More Notes from the Road

So it turns out that once you start taking notes of names, it becomes a fun habit.  Here're some more:

Places:

• The Crazy Mountains
• White Sulfur Springs
• Bear Canyon (gee, I wonder what lives there?)
• Pipestone
• Tobacco Root Mountains
• Anaconda
• A town called Opportunity
• Gold Creek
• Bearmouth Recreation Area
• Beavertail Hill
• Sapphire Mountains
• The town of Superior
• Dry Creek
• Lookout Pass
• Spirit Lake
• Treaty Rock
• Fishtrap
• A town called Deal (sounds like Bartertown to me...  this one is definitely seeing use)
• Stampede Pass

NPC names (towns in real life, but probably better as NPCs for my purposes):

• Absaroka
• Tarkio
• Mullen
• Cataldo
• Kootenai
• Kittitas
• Kachess

I've also started reading the Black Company series.  There were two primary reasons for my interest here.  I first encountered mention of the series through True Sorcery, which is a standalone version of the magic system found in the Black Company Campaign Setting.  That there was a setting which had magic resembling TruSorc intrigued me, but wasn't quite enough to push me to pick it up.  What did that was Daztur's Combat As War post on EnWorld, which cited the Black Company's exploits as canonical combat as war material.  I finished the first book last night at around 2AM PST / 5AM EST, and I was not disappointed.  It started with combat as war, then gradually shifted to focusing more on the high sorcery of the Taken.  Particularly interesting here is that the 'PC' wizards of the Company appear to be around 5th level by TruSorc's standards (focusing mostly on Sense and Illusion), while the Taken are in the 10ish range (with powers like Shapeshifting, Healing, and Air Lore; I really liked Stormbringer, since I quite enjoy building True Sorcerers who do that), and the Lady seems to be in the 10-15 range (the Ritual of Taking, at the very least, should require Create Undead, and she definitely has Telepathy as well).  Given that the Company's wizards have already had their lives extended by magic, and the Taken are kind of undead, this means that reaching high levels takes a loooong time in this world.  Combined with the way these level ranges match up nicely with ACKS', this pleases me.

TODO: write True Sorcery Lite for ACKS.   Yeah, that's happening...

As a result of leisure reading and traveling, though,  actual prep work for ACKS has suffered.  Now I have names and ideas, so things should go faster.  Hopefully?