Hard Kill

I though the whole point of lans was to be a front for drinking and sharing illegal data? You have to take your collection of HDDs, same as you have to take a bottle opener and some patch leads. source

I'm a Paladin with 18 charisma and 97 hit points. I can use my helm of disintegration and do one D4 damage as my half-elf mage wields his plus-five holy avenger. source

But if we create a culture of death, then there's more killing. The guy would have spend 30-40 lousy years in truly lousy prisons. source

I recently read a story in Analog where the problem was that the flora and fauna on a planet were poisonous to humans and the colonists were starving. The denoument was that the plants and animals shared characteristics of each other, so the solution lay in how they were cooked. There was a little character conflict, about the female head of the colony worrying about being forced out of office if she couldn't find a solution that frankly felt like it was just something hang the "story" on. If I want to read what amounts to a "science puzzle" story I'll read Ross Rocklynne's "The Men and the Mirror," or anything from the 1930's. The Asimov-edited "Before the Golden Age" is an excellent collection of old-fashioned stories by many authors who went on to become legends of the genre. source

I shot a tog yesterday, brained him immediately while still on the spear. Usually when I spear a fish there's a large red section where blood hits, and if I penetrate the abdominal cavity blood will start dripping out onto the fillet. When I went to fillet this fish however, there was not one drop of blood to be seen, and the fillets came out firm and white as can be, just as you would see for presentation in a seafood market. Also note I had the tog on ice for a couple hours to firm up the fillets. source