Just because it needs to be said...

(This board contains adult material.)

Dogstar Academy for the Defensive Arts is an active and well-established adult roleplay board set in the Harry Potter universe. With a focus on writing, we are a board for those 17 and older who wish to improve their writing skills and interact with a friendly and dedicated community.

Our plot brings us to a time well after Harry and his friends have left the great halls of Hogwarts: well after Voldemort has been defeated, yet long before all evil has been removed from power.

Dolores Umbridge gained the title of Minister of Magic a little over two years ago. This title bore the kind of unrestricted power that should never have been given to such a person. Instantly, all half-humans and beasts found themselves rounded up and imprisoned. Fugitives from the Ministry (those who opposed Umbridge) were apprehended. A goal to place Ministry outposts all over the country was set. It so happened that their first (not so shiny, not so new) acquisition was Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Minister Umbridge, along with her army of Death Eaters and Dementors, took it swiftly. She lost only a handful of students and professors to escape prior to her arrival. Leading them was the notorious and most wanted wizard in all Britain: Sirius Black.

It is now in one of the last strongholds of resistance that the man who eluded the Ministry for so many years is doing it again. This time, however, he's running an academy in the only way he knows how: by teaching illegal magic, of course. Castell Seren-Ci, more recently known as Dogstar Academy for the Defensive Arts, is a home and sanctuary to those it keeps. It is a training ground for all who oppose the current Ministry, and those who take the more difficult road of standing up to the government find themselves here one way or another.

Eventually.

Dogstar Academy. The war isn't coming: it's already upon us.

Very, very random

In commemorating Simon Weisenthal's passing, one of the denizens of SFF Net said 'One of the 36 righteous men is gone.'  Subsequent posts led me to Google for their reference to these thirty-six, the Lamed-Vovniks.

( Quotes and links )

In more sober news, but still spiritually related:

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- New flooding hit New Orleans' low-lying 9th Ward Friday as water poured over a section of the Industrial Canal levee under repair.

The levee had been breached during Hurricane Katrina, causing catastrophic flooding through the neighborhoods of the 9th Ward.

Officials blamed rain and storm surge caused by winds from Hurricane Rita for the high water, the New Orleans Times-Picayune said.

Dozens of blocks were again under water as a wave of water 30 feet wide poured over a dike that had been used to patch breaks in the Industrial Canal.

On the street that runs parallel to the canal, the water ran waist-deep and was rising.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

Y'know, if Dennis Hastert wants to bulldoze the whole of New Orleans and, I dunno, put in a golf course or something, shouldn't we do the same thing to Houston?  In fact, let's replace every city hit by a hurricane with a golf course, because there can never be too many places for the rich to spend their leisure, right?  Even if their buildings are the ones getting knocked down.


If the plural of 'fan' is 'fen', is the plural of 'Firefly flan', 'Firefly flen'?


Tomorrow is the Shire of Southkeep's la Dia de los Muertos.  Well, technically, it started tonight, but other than thlroz cookin' her skilled fingers off, there's little going on.  Stuff in the Paludine is almost always daytrip.  I, for those not familiar with me in a SCAdian fashion, shall be site-heralding and also doing the setup for the High Table.  This is where the OCD comes in handy.  There MUST be complete sets of things, they MUST match or be complementary, they MUST be properly washed, wrapped and folded when done with.  Where's the camera?  Maybe I'll take pictures.  Not very medieval, true, but ever so much faster than illumination.

Checking on Houston - webcams

http://www.earthcam.com/usa/texas/houston/museum/ (look!  standing intact trees!)
http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/SkylineCamOne.html
http://www.click2weather.com/wxcam/1807605/detail.html

Looks like Houston can join the Missed-That-Bullet club.

Galveston:
http://www.galveston.com/webcams/thestrand/
http://www.galveston.com/webcams/stewartbeach/
http://www.galveston.com/webcams/harborhouse/

Can't find a live cam for Beaumont/Port Arthur.  Not terribly surprised.