Thanks, love. It's smoky where I am, but no real danger.

No no, I HAVE dental insurance. Great dental insurance, actually. The same kind my dentist has, actually. The only problem is actually finding an open spot to SEE somebody. I swear to Christ, you could walk into a Kaiser Permanente bleeding from every orifice in your body and on fire, and the first thing they'd do is tell you to come back in three weeks after you've filled out their bullshit forms.

Yeah, my tooth still hurts a bit. >.<

Interesting question, but IP law is so not my bag, baby.

He'll figure it out. He's a smart guy and well-connected.

Isn't it cute? It's a frolicking baby AT-AT.

:-)

I see what you did there.

I have better posture than was photographed in that desert; it was kind of cold!

Thank you, sir. They should be, though I find the excitement of the coming presentation is keeping me from sleep. I'll have to work on that.

True! I think we're still in an adjustment period. By the end of the year, we'll be much cozier socially I'm sure.

Hearts.

I re-watched that this morning, just to assure myself I wasn't totally insane.

The Tower of London is well documented. The central tower - the simple, four story stone building at the center - the original tower - that was constructed in the 11th century. The rest: The other towers, the walls and wards, those were built up in the centuries that followed. I considered using it, but it's a plain stone cube.

In the 11th century, the majority of forts were wooden motte and baileys. Artificial hill, two or three story wooden fort on top, wooden palisade outside, dry moat outside that wall. And that was is.

But I figure people wouldn't understand that model, either, and those weren't the great castles of the day. You only get 2 or 3 castles each in a game of Lyssan. They should be the big ones. And that's true to the era. One of the characteristics of the dark age is that tech took longer to spread. You could have something WAY ahead of its time and stay that way for longer, with the communications & educational system of the time.

What I wanted to avoid was the castle features that were learned from the crusades: Multiple wards, inner curtain wall and outer curtain wall, massively compounded gatehouses. So this is the hybrid halfstep: A few towers, the rest of the wall follows the countours of a hill, and there's still room on the front to add a simple gatehouse.

P.S. The star fort you linked is typical of the 16th century. That's Age of Empire, not medieval, after cannons had made castles largely obsolete. It still made sense to do simple construction of brick walls, or retainer walls holding back earthen ramparts. The old castle shapes still gave good fields of fire, too. But there was no sense spending a decade or two on massive stone construction when a week of cannon fire could reduce it to rubble. We had one of those forts in the town where I grew up: Fort Conde, guarding Mobile Bay.

Another castle (ruin) that's well documented to date back to the 11th century was Old Sarum. It's a classic norman hill fort in design, but larger, and built in stone with a several stone buildings within.

Warmer than here, anyway.

Will do!