For posterity (though the bit where I flirt with androids is a trifle embarrassing).

So this is what I dreamed last night:

A friend and I were in Eagan (where I lived from ages 2-12) trying to finish an indie film version of Running In Her Veins. Partway through, my family came to visit and we went to a bizzare but awesome children's museum in the area (there really is one, too, but this wasn't it). While exploring the museum, I found a strange underground complex and was recruited onto a team of FBI-trained superpowered juvenile delinquents (Shadow Unit meets the Misfits!), and from this point on in the dream I was a teenager. I am not sure if I had a superpower or not.

 

While doing stealth training at night, we stumbled across evidence that a mad scientist was spreading “biological informational weapons,” which turned out to be AI programs who could project forcefields. One of them was loaded into a female body (hello Aigis from Persona 3!), but the rest were initially on laptops. We figured out how to get around the forcefields (distortion on the bottom edge made the last 3 centimeters of forcefield unstable, and they phased objects in and out of solidity. I messed up one of my fingers but made it through, the logic being that as a teenager, I was really skinny – 5'9”, 145 lbs, 27 inch waistline. Moving through solid objects under a razor sharp forcefield which may pass its distortion phase and return those objects to solid any moment is NOT FUN, let me tell you.), got the laptop-AIs bodies, and recruited them onto the team.

 

Then one of my cousins and one of my uncles were watching the drainage of a lake as a bridge got repaired. I was just reading a story where a mudslide cut off a bridge yesterday, so I know where this came from too. My cousin was playing in the mud (and my uncle was fishing) when another of my cousins drove past on the detour route in a souped-up little car I called the Red Light Special. It used to be a real car, but now it is no more.

 

Then I was back in our FBI secret base headquarters thing, showing the AI girls around our school and awkwardly hitting on them.

 

Then I woke up.

Webcomickery.

So, as I've been coyly hinting/loudly shouting in various corners of the Internet over the last few days, my webcomic project Madcap Archaeology has been, well, frantically unburied from where past societies left it and is now being prepared and written at a breakneck pace.  The origin of the project is discussed here, and the worldbuilding here,  It's a character-driven MacGuffin-hunt romp through a weird and fantastic world, the sex and the violence are in more equal proportions than is usual.  It will definitely be going live on both tumblr and deviantart; and possibly on its own website as well, if the artist and I can find a) hosting space; and b) a webmonkey willing to help with the webmonkeying.  Launch date is somewhere between May 11th and August 24th, depending on scheduling and how long it takes to build up a backlog of pages.  The full story arc is some 280 pages, which will take between 3 and 6 years to unfold, depending on our update schedule (yet to be determined).

Anyway, all that is boring stuff.  I want to talk to you about the characters!

Indir is a storyteller, a scholar, a musician, a master of prestidigitation, and a sorceror whose magic is mostly useless.  He can craft illusions or briefly conjure unreal-looking solid geometrical shapes, but that's about it.  Terminally cheerful, enthusiastic, curious, excitable, flamboyant, and dramatic, Indir is smarter than he seems but not much wiser.  Of the four, he's most attuned to the emotional states of others and is very much the peacemaker in the group.

Vessa is the de facto leader and organizer of the group.  Geometer, engineer, spell-binder, alchemist, and most shockingly of all a cartographer, Vessa is geeky, lazy, practical, boisterous, nervy, and impatient.  She's very protective and possessive of the team she put together, and generally the one who takes the most initiative in both business and romance.  What magic she has is completely centered around tools and magical objects.

Jonathy is a warrior.  Trained in the religious martial arts and mystical traditions of Nautilus Cloister, she has very tight control over herself, body and mind, and a small degree of both psionic and divine power.  Jonathy is emotional, nostalgic, intuitive, irascible, and flat-out indestructible. The most withdrawn and isolated of the group, she has come through a lot of trust issues and heartbreak.  She's the devoted one, at least when it comes to Vessa and Indir.

Naurian is the group's wilderness guide.  An expert in reconnaissance, survival, tracking, and archery, Naurian speaks of a long and experienced history as a traveler, but he's thin on providing details.  Awkward but outgoing, driven, pragmatic, often quiet but frequently amused, Naurian often finds himself taking care of the details of everyday life that the others neglect. He's the one who barters for food in the market and goes looking for jobs when they run low on goods to exchange.  Unlike the others, Naurian has absolutely no magic.  The most recent addition to the group, he works best with Vessa, gets along best with Indir, and maintains an uneasy tension with Jonathy.

Together, the four of them work as a retrieval service.  In a world which is constantly changing scale, direction, and content due to Flux storms, talented scavengers are always in demand, especially when powerful people have some specific rare commodity in mind.  When someone comes to them with a commission, Indir's heard all about what they want, Vessa knows how and where to locate it, Naurian knows how to get them there quickly and quietly, and Jonathy keeps them safe from any threat along the way.

It's going to be a blast.

So...

...how do I set up those little messages at the bottom of an LJ post noting that this post was crossposted from Dreamwidth?  And are they like an automatic siganture, or would I have to edit 'em in every time I post?

Testing, one two three.

Is this footer on?