Ascala Spotlight – Knights and Phoenixes

Hello. C J here. I’ve got two new corporations heroes from Five Million Strong for you this afternoon. First is Hawthorn, the mage coder who acts as the public face of the Shadow Knights. The Shadow Knights are technically a corporation despite the fact that they are decentralized and have no known location. They are coders and computer wizards who keep the other corporations honest without ever letting them know who within their own team did what. Hawthorn is one of the few of them who will meet outsiders, although what this says about his rank in the team is unknown to anyone except for him.

Next up is Phoenix Captain Miak Youngsun. The term Phoenix Captain means she’s currently the top ranking member of Phoenix Legion. Phoenix Legion is the continent’s largest professional mercenary organization and while they are known for their speed they are also known to follow the law very closely. Often the corporations need manpower in their quiet wars and conflicts they have in the Interior, the desert at the centre of the continent. These wars never conclude and so the members of this mercenary organization live most of their lives in the Interior doing work for other corporations. This is their current team lead.

This art will be used to make the final cards in Five Million Strong. No matter how nice all of this art looks it’s concept art and not the final art that will appear on these character’s cards. That art will be in my line art style and will be based on the concept art here. Next up I’m documenting the two other Blackforge Industrial Division Chiefs who work alongside Balath Regal.

C J Mcpherson

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Four New Recipes for January

Hello. C J here. I've got four new recipes for everyone here. We have everything from Chinese chicken to homemade hot apple cider. Enjoy. The Emperor’s Potatoes Here we have the first food item I ever finished designing for Food of the World – Carthia. I tried three combinations of traditional Asian ingredients and pasta under the assumption that I was doing Italian-Chinese food for the book. I could not for the life of me get any of them to be exciting. They were fine. I don’t eat fine. I got bored of the pasta thing and then thought to myself, ‘what happens if I swap the pasta for another starch? What about a potato?’ It worked. Really well. It worked so well I named them The Emperor’s Potatoes. They’re mashed potatoes and I left the skins on because I like vitamins and then that got me thinking about the traditional medicinal food of Ancient China, ginger. Could I put ginger in a potato dish and have it work? Yes. I can. That surprised me. Be warned, these are almost dangerousl...

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Chocolate and Barbecue Sauce and Truffles Oh My

Hello. C J here. I've got two new recipes for everyone today. I meant to type up a third but for the life of me I can't find the paper index card I wrote it down on. I will have to make it again and post it later once I double check I have the right proportions. I know what's in it but the proportions are done by taste. It's for Asian style ginger baked beans as part of my Asian-barbecue book I'm working on. The book might actually end up being cards for the card game because the recipes are so simple they fit in that format. That makes my job easier. Here's our two recipes for today. The first is a new Asian style barbecue sauce I invented from scratch. This isn't based on an existing sauce. It's the product of a lot of planning and research. It's great. The second recipe is for my final draft scratch made dark chocolate. This stuff is good. I still have some of the batch I made three days ago on hand. It's too tasty to eat. There will be a mil...

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