Call Larry

As a D&D player, I’ll call Larry to find out where his home is, and if I can get to his home, sometime soon.

Peak-Period Congestion on the National Highway System: 2035

This map of peak-period congestion proves why both Federal and State governments need to expand new Amtrak routes, while putting more trains on existing routes.  We can’t solve peak-period traffic congestion simply by building new highways, while widening existing highways.

Today, I saw “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire”

If you like the Ghostbusters franchise, you will take pleasure in seeing this movie.

One of my favorite photos of Duluth, Minnesota

I took this beautiful image of my bicycle at the intersection of North 45 Street East and East Superior Street.

Graffiti that I found at the Miller Hill Mall DTA bus stop

I’m reminded of an old saying that goes, “Fools names and fools faces often appear in public places.”

Dear anonymous graffiti artist:

I improved upon your unsolicited graffiti that you wrote on my Dungeons and Dragons sign-up sheet.

Magic marking spell

Magic Marked Coin

Spell Name: Magic marking spell

School: First level Abjuration

Casting Time: 1 Action

Range: 30 feet

Duration: Until dispelled

Component:  V

This spell marks any type of coin or other object with a one inch tall, invisible “X” symbol, of up to ten objects per level of the spell caster.  These symbols will glow softly in the range of a Detect Magic spell.

An example of this spell happened in my D&D campaign.  The Mayor of a large seaport city was suspected of treasonous collaboration with a Lawful Evil Queen Goldstein Maul that ruled an oppressed land named “Iron Isle”, so named for the profitable iron mines on the island.  By deceit and treachery, she gained ownership of these iron mines; selling refined iron to evil aligned nations to create useful tools, armor, and weapons.  Queen Goldstein Maul would not sell iron to any good aligned nations.

Harper agents found out that the Lord Mayor was getting richer far faster than his income would normally allow him to be.  Harper agents already knew from the evidence they collected that the Mayor is a smooth-talking liar whose name is “Goodheart Truesdale”.

Thus, the Harpers sent my PCs disguised as tax collectors who sneaked into the Iron Isle.  With tax collector uniforms and believable appearing, yet faked documents; they found a caravan of wagons used by national Queen Maul’s tax collectors.  They were given permission by the caravan guards and low ranking tax collectors to inspect the tax money that they had collected.  In the wagons, my PCs marked many of the gold coins collected with the coin marking spell.

After a few months, in the PCs home nation, they asked to see the Mayor’s private home vault; with an excuse to find counterfeit coins.  When they cast detect magic on the coins, a few lit up with the now visible symbol.

The Mayor, without a logical excuse as to why he had the marked coins from the Iron Isle, confessed that he was working with thieves, along with the evil queen, to sell his city’s citizens into slavery to work the mines of the Iron Isle.  After the Mayor was sent to prison, the nearby good aligned nations invaded the Iron Isle.  The night before the invasion, my PCs burned six large catapults that guarded the island’s only harbor, Maritime City.  The invasion successfully liberated the island from Queen Goldstein Maul.

These successful adventures gave my player characters a great deal of fun, experience points and money, while gaining much positive fame (useful for charisma [persuasion] checks) from good people and their leaders; while gaining infamy with evil people and their rulers.

Do you like games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, others?

What is that graffiti on this poster?

City Stories: The Furrier’s Guild

There are many useful story ideas in this one page, Living City article; including a way to turn a benevolent magical item into a malevolent magical item.

This is also is a much better scan of my article page.

Freight and passenger canal narrow-boats

Cost freight boat:  200gp

Cost passenger, modest basic accommodations boat:  250gp

Cost passenger, middle-range accommodations boat:  300gp

Cost passenger, luxury accommodations creating a positive impression with most visiting, non-player characters boat:  350gp

These numbers are for wooden hulled boats.  Add an additional 100gp for metal hulled boats.  Add an additional 100gp for double hulled boats.

Weight:  6600lbs

Freight boat carrying capacity: 66000 / 66500lbs*

Passenger boat, freight carrying capacity: 6000 / 6500lbs*

Specialized boats built to carry vehicles such as chariots, wagons, or caravans and their pulling animals determined by DMs discretion.

*At the DMs discretion the flat roof can in safety give a freight or passenger boat an extra 500lbs worth of external storage space.  A roof load of more than 500lbs gives a slight change of overturning the boat during stormy weather.

Narrow boats have an AC of 30 and 40 damage will penetrate the walls. You should double AC and damage threshold numbers to penetrate if the boat is made of metal.  For double hulled boats, an enemy must have two successful attacks on the same area to break through both hulls.

Freight canal boats have a large cargo hold, with a common room for the crew.  Passenger canal boats provide 6 cramped, yet comfortable cabins for character parties.  A cabin can be made to be a small workshop.  Access to the cabins is a narrow hallway on one side of the boat.  Canal boats give the party members the comforts of home, out in the unforgiving wilderness.

Modest Cabin

Passenger canal boat cabins have 2 bunk beds, chair and table, a chest and 2 pull out drawers under the bottom bunk bed for personal storage space*, as well as a three gallon barrel, with a spigot, for safe to drink water, or alcoholic drinks, kept fresh and cold by a preservation spell.  There is also a wall-mounted lantern for light, while bolted to the floor is a wood, coal, or dried peat burning stove, or a magically heated stove - for heating and cooking.  A bed roll can be rolled out on the floor to accommodate a second guest.

In the common language, one drawer has a brass nameplate label “upper”, while the other is labeled “lower”.

Horse pulling narrow boat

Before the internal combustion engine, moving freight and passengers by water was far less expensive than moving the same freight and passengers by draft animals, wagons, and seldom paved rural roads.  For example, a typical Conestoga wagon is four feet wide and 18 feet long.  These wagons needed two draft animals to transport about six tons of cargo.  On the other hand, the United Kingdom’s narrow-boats are seven feet wide and 70 feet long.  These need one draft animal to pull a boat that can carry about 30 tons of cargo.

By using canal boats you save a significant amount of money by using one draft animal, while transporting five times the cargo.  A narrow boat can also tow a second narrow boat without a loss of travel speed.  This is why the Industrial Revolution started on canal boats and ships.

Narrow boats move at the walking pace of the average draft animal.  However, some parties have installed steam engines fueled by wood, coal, or other combustible materials.  Some higher skilled parties create magically powered engines for their narrow boats.  Because narrow boats were pulled by draft animals, few narrow boats used folding masts.  Yet, some narrow boats used sails to cross rivers and lakes.

3 narrow boats with stone walls

In my home campaign, my players usually use one freight boat to move their equipment and one passenger boat as their mobile bastion.  They have in storage a boat designed to transport their passenger caravan and freight wagon.  My player characters have also installed on their boats two bullseye lanterns  in front, and two additional lanterns in the rear that are lit during night or stormy weather.

The return of Pizza Toast, 2024 edition!

I used Colon’s Cheesy Garlic Bread, with Classico ® Traditional Pizza Sauce, Crystal Farms ® Whole Milk Mozzarella, and Hormel ® Pepperoni Minis for toppings.

If you are innocent, naive, and love tacos clap your hands.

I found this small packet on the King Manor parking lot.  At first, I looked at the cute pictures of tacos and then thought I had found a packet of taco sauce.

Then, when I turned it over I had in fact fond a condom.  After realizing my mistake, I clapped my hands.

What is posted on King Manor’s fifth floor bulletin board for March 12, 2024?

Are you able to find the two ponies on the March calendar?

At a Duluth bus stop, have you ever seen a “Simme-Seat”?

I found this one southeast at the intersection of East Second Street and North Third Avenue East.

What is posted on King Manor’s fourth floor bulletin board for March 8, 2024?

Similar to February, old posters have disappeared, while new posters have taken their place.

Did you find the 2 ponies on a calendar poster?

I see and hear the construction of a city parking ramp next to East First Street.

Located within Duluth’s Medical District, this construction site is across the street from my apartment.

Message inside a box

I found this box on the street corner of West Third Street and North Third Avenue West.  I do believe that someone wrote down a license plate number and a bumper sticker that reads:  “I love raw milk”.  I will never know who wrote this message, when it was written, and why this message was written.

Today, I voted

By reading my blog and published newspaper articles, you already know which political candidate who is nicknamed, "Amtrak Joe" I voted for and will again this November.

What I found at the Superior Street construction site.

The first is a Voyager Lakewalk Inn sign.  That sign is still there, despite the fact that the Voyager Lakewalk Inn has been gone for years.

 

The second is a mystery sign that I don’t know what it was advertising for.

Sharp Dragon’s teeth crafted into D&D tools and weapons

Shafted and polished axe found in the Sigerslev Bog near Præstø.  This axe is exhibited in the exhibition about Danish Prehistory.

Our Stone Age ancestors used bones and rocks like volcanic glass, known as obsidian, to craft tools and weapons.  Such weapons are hand-crafted axe, arrowhead, and spear blades, as well as knife and macuahuitl blades.  Mesoamerican macuahuitl is a weapon, which is a wooden club embedded with several embedded obsidian blades on 2 sides, like a double-edged sword.  While made of wood, stone or Dragon’s Teeth, those are weapons that could be used by wizards.

Imagine using magical Dragon’s Teeth, and the teeth of other types of monsters, as cutting blades for D&D tools and weapons.  For combat, Dragon’s Teeth blades are considered magical weapons.  Thus, those blades become an inexpensive way to equip magical weapons to henchmen and hirelings.  During my past campaigns as a player, I remember several times when my party’s henchmen and hirelings, as well as player characters, fled or died in combat, because they didn’t have magical weapons to fight monsters that can only take damage by magical weapons.

The peaceful way to obtain sharp dragon’s teeth happens when dragons grow new teeth while pushing out their old teeth from their jaws in each stage of their lives.  The violent way is to take them from dead dragons.  Dragons selling their old teeth could create a new source of tools and weapons for the party, to be used by them or sold to NPCs.

Locomotive Number 7, Under Wraps

I saw this locomotive in the Lake Superior Railroad Museum.  A visiting man, upon seeing this locomotive said out loud, “I’ve never before seen a locomotive wear a body condom.”

I wonder how the Depot workers wrapped this locomotive with a plastic wrapper.