Cypher System Revised Edition Character Creator is Live!

Have at it. The new CS character generator for the revised edition (or second edition or whatever you want to call it) of the Cypher System is up now. Very likely there are some things I missed when entering the data. If you find something amiss, please let me know, if you would be so kind.

If you see a bug but don't want to post a comment on the blog for some reason, you can always email me any bugs you discover. My email address is my first and last name, including the Roman numeral, all one word and lowercase, no dots or anything like that, at Gmail. (It is the same username as for Blogger, which you can copy and paste from the URL above, simply adding the "at Gmail dot com" part to my name).

A few quick notes. First, some of the suggested foci by genre include a few extras not in the core book, e.g. Thunders has been added to the Superhero genre because come on, how is that not a superpower? For some reason, Emerged From the Obelisk does not appear in any of the genre focus lists, so I tossed it in to both Fantasy and Superhero. Drives Like a Maniac has been added to Sci-Fi and Modern because why not, and Runs Away and a few other mundane foci have been added to multiple genres. These are not the only ones, but I am too lazy to make a comprehensive list of differences. (In all cases, any differences should be foci I have added to genres-- I did not take any away.) Next quick note: as mentioned in a prior post, species descriptors are not limited by genre in this character creator. (We do not discriminate against an Elf gallivanting about in outer space or an Artificially Intelligent clockwork tin-man traipsing through the fantasy woods.) Last quick note: the Weird West/Steampunk genre which existed in the previous version has been carried over to this new version as well. If you are wondering where that came from, since it doesn't appear in the core book, well... I made it up. (Maybe some day I will make up a Weird West setting to go with it.)

Star Wars is Surprisingly Unterrible (No Spoilers)

I wasn't planning on seeing the new Star Wars movie since I didn't really care for episodes 7 and 8, but a friend of mine from church bought all the tickets for a 74-seat theater for the premiere of episode 9 and resold them at cost to people he knew, so I thought, why not jump in on this action. The chance to see a movie in a theater full of people I all knew was pretty neat.

I won't spoil anything about the movie. I just want to say, if you like true Star Wars movies, you'll like episode 9. Unlike some others I could name, this one is actually worthy of the Star Wars name, in my opinion.

Don't listen to the critics on Rotten Tomatoes (who give it, currently, a 57%). Note the audience rating, which is 87%. This is almost the exact inverse of episode 8, which had a 91% from the critics and a 43% from the audience. This basically shows that movie critics today have essentially no integrity or intellectual honesty. The movie is good, and the critics-- as usual-- are full of it.

(A side-rant. Ever since Roger Ebert passed away, there has not been a halfway decent movie critic/reviewer that I can find. I did not agree with everything Ebert said, or even most of what he said, but his opinions about movies were presented mostly logically, focused mostly on relevant things, and mostly without spoilers. I knew if I was thinking about watching a movie, I could read Ebert's review of it and know pretty reliably whether I would like the movie-- not that I liked the same sorts of movies he liked, which actually I mostly didn't-- but that his reviews were sufficiently honest that I could get a pretty good idea of whether I would like a movie based on what he said.)

Quick Note Regarding the Revised Cypher System Character Creator

The Character Generator for the revised edition of The Cypher System is almost ready. I am about two-thirds of the way through the foci, and have been updating the foci lists under the genres as I go. Once this is done, within a few days probably, after some final checking, it will be ready for launch. There may be will certainly be a few bugs and/or missing data at launch. There always is with these projects. Let me know if you see something that doesn't look right. If you don't want to post a comment on the blog for some reason, you can always email me any bugs you see. My email address is my first and last name, including the Roman numeral, all one word and lowercase, no dots or anything like that, at Gmail. (It is the same username as for Blogger, which you can copy and paste from the URL above, simply adding the @gmail.com part to my name).

Revised Cypher System Character Creator Update (Plus a Blog Update)

The new version of the Cypher System Character Creator (for TCS 2nd edition) is fairly close to being ready for launch. Done so far: descriptors and types. Still to do: new foci and genres. As noted in the previous post, once this is done, there will be two CS character creators: one for first edition and one for second edition.

The introduction of genre-specific species descriptors in the new book brought an interesting challenge since the generator's code was not originally designed with these in mind. After some thought, I decided not to add code that would dynamically take away or add in these descriptors based on genre selection, since it would require a major overhaul of the setGenre code for the sake of only a handful of descriptors. On top of that, many of the genre-specific descriptors could potentially work in other genres/settings. For example, space elves are a fairly common trope-- think Eldar from Warhammer 40k or Minbari from Babylon 5. Space dwarves are less common, but not unheard of. So, depending on setting (and GM approval, of course) Elf and/or Dwarf descriptors could potentially be used in a Science Fiction game. Similarly, the Half-Giant, Helborn, Morlock, and Roach descriptors could also be alien species with a little tweaking. On the other side of the coin, Artificially Intelligent could be used to represent a clockwork/automaton character in a Fantasy or Fairytale setting (think the Tin Woodsman from The Wizard of Oz or the clockwork soldier whose name escapes me at the moment from Return to Oz).

And moreover, not all fantasy settings have Elf or Dwarf characters; in fact probably most fictional fantasy worlds do not. To my mind, these species descriptors are not so much genre-specific as they are setting-specific (or perhaps one might prefer the term universe-specific).

So instead, the way it is set up now is that the species descriptors are available to all genres, but selecting one will display a brief note indicating that your descriptor choice is "genre-specific" and subject to GM approval. Obviously it goes without saying that everything is subject to GM approval, but these are definitely something you will want to run by your GM before becoming too attached to your Roach Adept Who Exists Partially Out of Phase or whatever.

Also of note, while updating descriptors I discovered that the Virtuous descriptor was missing from the existing first-edition Cypher System generator (and presumably has been MIA all this time). This has bee rectified; apologies to all frustrated would-be goodie-goodies out there.

Blog Update

The blog set another record this past November with 1701 views over the course of the month, a substantial increase over the previous monthly record of 1517, set back in August. In fact, the blog has not had fewer than 1200 views a month since last June. Most of the traffic is, as always, to the Numenera character generator, but an increasingly large slice goes to the Cypher System character generator now too. Those two pages together now account for well over half the site's total views.

Revised Edition Cypher System Character Creator: Coming Soon!

A few months ago the second edition of The Cypher System came out. I missed the Kickstarter (had just lost my job and decided to go back to school, so money was a bit of a concern), but the other day I went ahead and bought the PDF version of the revised CS core book. I am planning to post a revised version of the Cypher System Character Generator as soon as I can.

What I am planning to do this time-- and what I should have done when the second edition of Numenera came out-- is make separate generators for first edition and second edition. The Cypher System character creator that's out there now will remain as the first edition character creator, and the new one of course will be the revised edition. That's the plan, anyway. I have not gotten all the way through the new book yet, but it looks like changes to Tier One characters are fairly minor (e.g., for Warriors, Thrust has been removed and a couple of other Type abilities renamed). If I decide overall changes are minor enough, I may decide to just have the one (revised) character generator in order to reduce potential confusion. We shall see.

Things are still busy for me, but I do not expect the revised Cypher System generator to take long to set up.

Updates and Milestones: September 4, 2019

I am very happy that people still come to this site to use the Numenera 2 Character Generator. In addition to that, the vanilla Cypher System Character Generator has started to blow up in a big way as well. August, in fact, set another record for Troy Stories, with 1517 views, a truly massive increase over the previous month's record of 1217, set in July. (And weirdly, the difference is exactly 300. This is Spartaaaaa!)

Most of the traffic was, of course, to the character generators. An interesting stat though: about half of the Cypher System character creator's all-time hits came within the past 30 days. That indicates to me that my CS character creator is only just now really catching the attention of the Cypher System community and/or Google. Pretty neat.

Some news: I have heard back from Zendexor, and he indicates to me that the story I submitted for Vintage Worlds 2 has been accepted for publication. The formal announcement has not been made yet, but should be forthcoming soon. I will post here when that happens.

A personal note: I am going back to school now, trying to finish up my bachelor's degree after a long hiatus. That is part of the reason I have not produced any content for the blog lately. At some point I would like to get it going again (although I say that every month...).

"Ja'ek and the Beanstalk" Posted at The Ninth Word

Monte Cook Games has officially launched The Ninth Word-- note the lack of an L-- a repository for fan fiction pertaining to the Ninth World, i.e. the world of Numenera.

The first story to be posted to the site was Monte Cook's own "Reach of Ghosts". Story number two is, wait for it, "Ja'ek and the Beanstalk" by yours truly, a story I submitted several years ago to the now-defunct (I think) CypherCaster magazine which they decided not to publish. I am happy that that story has found a home besides this blog.

Updates and Milestones: August 1, 2019

For some reason, July was a huge month for the site despite the lack of updates, with 1217 views for the month that honors Julius Caesar, straight-up demolishing the previous monthly record of 818 (set this past April). If you're curious-- though I know no one is-- the months intervening between my last monthly update and now (that is, May and June) had a bit over 600 views each, which at one time would've been huge, but compared to the expectations set in March and April, were kinda lackluster. (I'd thought perhaps interest was waning in my character generator, or even that interest might be waning in Numenera more broadly. I guess not haha; maybe the announcement of a new Numenera source book and novel has rekindled interest?)

As one might expect, a bit more than half the Troy Stories traffic in the month of July was to the Numenera 2 character creator. Another 20% or so of the traffic went to the generic Cypher System character creator. Another ~2% of the hit parade marched on over to the relatively new Numenera 2 Character Sheet index, and about the same number of hits to the Scrabble Two-Letter Word List. Other hits were scattered around the site here and there, with little apparent rhyme or reason. (Must have had a ton of hits on the front page; visits to the site's main front page count toward overall stats but doesn't have its own individual views stat that I can find.)

One announcement: though I have not had time for blogging lately, I did manage to get a story finished in time to meet the deadline for the Vintage Worlds 2 call for submissions. I sent in an 11,000 word novelette, the longest I have ever submitted to one of these contests. I don't yet know if it will be selected, but I feel pretty good about it.

That's all for now...

"Come Home Ere Falls the Night" To Be Published (And Other News)

I apologize for the recent lack of updates on the blog. Real-life has been quite full of turmoil lately. Have not had time to write anything for the handful of people who follow this site. Sorry 'bout that. =(

But, I do have some good news. The poem I submitted for consideration in the Love Among the Ruins project has been accepted and will appear in dead-tree form along with the other accepted submissions for that book. Here is the announcement of that happy fact (you will have to scroll down to the row of asterisks). Maybe not happy for the trees, but... y'know.

Not sure when I will have time to write a big update for the blog, but the occasional quick update should be doable. Again, I want to write more, I just don't have much time right now. Hopefully at some point real-life problems will settle down.

Updates and Milestones: May 1, 2019

Troy Stories set another record this month for views with 818 in April, just edging out March's record of 811 views. Overall, the site has now had 6,593 "all time" views, of which 2,079 are of the Numenera 2 Character Creator. Which reminds me, the two-thousand view milestone for the character generator was passed just over a week ago. (And to put that into perspective, the second-most viewed page on this site has only 156 views all-time.)

The generic Cypher System Character Creator seems to be getting a little bit more use as well, as of this moment tied with A Ruinman's Villanelle for fourth most-viewed page on the site with 121 views apiece, but I think people just don't play generic Cypher System nearly as much as they do Numenera, so there's less demand for this sort of thing. I could be totally wrong about that though.

This month also saw the addition of another Numenera-related utility, the Printer-Friendly Numenera Character Sheet index. Within a matter of hours of being posted it had already passed the Scrabble Guide index in total number of views haha (not that that's a particularly high bar).

I can understand though. With the Scrabble Guides, my guides are competing with well-established sites that have had extensive online guides since OSPD 3rd Edition. Whereas with Numenera and the Cypher System, there are not many alternatives to what's offered here.

And speaking of Scrabble Guides, the R-Z Two-Make-Three list is coming, but time got away from me, so I didn't get it finished before the end of the month like I'd planned. Should have it ready in a few days though, I think.

Regarding the Tears of the Gods, may have to take a break from it with plans to revisit it in the future.

That's all for now...

Quick Tip: City of Heroes Monitor Window

CoH Tip of the Day: There is a way to make City of Heroes expose the "real numbers" for you in terms of your character's Defense, Resistance, Hit Chance and other stats, taking all buffs, debuffs, etc., into account (instead of having to rely solely on vague descriptives such as, "adds a moderate amount of to-hit chance", etc.), but it is not at all obvious/intuitive how to do this. Seeing these numbers is critically important for monitoring your performance in end-game content (at least for tanks-- maybe other classes don't depend on it as much, though they could probably benefit from it). At low levels it's not that big of a deal, but if you're doing Incarnate content, you may want to have the monitor window going.

And so, ever since CoH came back into my life last week I've been struggling to find/remember how I got the monitor window to show up before. Was it a custom UI mod? A window that had to be opened with the typed-out /window_show command? Something else? My first thought (after my googling proved unequal to the task) was to check my old Windows XP box that still has CoH installed on it and see if it had any kind of custom UI files, or if there was a user settings file that might say what the window was called. I checked and couldn't find anything.

Most of the old online CoH player guides have disappeared over the years-- so much for the theory that nothing ever disappears from the internet-- so what I ended up having to refer to was a complete list of all slash commands from one of the old CoH wikis, and trying out different commands that seemed like plausible candidates to be the monitor window. Eventually, I found it. It is /monitor_attribute

Type commands such as this...
/monitor_attribute Current Hit Points
/monitor_attribute Last Hit Chance
/monitor_attribute Smashing Resistance
...etc.

You should get something that looks a little like this (attribute monitor moved to the upper right)...

Just for fun, here's a screenshot of the monitor window in action from the live servers, circa 2011...

City of Heroes is Back. (Maybe.)

A confession: I used to play MMORPGs back in the day. (If you don't know what that is, it stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. If you've heard of World of Warcraft-- still probably the best-known game of that genre-- then games that are like that.)

I played a pretty decent number of MMOs with varying degrees of dedication. The original EverQuest was my first and probably the one I put the most hours into, but I also played Dark Age of Camelot, EQ2, WoW, Wildstar, Horizons, The Secret World, Champions Online, and probably a couple of others I'm forgetting in my old age.

But one MMORPG stands above all the others in my memory, and that is a superhero-themed MMO named City of Heroes, which I played off-and-on from its beta in 2004 until it was announced that it was being shut down due to nonsensical corporate politics in late 2012. It was not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was by far the most fun MMORPG I ever played. Perhaps even the most fun video game of any kind I ever played. CoH also had a great community, which made playing it that much more enjoyable, something that was-- and is-- very unusual for an MMO (and which has made getting into other MMOs harder, when I inevitably discover they have unbearably toxic communities *cough*WoW*cough*Wildstar*cough*). 

(To be fair, some other MMORPGs did have good communities also. The Secret World had a good community. But that may be partly because TSW went free-to-play the same month CoH shut down, and a huge chunk of Secret World players were CoH refugees for that reason.)

Anyway, at this point, City of Heroes has been shut down for longer than it was live, but it still has a large, nostalgic fan-base holding out hope for bringing it back nonetheless.

And that brings me to my reason for posting about all this today. It's back. The dream is alive! Yes, I am serious.

But how? Well, from what I understand, shortly after the shutdown in 2012, an unknown CoH dev secretly (and very illegally) turned over the game's server-side binaries to some guy who then secretly worked on reverse engineering them these past seven years. And now the cat's out of the bag-- the stolen and reverse-engineered server-side code has been leaked, "out there" in the wild. All this time, it was said that without the server-side code there would never be any way to reverse engineer CoH since so much of that game was handled server-side (at least, compared to MMOs of the same era, e.g. WoW, which tended to rely more than CoH did on client-side code, making reverse engineering it easier.) That is the reason people stated for why it was possible to have rogue "community servers" of games like WoW and EQ1, but that such would never be the case for CoH. With the leak of CoH's server-side code though, everything has changed.

And indeed, now there is a playable CoH community server up. Its legal status, etc, is still up in the air (as one might expect), but who cares? Additionally, there's been an embarrassing amount of publicly aired personal drama surrounding the people involved the effort, but again: what difference does that make to me? City of Heroes was my favorite video game, and I truly thought I'd never get to play it again. But now I can. I'm not going to sweat the legal niceties, nor the petty drama. I'm going to log into City of Heroes and "arrest" bad guys by blasting them with my super-powers, and I ain't even sorry.

Note: I do realize that very likely no one among this blog's usual visitors cares anything whatsoever about City of Heroes. It is definitely dated-- it did not boast top-of-the-line graphics even by the standards of 2004, let alone 2019. But it was-- and still is-- a lot of fun to play. It is hard to point to any one thing that makes it so, but in general, you just feel really powerful in CoH even from the beginning, compared to other MMOs, where you typically feel very weak and afraid haha. Despite that, I just can't remain silent about the return of CoH-- to me, this is huge. And needless to say, anyone reading this is, of course, welcome to check it out, even if they never played it back in the day. *Insert caveat here that doing so may or may not be entirely legal, so do so at your own risk, etc*

PSA: "Po" and "Te" Are Now Real Words

At some point recently, the words "po" and "te" were made into official Words With Friends words, in case there was any doubt as to whether WWF has been cribbing from the Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (which added both of those with the publication of the OSPD5 back in 2014). Guess I will need to go back and edit my Scrabble/WWF guides.

I only found this out by accident when the computer allowed "te" in one of my Solo Challenge games. (So far as I know, WWF does not maintain an official, publicly searchable word list anywhere. Their initial stock is said to have came from the ENABLE list, but they long ago split off onto their own proprietary list). When I realized "te" was now legal, I immediately tried "po" and found it to be legal as well. These two words were, until recently, the only two two-letter words recognized by Scrabble that were not recognized by Words With Friends. When this change was made exactly is hard to say, but I would guess probably some time this year (I periodically check words that I think might be possible candidates for being made legal, but don't keep a log of this. Po and te have been near the top of my list for a long time, but I don't know when exactly I checked them last.)

If you are wondering what they mean, "po" is slang for "chamber-pot" in some benighted English dialect or other, and I believe "te" is an alternate spelling of "ti" (as in, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do).

Edited to add: in regards to plurals, "pos" is now a word also-- it was not before-- a rare instance of Words With Friends actually remembering to include the plural inflection when adding a new word. "Tes", however, is still not a word. I guess they forgot on that one.

Edited again to add further: as of this writing, PO and TE work only on the desktop version of Words With Friends, not mobile. (The fact that WWF has different word lists for desktop and mobile is a well-known bug that has existed for years. It seems to me that they tend to update the desktop word list first, and the mobile word list is updated weeks or months later, whenever they get around to it. That's just my own observation, of course; it might not work exactly that way. If you are playing a game on mobile and would like to play Po or Te but it won't let you, you can log into that game via Facebook and play it there. Yes, that is seriously messed up, but it does work.)

Edited again again to add even more: "Ja" is now accepted by Words With Friends as a word also. This word does not appear in OSPD6, TWL, or any other word-game word authority. I assume it is from German (where "ja" means "yes"), but is "ja" really used commonly enough in English to be considered an English word? It would seem so, according to some...

Numenera Character Sheets Revisited

Based on feedback and discussion on the Cypher System Gaming Facebook group, I have updated my "Plain" Character Sheet. It now has columns for Assets in the Skills and Inabilities section, allowing that to be tracked more easily. I also added a checkbox for Other Options (under character advancement).

In addition, I decided to make a page to be a handy-dandy repository for printer-friendly Numenera character sheets. It includes links to my own character sheets and a few others I like.

R.i.P. Gene Wolfe, 1931-2019

Award-winning SF and fantasy author Gene Wolfe passed away yesterday (April 14, 2019). Here is a sort of obituary for Wolfe posted on Tor's web site.

I mention this here because the majority of the content on this site pertains to Numenera. Even though he did not contribute directly to the Numenera project, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series was very likely the single biggest inspiration/influence on Numenera. If you love the Numenera setting but have never read the Book of the New Sun, you should definitely do yourself a favor and check it out. Fair warning: it is a challenging read, but in my opinion, well worth it. (I expect that people familiar with Numenera will be able to grok many of the core concepts of BotNS more readily. Be warned, it will be a challenging read even so; have a good dictionary to hand before you start.)

Even if you don't know about Numenera, I still highly recommend that you check out the Book of the New Sun. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, science-fantasy books of all time. 

Updates and Milestones: April 1, 2019

Happy April Fools' Day. Be sure not to believe anything you read online today.

(I actually don't care much for April Fools' Day, myself. Most of the jokes and pranks people come up with for AFD fall a little flat for me. Hey! Here's a webpage that says the exact opposite of what our site says on the other 364 days of the year! Isn't that comedy gold!? Meh.)

On to the updates and whatnot...

March was another huge month for the blog with-- are you ready?-- 811 views. That's such a big number relative to what this blog has gotten in the past, I feel obligated to say that that is in fact real, and not an April Fools' joke. (February, if you'll recall, was the first month the blog broke 600 views, with 603. March blew that short-lived record away by more than a third. Woot woot!). As usual, the lion's share of this traffic was to the Numenera 2 Character Creator. Awareness of that page seems to be spreading among the broader Numenera community, which I think is fantastic. Lately I have been seeing a few referrals to that page from Facebook and Meetup, which, if I had to guess, is GMs sending links to the character creator to players of their face-to-face games. Again, I am thrilled that people are actually using this tool.

And speaking of, I do plan to make a Numenera 1st Edition Character Creator available also, for those people who want to play Glints or Seekers, or who otherwise want a first-edition experience. I am hoping to have it ready in April some time.

Tears of the Gods

You may have noticed that I finally got another installment of Tears up there. You may have also noticed that I changed Thecla's name to Tlecha. About that... As you may know, this story is based on a play-by-forum campaign of Numenera. Thecla, of course, was a player character in that game. I took the liberty of changing the name because it was bothering me that the name came from an important character in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series, which is said to be one of the primary inspirations for the Numenera setting itself. The line between an homage and simple copying is not always clear, but I prefer to err on the side of being original. The altered spelling of the name keeps the homage, I feel, but is "original enough", at least for me. Since I'm now the only person writing this story, I feel like I have leeway to make such changes. The new spelling also meshes better with the implied phonological rules I created for the Eighth World's language.

And speaking of Tlecha (or Thecla if you prefer), it's clear that I will need to go back and revise a previous chapter to flesh out Tlecha meeting the group, and explain why she chose to travel with the Broken Cage Company. This meeting up was not played out in-game; the GM just had us jump forward a few months with additional players now in the group to replace people who had dropped out with little more than a vague handwave as to why we were all together. But, for the story, it's becoming clear that Tlecha needs more of a formal introduction than what she has hitherto received. Think of it as making up for changing her name.

I don't know if I will have chapter 12 ready in April, but I have high hopes that, at the very least, the revised chapter 9 (I think it's chapter 9), introducing Tlecha, will be done shortly, like in a week or two.

Scrabble Guides

I didn't get to the R-Z Two-Make-Three guide this month like I had planned. Allergies have been hitting me really hard in the last couple of weeks, which has sapped my will to write. But I hope to have it up this month.

Miscellany

I think the schedule of four posts a month is doable. I enjoy writing, but I don't want to burn myself out cranking out more than what seems fun to me, and four posts a month seems to be working out for the time being.

That's all for now; see y'all next time, and thanks for the support!

Tears of the Gods, Part Eleven - The Pursuit of Power

This is part eleven of this story. Chapters one through ten can be found at the Tears of the Gods table of contents page, along with important disclaimers and whatnot. I know it's been a long time since the last update; sorry about that. Enjoy!

***

Previously in "Tears of the Gods"

The small room—what had the servitor called it? The elevator?—bore Gormin and his new "friends" away from the maze of pipes and the raging bellowheart, back to the Arechive and presumed safety.

Yimoul-Za  narrated their adventures to Lady Isla: the arena, the chronal feeders, the sudden appearance of Tempus, the Krai. Isla hung on his every word, gasping at the dangers they'd faced and beaming and clapping at their triumphs.

Off in the distance, a large, wriggling globe rolled off the edge of the Hub platform. Gormin squinted at it. It was a ball of captured people, just as Frater Neymich had described.

The rest of the group was up and fighting by now, but the huge purple wasps were harrying them, keeping them away from the tunneler that continued to slam itself against one of the building's spine-like pillars, which crunched worryingly in response to the abuse.

Tempus wrapped a cloth around the cut on his hand. With a hint of sadness, he noted that not all of his companions had been in the future that he'd seen, and some of those he'd seen in the future were not present in the present—Syrus and Kiraz both seemed to be missing. His eyes came to rest finally on Tlecha, the white-haired ultraterrestrial being who'd been pressed into service by Eighth Worlders and escaped by traveling countless millions of years into her future.

A varjellen approached, trying to get him to pay shins to fight a jiraskar supposedly contained in his tent. Tempus ignored him.

***

Date: 9th Vaen in the 402nd Year of the Founding

Tlecha

The temperature in the atrium was dropping noticeably. The huge hole in the glass ceiling Tempus had made was rapidly letting out the building's stored-up greenhouse warmth.

Tlecha sighed and sniffed a vividly red-and-pink summer flower. All these will likely be dead in a matter of hours, she mused.

She shook her head to clear it and continued searching for... what, exactly? Gormin and Tempus' reasons for breaking into the closed silster factory were vague at best. She explored the rows of exotic flowers and plants, drifting away from the rest of the group.

She could hear Gormin and Tempus speculating as to the purpose of the flowers a couple of rows over. "The flowers are very colorful," Gormin was saying. "Perhaps fabric dye is made from them for the silster, in case someone wants, say, a chequered red and gold silster garment. I've never owned a piece of silster, and have no idea how well it takes dye. More likely the flowers are for some illegal purpose unrelated to the silster, since the factory is closed for silster-production but these flowers are still being taken care of. Or they were, until 'someone' opened the greenhouse roof to the winter sky." She heard Gormin chuckling at his own odd humor.

Voloidion made a discovery and called the rest of the group over. It was a sliding metal mesh gate at the far end of the atrium. Through the slats in the gate could be seen a smallish square cubicle with a metal pull handle on the far wall.

Jilandri came up next to them, bearing a pouch of pollen extracted from the atrium's flowers. "I think I’ve seen something like this before. I think it’s a lift box, for traveling vertical-like." She slid open the gate.

Gormin nodded. "Aye, the misnamed Order of Truth had one like this in their cursed Arechive. They called it an elevator." He stepped into the box. "Let's see where it goes. I am starting to suspect that the circus outside is just a cover to loot this 'closed' factory. Which, given that flowers don't normally bloom in mid-winter without human intervention, is evidently not as closed as it is made to appear. It's not really our business, but it is interesting enough to take a look."

"Yeah," said Jilandri. "Personally, I want to know what kind of activity the Pieriant is masking at this facility." She entered the elevator and raised an eyebrow at Tlecha. "Coming down with me?"

Tlecha bowed her head. "I shall accompany you," she answered.

***

Syrus

"A good effort," said the purple-skinned varjellen carnie. "You scored well, but not the main prize. Here, accept this medallion as a memento." The varjellen handed Syrus a gold-tinted strongglass medallion on a rawhide lanyard. On the glass medal was inscribed I fought a jiraskar and lived.

Syrus, feeling a little disappointed, took the medal and put it around his neck. Fighting the simulated jiraskar had brought him back to his youth and some of the fun times he'd had in a simulator owned by a family friend back home.

He hopped down from the wagon that bore the "jiraskar" tent with its varjellen barker and looked around for his friends. After a few moments, he caught a glimpse of Yimoul-Za disappearing down an alley beside an abandoned factory of some kind. He followed.

Guards were halfheartedly watching the factory's main entrance, and one side-alley was blocked by the circus itself, but Syrus managed to slip into another side alley without being noticed. The alley curved around the back of the factory, and there he found a door leading in, standing open. The door had nails through it as if it had been nailed shut and subsequently pried back open. Yimoul-Za must've gone this way, he thought. With a quick backward glance, he entered the factory and quietly pulled the door to.

He found himself in what appeared to be a reception room or office. A chalkboard on the wall read "Welcome to Dzantis Silster!" Syrus frowned. Why does Dzantis Silster sound familiar? A fancy desk made from the ribcage of some large beast and several padded chairs were arrayed around the room, under a thick layer of dust. One of the chairs was overturned. On the desk were several scraps of advertising scrip with prices and services offered for bespoke tailoring of silster, either as complete garments or trim for armor and such. Curious, Syrus flipped through the pile of leathery scrip. The most recent advertisement bearing a date was dated 397 YF, about five years old. A door-less passage lead out east, wood-paneled and hung with pictures. There was also a closed, pentagon-shaped door to the west.

Syrus guessed that Yimoul-Za had gone down the passage. As he passed, he glanced at the pictures on the wall; they appeared to be drawings and paintings of people wearing golden silster garments of various styles.

At the other end of the passage was a spacious atrium packed with row upon row of brightly colored flowers, grown high enough to obscure his view of the other side of the room. A breath of cold air made him shiver. He looked up. Someone had knocked a ragged hole in the atrium's glass ceiling. Since the flowers did not yet appear to be dead, it must have been recent. Syrus made his way between two rows of flowers, taking care to avoid stepping on the fragments of broken glass.

He heard a female voice ahead and off to the left. Tlecha? He wasn't sure. He advanced cautiously. Just before he rounded the corner at the end of the row, he heard some kind of machinery crank into action. He peered out cautiously from behind the flowers. Beyond a mesh metal gate, he glimpsed the group packed into an elevator, descending quickly out of sight.

"W- wait!" he called. But it was too late; he had just missed them.


***

Tlecha

The elevator banged to a halt at the bottom of the shaft. Tlecha tried raising the lever that controlled the elevator to go back for Syrus, but it was no use. The elevator was stuck.

"Probably power," Jilandri speculated aloud. "Going up takes more power than going down. The installation's power reserves are probably low."

Gormin grunted. "Well, no use staying here." He slid aside the elevator's gate and drew his sword.

Narrow beams of flickering purple light crisscrossed the octagonal room beyond. There were five waist-high domes set in the floor. Gormin stepped forward, allowing the light to play over him.

"Ah," said Jilandri, too late. "Those might be..."

Two of the domes split open and retracted into the floor. Floating metal spheres, each with a single reddish electric eye, began surging from the open domes.

"...security beams."

Tlecha began to sweat as the spheres scanned the group with their baleful red eyes. An unpleasant memory was making itself felt just beyond the edge of her awareness. She frowned. Have I seen these things before?

She realized with horror she had. "No," she breathed. She sank to her knees, shaking. "But how? How? No one knew! No one..."

***

Date: IX ides of Tludusp in the 11,074,608th Year Prior to the Founding

Tlecha considered the device. The brain-spike.

Mlikix sighed. "Are you having second thoughts? Once we break in, we're committed. There'll be no going back."

Tlecha set her jaw and shook her head, saying nothing. The two of them exited the hovercar. It was a nice day in the capital. Indeed, every day in the capital was as equally nice as any other.

The operation went smoothly, at first. It was obvious to most people that Tlecha and Mlikix, though generally very human-like, had an ineffable otherness about them that marked them as ultraterrestrials, beings from another dimension. Few humans were bold enough to challenge an ultra, to ask them what are you doing here? Of course, Tlecha and Mlikix had identicards, but these were forgeries, and their claimed authorization from the Omnicognant would not have passed a routine double-check.

Nonetheless, they were waved through checkpoint after checkpoint on the way to Dimensional Transfer Node 4QL. No one ordered the pair to be brain-scanned. No one was willing to risk being seen as second-guessing the Omnicognant. The irony that the Omni's paranoia was also its greatest weakness was not lost on Tlecha.

The Dimensional Transfer Nodes were one of the key technologies that allowed the Eightfold Worldline Omni-unity to sprawl like a cancer from universe to universe, piercing the veil of any reality, para-reality, or spacetime-line. But there were said to be at least a few dimensions and galaxies that still held out against the Omnicognant's tyranny.

It was to one of these that Tlecha and Mlikix wished to go, to the fabled free galaxies of Ghenivupt. Dimensional Transfer Node 4QL could get them there.

The technician configuring the Transfer Node was frowning and taking an inordinate time to adjust the settings that would send them on their way. Tlecha bit her lip. Does he suspect?

The transfer platform was within a transparent cylinder that shielded bystanders from the Node's colossal blasts of energy. The cylinder split open. Tlecha looked at the technician. He nodded and gestured for them to enter. He was sweating.

She turned to Mlikix and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, the alarms went off. Bright orange warning lights flared as klaxons pierced Tlecha's eardrums.

Mlikix pushed her towards the cylinder. "Go! And don't forget the spike!"

Tlecha stumbled into the cylinder. She withdrew the brain-spike from a hidden pocket and considered it again. It was a fail-safe. By scrambling her memories and other mental architecture, she could beat any brain-scan that tried to identify her as Tlecha. More importantly now, perhaps, it would protect the friends who had risked much to help her get this far.

Tlecha gripped the spike in her fist. It was time to use it, but she was afraid.

Eyes of the Omnicognant, floating metal spheres each with a glowing red lens set in it like the pupil of a demonic eye, began streaming into the room from recesses in the walls and ceiling. They whirled about the room, scanning everything in sight.

Mlikix struggled with the Node technician. The Eyes began firing energy bolts at them. A bolt struck the tech in the back, and he went sprawling over the Transfer Node's control panel.

A deep, thrumming vibration below Tlecha's feet began and quickly built up in pitch and intensity...

***

Date: 9th Vaen in the 402nd Year of the Founding

Syrus

Syrus waited a few minutes for the elevator to return, but it did not. He wasn't sure if the others had even seen him. He decided to search the ground floor of the factory, seeking an alternate way down.

He found himself in what appeared to be an abandoned conference room or dining hall. The room was dominated by a long, dusty table with heavy benches along the sides of it. Piles of books and loose sheets of aged leathery scrip covered much the table, and more of the same were piled haphazardly on shelves built into the wall. Tube-shaped glow-lamps, presumably electrically powered, lined the walls as well, but these were dark. The only illumination was from the skylights above, letting in the halfhearted light of the overcast day. The room had a musty, unpleasantly sweet smell. In the opposite corner of the room from Syrus was a wooden ale cask with a leather satchel sitting on top of it.

Syrus crossed to the other side. As he came around the corner of the table, he spied a skeleton curled up in the corner beside the ale cask. The skeleton was clothed in scraps of what had once been hide armour; a notched and rust-pitted short-sword lay on the floor next to it. The skeleton's neck looked as if had been bitten through or perhaps hacked through with a dull axe. Syrus reckoned the unfortunate skeleton had been moldering in here for a year at least.

Syrus stepped up to the leather satchel sitting on the ale cask. The satchel looked relatively new and dust-free. Curious, Syrus reached out to open it. He let out a yelp of surprise when it bit his hand.

***

Tlecha

"Mlikix," Tlecha whimpered. She was curled up in a ball in the corner.

A part of Tlecha remembered why she had fled from that time and place. It cried for her to remember.

Why she had demanded to keep her own self. Why she had revolted against her every move, every action, even every thought being monitored, categorized, and judged. Being pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second. Why she had turned against the Omnicognant. And why she had ultimately fled beyond the walls of reality itself.

"No!" she grunted through clenched teeth. That was the past. She had to stay in the present. She removed her hands from in front of her face.

Gormin was standing over her, glowering. "You need to pull yourself together," he growled. "These gazers aren't anything to be frightened of, but we're likely to run into far worse before the day is out. That's the way it is, poking around prior-world facilities. We'll need everyone to fight next time and not cower in a corner." He stalked off down a passage to the left.

Strewn about the floor were pieces of the Eyes of the Omnicognant. Gazers, Gormin had called them. Dimly, Tlecha could recall the sounds of her new friends battling the Eyes around the edges of her vivid flashback as she had crouched in the corner.

She shuddered and picked a broken capacitor out of the scattered remains of the Eyes. She whispered to it in Low Universal, once the most widely spoken tongue in every universe, now an obscure dead language known only to those whose calling it was to delve into the ancient past. "Ah, Omnicognant, so-called All-Thinker, you were not supremely powerful as you portrayed yourself, were you? Time came even for you."

She wondered for a moment what had finally brought the Omnicognant and the Eighth World to an end, shrugged, and discarded the capacitor. The others were moving to follow Gormin down the passageway. Tlecha stood and turned to join them.

***

Syrus

Syrus stumbled back a step, yanking his hand away from the unexpected teeth. The "leather satchel" he'd been poking at unfolded itself into its true form. It was a drebil-- an ugly, toothy, vaguely reptilian creature that could ambush the unwary by disguising itself as a common household object.

He uncoiled his whip with his uninjured hand and gave the drebil a vicious lash. It squawked in protest and gathered itself up to make an attack.

From the corner of his eye, Syrus spied what he'd thought was a pile of moldering books and papers unfold itself into a second drebil. He gave it a lash as well.

The first drebil launched itself at Syrus, but Syrus swayed out of the way and kicked at it awkwardly.

These are not worth killing, Syrus decided. He circled round the long table, giving the creatures a way of escape and roared at the top of his lungs.

As he'd hoped, this spooked the drebils. They sprouted stubby, leathery wings from their mutable bodies and flapped their way out the passage Syrus had entered by.

Syrus looked around the room carefully for any additional creatures emerging from hiding. Nothing moved. Satisfied that he was safe for now, he attended to the bite on his hand, wrapping it up with some yellowish gauze. Hopefully it won't get infected, he thought. Drebils probably don't keep their mouths very clean.

Just then, he remembered why the name "Dzantis Silster" had seemed familiar. His dad had occasionally sold rolls of silster, that ridiculously expensive shimmering golden cloth, favored by a certain variety of ultra-rich dandies. He and his sister had been forbidden from even touching it. Dzantis had been their only supplier of the stuff.

Suddenly curious as to what had befallen his father's former associate, Syrus flipped through some of the books and papers on the conference table.

What he found was that the factory was owned by Imon Dzantis and had once made—according to Imon—the finest silster in the whole of the Steadfast. His secret was that the silster came from the larvae of caffa wasps nurtured in decomposing human flesh. This gave the silster a supposedly higher quality. To supply this need, the family had had an arrangement with the city's criminal underworld. As with many criminal arrangements, however, the deals were subject to change without notice. A new mayor had cracked down on the illicit trade in human cadavers, the supply of bodies dried up, and the factory went out of business five years ago.

All of that was interesting information though not immediately useful. Syrus found a rawhide-bound book that turned out to be a sort of journal of meeting notes for the factory's managers. He flipped to the end. Imon Dzantis and his management team had discussed relocating the factory to somewhere more accommodating, but Imon had refused, stating that the Shrine Portal's power source was needed to power the factory's gigantic automated looms, and that this power source, located far underground below layers of prior-world ruins, could not be feasibly moved. If there were further meetings after that, they were not recorded in the journal. The phrase Shrine Portal caught Syrus' attention. Now here might be something interesting.

Unfortunately, the book had no index, but Syrus was in no hurry. He flipped the pages, scanning for further references to a shrine or a portal. He wasn't disappointed. One of the first recorded meetings had actually occurred prior to the factory being built at Auspar. An adventurer had traded Imon the location of a portal to the Shrine of the Winged God in exchange for a fringed silster cape. The portal was underground, in a long-forgotten tunnel far beneath the city of Auspar. Imon had determined that the portal's energy source could be repurposed to power vast industrial looms—he'd then pulled strings to buy a building close enough to the portal that he could tunnel his way to it.

Syrus closed the book. Evidently, Imon Dzantis' business plan had worked for a while before it all unraveled. That meant that the portal to the Shrine of the Winged God wasn't just a tall tale some adventurer had made up to scam Imon out of a silster cape—it was real, and it was nearby. Finally they had a lead on it after all these months. He had to find a way to get back to his friends. He put the meeting journal in his backpack and left the conference room.

***

Tlecha

A heavy vault door barred the group's way. It looked too sturdy to break down, but Jilandri had pointed out that the wall around it was crumbling and likely weak. It should be possible to chip enough of the wall away to get at the vault door's hinges and remove the door altogether. Tlecha volunteered to help with this, hoping to make up for her earlier lapse.

The others were discussing the tunneling creatures from the vision of the future.

"If someone is breeding those things down here," asked Jilandri, "do you think we can stop them now? They killed us before."

Gormin sniffed, "Well, I mean to. No one kills Gormin and gets away with it if old Gormin has something to say about it!" He chuckled at his own gallows humor. Gormin was holding a glowglobe, currently their only source of light.

Tlecha said nothing, focused on helping Jilandri open the door.

It was hard work, but after half an hour or so they managed to get the door off its hinges. The room beyond was long, narrow and low-ceilinged. The illumination from Gormin's glowglobe did not reach to the far end. Tlecha had expected the room to be vault-like because of the vault door, but instead it was more like a natural cave.

Natural, that is, except for the series of strongglass domes set in the floor. The domes were faintly lit from within.

The group moved to investigate. Gormin held his glowglobe close to the nearest dome to help get a better look.

The insides of the domes were smeared with some kind of organic green substance, possibly a kind of algae or mold. Through the gaps in the algae could be dimly glimpsed a writhing grey mass. It wasn't clear where the light was coming from. Possibly bioluminescence from some creature trapped in there, Tlecha mused. She shuddered.

A sound like frying strips of meat startled everyone.

"That sound," said Tempus. "From the vision."

The sound seemed to be coming from above them. There was a low thump, and dust rained from the ceiling.

Gormin handed the glowglobe to Tempus and drew his sword and shield, but after a few moments, the sound died away.

Yimoul-Za peered at the ceiling with his enormous eye. "If the creatures are above us, perhaps we are safe down here? What do you think, friend Tempus?"

Before Tempus could answer, the sound returned, louder than before. Another muffled thump, and the ceiling partially collapsed. A heavy chunk of rock smashed a dome on the far side of the room. From the breach poured the stench of festering decay, the unmistakable odor of rotting human flesh—and the writhing grey mass was pouring forth as well.

"Light," said Yimoul-Za. "Scatter the darkness." He cast a ball of golden light over the grey mass, illuminating it.

The mass was countless grey, finger-length larvae, with huge sucking maws.

"Caffa larvae," said Gormin. But Tlecha barely heard. The stench of death had awakened another memory from the darkest recesses of Tlecha's forgotten past. The Plague Prisons.

No, not forgotten. Deliberately vanished. Beaten down. Crushed into the past. Erased by the brain-spike's neurophage enzymes which had guaranteed the destruction of protein matrix memories. Or so she thought. So she thought.

Tlecha clutched her hands to her head. "No! I've got to keep it together!"

Her hands shook. What have I done? She remembered. Oh, how in her fearless youth, she had resolutely, sometimes violently, defended the honor of her work for the Omnicognant. Of course, if one would curry the favor of the All-Thinker, one must do its bidding, no matter how distasteful that might be.

Tlecha sat on the ground. On some level she knew Gormin would be angry at her loss of control, but there was nothing for that now. Her thoughts came in a rush of pieces.

How had Tlecha learned to escape the all-encompassing clutches of the All-Thinker? By her years of being a guardian of the Thought-Pits, of course. The Plague of the Mind.

Those who displeased the Omnicognant were sometimes deliberately infected with the Mind Plague and dropped into the Pit, to live out the remainder of their lives in a permanent, inescapable nightmare. The Plague was distilled from some psychedelic algae from another world.

The Thought Pit. The Plague Prisons. It was all coming back now. The darkness and total aloneness, and smell. Oh, the smell. The smell of the prisoners who'd died in their nightmares and simply been left to fester. It was this smell that triggered the memory.

Being sentenced to the Thought Pit was literally the worst thing imaginable. Prisoners served every moment of their brief sentence, both waking and sleeping, facing that which terrified them most. She'd known friends of hers who would beg to be sent to the slave worlds rather than be sent to the Thought-Pit once they had earned the ire of the Omnicognant.

She shook her head again and again and again. "I'm going insane!"

Oh, how she'd laughed! And you didn't have to do anything to be a guard of the Thought-Pit! Just plug in and concentrate! If a prisoner tried to escape from the Isolation, she'd just push them down again, down into the screaming darkness, just using the power of her own ultraterrestrial mind. And if a prisoner proved too strong, she'd just unplug and call the attendant for another injection of Mind Plague into the prisoner. Easy work, if you don't mind being a soulless monster.

And the Plague had also been the way out when things became too much. The Mind Plague could be genetically altered to erase memories. That's what Mlikix had said, at least. But it would seem that memories are more robust than she and Mlikix had thought.

"I have to stop! This has to stop! I must forget again!"

Tlecha rocked back and forth on the floor, hugging herself, wrapped up in the horror of her past.

To be continued...

Happy Pi Day!

March 14 (3/14) is Pi Day, honoring the irrational mathematical constant that is, among other things, the ratio of a perfect circle's circumference to its diameter.

As a fun Pi Day stunt some eight months in the making, it was announced today that a Google employee used the cloud to calculate pi out to 31,415,926,535,897 digits, smashing the previous world record, and timing the announcement until today, Pi Day 2019. And yes, you read that number right: she calculated pi out to pi-times-ten-trillion decimal places. How 'bout that.

(Calculating pi out that far has no known real-world application other than bragging rights, of course. Even if you are calculating the circumference of the observable universe down to the precision of one atom, you'd only need pi at the precision of thirty-nine digits. Having over thirty trillion digits is a bit excessive.)

A fun bonus fact about pi: the reason the Greek letter π was adopted as the symbol for this number (instead of some other Greek letter) is because the Greek word for circumference, περιφέρεια (periphéreia, from which we obviously also get our word "periphery") starts with a π. Calculating a circle's circumference was, of course, the first known use for the number pi.

So, Happy Pi Day! Hope you have a good one! (Or should I say, hope you have a good 3.141!)

Happy National Napping Day!

Today is the best of all possible holidays: National Napping Day.

A quick tip for for those celebrating this auspicious day: according to Science, some caffeine right before you start the nap will make your nap more efficient. The basic idea is that the caffeine takes ~20 minutes before it affects you. Drink the coffee (or coke or whatever), nap for 20 minutes and wake up refreshed instead of craving more sleep.

https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/973253539098189826

Updates and Milestones: March 1, 2019

February was another record-breaking month for the blog-- just eking over six hundred page-views over the course of this shortest-of-all months, the first time that threshold has been reached, or even closely approached! (603 views to be exact). We also are very close to the 5,000 total views milestone, which likely will be surpassed some time in March. Woo!

Miscellaneous Blog Updates

To celebrate all these page-views (not really), I made a custom background and tweaked a few of the other customization options for the blog. Up till this point, Troy Stories has used Blogger's "Simple" theme more or less as-is, with minimal customization. It was time to try to create an interesting and unique look for my site. I kind of dig the result. The color scheme, if you are wondering-- black, dark gray, and white with bright green accents-- is loosely based on that of the Houston Outlaws, who are my favorite Overwatch League team. (Sadly they are not off to a great start this season, but oh well. They still have the coolest color scheme.)

The other blog-related update is that I want to commit, here in writing, to making at least four posts a month (including the monthly "milestones" posts, which I plan to do around the first of every month). That's, on average, about once a week, but my schedule is such that I don't want to commit to weekly posts on a particular day of the week. It will be, some weeks no posts, other weeks two or three posts, but hopefully most weeks at least one post.

Poetry

I have gotten some positive feedback in regards to "Come Home Ere Falls the Night", (aka "A Ruinman's Villanelle"). In fact, it is now the most-viewed non-Numenera post on Troy Stories. That makes me want to write more poems for the site.

The Tears of the Gods

I have changed my mind again about the Tears of the Gods story. I will be attempting to complete the novel despite the game being prematurely ended. Though I still have not heard from the former GM, I have the permission from the former players to write it according to a rough outline I sketched out to them on BGG. Chapter 11-- which is pretty close to being finished, by the way-- is partly based on what happened in the game, partly just me writing after the game had ended. Moving forward, future chapters will be just me writing, barring some kind of completely unforeseen circumstance.

The good news is, since I am no longer dependent on anyone else for content, updates to this story should, in theory, come a bit more frequently. On the other hand, since it is just me now, I have to come up with all the ideas myself, and moreover there's no accountability or incentive to buckle down and write. And, as regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I am a procrastinator.

Nonetheless, I am hopeful for this story to get finished someday.

Scrabble/WWF Guides

These posts require a lot of work to research and put together. Of course, the word lists that form the "seeds" for this content are freely available elsewhere already, but tracking down definitions is a little bit of a hassle. Many online dictionaries do not have definitions for many of these words. Of course, there's always the paper Scrabble dictionary, but that is less convenient to refer to, and often the paper Scrabble dictionary's offered definition is concise to the point of being cryptic (see, e.g., the definitions of oe or po).

I expect I will have Part Four (R-Z) of the Two-Make-Three series up some time in March, but after that, will probably put the Scrabble guides on hiatus and concentrate on writing more interesting content. (I mean, *I* think the Scrabble posts are interesting, and in fact, I myself learn quite a bit putting them together, but they don't rack up the kind of views the fiction, poetry, and Numenera posts typically get. They do do better than Esperanto posts, however, so there's that.)

That's all for now. Lord willin', we will have several posts this month and another general update April 1. (Not an April Fools post. Probably.)

PSA: The Momo Challenge is Not Real

This is a public service announcement. Momo is not real. The so-called "Momo Challenge" is a hoax. Tabloid "news" articles linking various teen suicides to the "Momo Challenge" are fake-news clickbait garbage written by garbage human beings who eke out a living selling obvious lies to frightened simple folk. Don't let that be you.

Again, there is no Momo. There is no bird-faced demon on WhatsApp tryna slide into your DMs in order to trick you into turning on your oven in the middle of the night. (The legend sounds kinda dumb when I put it that way, doesn't it? Hold on; it gets even dumber.) The aforesaid bird-faced demon, which I note again does not exist, has also not hacked into Peppa the Pig's YouTube channel, nor into the popular video game Fortnite, nor can she invade your dreams and kill you Freddie Kreuger-style. So, if you could stop blowing up my social media feeds with breathless (and baseless) fake-news "reports" that state otherwise, that'd be great-- thanks in advance.

"But Troy," someone always says, "I've seen pictures of Momo on YouTube. Kids are scared! That proves everything!"

It proves horse feathers. But before I discuss the many pictures of Momo cropping up all over YouTube, allow me to briefly delve into the history this legend, as detailed on KnowYourMemes, Mashable, and other respectable sites. Long ago, in 2014, a Japanese special-effects company named Link Factory created a grotesque sculpture of a harpy-like creature named "Bird Mother" for an exhibit of monstrous special effects. Bird Mother has taloned bird-feet, a human female torso, and a distorted, vaguely bird-like (but mostly human) face with stringy black hair, freaky bulging eyes, and an oversized mouth that smiles disquietingly. Bird Mother is quite the work of art, if you are into that sort of thing (i.e., if you are into the nightmare-inducing sort of things). Its creators posted pictures of the sculpture from various angles on Instagram.

(Note: I'm not going to post a picture of Bird Mother because I'm tired of seeing it, but it is not hard to find.)

Fast-forward to the summer of 2018. A rumor starts spreading in Spanish-language social media circles of a mysterious telephone number which, if you add it on WhatsApp, will start sending you messages urging you to do increasingly dangerous challenges such as taking your parents' pills or turning on the oven in the middle of the night, before ultimately telling you that you can "win the game" by killing yourself. (In other words, a rehash of the equally fake "Blue Whale Challenge", but in a different part of the world and under a different name.) This supposed WhatsApp account used a picture of Bird Mother's face as its avatar and "MOMO" was its user name. In July of that year, a YouTuber named Al3xeitor attempted, unsuccessfully, to call Momo live on his YouTube channel. As of this writing, that video has racked up well over five million views. Al3xeitor's video either caused, or is coincident with, the first wave of the Great Momo Panic.

It is important to note, again, that Momo is entirely legendary. There is no part of the Momo legend that has any basis in reality. No one has ever been able to get in contact with Momo using any of the supposed mysterious telephone numbers. (The telephone number, of course, varies wildly with whoever is telling the story.) Nor has anyone contacted Momo via the supposed WhatsApp account (which most likely never existed in the first place, and certainly doesn't exist now). People claiming to have successfully FaceTimed or called the Momo creature are attention-seeking liars. No documented suicide or injury has ever been linked to Momo or the non-existent Momo Challenge. Tabloid reports that state otherwise are, as I said above, irresponsible clickbait garbage. Momo has never contacted anyone for the same reason that Slenderman has never contacted anyone: they aren't real.

"But what about the pictures on YouTube!?"

I'm getting to that. In February of 2019, round two of the Great Momo Panic began as the (note) entirely unfounded rumor of Momo suddenly spread to English-language social media. As the hysteria spread online, unscrupulous quasi-journalistic outfits such as the Daily Mail cashed in, adding fake news to the fire. As well, jokers and pranksters on YouTube started jumping on the Momo bandwagon with hoaxes of varying degrees of sophistication. Very quickly, Momo's beatifically smiling face became ubiquitous, but it's important to note that all pictures of Momo on YouTube or other social media fall into one of the following contexts, in order of most common to least common:

1. Gullible folks breathlessly and uncritically repeating unfounded "warnings" about the "dangers" of sinister Momo, thus feeding the frenzy and frightening the weak-minded 
2. Pranksters making fake (but scary) videos that attempt to conform to the legend in some ways (while carefully avoiding doing anything that would run afoul of YouTube's terms of service, such as actually telling a kid to kill themselves), as a joke at the expense of the aforesaid gullible folks who believe in Momo, or otherwise just having fun with the ghost story
3. Rational people documenting the truth about Momo and trying fruitlessly to get the aforesaid gullible folks to check Snopes or whatever before forwarding obviously fake crap 
4. Content related to the original Bird Mother sculpture 

Note that "actual" Momo is nowhere to be found on YouTube. (And in any event, even according to the legend, Momo haunts WhatsApp, not YouTube; surely demons can only haunt one social media platform at a time, yes?) Indeed, YouTube issued an official statement on February 27: "Contrary to press reports, we’ve not received any recent evidence of videos showing or promoting the Momo challenge on YouTube. Content of this kind would be in violation of our policies and removed immediately."

Note that they are not saying that there are no pictures of Momo on YouTube. Momo pictures are all over YouTube these days, as YouTube is doubtless aware. But mere pictures of Momo, however disturbing, do not break YouTube's terms of service, nor do they prove that the so-called "Momo Challenge" is a real thing that any real person has ever attempted to undertake or induce anyone else to undertake.

"But what about the six-year-old girl who was contacted by Momo on YouTube!? Checkmate, skeptic!"

Yes, about that. Here is said girl's statement in her own words. Momo is "like an app, and you can call and text her," and "she could be in your dreams or she could kill you."

Well, there you go. Seems legit. Just like Freddie Krueger, who is also definitely real, right? Definitely not a case of a six y/o mind being exposed to too many scary movies at too early of an age and losing track of the difference between make-believe and reality, or of being put up to some disgraceful shenanigans by an irresponsible attention-seeking parent. No sir, definitely not that. It's just a shame that there isn't any corroborating evidence for this delusional load of horse-apples completely rock-solid, certified-gold, hundred-percent-proven factual account.

(In all seriousness, I will not give out the name of the six-year-old girl who says Momo can be in your dreams and kill you, even though the media-- of course-- has. She's six. She was put up to this nonsense by some adult, I think it's safe to say-- and I don't mean Momo. She doesn't deserve to be piled on.)

"But my kids are scared!"

Kids are not scared because Momo the WhatsApp Demon is hacking their Fortnite game and supernaturally invading their dreams. Kids are scared because mommy is having a frantic meltdown, snatching the phone out of their hand and deleting YouTube Kids off of it, and/or because they have friends at school whose parents are also giving in to the hysterical overreaction, deleting Fortnite off the family computer. No doubt, many kids are confused as to what's going on. But it's the overreaction to the hoax that is both (a) scaring kids, and (b) inducing jokers and trolls to jump in on the hoax action. Stop feeding the frenzy. By doing so, you are only playing into Momo's wickedly sharp talons. (That last was figuratively speaking, of course. I'm sure Momo keeps her talons neatly trimmed.)

"But YouTube Kids has lots of scary and disturbing content!"

This last bit, unfortunately, is true, but it has nothing to do with Momo. In fact, there's extremely disturbing, blood-curdling stuff that has made it onto YouTube Kids that would make Momo the WhatsApp Demon look like Anne of Green Gables by comparison. (And no, I will not link to it.)

It is important to note that neither YouTube Kids, nor YouTube more generally, are curated by a flesh-and-blood person. Machine-learning algorithms decide what is appropriate for the "Kids" platform, decide what appears on "Trending", and decide what appears as related or recommended videos for you to watch next. Sometimes the machines make decisions that are, ahem, "interesting". YouTube has employees that do look into reports/complaints, but it is well-known that the main priority for such policing is tracking down violations of copyrighted music and movies. Policing adult content that is deceptively (or accidentally) tagged as children's content seems to be a much lower priority, I am sad to say.

And moreover, as noted above, the mere fact that content is "disturbing", does not, in and of itself, break YouTube's rules. If you see a "Screamer" with Momo's face in it, for example, and you report it, it's likely that it will not even be removed (from YouTube, at least-- hopefully such content would get removed from YouTube Kids, if it ended up there).

But here's the good news. If you, the parent, personally vet each video you allow your kid to watch, that should be fine. The idea that Momo can "hack into" any video when the parents are not watching is one of the many supernatural powers attributed to Momo that has zero basis in reality. It is possible to configure the YouTube Kids app so that the search bar is disabled, and the user (i.e., the kid) is limited to watching playlists that you have set up yourself. Do it that way. Or-- and here's a crazy thought-- maybe watch videos together with your kids, answering any questions they may have, instead of using YouTube as your babysitter while you go off and do something else.

(But of course, that would take work-- much easier to simply fly off the handle, delete everything, and spew out a tweet-storm consisting of 50% exclamation points announcing your ignorance to the world.)

The bottom line: if you let your kids watch whatever they want on YouTube-- even so-called YouTube Kids-- without supervision, then you are taking a huge risk that they will see something truly upsetting, even traumatizing. That was true long before Momo came along, and isn't likely to change anytime soon. And if you let your kids contact random strangers via WhatsApp (or any other kind of way), then, well, a bird-faced, Fortnite-hacking, dream-walking demon is likely going to be the least of your worries.

tl;dr... Stop with the Momo crap, I beg you.

Two-Make-Three Words in Scrabble, Part Three: L-Q

This is part three of the list of three-letter words that can be formed from extant two-letter words. For intro remarks as to what this is all about, see Part One.

SYMBOLS
*   Word is new for Scrabble, as of OWL 2014 / OSPD5
†   Word is NOT valid in Words With Friends (but is valid in Scrabble)
‡   Word is NOT valid in Scrabble, but IS valid in Words With Friends (not comprehensive)
(And of course, no symbol means the word should be fine to play in pretty much anything.)

La (a note to follow so)

ALA: a wing-shaped part of a bone
 ---
LAB: 'cause saying "laboratory" is too much work
LAC: a kind of beetle, from whose resinous byproduct shellac is made
LAD: a strapping young man
LAG: to fall behind
LAH: variant of "la" (as in, the do-re-mi note) †*
LAM: the dame with the gams is on the lam (...someone in a film noir movie might say)
LAP: it disappears when you stand up (presumably it goes to Lapland)
LAR: a kind of gibbon
LAS: more than one "la"
LAT: what a normal person calls their latissimus dorsii muscles
LAV: short for "lavatory"
LAW: I am the law!
LAX: loose (figuratively or literally)
LAY: to place horizontally

Li (about a third of a mile)

(no front hook for "li")
 ---
LIB: short for "liberal"
LID: a removable top for a cup or bowl
LIE: to tell untruths
LIN: Scottish for "waterfall", sometimes spelled "linn" (which is also valid)
LIP: the fleshy rim of your mouth
LIS: more than one "li"; also an obscure legal term (completely different word)
LIT: lighted

Lo (and lo, I am with you alway)

(no front hook for "lo")
 ---
LOB: to throw or hit something high into the air with not much horizontal impetus
LOG: a tree's corpse
LOO: British for "bathroom"
LOP: to cut off (e.g. "lop off his head")
LOR: a mild swear word, short for "Lord" (comparable to how "gosh" and "jeez" are used in place of God and Jesus respectively when quasi-cussing) †*
LOT: a great quantity
LOW: not high (can be a noun also... e.g. "the highs and lows of competitive Scrabble")
LOX: liquid oxygen

Ma ('cause saying "mom" is too much work)

AMA: pearl-diver
 ---
MAC: a casual term of address to a man whose name is not known (similar to bud, dude, etc), sometimes spelled "mack" (also valid)
MAD: angry and/or crazy
MAE: Scottish for "more"
MAG: magazine
MAM: British for "mom" †*
MAN: a dude
MAP: shows the way to the treasure
MAR: a stain
MAS: more than one "ma"
MAT: a temporary covering
MAW: the hapless victim disappeared into the monster's gaping maw
MAX: 'cause saying "maximum" is too much work
MAY: I think I may, I think I might

Me (a name I call myself... the actual one)

EME: Scottish for uncle (seriously, Scotland?)
 ---
MED: medicine or medication
MEH: interjection expressing boredom (coined by The Simpsons TV show) *
MEL: medical prescription shorthand for "honey" (I am puzzled as to why that's a thing, but okay)
MEM: the Hebrew letter מ
MEN: dudes
MET: meeted
MEW: the sound a kitten makes

Mi (a name I call myself... the do-re-mi note)

AMI: parlez vous francais, mon ami?
 ---
MIB: a kind of marble used for the game of marbles
MID: as in, the mid 19th century (often hyphenated in such contexts, but it doesn't HAVE to be... since it CAN stand alone as a word, it's allowed in Scrabble)
MIG: variant of mib (the kind of marble)
MIL: 1/1000th of a (monetary) pound, in some countries that use "pounds" as the local currency
MIM: British for "modest" or "demure"
MIR: a commune of peasant farmers (Russian loan word)
MIS: more than one "mi"
MIX: to blend together

Mm (tasty)

HMM: variant of "hm" (or maybe "hm" is the variant of "hmm"? Hmmm!)
MMM: really tasty †*
UMM: variant of "um"
 ---
MMM: really, really tasty! (this is the only 2-make-3 entry that appears twice under the same two-letter word!) †*

Mo (moment)

EMO: like a goth teen *
 ---
MOA: a peculiar-looking, vaguely ostrich-like bird, now sadly extinct
MOB: a crowd or the mafia (use context to distinguish)
MOC: 'cause saying "moccasin" is too much work
MOD: modification or moderator (use context to distinguish)
MOG: Cockney slang for a cat (shortened form of "moggy")
MOI: fancy-pants word for "me" *
MOL: one mol is an Avogadro's number worth of molecules (or atoms) of any given substance (more commonly spelled "mole")
MOM: 'cause saying "mother" is too much work
MON: variant spelling of "man" in a number of different English dialects
MOO: what a cow says
MOP: a bundle of coarse yarn on a stick you wipe the floors with
MOR: "humorous" pseudo-dialectal spelling of "more", e.g. "Ah reckon that slap o' grits o'er yonder is mor'n y'all can et up"
MOS: more than one "mo"
MOT: a witty remark, usually seen as part of the phrase "bon mot"
MOW: like mowing the grass

Mu (Greek letter μ)

AMU: atomic mass unit (often written lowercase and pronounced as a word, so it's allowed)
EMU: a funny-looking bird
 ---
MUD: watery dirt or really dirty water
MUG: an ugly face or a large drinking cup (use context to distinguish)
MUM: as in, "mum's the word"
MUN: old-timey variant of "must"
MUS: more than one μ
MUT: variant spelling of "mutt" (i.e., a mongrel dog)
MUX: short for "multiplexer" (an electronics component) †*

My (belonging to me)

(no front hook for "my")
 ---
MYC: variant spelling of "mic", because saying "microphone" is too much work, and also a kind of oncogene (i.e., a cancer-causing gene) †

Na (variant spelling of "nah")

ANA: a collection of memorable sayings
 ---
NAB: steal or kidnap
NAE: Scottish for "not"
NAG: what your mom does
NAH: nah, bruh! (for some reason, "bruh" is not yet valid... bruh!)
NAM: variant spelling of "naam", an obscure legal term
NAN: variant spelling of "naan", a delicious flatbread term
NAP: a short break for sleeping
NAV: short for "navigation", usually in the context of a website †*
NAW: naw, bruh!
NAY: nay, dear brother!

Ne (variant spelling of "nee", used to indicate a maiden name)

ANE: Scottish for "one"
ONE: non-Scottish for "ane" ;)
 ---
NEB: old-timey word for nose or beak
NEE: normal spelling of the word to indicate a woman's maiden name
NET: crisscrossed ropes for catching animals or people
NEW: not old

No (not yes)

ONO: a kind of mackerel
 ---
NOB: a term from cribbage (the card game), namely the jack of the starter's suit
NOD: like nodding your head yes
NOG: like eggnog
NOH: a kind of traditional play in Japan (usually referred to in English as "noh theater")
NOM: fancy-pants word for "name", usually seen as part of the phrases "nom de plume" (meaning a writer's assumed name) or "nom de guerre" (usually meaning a guerrilla or terrorist's alias), though note that "guerre" is NOT a valid word
NOO: "humorous" pseudo-dialectal "mispronunciation" of the word new, e.g. "Noo-Yawk"
NOR: can replace "or" when negating things, e.g. "not this nor that"
NOS: yeses and nos
NOT: an adverb of negation
NOW: currently

Nu (Greek letter ν)

GNU: a cool-looking animal with a suitably cool name
 ---
NUB: a small protuberance
NUG: a flowering plant cultivated in Ethiopia for its edible seeds and oil †*
NUN: a female member of a Catholic religious order
NUS: more than one of the Greek letter
NUT: a crazy person or a really dry fruit in a tough shell (use context to distinguish)

Od (old-timey science word)

BOD: 'cause saying "body" is too much work
COD: a kind of fish
GOD: invisible sky father
HOD: an apparatus for carrying bricks on your shoulder
MOD: modification or moderator (use context to distinguish)
NOD: like nodding your head
POD: like peas in a pod
ROD: as in, "thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me"
SOD: dirt suitable for growing stuff in
TOD: an obsolete unit of weight, equal to ~28 pounds
YOD: alternate spelling of "yodh", the Hebrew letter '
 ---
ODA: a harem (Turkish loan-word)
ODD: strange
ODE: a kind of poem
ODS: totally makes sense to refer to the non-existent od in the plural

Oe (a Faroese whirlwind... do not ask me to explain further)

DOE: a deer, a female deer
FOE: fancy-pants word for "enemy"
HOE: a gardening implement (what did you think it was?)
JOE: slang for "coffee"
ROE: a kind of deer
TOE: a foot-finger
VOE: old-timey word for a small bay
WOE: trouble
 ---
OES: more than one oe

Of (from)

OOF: the sound a Roblox character makes when they die (how is "oof" still not a valid WWF word!?) *†
 ---
OFF: not on
OFT: 'cause saying "often" is ofttimes too much work

Oh (as in, "oh, snap!")

FOH: variant of "faugh" (an old-timey interjection expressing disgust)
NOH: a kind of traditional play in Japan
OOH: oohs and ahs
POH: old-timey variant of "pooh" (the interjection expressing disbelief)
 ---
OHM: a unit of electrical resistance
OHO: aha! ho ho!
OHS: exes and ohs

Oi (as in, "Oi, what's all this then!?")

KOI: a kind of fish *
MOI: fancy word for "me" *
POI: a traditional Hawaiian food made from taro (also a valid word)... it looks kinda like purple applesauce
 ---
OIK: British slang for an oaf †
OIL: a viscous liquid not soluble in water

Om (meditation word)

DOM: an honorary title, similar to "don"
HOM: an obscure mathematics term, as in "hom functor" (and functor is a valid word even though hom is not in WWF)  †*
MOM: 'cause saying "mother" is too much work
NOM: fancy-pants word for "name"
POM: like a pom-pom
ROM: read-only memory, i.e. permanent storage for computer instructions or data ("rom" can be written lowercase and pronounced like a word, so it's allowed)
TOM: a male cat
YOM: Hebrew loan-word for "day", as in Yom Kippur
 ---
OMA: "grandmother" in some dialects †*
OMS: say a few oms when meditating

On (not off)

CON: to trick by betraying someone's confidence
DON: an honorary title, similar to "dom"
EON: a long time
FON: variant spelling of "foehn", a warm, dry wind
HON: short for "honey", i.e. what waitresses at Cracker Barrel call everyone
ION: an electrically charged atom (the two kinds of ion, cations and anions, which are positive and negative ions, respectively, are both recognized as valid words too)
MON: Jamaican man
SON: male child
TON: really heavy
WON: 'cause "winned" ain't a word
YON: yonder
 ---
ONE: a number between zero and two
ONS: as in, "ons and offs"

Op (short for "operation")

BOP: to strike lightly and/or playfully
COP: policeman (short for "copper", which police badges were once made from)
FOP: a useless dandy
HOP: ...skip and a jump
KOP: a hill (Dutch loan-word)
LOP: to cut off (e.g. "lop off his head")
MOP: a bundle of coarse yarn on a stick you wipe the floors with
POP: incorrect Midwestern slang for "coke"
SOP: to dip in liquid, e.g. sopping up the spaghetti sauce with garlic bread
TOP: the opposite side from the bottom (can also be a verb, e.g. "he topped up his glass")
 ---
OPA: an interjection of "acclaim" (Greek loan-word, much popularized by the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding) †*
OPE: as in, "ope wide the gate" ('cause saying "open" is too much work)
OPS: like spec ops ("spec" also a valid word)
OPT: to choose an option (e.g., "he opted for the cheapest one")

Or (heraldry term for gold color)

COR: variant spelling of "kor", the unit of measure
DOR: a kind of beetle (also spelled "dorr")
FOR: opposite of against
GOR: a "mild oath", i.e. the British version of "golly" or "gosh"
KOR: ancient Hebrew unit of measure equal to 10 "baths" or about 58 gallons, see Ezekiel 45:14
MOR: "humorous" pseudo-dialectal spelling of "more", e.g. "Ah reckon that slap o' grits o'er yonder is mor'n y'all can et up"
NOR: can replace "or" when negating things, e.g. "not this nor that"
TOR: old-timey word for a high, craggy hill, preserved in a few place names in England, e.g. Glastonbury Tor
 ---
ORA: one possible plural of "os" (it's a long story)
ORB: a sphere
ORC: monstrous demi-human race from Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, and similar
ORE: metal-bearing rock
ORG: organization †*
ORS: totally makes sense to refer to ors in the plural
ORT: old-timey word for a scrap of food left over from a meal (more commonly seen as "orts", which is also valid)

Os (a bone, an orifice, or an esker; use context to distinguish)

BOS: the genus to which cows, yaks, zebus, and other related animals belong
COS: cosine, cousin, or variant spelling of kos (use context to distinguish)
DOS: more than one "do", as in do-re-mi
KOS: a former unit of length in India (~2 miles), also spelled "coss" or "cos" (which are also valid)
MOS: more than one "mo"
NOS: more than one "no"
POS: more than one "po", i.e. chamber-pot *
SOS: more than one "so", as in do-re-mi-fa-so
WOS: variant of "woes"
 ---
OSE: variant spelling of "os", meaning an esker

Ow ('cause saying "ouch" is too much work)

BOW: to bend
COW: a bull's female counterpart
DOW: Scottish for "thrive"
HOW: in what way?
JOW: Scottish for the sound a bell makes
LOW: not high
MOW: like cutting the grass
NOW: the present moment
POW: boom! bang!
ROW: ...yer boat
SOW: like Miss Piggy
TOW: to pull something heavy
VOW: a super-serious promise
WOW: amazing!
YOW: what you yell when yowling... yow!
 ---
OWE: to be indebted to
OWL: a wise bird that eats insects
OWN: to legally possess
OWT: dialectal variant spelling of "aught" (meaning "anything") in the north of England, e.g. "don't say owt for which you'll be sorry" †*

Ox (fixed bull)

BOX: a hollow cube to contain things
COX: a variety of apple (often uppercase but CAN be lower)
FOX: what does the fox say!?
GOX: gaseous oxygen
LOX: liquid oxygen
POX: a pox on both your houses!
SOX: solid oxygen
VOX: fancy-pants word for "voice"
 ---
OXO: cubes of beef extract used to make stock (originally a brand name, but CAN be lowercase)
OXY: 'cause saying "oxygen" is too much work

Oy (variant of "oi")

BOY: a young male
COY: playing hard-to-get
FOY: old-timey word for a goodbye party
GOY: a gentile
HOY: a kind of ship
JOY: a kind of happiness
SOY: what they make tofu and edamame out of
TOY: a thing to play with
 ---
(no back hooks for "oy")

Pa ('cause saying "papa" is too much work)

OPA: an interjection of "acclaim" (Greek loan-word) †*
SPA: a place for medicinal baths
 ---
PAC: short for "shoepac", a heelless inner shoe worn within a boot ("shoepac" is also a valid word)
PAD: a soft covering to absorb or cushion
PAH: interjection expressing disgust or contempt
PAK: short for "package" †
PAL: slang for friend
PAM: slang for pamphlet; also an obscure card game
PAN: a metal circle to cook things on
PAP: soft food for babies or invalids, e.g. bread soaked in water or milk (presumably a "pap smear" is called that because it has a similar consistency)
PAR: for the course
PAS: more than one pa
PAT: on the head
PAW: an animal's foot or "hand"
PAX: the "kiss of peace", i.e. the ritual kissing of a picture of Jesus or a saint in old-school churches
PAY: to give money to

Pe (Hebrew letter פ, actually the same as "fe")

APE: kind of like a big monkey
OPE: ope wide the door
 ---
PEA: a kind of legume (e.g., green peas or black-eyed peas)
PEC: pectoral muscle (more commonly referred to in the plural, but as with abs and lats, it can be singular as well)
PED: 'cause saying "pedestrian" is too much work
PEE: the letter P or slang for urine (use context to distinguish)
PEG: a pirate's leg
PEH: alternate spelling for Hebrew letter "pe"
PEN: for writing with
PEP: vivaciousness
PER: as in, this lame blog has only a couple of posts per month
PES: more than one פ
PET: an animal you keep because it's cute
PEW: a bench at church

Pi (Greek letter π)

(no front hooks for "pi")
 ---
PIA: the innermost layer of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord (technically, the "pia mater", but often just called the pia)
PIC: picture
PIE: a pastry with a tasty filling (also circumference over diameter... j/k, that's pi)
PIG: an animal made from tasty bacon
PIN: a pointy thing used to attach things to other things (or the act of so doing)
PIP: a decorative dot
PIS: more than one π
PIT: a hole or cavity
PIU: Italian for "more", used in musical contexts, e.g. "piu allegro" or "piu presto" (and of course, "presto", "allegro", and other musical loan-words are generally valid)
PIX: more than one pic

Po (a chamber-pot... no, really)*

APO: 'cause saying "apolipoprotein" is too much work (in this case, I'm not even being sarcastic) †
UPO: 'cause saying "upon" is too much work (this one does deserve sarcasm... come on now, really?)
 ---
POD: like peas in a pod (or pod-people in a pod)
POH: old-timey variant of "pooh" (the interjection expressing disbelief)
POI: baked taro
POL: politician
POM: like a pom-pom
POO: crap
POP: ...goes the weasel
POS: more than one po *
POT: as in, pots and pans
POW: boom! pop!
POX: a disease that leaves pockmarks

Qi (very nearly the only Q word you need to know)

(no front-hooks for "qi")
 ---
QIS: more than one qi