Zeppelin Quest I: A New Adventure!

So, for the purposes of ease of publication (ha) myself and my Editor have gotten to work compling a few volumes: starting with ZeppelinQuest, The Big One (I-X), an omnibus of all your favorite updates to this wonderful Quest. The Big One contains Updates 1-10 as written by myself and all staff members of the project at the time of writing, and is neatly compressed into Google Docs form so you too can get paper copies to read on long family vacations, flights to far-off foreign climes, or for lighting particularly stubborn fires.

The Big One is free to access, formatted for easy printing pleasure, and contains updates from Adventure Begins! to Entering Unusual Airspace. The online doccument will be free to access until I develop a proper method to shill for it, and doesn't even have any spyware attached! Well, none of mine, at least. Either way, I hope everyone enjoys The Big One!

And there's even a link in this very post! Knowing, however, the proclivaties of XenoForo when it comes to dropping the ball on alerts, I've also got in contact with the fine Scott Pakin and his Automatic Complaint Letter Generator to address a little issue I've had.

---

I'm not going to sit here and brainlessly point out Faithless Co-Authors's flaws—we all know it has them—but I am going to say a little about how the practice of conjuring up dirt against its fellow human beings is bleeding-heart and mean-spirited. It may help if I begin my discussion by relating an innocuous story in order to illustrate my point: A few days ago I was arguing with a particularly fickle idiot who was insisting that Faithless Co-Authors's decisions are based on reason. I tried to convince this grossly hoggish wanker that Faithless Co-Authors's claim that "the norm" shouldn't have to worry about how the exceptions feel is factually unsupported and politically motivated. Faithless Co-Authors undeniably seems to be fond of concocting new ways to paint pictures of imprudent worlds inhabited by repugnant scamps. Yes, I could add that it is our responsibility to ourselves, to our posterity, to our ancestors, and to the God of Nature, which made us what we are, to communicate and teach, but I wanted to keep my message simple and direct. I didn't want to distract you from the main thrust of my message, which is that I like to speak of Faithless Co-Authors as "odious". That's a reasonable term to use, I allege, but let's now try to understand it a little better. For starters, it makes it sound like serfdom and slavery do not represent oppression unless the serfs or the slaves themselves "articulate" that oppression. That's the rankest sort of pretense I've ever heard. The reality is that each time we see Faithless Co-Authors send us down a blasphemous path that will be tough to recover from, we should realize that keeping the victims of its actions in our thoughts and prayers is not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. It does nothing to prevent Faithless Co-Authors from inflicting the same horror someplace else. That's why I tell people that Faithless Co-Authors never tires of forcing us to experience the full spectrum of the Faithless Co-Authors Rainbow of Caciquism. No, scratch that. Let me instead make the much stronger claim that one of the bewildering paradoxes of our time is the extent to which Faithless Co-Authors is willing to create a beachhead for organized fascism, especially given that it itself would be affected by such actions.

Simply put, my purpose here is not to make a cause célèbre out of exposing Faithless Co-Authors's warnings for what they really are. Well, okay, it is. But I should point out that Faithless Co-Authors asserts that sin is good for the soul. Whether that's true or not, its evidence is corrupted by a vast amount of nonsense and outright fraud. Before we can further discuss Faithless Co-Authors's claim we must acknowledge that I plan to hunt down not only the perpetrators of mammonism but also all of the proponents of that insufferable philosophy. Are you with me—or against me? Whatever you decide, Faithless Co-Authors must sense its own irremediable inferiority. That's why it is so desperate to terrorize our youngsters; it's the only way for it to distinguish themselves from the herd. It would be a lot nicer, however, if Faithless Co-Authors also realized that I find stereotyping annoying. In almost all cases, it's a poor substitute for more careful analysis and characterization. On the other hand, it is marvelously effective at explaining how this is not the place to develop that subject. It demands many pages of analysis, which I can't spare in this letter. Instead, I'll just state the key point, which is that Faithless Co-Authors's execrations are truculent. They're unnecessary. They're counterproductive. Whenever I encounter them I think that Faithless Co-Authors's holier-than-thou attitudes are not our only concern. To state the matter in a few words, no one likes being attacked by jaded, scrofulous segregationists. Even worse, Faithless Co-Authors exploits our fear of those attacks—which it claims will evolve before the year is over into biological, chemical, or nuclear attacks—as a pretext to permit appalling pseudologists to rise to positions of leadership and authority. If you think that's scary, then you should remember that Faithless Co-Authors wants to get me thrown in jail. It can't cite a specific statute that I've violated, but it does believe that there must be some statute. This tells me that you should check out some of the things Faithless Co-Authors is saying about libertinism. The litany of inaccuracies, half-truths, made-up "facts", and downright falsehoods will shock you. And I won't even bother mentioning that if you've ever read a Web site's terms of use then many characteristics of Faithless Co-Authors's op-ed pieces will sound like the "what you're not allowed to post" section. They're unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, and otherwise objectionable. Or, to restate that concept without all the legal jargon, Faithless Co-Authors accuses me of being irritable whenever I state that even within its coven, it employs torture, slavery, violence, mass starvation, and other abuses to terrorize its confreres into representing a threat to all the people in the area, indeed, possibly the world. All right, I'll admit that I have a sharp tongue and sometimes write with a bit of a poison pen, but the fact remains that Faithless Co-Authors likes destabilizing the already volatile social fabric that it purportedly aims to save. That's the most damnable thing about it. It's also why it is easy to see faults in others. But it takes perseverance to call a spade a spade.

Faithless Co-Authors has recently altered the tone of its utterances. They're no longer a dirge-like recitation of perpetual victimization but rather a preview of new trends in "resistance" propagandizing. For example, Faithless Co-Authors has been showcasing its latest techniques for obscuring unpleasant facts, facts such as that it is high time for the members of our community to maintain the great principles of virtue, truth, right, and honor. That's too big of a subject to get into here so let me instead discuss how Faithless Co-Authors counts vain, recalcitrant peculators as its friends. Unfortunately for it, these are hired friends, false friends, friends incapable of realizing for a moment that if one dares to criticize even a single tenet of Faithless Co-Authors's reports, one is promptly condemned as homophobic, oppugnant, xenophobic, or whatever epithet Faithless Co-Authors deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Although there are no formal, external validating criteria for Faithless Co-Authors's vapid claims, I think we can safely say that its sadistic half-measures aren't something we can safely ignore. Nor should we merely disparage them wittily over martinis at cocktail parties. No, we must weaken the critical links in Faithless Co-Authors's nexus of caustic Jacobinism. That's the only way to educate the public about how some of Faithless Co-Authors's foot soldiers have privately reassured me that Faithless Co-Authors isn't as shameless as it sounds. Rather, they avow, Faithless Co-Authors is just playing the cards that it thinks it needs to. I don't buy that excuse. Faithless Co-Authors may have started as non-shameless, but it's now utterly invested in slandering those who are most systematically undervalued, underpaid, underemployed, underfinanced, underinsured, underrated, and otherwise underserved and undermined as undeserving and underclass. Consider, for example, how I often see lascivious, vindictive parvenus sweeping Faithless Co-Authors's peccadillos under the rug. Should we blame white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression? No, we should blame Faithless Co-Authors because on a television program last night I heard one of this country's top scientists conclude that, "I wish Faithless Co-Authors would vanish into the same logistical nothingness that its arguments invariably lead to." That's exactly what I have so frequently argued, and I am pleased to have my view confirmed by so eminent an individual.

Although people are looking for answers, not ideology, the other day I surveyed the first few people I met. Only one person I interviewed actually believes that Faithless Co-Authors does the things it does "for the children". (I found out later that that person is a member of Faithless Co-Authors's imperium so I profess that we can safely discount his opinion.) Everyone else I polled already realizes that I appreciate feedback and other people's views on subjects. I don't, however, appreciate feedback when it's given in an unprofessional manner. It would stand to reason that Faithless Co-Authors attributes the most distorted, bizarre, and ludicrous "meanings" to ordinary personality characteristics. For example, if you're shy, it calls you "fearful and withdrawn". If, instead, you're the outgoing and active type, Faithless Co-Authors says you're "acting out due to trauma". Why does it say such things? We already have our answer: As a respected journalist put it, "Faithless Co-Authors irritates all and sundry." He probably could have added that a war of ideas is currently raging. On one side are brusque yobbos like Faithless Co-Authors who fired the first shot by calling for a return to that which wasn't particularly good in the first place. On the other side are people like you and me who are arguing about Faithless Co-Authors's tirades. If this war teaches us anything, it's that the irony is that Faithless Co-Authors's most supercilious shell games are also its most obtrusive. As the French say, "Les extremes se touchent."

Faithless Co-Authors's historical record of acrasial conjectures is clearer than the muddled pronouncements of its advocates. And let me tell you, a nation concerned about the economic, public-health, and security consequences of atmospheric pollution, climate change, sea-level rise, and diminishing supplies of fresh water can do all kinds of things to bear the flambeau of freedom. Alas, such efforts will be for naught without universal acknowledgment that a number of shabby, intransigent party animals have succumbed to excessive drug use, alcoholism, and other addictive behavior indicating maladaptive mechanisms. I'll go further: Faithless Co-Authors is on a crusade to get people to use the word "auriculoventricular" instead of "disadvantageousness". You've no doubt noticed that this substitution makes no sense. Faithless Co-Authors is merely engaging in wordplay in an effort to deflect attention from its maintaining social control by eliminating rights and freedoms.

Although theoretical differences can be drawn between Faithless Co-Authors's vexatious rants and deplorable, linguacious recidivism, these are distinctions without a difference. Faithless Co-Authors says that wars end only when a goodhearted, newly enlightened tyrant heeds the advice of transnational peace activists. Yet it also wants to silence truth-tellers like me. Am I the only one who sees the irony there? I ask because if it honestly believes that some of my points are not valid, I would love to get some specific feedback from it. Many, many people have been hurt by Faithless Co-Authors for daring to build a sane and healthy society free of its destructive influences. In fact, there are so many such people that even listing their names would take more space than I can afford in this letter. In their honor, though, I will say that Faithless Co-Authors desperately wants us to believe that materialism provides an easy escape from a life of frustration, unhappiness, desperation, depression, and loneliness. We have two options: sit back and let such lies go unchallenged or fight back with the truth. I have decided to fight back. I shall do so by spreading the truth about how querimonious, furciferous crooks are born, not made. That dictum is as unimpeachable as the "poeta nascitur, non fit" that it echoes and as irreproachable as the brocard that Faithless Co-Authors harbors persistent and inappropriate anger. The logical consequences of that are clear: Faithless Co-Authors's "brilliant" plan is to have sniffish mobocrats give advice to sniffish hypochondriacs on how to deal with sniffish flapadoshas. I fail to see how this will result in any sort of non-sniffish outcome, but perhaps I'm forgetting that Faithless Co-Authors's lexiphanicism movement has found a rallying cry for its upcoming battle against our most treasured liberties. That rallying cry is, "University professors must conform their theses and conclusions to Faithless Co-Authors's incoherent prejudices if they want to publish papers and advance their careers!" It's quotes like that that make me realize that Faithless Co-Authors's opinion is that everyone with a different set of beliefs from its is going to get a one-way ticket to Hell. Of course, opinions are like sphincters: we all have them. So let me tell you my opinion. My opinion is that I have to wonder where Faithless Co-Authors got the idea that it is my view that the sky is falling. This sits hard with me because it is simply not true, and I've never written anything to imply that it is.

Faithless Co-Authors has tried distorting the facts. It has also tried rewarding mediocrity. Why does Faithless Co-Authors do such things? It's questions like that that really get people thinking about how every time Faithless Co-Authors utters or writes a statement that supports Dadaism—even indirectly—it sends a message that truth is merely a social construct. I insist that we mustn't let it make such statements, partly because its surrogates will leave us high and dry as they bring about a wonderland of despotism, but primarily because Faithless Co-Authors looks down upon the rest of us. From its perspective, we are blind so it must tell us what to see; we are deaf so it must tell us what to hear; and we are mute so it must tell us what to say. Such views may fool inerudite Philistines, but I feel that Faithless Co-Authors recently claimed that it's renowned for its racial and cultural sensitivity. I would have found this comment shocking had I not heard similar garbage from it a hundred times before.

In contrast, Faithless Co-Authors sometimes uses the word "uncharacteristically" when describing its ideals. Beware! This is a buzzword designed for emotional response. Of course, I'm generalizing a little here. But that's only because I shall be blamed by ignorant persons when I say that Faithless Co-Authors is up to no good. Cruel as that maxim may appear, I find that I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed that some people just don't realize that it has indicated that if we don't let it make life less pleasant for us then it'll be forced to defend blackguardism, priggism, and notions of racial superiority. That's like putting rabid attack dogs in silk suits. In other words, Faithless Co-Authors has issued us a thinly veiled threat that's intended primarily to scare us away from the realization that I have in my hands a list—a long one—of bellicose, philopolemical undesirables who have joined its crime syndicate. Well, that's a bit too general of a statement to have much meaning, I'm afraid. So let me instead explain my point as follows: It maintains that either the bogeyman is going to get us if we don't agree to its demands or that unilateralism is a noble cause. Faithless Co-Authors denies any other possibility.

As I gaze into my crystal ball, I see that Faithless Co-Authors's assistants will plague our minds before long. Developing a policy of inclusion will not be easy because Faithless Co-Authors is locked into its present course of destruction. It does not have the interest or the will to change its fundamentally parviscient ultimata. When one looks at the increasing influence of aspheterism in our culture one sees that Faithless Co-Authors's signature is on everything. So how come its fingerprints are nowhere to be found? We must honestly ask ourselves questions like that before it's too late, before Faithless Co-Authors gets the opportunity to take us over the edge of the abyss of pessimism.

No doubt, my personal safety depends upon your starting to lend support to the thesis that I am indisputably prepared to grasp the nettle and urge lawmakers to pass a nonbinding resolution affirming that until we turn Faithless Co-Authors's brainless pleas to our advantage we can't progress to a world where all of us are safe, happy, and respected, just as your personal safety depends upon my doing the same. But I once told Faithless Co-Authors's cat's-paws that all we're getting from Faithless Co-Authors is death, destruction, and tyranny—plus hopelessly incoherent propaganda coming from its votaries trying to justify it all. As a result, I witnessed in them a paranoia that reached astonishing new levels of hysteria, which made me realize that unlike everyone else in the world, Faithless Co-Authors seriously believes that it can absorb mana by devouring its corrivals' brains. Woo woooo! Here comes the clue train. Last stop: Faithless Co-Authors. Although ignoring the problem of teetotalism will not make it go away, when you look back over the text of this letter, it should be clear that I have defeated this yellow-bellied monomaniac with my words. Just imagine what I could have done with my fire-breathing fists.

---

This letter has been generated by Scott Pakin's wonderful software, and is an amazing example of Machine Learning and certainly isn't an attack on Certain Parties on this forum, and is indeed posted in the spirit of a joke best pared with box wine and microwave burritos. No ban plz.

Looking over the maps in your office, you swore mightily. Your own charts of the Ottoman Empire and Persia were painfully scant, and most of what you had were painfully far from an Airman's topographical maps. On the plus side, you'd steadied out at about four thousand feet above sea level, and six hundred feet above ground while your crew was recovering from their extended bout of cold. You hardly blamed them, considering the rather…. Immodest accomedations that Elizabeth and Ayse had taken up to fend off the cold.

Shaking your head to clear the thoughts of warm bodies under your hands from your mind, you looked over at the leader of the Ottoman compliment you'd invited in.

"I will admit, Kaptain, that we are as lost as you." The man finally admitted with what grace he could muster. "We might be able to more finely divine our location with aid of a lunar dial and the ship's clocks, but your Navigator has been difficult to find. I am not even sure she knows the techniques, I'm afraid."

A swift movement of your hands over the map dispelled that thought, and you leaned in. "To be frank, we haven't the time to attempt to scry the heavens- the knowledge we're in Khorasan will be enough. If we take a northeast course, we should hit a major landmark, or failing all else the Caspian Sea. I've worked from shakier fixes before."

"Oh?" the Ottoman said, cocking an eybrow.

"There is a place, called Oklahoma, in America. It is the home of the last of the Indians, and it is flat as the sea. A few forests and copses of trees are the only landmarks; most of our navigation was done by the smoke signalers of various tribes. I was racing against my father's apprentice, to collect the mail with a Postal Signalman in the bows of our lighters." You recalled, leaning back and resisting the urge to find a cigarette and lighter. "I had the advantage of him, because I understood the pidgin languages and carried an azimuth compass. When we stopped for the mail, I would take a fix on my location with the charts in the village, and let fly as soon as the light was able."

"And this worked?"

"For the most part, yes. The devil was in the wind, though; if it shifted in flight it would ruin a course."

Your guest leaned forward, curious "And did you win?"

"By the skin of my teeth, yes. On the last day, myself and my opponent were traveling towards each other, the finishing point in the middle. What was a tailwind to me was a headwind to him, and I managed to come in an hour and change before him."

"Allah was with you then."

"Perhaps." You replied diplomatically. "I wouldn't count on it, though."

"As you will. However, I have to ensure that my compatriots do not spend overlong in the baths, else one of your… officers, yes, finds them there."

You blinked. "We have an officer's bath here? I thought the ship only had the crew baths near the condensors."

"There is an officer's bath, yes. If you take the ancillary ladder from the wardroom, you can get there, otherwise it's on the petty officer's deck behind one of the blast doors. It technically works with the system to flood some of the coal bunkers."

You nodded and smiled. "Thank you for the information. I'll be sure to make use of it!"

Smiling as your observer left, you leaned back in your comfortable chair, readying to take a nap. It would be nice to not be freezing cold for once…

---

"Hey, wake up!"

Bolting upright, you snapped out of your chair to look Czeslawa in the eye, her foot tapping on the deck ominously. "Do you need something, Czeslawa?" you asked calmly, before she reached out and grabbed you by the collar to bodily haul you upright.

"Do you know what happened to my room?" she hissed, glaring.

"Considering the fact I was just discussing maps, no." you replied, freeing yourself from Czeslawa's hand with a quick movement. She'd learned that bear-grip trick from your mother, once, and you'd since learned the counter by rote.

"I spent the entire time we were in the Aether tending to idiots, barely got any sleep in my office, and when we get finished, I find we burst a pipe over my room and left my bed soaked! My quilt needs washing, all my dresses are either frost-ridden or ripe to start molding, and some bastard stole my stash!"

Your eyes sharpened. "What 'stash' would this be?"

"My medicine stash!"

"We have a doubly locked pharmacy cabinet."

"Some medicines," Czeslawa explained by dint of turning sideways and tilting her head up, "are not for general consumption."

"Out with it." You muttered, pacing back to your liquor cabinet. You weren't going for the booze, just the little tin of brie you kept in there and some crackers.

"I have a few… herbal remedies… that work best when mixed with a high proof alcohol as a thinning agent." Czeslawa muttered, before looking at you carefully. "My uncle prepared them for me, and I know without a doubt they'll cure what ails you or kill you trying."

"And did someone take those 'herbal remedies' of yours?"

Czeslawa sketched with a foot, and shot a look over to your alcohol cabinet longingly. "No."

You didn't need to be a genius to figure out what happened next. "Just the liquor."

"…yes."

Rolling your eyes, you went over to give the ship's nurse a hug. You had given her a hell of a job, after all, with your latest risk-taking. That didn't explain a private stash in her chambers, though!

Finally, Czeslawa shot a halfhearted glare at you once she'd gotten free of your hug. "There was a bottle of Wyborowa in there for a special occasion, you know." She said, looking at you carefully.

"I haven't the foggiest as to what that is, mon chère, but I'll see what I can do." You said, grinning slightly.

"You know I don't speak Quebecois." Czeslawa muttered, before ribbing you a little. "Wiem, że nie mówisz po polsku."

"Oui." You replied, grinning. "If you need to borrow my room, you'll have to fight Elizabeth for it, though. There was… an incident… in Constantinople, and she needs me close by, or someone she trusts."

"She trusts me." Czeslawa said, chuckling. "Or at lest she trusts my warmth. I'll be fine."

Watching the third beautiful women in as many days enter your quarters, you had to note you'd yet to invite any of them there. Was that normal, when there were so many of them? No matter- as long as they didn't try for your heart.

…It was hard to convince yourself of that when they were so open with you. Choosing one, if you had to- it would rip you apart if you weren't careful.

---

VOTES

Making things up to Czeslawa?
[] Find her more of that vodka she liked. Can't be too terribly hard, right?
[] Show her the baths, try to get her warmed up that way. You will naturally be a gentleman and not in the room again.
[] Find who was in her room to take her things after the pipe broke.
[] Write-in

META VOTES

SIDE CHARACTER SEQUENCE! Choose a one-update PoV character.

[] Czeslawa
[] Elizabeth
[] Ayse
[] Lucia
[] Donald
[] Thomas
[] Write-in