Parasites and a Moral Dilemma

Friday I got an announcement email reminding bloggers not only about the fact that NaNoWriMo was coming up at the beginning of November, but also a really neat idea about how to gear up for it. I wrote on my first NaNo last year, and simply fell in love with it. It not only gave me an excuse to devote time each day to writing, but also forced me to quite being so darn nit-picky about my word choices and simply get the ideas down on paper. Evidently that was really the impetus that forced me to action. I had written on a few Big Bangs last year, and being able to devote an entire month to writing original work simply seemed marvelous.

So naturally I’m planning on writing again this November. I’m settling in to do some outlining in just a few moments actually. But the part of the notice that really seemed clever was the idea to join Post a Day during the month of October to gear up for writing everyday in November. Well, I thought, I’ll be sure to do that! I post on my WordPress blog almost every day anyway!

Well… to make a long story short, that just didn’t happen yesterday. The first day and already my best intentions were fouled. Oh well, I’ve got to start somewhere, I suppose. So in true writer fashion I’ll begin this the second day of the month instead of the first, and try to give some updates as to my planning for next month. Maybe with a few ideas as well behind them. By the way, here is what prevented me from making said blog update yesterday.

When I woke up I was in the mood to bake. Now this is not in fact that strange for me. My fondness for baking is rather renowned among my friends and family (not that they’re complaining), and so I started in immediately. I made some orange rolls that had to rise twice before I could actually cook them. And I also volunteered to make pizza crusts for our D20 Future tabletop campaign we started last night. The bread machine made that so very easy too! (Between that and my mixer, it’s no wonder I bake so much!) Include the icing I made for the orange rolls and the marinara sauce for the pizza, and whoosh – time seemed to fly by. Then we piled all the goodies into my car to head over. As usual, the pizza was delish – not to mention so much more filling than your regular delivery pizza. Then it was on to the gaming.

Our campaign has a pretty fun setup. My character is a jazz lounge singer that’s taking her gig to Mars to try her hand at entertainment on another planet. She’s not exactly a fighter, but instead I’m turning her into an empath similar to Deanna Troi. Anyway one of the head leaders on the 1000+ passenger ship got a strange virus a week into the voyage. Upon further investigation of this passenger and five others, we learn that actually the infection is a parasite that turns into a huge black leech thing that pumps its dozens of babies into the host of the body and uses it as an incubator. To make matters worse, the leeches turn out to get loose on one of the decks and now we’re trying to decide if it’s salvageable. Do we kill the entire deck of people and parasites and write them off as a lost cause? Do we go through a slow and steady sweep and clean – risking the possible infection of our staff and crew? Do we notify the captain even though he could disconnect the passenger section of his ship and leave us all floating in space? Dang I love science fiction!

Anyway, that’s what was preoccupying my time yesterday. Don’t you love moral dilemmas?