Setting & Society Sunday - Pedlars and Alchemists

The Medievalists.net website clued me into a 2011 article on academia.edu focusing on the "Pedlars and Alchemists in Friuli History of itinerant sellers in an alpine reality."  Set this one aside for a long read later today if you have the time and want a deep history lesson here.

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Saturday in Space - Space Rubble & Fossil Meteorites

A recent article on Space.com explains that a "Potentially Dangerous Asteroid Is Actually a Pile of Rubble."  Read more here.

Finally, a bit closer to home, over on the Brain Scoop YouTube channel they have uploaded a new video featuring "Fossil Meteorites."  Enjoy!

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Beaked Bears & the Portuguese Man-of-War Up Close

Over on The LAD Bible website (the rest of the site is not really kid-friendly), they have a pictorial article on Bears with Beaks.  See more here.

Also, the National Geographic YouTube channel has uploaded a video of "The Portuguese Man-of-War Up Close."  Enjoy.

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Historical Thursday - Oceans in the East in Late-Medieval Thought

Over on the Medievalists.net, they are featuring a paper on "Oceans in the East in Late-Medieval Thought."  See more here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Ruined Castles in Ireland

Over on IrishArchaeology.ie, there is a great pictorial on "Irish Castles and Forts in Photos" but really it is all pics of ruins, which is very cool.  Plunk a few of these down in various locations in your tabletop RPG setting and there will always be plenty to explore.  See more here.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Cathedral Mathematics, the Color Thesaurus, & the North Pond Hermit

Over on the Medievalists.net website this week, they posted an article featuring the "Mathematics at Chartres Cathedral."  See more here.

Also, on ingridsnotes.wordpress.com, you'll find the wonderful Color Thesaurus here.

Finally, on GQ.com, "The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit" here.

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RPG Media Monday - Frazetta Film, Bakshi Blu-ray, & Sticky Note Monsters

Inspiration for your games can come from many places.  Visually, I find that films and other media have played a huge part in shaping my tabletop RPG experience over the years and today a couple of oldies and a new goody too are part of the mix.

First up, Rumors of the Robert Rodriguez Frazetta film project are being stirred up on Comic Book Resources here.  Ralph Bakshi of Fire & Ice fame is said to be on board as a producer.

Speaking of Ralph Bakshi, his gamer-classic film Wizards can now be had on Blu-ray at Amazon.com here.

Finally, Bored Panda tuned me in to Danish artist John Kenn Mortensen who makes Sticky Note monster drawings.  See more here.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Grizzly Food, De-Fleshing Rituals, & Neanderthal Neighbors

This week, here's a little mishmash of the modern and the prehistoric.  First up, there once existed a tavern and restaurant on the north side of Chicago.  It was a place where game of all manner were available to try for those more adventurous than the usual steak and burger crowd.  It was Grizzly's Lodge and it is memorialized here.

Somewhat further back in world history, a 9K year old de-fleshing ritual from the Philippines is discussed in an article on pasthorizonspr.com here.

Further back still, an article on sci-news.com takes up the banner of those who concur that Neanderthals lived side-by-side with modern humans for many centuries.  Read more here.

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Saturday in Space - Rover Wear, Space Plankton, & Sailing Past Triton

Over on theverge.com, they take a "Look at what two years on Mars did to the Curiosity Rover."  Read more here.

Russian scientists have made a curious discovery of sea plankton on the outside of the International Space Station.  Read more here.  Over on Forbes, they outline the debate that this has sparked here.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft sailed past Neptune's moon Triton back in 1989 and they've taken the data to produce a video of what that flyby would look like.  It's been uploaded to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel.  Enjoy.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Sharks, Cables, and Cookies

There has been some recent hubbub over Google's claims that sharks are cutting into their bottom line by attacking the cable lines at the bottom of the ocean.  The skinny on this is being compiled on skeptics.stackexchange.com here.  Be that as it may, the Discovery Channel is making it plain that the cookie cutter shark is doing documented damage to all sorts of creatures, including great white sharks, and will keep plugging away.  Check out this short video below.

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Historical Thursday - Tomb Guarded by Two Sphinxes

It's been reported over the last couple weeks around various archaeology websites about the tomb in the Macedonian region of Greece with two sphinxes guarding the entrance.  Dating to approximately 300 B.C., it is the largest tomb ever found in Greece.  Could this be the mysterious tomb of Alexander the Great?  What treasures will be found?  Snakes?  You go first . . .  Read more here on ancient-origins.net (they've got the best pics for this one).

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Step-by-step Pictorial on Imgur

Over on Imgur, someone has uploaded a step-by-step pictorial on worldbuilding that demonstrates a useful process.  See more here.

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The Tuesday Sundries - New Story on Pottermore

J.K. Rowling has penned a new 500 word short story hilighting an off-stage character from the Potterverse known as the "singing sorceress" AKA Celestina Warbeck.  If you're running a Potterverse RPG campaign, this might present a bit of the world that your players don't already know much about.  Read more on IGN.com here and sign up for Pottermore to ready the story here.

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RPG Media Monday - The Periodic Table of Storytelling

Over on James R. Harris's Design Through Storytelling website you can find the Periodic Table of Storytelling here.  Some of the entries are absolutely hilarious but there are some underlying truths to the structures of stories that tie it all together.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Virginia Renaissance Faire Ruins

Imagine a Renaissance Era village gone to seed.  Now, imagine it exists in Virginia in the United States.  That's a bit of what you might expect to see if you travel to the abandoned site of Virginia's Renaissance Faire which ran from 1996 to 1999.  More can be found on an article from last October on io9.com here.

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Saturday in Space - Rosetta Comet Landing Explained

Over on Space.com, there is a nifty pictorial and brief article describing the landing of the Rosetta spacecraft on the comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.  It's been amazing to find out more and more as we seek more knowledge.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Wild Horses & Black Wolves

I recently posted about Nat Geo's Hazen Audel and in the video below he has to prove himself to local Mongolians regarding his horsemanship.  Enjoy.

Also, an article on WIRED Science discusses how "Black Wolves [are] the Result of Interbreeding with Dogs."  Read more here.

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Historical Thursday - Henge in Kent

A new site that is being compared to Stonehenge has been discovered in Kent.  Who will be the first to write a story or adventure surrounding what is uncovered or what odd things happen around the area as they start to dig deeper?  I'd go with things getting stranger and stranger as they begin a reconstruction project.  That is, they decide to try and put stones in where they do not now exist, based on some evidence of where they were and what Stonehenge is like.  In the process, and as each stone is added, some odd occurrence, increasingly disturbing, begins to happen to those involved in the project.  But is the source of the mystery mystical, coincidental, or opportunistic?  Read more here.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Temple of Artemis Excavations

A new article over on archaeology.org heralds the re-opening of excavations at the site of the Temple of Artemis in the ancient city of Ephesus.  It's been two decades since the last dig and with recent drought conditions, archaeologists hope to progress quickly and go deeper than would normally be expected in a typical dig season.  See more here.

The Temple of Artemis is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The three temples built, destroyed by flood, rebuilt, destroyed by fire, and rebuilt again on the site in the Bronze Age and afterward.  In modern times, the Late 19th Century, the site was rediscovered and first excavated.  It's uncertain what else might be discovered on the site but there is still great mystery surrounding the various religious groups who utilized the place, and not only specifically for Artemis.

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The Tuesday Sundries - Micronations as Setting Options

A recent article on io9.com got me thinking about "The Weirdest Micronations That Have Ever Existed."  It gives some details on a pirated oil rig, small islands, and even a nation within the City of Milwaukee.  Each has an interesting enough story in actuality but certainly any of these locations could be revised as the basis for the lair of a splinter group or evil super-villain.

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RPG Media Monday - The Book of Imaginary Beings

(The) Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges was originally published in Spanish in 1957.  The description on Amazon.com is as follows:

In a perfect pairing of talent, this volume blends twenty illustrations by Peter Sís with Jorge Luis Borges's 1957 compilation of 116 "strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination," from dragons and centaurs to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat and the Morlocks of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. A lavish feast of exotica brought vividly to life with art commissioned specifically for this volume, The Book of Imaginary Beings will delight readers of classic fantasy as well as Borges's many admirers.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Scotland’s Dandaleith Stone

Scotland’s Dandaleith Stone is proving to add to the mystery of Pictish culture, or at least what we think we know about it.  As an example of how they seemingly marked boundaries or heralded events or personages import to them, it seems to have a so far unique aspect of including more than a single idea being presented.  Read more here on archaeology.org.

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Saturday in Space - Constellations Explained

Over on Space.com, there is a nifty pictorial titled "Constellations of the Night Sky: Famous Star Patterns Explained."  See more here.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Bear Saves Crow & Crow Meta-Tool-Use

Recently shared elsewhere, there is a video of a bear rescuing a crow with seemingly no interest in the bird as lunch.  Enjoy!

Also, a documentary on A Murder of Crows shows off their tool use and adaptability.

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Historical Thursday - Gear Through the Ages

There is a fascinating pictorial on Imgur.com showing soldiering gear through many periods from 1066 A.D. to 1916.  See more here.

It's easy to see that a soldier's load was never light.  None of this shows what sort of other items might have been pressed upon them in the interest of the unit, as well as food and water (and other beverages) when beasts of burden were not able to be used.

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Worldbuilding Wednesday - Comet-Catching Rosetta Probe

Today we take a look at some real world worldbuilding as the European Space Agency's probe, named Rosetta, was scheduled this morning to be the first ever to orbit a comet, named 67P/C-G.  Aside from the re-broadcast of the actual event, you can find a ton of other links with background on the mission and more information here (scroll down).

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The Tuesday Sundries - Will Bird and the Roman Gladius

There's a wonderful story of a Roman Gladius found by a WWI soldier titled "Will Bird and the Roman Gladius" which you can read here.

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RPG Media Monday - Photogenic Castles

From the world of photography, by way of the-Open-Mind.com, comes "25 Beautiful Castles from Around the World."  See more here.

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Setting & Society Sunday - Old Things

Sometimes it is hard to imagine the origins of some everyday things like pants, shoes, socks, and the like.  While we cannot know for sure if the oldest examples we have of some such things are the original examples of those things, they give us at least some idea of how long they may have been around.  This can help us to put some perspective to our own tabletop RPG setting creations as being rooted more in reality than we may have thought before knowing about the examples.  So, with that in mind, here is a pictorial article from BoredPanda.com on "16 Oldest Surviving Examples of Everyday Things."

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Saturday in Space - Martian MOXIE, Getting There, and What to See for Now

NASA has plans to send a machine to Mars that will make oxygen.  If successful, a larger version will follow.  Read more here in a New York Post article.

A couple of articles on Space.com that caught my attention include this first one regarding a propulsion engine previously not thought to be viable.  Recent tests of the microwave thruster system seems to indicate otherwise.  If true, it opens up huge possibilities in extended space travel and self-sustaining satellites.  Check out more on this development here.

Meanwhile, from a more down to Earth perspective, August could prove to be an exciting month for those who like to look to the stars.  A recent article suggest "How to Spot 5 Cosmic Treats in August Night Sky" include a "double-double star," "cosmic chrysanthemum," and more here.

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Flora & Fauna Friday - Nat Geo Vids & Hazen Audel

If you work on any tabletop RPG setting material and aren't subscribed to the National Geographic YouTube channel, you're missing out on a lot of fun videos and consistent inspiration.  They have a lot of full shows on the channel, and many clips from shows they have done, as well as quick looks at shows that are coming up on their television station.  While to some this might feel like signing up to receive a string of commercials, I personally find little tidbits and springboard ideas even from some of the flat-out promos.  Take, for example, the follow two clips for the currently running Hazen Audel show "Survive the Tribe."  The host and show are new enough on the scene that neither has a page on IMDb yet.  He's a self-styled adventurer-explorer-teacher-presenter-etc. and his demo reel on Vimeo even has some fun moments.

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