Wardstone with arduino

It ain’t finished yet, but here it is so far. I’m doing the electronics and the panels, Bevis is doing everything else 🙂 .

I was concerned that the LEDs wouldn’t be bright enough, that it would be “is that turned on?”

Holy shit.

You can’t look directly into them. I mean, you can, but then its several seconds before you can look at anything else. With a nice orangy-yellow, this thing looks molten.

The main thing is that you cannot drive something like that off a digital out – you will fry your arduino. I am driving these with the 5v off the arduino board via a darlington pair array. This means that power is coming off the regulator, not off the microprocessor.

Darlington pair array chips are designed for stepper motors and will happily handle 24v. They switch fast and have almost no resistance when driven (otherwise driving a motor would let the smoke out). The arduino analog out is pulse-width modulated, so no worries. Don’t need to use the flyback diodes, because the load is not inductive.

The darlington array shorts its output to ground when driven, so this means using common-anode LEDs.

I will etch some eldrich runes into the panels with the dremel. The idea is that not only will this catch the light, but with 2 differently-coloured LEDs in the base, different parts should catch different bis of the light. The arduino has six analog outs, so the LEDs are wired up as two sets of four on opposite corners.

I used single-core hookup wire for the loom, which was probably a mistake.

As for code – I just bodged something up this evening. light cycles between reddish and yellowish every second or so, using a slightly different period for the two sets. Won’t really know how it looks with the runes until we have runes. May need to make the colours more dramatic.

TODO:

• move electronics onto a bit of veroboard, provide a controller of some kind – on/off at least. Might be nice to provide a pushbutton to make it strobe white, maybe some kind of “Oh Noes! The wardstobe has been corrupted!”. Our DM is being cagey, unfortunately, so I can’t be sure what he needs.
• build obelisk that has been broken. Scribe runes first – we want the broken base to have enough runes to look kind of cool.

In defense of Brother Warming

So, Brother Warming-Light-Of-Saranrae executed a prisoner last session. It falls to me now to justify it so he does not lose his good alignment.

This may seem a little backwards to you, but we are writing fiction. I prefer to discover what my characters are like. This is very much like real life. Everyone’s untested opinion of themselves is usually wrong. We each discover what kind of person we are by our actions.

So we need a little background.

The city has become overrun with demons/devils. Massive disaster, war-of-the-worlds scenario. We have just discovered this after emerging from the underground.

We assisted an NPC to find her home and hopefully her wife. At her home, we were attacked by a dude who radiated evil (or detected as evil, anyway). We beat the dude, tie him up. Turns out he is a convicted criminal, and was waiting in this house specifically to murderfy our NPC.

After a bit of to and fro, my character – Brother Warming, went “right” and coup-de-grace’s the bastard while he was still bound.

Why?

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

On the night, I got it wrong. Really, I have been playing him wrong for weeks.

The dude was a convicted neer-do-well-er of some decription, probably quite a serious one. Maybe he was sentenced to death, maybe escaped, maybe wanted dead-or-alive. Maybe there was a warrant out for him. First, Br Warming didn’t know that; and second, that ain’t the reason.

Well, what else are we going to do with him? We can’t let him loose to hunt us down, can’t tie him up and leave him for the demons. Well, maybe that’s a contributing factor. It is not wrong to kill someone who has declared it their intent to kill you. And if it’s wrong to cut a dude’s head off, then leaving him to get eaten by the demons doesn’t become right just because to didn’t get your blade wet. So yeah, that’s part of the reason, but not the core of it.

Yes, the city is in turmoil and sometimes a warpriest has to step up and administer a little justice. But that’s not quite it either.

The core of it is this: the reason Brother Warming executed that bastard was to make the world a better place.

Br Warming is not Lawful Good, he is Neutral Good. Now, this is not to say that he holds the attitude that Lawfulness is neither good not bad. On the whole, Law is a good. Certainly not the greatest and most important good, but you know – it has its place. (Chaotic Good people can sometimes be inclined to feel that law in itself is basically a bad thing). But Br Warming is not going to feel a need to haul this dude up before a correctly constituted court, give him a lawyer and a six-week trial.

Oh sure, you have to be careful. Sure, it is better to do things properly. Sure, even though horrible miscarriages of justice happen all the time; on the whole the world is a better place for it. Vigilantes and mobs make terrible mistakes. Even priests od Saranrae make mistakes, it’s true. Going through channels and doing the procedure is usually the right thing.

But in a city that has demons crawling all over it, that has no functioning government? A murdering dirtbag like this? Nup. Sometimes it’s obvious what needs to be done, and if the paladins and priests of Iomedae are going to be squeamish and precious about their honour, then it falls to a warpriest of Sarenrae to do what obviously, obviously needs to be done.

The whole point of having laws at all is to make sure that people like this get executed (and that people not like this don’t). Sometimes it almost seems like Iomedae’s people think that the process itself is what matters. No. No it isn’t. This dude hung out in someone’s home to avenge himself on a judge by killing their partner. Any law that doesn’t result in this person being hanged, beheaded, or otherwise cleanly and humanely executed is not worthy of the name.

Br Warming is a sword of Sarenrae. Hers is the light that banishes darkness, that exposes and cleanses. Whether it’s demons, devils, or incorrigible murderers, Br Warming is prepared to do the necessary.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Now, I imagine that part of the whole campaign arc is the slippery slope to becoming a raving fanatic. Yep – totally this is a danger for Br Warming. Although I have played the “character turns evil” trope before and maybe it’s a bit old-hat.

There’s also the matter of his secret little background thingy, which the DM had us all pick one for our characters. Br Warming has to be particularly careful of his alignment. There’s a reason he chose Saranrae in particular for his god.

But I think his conscience is clean. This time.

James Mallard – bad magic, good magic

SEC: SECRET-EMPEO-ARCOPS

From: Lt James Mallard, Chancer’s Hope
To: Capt Gerard, Ebony Watch
To: Sir Leonard Griffinshart, Chancer’s Hope

Subj: Reactivation of Ebony Watch defensive node

1. Summary of events
   1. I am currently acting as part of a team of civilian specialist, under the direction of Sir Leonard Griffishart.
   2. Our group’s current mission has resulted in us passing through Ebony Watch.
   3. On arrival in Ebony Watch, Lt Green apprised us that the previous CO had barricaded himself in the top level of the watchtower. This occurred several months ago.
   4. Lt Green requested our aid in the matter.
      Did this actually happen? I forget. But it’s his word against mine, so screw him.
   5. I and other members of our group investigated the tower on insert date here.
   6. We broke through the barricade barring the top floor of the tower. Within was the skeleton of the previous commander; a skeleton of some kind of reptilian humanoid, wearing the remains of robes; a large pile of gems and currency; and the defensive node.
   7. I investigated and reactivated the node. I attempted to alert it to the various magical disturbances in Ebony Watch which appear to be originating from the direction of The Eld.
   8. It was clear to me that the node had been tampered with. Various operating runes and link-lines had been altered.
   9. Correct reactivation of the node initiated a self-repair sequence, absorbing a portion of the pile of currency and gems for materials.
   10. Upon the reactivation of the node, the skeleton of the previous CO and the reptilian humanoid reanimated and attacked.
   11. The reptilian skeleton appeared to be illegally drawing arcane power from the node.
       Yeah – it wasn’t just trying to kill us, it was breaking the law!
   12. The skeleton of the previous CO kept repeating words to the effect of “No brother, I will not permit you”. (this is fairly typical of the undead – they can tend to replay whatever was occuring at the time of their deaths).
   13. We destroyed the remains of the reptilian arcanist. As we did, the remains of the previous CO also de-animated, saying “No brother, I will not let you – it is cursed”.
   14. During this fight, undead had reanimated around the tower. When the remains of the reptilian were destroyed, they de-animated. Regrettably, there may have been civilian casualties.
   15. The node now appears to be correctly operational.
2. Evaluation

   I cannot make anything of the words of the commander’s remains beyond the obvious: that the reptilian humanoid was tampering with the node (which I gather has been inactive for many years), and that the commander stopped this at the cost of his own life. Any more than that would require knowledge of local events which I do not have.

   There appear to be some sort of magical attacks being made on the town currently, although they only appear to be probing at present. These attacks take the form of a music which seems to be making people aggressive or otherwise affects their emotions without their being aware of it. There has recently been some sort of unusual activity in the direction of The Eld (odd lights, mainly). As giants are known to use bardic magic it is possible that they are up to something, but at this stage I can only offer speculation.

   The nodes are intended as magical defenses of the empire and its outposts, but I do not know specifically what – if anything – the reactivated node will do with respect to this magic. Ebony Watch requires better information on its node from an empire arcanist.

3. Recommendations
   1. Our team will be departing Ebony Watch this evening. As I have indicated, they are a team of civilians not in the chain of command and cannot be ordered to remain for an investigation. I request that we be permitted to depart without delay.
   2. Our team has retained some of the pile of loot in the tower in lieu of bounty or reward. I request that this be permitted. Our group is in need of supplies, and a reward would otherwise be customary in these circumstances. I myself have retained an amount of loot for supplies and spell components.
   3. The node should not be approached by untrained personnel or civilians. It is, as far as I can determine, fully operational and will defend itself.
   4. The node is now in communication with other defensive nodes of the empire. In due course, an arcanist will be dispatched to investigate its reactivation. I recommend that Ebony Watch make every effort to expedite this. The town will require an empire arcanist to manage and monitor the node on an ongoing basis.
   5. No attempt should be made to replace the roof of the tower at any time. Nodes require line-of-sight to the sky. This is why the node removed the roof of the tower when it was reactivated. Even a tarpaulin over the roof will be treated similarly. If the tower leaks during the rain, that will have to be dealt with in some other way.
      It’s this nugget of information that makes this report secret, empire eyes only, and arcane ops. I’m thinking nodes communicate by bouncing signals off the stratosphere.

Lt James Mallard

SEC: SECRET-EMPEO-ARCOPS

We are Level 2! W00T!