It’s been over 200 strips into the story and I just realized that I haven’t really gone into much detail regarding Coco’s Dragon Knight (a Paladin/Sorcerer). I’ll only be going into it a little over the next week, but his full story (and Coco’s) won’t come until much later.

Speaking of blood sacrifice, I’ve been playing the new version of Dwarf Fortress: Slaves to Armok, God of Blood recently (v.31.19). I ran into a regular reader of Familiar Ground over on the DF forums. That was kinda cool (/waves hi). The scarcity of metal ore means that Goblinite (the melted weapons and armor of defeated goblin) is perhaps the most reliable source of iron and steel.

If you modify the raws of Dwarves in the /raw/objects/entity_default file to:
[ETHIC:EAT_SAPIENT_OTHER:ACCEPTABLE]
[ETHIC:EAT_SAPIENT_KILL:ACCEPTABLE]
Goblins also become your best source of meat, since apparently it’s next to impossible to domesticate elephants, yaks and cows now because they eat way too much grass and harvesting feed isn’t in the game (yet).

What?  Another end of the world story?  Sorta.  It is, but it isn’t.

At least we’ll get to follow along with the antics of Toad, Sasha and Coco as they stumble towards the  apocalypse that isn’t…

Here ends chapter 1.

Coco is showing some of his prejudices.

It’s understandable considering some of the nasty things he’s fought that crawls, oozes or lumbers to do evil.  This is almost like foreshadowing that he’s gonna fall prey to some beautiful evil creature in the future or something.

See.  This is why you should listen to your mother and don’t jump off cliffs and bridges just because the other boys do. 

Or something like that.  I wasn’t listening.

Familiar Ground is holding steady at #101 at TopWebComics.

It’s always the quiet ones that are the most dangerous.

That dorf priest standing just to the side of the bridge in Alterac Valley?  Take him out first.  Likewise, that Kalashtar cleric casting Astral Seal to the corner.

Cat sitting quietly in the corner glowing with arcane energy?  Definitely take it out first.  

Familiar Ground is holding steady at the 100 spot at TopWebComics.

Did you know that studies have shown that animals laugh?  At least they exhibit behavior during play that is similar to laughter.  Instead of giggling or guffawing like humans though, they chirp, pant or otherwise exhibit other traits that express humor.

I wonder what sort of humor a rat might like.

I know that small dogs find getting underfoot and tripping humans to be a great amusement .

*** Familiar Ground is at the 101 spot at TopWebComics. ***

Sasha is up to some of her tricks again.  Don’t worry.  We’ll soon get an explanation of her abilities.

Familiar Ground is hovering around that 101 mark at TopWebComics.

Familiar Ground has been included in a virtual gallery exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco with dozens of other strips in the Monsters of Webcomics show.  It’ll be up starting this Sunday and will last until December.  Drop on by if you’re in the area.

As a fun exercise, I wonder how long we can carry on a word association game in the comments section of this strip.  It’s a game where you post a word that you associate with the previous word that’s posted. 

For example, if I post “frog” then the next poster can put “lily pad”, “amphibian” or “Joan Rivers”; anything they associate with frogs.

Let’s start with the word:  “CAKE”

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Familiars are like external hard drives for their wizards, sharing knowledge and memories.

In real life, it’s pretty amazing that computer processing and memory seems to double every two years or so.  I still recall playing with an IBM PC Jr back when I was very small.  I remember when my dad upgraded it from its normal 128k memory to 256k.  It had 4.77 MHz processing.

That was about 20+ years ago.  Now toasters and microwaves have more processing power and memory.

I can’t imagine what sort of computers we’ll have around 20 years from now.  Direct interface with our brains?  I imagine touch screens will be everywhere.  Visors that project a video screen directly into our retinas?  Everything will have a website and able to be accessed online, from takeout to family doctors.  I bet the DMV site will still take forever though.

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Vote for Familiar Ground at TopWebComics

I like spy movies.  The Bourne films.  007 films.  All great.

But I especially like bad spy movies.  Spy movies that are so bad that they become great.  Spies Like Us.  Ishtar.

Even better are spy movie spoofs like the Naked Gun movies and Johnny English.

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