? Because the copy of this in my PM box doesn't include html code, I had to redo that, so the formatting might be slightly different, but I didn't change any of the wording, spelling, or grammar.

I hope to be receiving a response from Dr. Archeville with the details of the Ref decision, addressing the specific concerns I raised in my PM.

From my experience in university and college, "being able to teach" is irrelevant compared to actually knowing the subject matter at an appropriate level. Professors are given workshops in delivering course material in a useful way, but success may vary. I actually think this would be a great idea, and I have a vested interest in that our two hair-heroes need to find things to do that won't step on each others toes.

Alternatively, you could... do something?

Perflourocarbons are something that we looked at in Respiratory Therapy... the site is a wee bit inaccurate about that stuff. It has been perfected to the point it can be safely used in humans, and has been for about a decade. The only real drawback is that medical grade-perfluorocarbon is ridiculously expensive... like, $800 bucks a litre expensive. It doesn't "contain" lots of oxygen, that's entirely incorrect, however it is extremely (if not perfectly) permeable to oxygen and CO2, which means it can be used as a medium for respiration. So... the question becomes "why?" Humans in critical care get put on Ventilators because they're just not up to breathing themselves. Ventilators do a pretty decent job of simulating human breathing, only the mechanic is backwards -instead of negative pressure from the lungs pulling air in, positive pressure from the machine pushes gas in, vice-versa with exhalation. Long term, this reverse motion starts to damage lung tissue; it's just hard on lungs. Babies have an even harder time. They're freakin' tiny which makes it that much easier to damage their lungs, and their respiration rates are like... 4x an adults, which makes everything 4x as hard... and finally, most babies who require ventilation are young enough that their lungs aren't producing surfactant -which is basically a lubricant that allows airways to open up easily. Take two kleenex, soak them in water slap them together, then try and pull them apart -that's a baby's lungs without surfactant (take two paper towels, soak them in very soapy water, and try to pull them apart -that's an adult lung). So, how perflurocarbon helps, is it allows for oscillation ventilation. Filling the lungs entirely with a thick fluid means the lungs no longer have to expand or contract at all (the article at Cracked implies that the mice were killed because their diaphragms couldn't move the fluid around -in all likelihood, the problem was they weren't getting fresh air). Oxygen is then pumped into the fluid in hundreds of bursts a minute, which provides a virtually continuous supply of fresh oxygen at the baby's alveoli. Edit: actually, now that I think about it, someone getting this therapy would probably need to have their normal breathing mechanic suppressed, and just trying to breathe the stuff would be pretty hard on the heart. On a vaguely related note, previous to the 90s, a lot of premature babies had such a terrible prognosis because their lungs didn't produce surfactant (normally, fetal lungs start to produce surfactant by the time they're born). I recall watching an episode of Oprah, where a Doctor was explaining this wonder substance. She's all "what is it? where does it come from??" And he... has no idea, and vaguely redefines it as "a special substance." Meanwhile, I'm shouting at my TV "It comes from Cows! It's Cow Spit!" (truth).

"You little shits are boring me." Pompadour's hair snakes out in a two-pronged arc, and snatches them up. "Time to cash you in for your deposits." There is a resounding *crack* as Pompadour drives the heads of the two bottle-toting Imps together. As Pomp drops them to the floor, the champagne bottle one of the demons is wielding pops its cork, spraying a white fountain of booze into the air. Pompadour steps over their prostrate forms. "Did you hear that Mercy! I quipped! I'm getting the hang of this hero stuff!" Glancing back at his partner, he frowns. "You OK, babe?"

ok!