Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend

I dropped the ball last week with the whole characters thing. I got it to you on Tuesday, but still. I'm not going to post one tonight. Also, I haven't gotten the map finished yet (not even started...there, I admitted it). I've been a little busy trying to get the house on the market.

Anyway, there's a couple of things I wanted to talk about tonight. First, since this post is so old, it didn't pop up in March, but rather in February. As it is, that's below the bigass March Madness post, and so I don't know if people would know to go and look for it. Anyway, here is the initial episode of Throwdown!

Secondly, I spent the better part of an hour today discussing things with the director of medicinal chemistry. We didn't talk much about chemistry, but we did talk a few things about history. He's an Englishman, and he was telling me about how he had just read a book about the English revolutions (the civil war, the passing of power from the king to the parliament) and he was talking about how few people realize that the Dutch actually invaded England and pretty much took over.

The thing was, this was an invited invasion by the English aristocracy, who were afraid of James II's claims that he was righteously set upon the throne of England by God. Worse, he was Catholic. William of Orange happened to be Protestant. Hesitantly, he invaded but ended up winning when the King's soldiers essentially abandoned their allegiance to the crown and sided with William (later known as William III, or "King Billy" by the Scottish).

As I haven't read the whole story of King Billy, I won't go into too many details. I will, however, mention that this story struck a chord with me. In my book (it should be around book III, King of Storms), I was having an issue getting two separate groups together. However, an invited invasion would make sense, especially given the political make-up of the two groups. There's also a familial link (similar to the King Billy story), which would make the plot device work rather well.

Anyway, I have a bit more renewed vigor for the story now. I'm still smoothing everything out, but I've jotted down the plot line of the planned invasion for later use. I apologize again for not having a character sheet ready to go. I'll work on that for tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the Throwdown.