#crs4

❥ Tyranny from Critical Role - played by Whitney Moore 👹 ❥ Sleep paralysis demon 👹 ❥ Don't throw her into the Pit👹 ❥ Sometimes Dr. Finger👹

T-4 hours - (1:55pm EDT June 1)

First reflown Dragon arrives at LC-39A ahead of pad’s 100th launch.

Gearing up for their next space station resupply mission, SpaceX rolled the CRS-11 Dragon spacecraft to LC-39A earlier this morning, June 1. 

While the Falcon 9 rocket for this mission is making its first trip to space, the Dragon capsule atop the vehicle will be making its second. CRS-11 marks the first time SpaceX has reused one of the pressure vessels from Dragon, installing a new heat shield and avionics systems while keeping the structural hull of the capsule.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 with the CRS-11 Dragon spacecraft is brought to a vertical position atop LC-39A, June 1, 2017. The Dragon for this mission previously flew on the CRS-4 mission in 2014 and SpaceX has been working since its return to Earth to prepare the capsule for its reflight. Not only will the capsule be reused but the rocket will also, landing at LZ-1 eight minutes after launch. Over 6,000 pounds of cargo will be delivered to the ISS, and Dragon is expected to arrive early Saturday morning, June 4. 

CRS-11 also marks the 100th launch from LC-39A since the pad was first activated in 1966 as part of the Apollo moon program. Prior to today’s launch, LC-39A has supported 12 Saturn 5 launches, 82 Space Shuttle missions, and five Falcon 9 launches. Liftoff of CRS-11 is scheduled for 5:55pm EDT June 1. Landing of the Falcon 9′s first stage is slated for around 6:03pm EDT.  Watch launch and landing LIVE via SpaceX’s webcast below or at the link here.

Spoilers if you hate even knowing basic information about a setting, and speculation extended out from there, I guess.

[I know I'm very spoiler-tolerant in-general (because a story should be worth a watch/read/etc. even if you know the twists), but I swear some people will hear "There are people..." or "People breathe air." or "This takes place in a world..." and freak out for spoilers. So, if you're in that camp. Take this as your warning to just not read on if you're not caught up and don't want to have foreknowledge of literally basic setting/background NPC structures]

Okay, grumpy disclaimer out of the way, The Great Sundered Houses of Dol-Makjar

Nobility and family heritage are important in this setting - To some characters anyway. The conflict caused by it is something everyone has to confront, if nothing else.

While there are plenty of important families - Minor nobles/vassal houses like Julien's house Davinos, or "heroic" houses of old, like Thaisha's house Lloy, there are five big dogs - The five most powerful noble houses in Dol-Makjar: Houses Royce, Tachonis, Halovar, Comoray, and Einfasen.

The latter two, we haven't had a ton of direct exposure to, yet (I'm admittedly a Monday/YouTube viewer, so I haven't seen last night (Nov 13th)'s episode 6 yet, so maybe there were some more scenes with them, or scenes that confirm my speculation completely.

At any rate - Each of these 5 houses is stated to have, in addition to numerous other privileges of wealth and power, bloodlines that tend to produce Sorcerers. Of these, only House Halovar's is clearly delineated - Wickander obviously is a Divine Soul Sorcerer (and spoilers for episode 2 detail exactly how that came to be).

As for what we know about the other houses, House Tachonis basically disowned Octis for the double-whammy of him not apparently being born with any Sorcerous gifts and especially for him learning to wield magic the commoner's way, via Wizardry. House Tachonis very clearly wield necromantic-aligned magic.

The NPC Lady Aranessa Royce also clearly wields magic. Given a motif of spectral butterflies, and the house's overall connection with the Fey (having the ability to bestow Thimble to Thjazi Fang upon his marriage to Lady Aranessa), it's pretty safe to say their magic is Fey-aligned.

There's a line in the sparse TVTropes entry for House Comoray that they wield Draconic Magic. I don't think it's been outright stated what kind of magic House Einfasen wields.

Nevertheless, the pattern is clear, and I think, pretty clever - And the point that I wanted to specifically make with this post. The Houses each have an inherent Sorcerous bloodline tied to a specific Sorcerer source/type of magic.

HOWEVER

I don't think they map 1:1 with Sorcerer subclasses. I think there's a bit of a blend between Sorcerer and Warlock Patrons going on.

While Lady Royce's Feywild-fueled spellcasting could translate specifically to being a Wild Magic Sorcerer, I don't think we've seen much evidence of unintended effects.

And House Comoray's dragon magic is very clearly a Draconic Bloodline - It's not too much of a stretch to imagine a powerful Dragon acting as a Warlock Patron - I'm sure there's plenty of 3rd-party material for such a subclass (Reflavour the Fathomless from an aquatic monster of great power to simply any sort of monster, such as a dragon, for instance. Also, I think Pointy Hat has even expressly done some sort of Dragon Warlock patron, hasn't he?).

House Halovar is pretty easy - There's both a Celestial Patron and Divine Soul subclass, which map very well to their situation. They also seem to be the most recent to have this sort of explicit pact/bloodline. They do work with Demons, but I don't believe they have a Fiendish Pact, as such, necessarily. If anything, it's more that the demons are their clients.

Of the Sorcerer subclasses, House Tachonis is likely Shadow Magic, mechanically - But given their ties to the undead, I'd wager that they might not draw specifically from the Shadowfell, but from an Undead (moreso than an Undying, which is still possible) original patron.

Total wild speculation for House Einfasen? There's a couple major subclasses left on either side - Clockwork Soul, Storm Sorcery, and Aberrant Mind on the Sorcerer-side, and Genie, Hexblade, Great Old One, Fiend (if you don't believe House Halovar counts for that). Aberrant Mind and Great Old One would pair very well together. However, my thought is that if you nudge Clockwork Soul and Hexblade together, you could get a house focused on military might and order, achieved through magic weaponry and machinery. Given that the member of House Einfasen we've met briefly, Harondus, is titled "Lord-Knight", I tend to believe it's closer to the latter situation than the form, despite the more-intuitive pairing of Aberrant Mind and GOO (If we meet any other Sorcerous bloodlines, perhaps in the wilds beyond Dol-Makjar, I heavily expect this pairing could come up).

So, to sum up what I think's going on with the 5 Great Sundered Houses:

They all produce Sorcerers of the different subclasses, but the flavour behind those subclasses stems from Warlock pact subclasses.

Essentially, the initial person to make that pact would be a Warlock, but their bloodline afterwards are all Sorcerers. As an example - Photarch Yanessa Halovar would be a Warlock, but her descendants are Sorcerers

House Royce: Archfey Pact / Wild Magic or maybe Storm Magic, with a bit of flavour-tinkering. Possibly a 3rd-party/reinvented "Feywild Magic" subclass, entirely.

House Halovar: Celestial Pact (very slight chance of it actually being with a Fiend) / Divine Soul Sorcerer

House Tachonis: Undead Pact / Shadow Magic (possibly some slight reflavouring, depending on setting-specific circumstances)

House Comoray: Likely a 3rd-party/wholecloth new Dragon Pact, (maybe a reflavoured Fathomless or Genie) / Draconic Bloodline Magic

House Einfasen: Total speculation, given how little we've seen of them, but I'm leaning Hexblade Pact (some flavour adjustments) / Clockwork Soul (again, likely some flavour adjustments)

(courtesy of Zaran on the Something Awful forums)Liquid oxygen (LOX) floating in microgravity after main-engine cutoff of the SpaceX CRS-4 second stage last night. After the engine shuts off, there is no force keeping the LOX pushed towards the bottom of the tank, so it starts floating around.

The Fax (about 20 years ago...) by zipckr on Flickr.