Amazing what one finds when one goes exploring.

Game: Mage: the Ascension
Rote: Portal Gun (alternatively, Artifact *)
Spheres: Correspondence *
Tradition: Sons of Ether
Commonly used focus: Self explanatory

Effect: The Virtual Adepts came up with it but it took the Sons of Ether to make it practical. Nobody's quite sure if Valve only has Sleepers on staff or if there are a couple of VA's among their coders, but everyone agrees that having a device that can forge Correspondence portals in the blink of an eye is a handy thing, albeit horribly vulgar. While gamers eat this stuff up like cake using one of these badboys outside is …

Game: Mage: the Ascension

Rote: ...as they really are.

Spheres: Matter , Mind , Prime , Spirit *

Traditional focus: Absinthe, though any reasonably high proof spirits would do.

Effect: This is a sensory rote developed by a Cult of Ecstasy chaote named Amber who made a habit of communing with the genius loci of wherever she happened to crash for the night. Following an old saying by Oscar Wilde that the first drink of absinthe shows us things as we wish they were, the second as they are not, and the third as they really are, she would prepare three doses of absinthe …

Work's had me running around a bit more than usual lately, which has put a serious crimp in my time to write, let alone keep up with current events. I don't know how much time I'll have this week because I have wedding-type running around to take care of, on top of getting ready to travel to the city that never sleeps - good old New York City to attend what could be the last HOPE conference organized and thrown by 2600 Magazine. As one might expect, available time allocated to sleeping, resting up, or getting other stuff done has been …

The way the last couple of weeks have been going, it's a safe bet that you can guess how Friday went. If you guessed 'more dental work', then you hit the nail squarely on the head. It has been two weeks (now a bit more than that) since my root canal, and I had gone back to Family Dentistry to get the molar in question cleaned out, built up, and have a temporary crown installed. Ordinarily, this isn't such a big deal because once the nerve's gone (i.e., post-root canal) you can pretty much dig around inside the tooth …