The Sakura Dojo

At the Jack Vance Official Website you can get the Chasch, first book of the Tschai - Planet of Adventure series for free in ebook format (and a ton of his books as ebooks too). Certainly worth grabbing as Vance's culture building skills are phenomenal.

Over on my gaming journal, a link to a free PDF I did for the retro-futuristic pulp setting of Rocketship Empires: 1936. Have fun.

Now up at the Mor Aldenn – City of Mages log is the second part of Cellian Varr's story:

Wizard’s Path, Part II: Broken Bones

Feedback welcome either here or there or both. Please go read and enjoy.

Apotrope (adj.: apotropaic) refers to objects such as amulets and talismans or other symbols intended to "ward off evil" or "avert or combat evil."

Apotropaic:
-having the power to prevent evil or bad luck
-warding off or "turning away" evil. [Greek apo an intensifier + tropos a turn].

Usufruct from ancient Roman law (and now a part of many civil law systems), "usufruct" means the rights to the product of another's property. For example, a farmer may give a right of "usufruct" of his land to a neighbor, thus enabling that neighbor to sow and reap the harvest of that land.
-the right of using another’s property for profit, without spoiling its substance.

The US Security forces have been extremely successful in thwarting terrorist actions against the US, forget Bush's speech and check out the information from the Department of Justice. I post this because I was not aware of the successes of the anti-terrorist campaign and, even taking the DoJ list with a grain of salt, they seem to have been quite successful at defeating terrorist action within the US.

Useful random generators:
Fantasy Novel Title Generator, also useful for inspiring RPG adventures.

Auto*Shoujo: Shoujo Anime & Manga Title generator.

Thank you all for your responses and thoughts on the question.

I think I will mostly have historical figures be historical (Doctor Dee and Sir Isaac Newton are major figures in the background, for example). With a few 'historical' figures never quite intentified acting as 'Easter Eggs' as St. Rev put it (or as I think of it "A nod and a wink") thrown in for the observant reader.

I did not even know this existed until I saw a post from jesshartley on the rpg_slaves group. Posted for mine and others reference.