Sharrukin's Palace

October was a fairly productive month. I got started on my university courses for this year, and although those are definitely presenting some challenges I seem to still be on track. Didn’t quite hit my objective for Composer of Cultures, but that’s certainly within reach. I also managed to write a complete Lower Decks novelette from a standing start, so there’s that.

November is going to be insanely busy, though – I’ve got to prepare for Philcon 2026, and I have not one but two projects in observational astronomy that are on a very tight schedule. So there’s not going to be a lot of slack time.

Here’s the general plan for November.

University Studies

I’m going to be doing a lot of observational planning this month – target selection, preparation, getting time on the telescope (while working around the inconvenient location of a few objects in the sky, and the presence of a waxing Moon which tends to wash out deep-sky objects). For two projects – one of which involves generating Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams for three star clusters, the other of which involves capturing an exoplanetary transit by measuring stars’ light curves. All of which happens as part of a team effort and on a tight schedule. This is going to be a challenge. Also a lot of fun, of course, assuming it all goes off on time.

The objectives for November are:

• SXPS288 – Complete the Astronomy modules 2-6, as well as the Skills module 2.
• S384 – Complete the Exoplanets modules 2-3, the Project modules 1-2, and the Stars modules 1-3.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I finished last month’s story, “Sixpence in Her Shoe,” and wrote the complete story “Asculum” in October. That last was fun – a tense little cross-over with Star Trek: Prodigy.

Unfortunately, as of this week my primary posting destination, Archive of Our Own, is down due to a serious security incident. ETA for the site coming back up is anywhere from 2-4 weeks. Which is causing all manner of angst out in the wild. Personally, I’m just going to put this particular sector on the shelf for the month of November. I may work on the next story so I can post some or all of it as soon as AO3 comes back online, but given how busy I’m likely to be otherwise this isn’t going to be a priority.

No objectives in this sector for November.

Architect of Worlds & Composer of Cultures

I’m continuing to make incremental progress on version 0.6 of the Cultural Evolution Game. There’s still some work left on the Catalog of Capabilities, but another couple of days of effort should see that done. So I’m reasonably confident I can move on to the next sections this month.

The objectives for November are:

• Finish the Catalog of Capabilities for version 0.6 of the Cultural Evolution Game for Composer of Cultures
• Re-implement the “Reading the Entrails” section from previous drafts for version 0.6
• Contribute to the initial design for other portions of Composer of Cultures
• Continue to collect other research for a potential second edition of Architect of Worlds, and make very occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

Personal Universes

Still working on using a set of games from my shelf to generate a future-history timeline for the revised “Human Destiny” universe. I was able to finish a run of Stellar Horizons in October, and I’m very happy with the results. I doubt I’ll need to go back and tinker with that any longer.

The next phase of this project will involve working with the GMT Games title, Red Dust Rebellion. This is one of their COunter-INsuergency (COIN) games, simulating a futuristic colonial rebellion on a settled-but-not-very-terraformed Mars. I have in mind that several factions of the early interstellar era will have their roots on the revolutionary Mars of the late 22nd Century. Early results are promising – Red Dust Rebellion isn’t nearly as heavy a game as Stellar Horizons, so I suspect I’ll be able to get this piece of the project done in November even with everything else that’s going on.

The objective for November is to continue working with Red Dust Rebellion to build components of a new timeline for the “Human Destiny” future history.

Philcon 2026

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’m slated to attend Philcon 2026 later this month. I’ll be running a session of the upcoming RPG Pioneer, offering a seminar on historical modeling for worldbuilding, and sitting on a few panels. Going to be a fairly busy weekend, and although I’ve specifically arranged things so I’ll need a lot less prep time than in previous years, that doesn’t mean zero prep time. So that has to happen in aming everything else that’s going on.

The objectives for November are:

• Prepare a “convention notebook” including Pioneer RPG materials and notes for my panels.
• Prepare a slide deck and outline for the worldbuilding seminar
• Attend Philcon 2026