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After Blue finished talking, Rurail would remember the freshly-opened treasure room, and make his way there.
Only one item on the pedestal, but it was pleasing to the eye- an oval shield about 2 feet wide & 1 & a half feet tall, with alternating bands & waves of silver & black.
Prominently featured in the center was some kind of clear glass gem, 5.5 inches long & set on it's side, surrounded by orderly coils of jet-black metal snakes. Around it rose six low geometric studs, each of which sporting their own black snakes. The studs had clear black hexagonal centers an inch or two wide, the color similiar to the main gem, while the surrounding half-inch facets glittered faintly.
Just above the rounded lip of the shield, slightly confused due to the color & texture of the metal, intricate patterns & geometric engravings danced their way around the shield, interlaced with two embossed damascus snakes which coiled loosely around each of the studs in-turn.
Rurail picks it up to inspect the gems & carvings, feels the heft, but then places it back down on the pedestal. He unslings his shield & leaves the chamber-
He'll leave his old shield in the main room before returning to claim the new piece of equipment.

Re-entering the chamber, Rurail dons the shield properly, slipping his forearm through the solid metal band and interlacing his fingers with 3 of the 4 leather hand-bands. It was made for a five-fingered species, each of the bands looping around a finger to leave the palm open. Convenient.
And then the shield shifted.
The gemstones sank into the metal to re-appear on the underside, the lip of shield near his hand came back to allow wider wrist movement, the snakes disappeared into the fold but the geometric patterns spread and consolidated, covering the shield but becoming less complex. The center became somewhat thicker than the edges.
Holding the shield up as if to block a hail of arrows, the shield changed again, becoming round and then much more ovoid as its upper and lower lips extended another foot & a half in their respective directions, the metal thinning as it expanded.
Again thinking of his weapon, again the shield changed. The crystals remained on the underside. Hm.
He also felt a slight warming sensation from the shield, some sort of magic, though he didn't know what.

He heads back out into the lobby.

Quote from: BlindKitty on August 17, 2014, 07:06:31 am

You gotta be f**** kidding me. That a person old enough to know how the computer keyboard works thinks that lack of computers lead to downfall of communism OR might be interested in seeing the USSR of all things back? I honestly can not believe this. I have no faith in humans whatsoever, and it still too much and I outright refuse to believe that. Tell me that some troll hacked your account. Also, actually, you got the automation part pretty much wrong way. In communism, the work is the ultimate good, and everybody should work because work is good. In capitalism, if you can get away with not working (because, for example, your spouse earns enough money), hey, good for you! So yeah, lack of work is problematic with communistic society, but not as much of a problem in capitalism.

Hmm... Somebody poses an interesting hypothetical and you respond with an emotional barrage. A'ight, lets do this.

You seem to not understand how automation affects an economy. You see it makes specific jobs redundant. For example, only 300 years ago about 90% of the workforce was employed in agriculture, but these days that has dropped to less than 2%, without triggering any sort of food shortage. This is because agriculture has taken up automation. Crops are sowed, watered and harvested on mass with great big machines driven by a single person, rather than by hand by a very large workforce. Reducing the labor demand of an industry has allowed people to move into other industries, industries that provide us other cool things like monster trucks and vidya games.
So, automation is the greatest gift to a capitalist society because it allows people to make a greater economic contribution per person and therefor things can only get better, right?
WRONG!
1915 was the peak year for the horse population on earth. Since that year their population has rapidly dropped because they have been made redundant and replaced by cars. It isn't that horses are lazy, it is just that they are incapable of preforming as well as a car, and this leaves them with nothing to contribute to the economy. They are pretty much redundant. The free market doesn't just magically make jobs for horses because their old positions were automated, and in economic terms there is no difference between a human and a horse.
It is easy to assume humans will always be able to fill a role that automation can not, but to do so is stupid. The transport industry is one of the biggest in any developed nation, but it is going to change very quickly within our life times with the introduction of self driving vehicles. There are machines that test the interactions of different drugs at a rate of thousands a day. What once took an entire floor of accountants to do is now done using a few megabytes of software. The vast, vast width of our economy is subject to automation, and humans, like the horse, will become redundant.
We are approaching a thing called 'near zero employment' where a very small fraction of humans are able to do anything of value. So how does a capitalist society function is such a technological environment? Well it just doesn't. When wealth is awarded to work, and nobody can work, things break down. The only possible solution is through wealth redistribution, a concept much more closely linked to communism than capitalism.

Study the intersectionality between macroeconomics and technology and everybody turns post-scarcity socialist sooner or later.

:3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Hurumph


Any news on how Russia is responding to the attack on it's APC column? Seems they're denying any forces ever entered Ukraine, and any vehicles were destroyed at all, which is good.

Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_III

Misuse of these emblems is prohibited by international law. Misuse may diminish their protective value and undermine the effectiveness of humanitarian workers. Use of one of the emblems in order to protect combatants and military equipment with the intent of misleading an adversary, perfidy, is considered a war crime.

Quote from: http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/icrc_002_0876.pdf

PERFIDY
The use of the distinctive emblem during an armed conflict in order to protect combatants and military equipment and with
intent to mislead the adversary. Perfidious use of the emblem, when causing death or serious personal injury, is considered a war crime.

(PMs)

Notice that people whom started before aug gets reduced repair price till september.

Under that regime my brother got to t10 and has now an all black successful gunbed without paying a dime.

For reals? How reduced?

I thought they were using the red cross symbol not working with the red cross organization.

I've read they worked with the russian red cross but there're communication failures with the international committee of the red cross, who are supposed to oversee the operation.

Quote from: GrizzlyAdamz on August 13, 2014, 02:21:52 pm

If I wanted to get relief somewhere fast, I'd support doing just that- and this pragmatism is what Russia is standing on.

That is utter crap.  If Russia wanted to speed this through they would work with the Red Cross and the supplies would already be delivered.

No, they wouldnt. There's a reason the national guard gets mobilized for domestic emergencies. The logistics they can bring to bear are enormous. The red cross, while a big organization, can't compete with a nation's armed forces in this regard.