Out There – Co-Geeking

The Odysseus LARP Is Going Pro

February 25, 2026February 22, 2026Eppu1 Comment

Odysseus was a well-received Finnish-style larp (or live-action role-playing game) for 104 players organized first in 2019 and again in 2024 by Illusia ry and a team of dozens of volunteers. It was set in an original world drawing heavily from Battlestar Galactica, but also inspired by Star Trek and The Expanse.

Three runs of the game were held each year, and large space ship sets were built in a rented school building, where the game area provided a 24/7 immersive experience for the players over 48 hours, followed by a debrief / end party.

Now a number of the crew are attempting to create a commercially viable version of the game. They’re setting up a business entity, Ellarion Tales, and are prepping an improved version to be known as Odysseus – First Light.

(To have a better understanding of what Odysseus was, you can look at their archived web site, which includes links to not just the game material but also documentaries, music, and photos. Or read player experiences, for example by James Bloodworth (“Odysseus A Retrospective (2019)”) or by Jaakko Stenros (“Human Monstrosity and Odysseus”). More Odysseus photos can be found at Larppikuvat.fi.)

To provide a background to the project, Laura Kröger, the lead producer and narrative designer, talks with Adrian Hon at MSSV about the thought process and challenges, including what commercial game running in Finland requires.

Flickr Henry Soderlund Troubleshooting Engine

In addition, the folks at Ellarion blog about the process and their reasoning behind a number of creative and pragmatic choices they’re making. There is also a fairly detailed intro post to Odysseus – First Light, including accessibility, safety, and expectations. The post about crowdfunding talks about the finances from players’ point of view and schedules for the first runs.

At this writing, their goal is 10 runs, starting from October 2026 and continuing until summer 2027, with the possibility of more if stretch goals for the crowdfunding are reached. Two of these 10 initial runs will be so-called local runs (materials will still be in English but the spoken language will be either Finnish or Swedish).

The Odysseus – First Light Indiegogo page prelaunched in late January. (Meaning, you can read about the project but cannot back it yet.) The campaign proper will start on March 6 and end on April 12th, 2026.

(Note that they are still finalizing the project; details might change before the campaign actually launches.)

I haven’t played in Odysseus myself, but I know several people who have—some more than once, in fact—and everyone has been bursting with praise. (And some thought-out criticism as well, sure, but overwhelmingly the comments have been good things.) In addition, Erik and I were able to tour the set during their July 2024 visiting hours, and can testify first hand to the quality of the propping and environments, including soundscapes. It was truly extraordinary! If the folks at Ellarion Tales are indeed able to improve on Odysseus, their larp(s) should continue to provide legitimately memorable gaming experiences.

Images: Jump countdown by Henry Söderlund via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). First Light mashup by Ellarion Tales. Ship faults by Minttu Hopeasuo (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Troubleshooting the engine by Henry Söderlund via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Empty cafeteria by Erik Jensen. Project schedule by Ellarion Tales. Attack by Henry Söderlund via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Textile Work on a Greek Vase

February 16, 2026February 8, 2026Erik1 Comment

In ancient Greece, as in many pre-industrial societies, textile work was primarily the domain of women, and since ordinary women and their lives rarely appealed to ancient Greek artists as a subject, we have few artistic depictions of women doing the work that filled much of their lives. That fact is one of the things that makes this vase so interesting. The decoration on the main body of this vase depicts many different stages of textile work, including spinning thread, weaving, folding the finished cloth, as well as weighing and perhaps dyeing it. All of these activities were part of the daily life of most women in ancient Athens, where this vase was painted.

Textile work on a black figure lekythos, via Metropolitan Museum (made in Athens, currently Metropolitan Museum, New York; 550-530 BCE; glazed pottery; attributed to the Amasis painter)

As we discussed in our series about textile production, making cloth and making clothes took up an enormous amount of time. It’s interesting to speculate on why someone might have chosen such a theme for a piece of tableware in their home. Was this a commission for a family who was in the textile business, not just producing for home use? Was it meant to celebrate the unsung daily labor of Athenian women by putting it in the same artistic frame as the deeds of gods and heroes? Was it a marketing ploy to try to appeal to a feminine audience?

Whatever the artist’s intent may have been, this is a wonderful piece to have surviving from antiquity.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Early Iranian Spindle Whorls

January 28, 2026December 7, 2025Eppu1 Comment

We all know that everyday tasks aren’t really made lighter by having eye-pleasing tools to work with. But there clearly is some innate yearning in humanity to not just modify but also to decorate our environment.

Earlier we’ve blogged about Minoan mugs from ca. 1,500 BCE, a Bronze Age cup with an attempt at animation, a Minoan octopus flask, a brilliantly colored ancient Greek glass perfume bottle, a monster mosaic from a 3rd c. BCE Greek city in Italy, a statuette of girls playing knucklebones from ca. 330 BCE, and a Maya vase with a rabbit scribe, and many other examples.

Here’s one more case in point: Iranian spindle whorls from the early islamic period c. 700s-900s CE. They are made from incised bone and carved with intricate designs.

Tumblr theinternetarchive Iranian Spindle Whorls

A spindle is a hand tool for making yarn, basically a long thin stick around which the freshly formed yarn can be wound. A spindle whorl is a weight attached to the bottom of a spindle. Whorls provide more torque and a longer spin time—purely functional, in other words.

Many, many spindle whorls found around the world have been carefully shaped, which is to be expected—you do want your tools not just to work, but work well for the purpose. In addition, so many of extant spindle whorls are also beautifully decorated.

You could perhaps argue that the small surface makes for a quick and easy art project. However, most whorls are round or spherical, which makes for a more challenging surface to decorate.

Spinning must have been an unending task for our predecessors. Spindles—and, by extension, spindle whorls—were the most basic, utilitarian tool you could imagine. And yet, we find innumerable people throughout history wanting to decorate their whorls. Little details like this make me love humanity all over again, despite all the awful we’re also capable of.

Images by The Cleveland Museum of Art, mashup via theinternetarchive on Tumblr

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Nan Madol: A Megalithic Palace in the Pacific

January 19, 2026September 28, 2025ErikLeave a comment

On the eastern coast of the island of Pohnpei, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, are the remains of a gigantic complex of megalithic structures. These structures stand along the coast of the island and on nearly a hundred artificial islands just offshore. This site is called Nan Madol.

Platform and enclosure wall, photograph by Uhooep via Wikimedia (Nan Madol; c. 1100-1200 CE; stone)

The structures of Nan Madol were first built in the 1100s CE and served as an administrative and ceremonial center for the Saudeleur ruling dynasty that held power over Pohnpei from approximately 1100 CE to the early 1600s. They were constructed using columns of volcanic rock that formed natural geometric shapes. By carefully jointing these stones together, the people of Pohnpei created large structures stable enough that many walls still stand today.

Wall with opening, photograph by Patrick Nunn via Wikimedia (Nan Madol; c. 1100-1200 CE; stone)

Nan Madol is one of many sites around the world that remind us that cultures capable of coordinated labor, careful planning, and social complexity are not the product of only one environment or part of the world.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Swimmers of the Sahara

January 5, 2026December 28, 2025Erik1 Comment

Thousands of years ago, the Sahara desert was not the dry, sandy place it is now. There was a time when northern Africa was wet and green. Most of what we know about climate changes in the past comes from the study of geology and paleontology, but one small indicator of a wetter ancient Sahara comes from the people of the time themselves.

There are numerous rock paintings and carvings in the Sahara, showing that people once lived in places that are now inhospitable desert. Several pieces of rock art show animals that could not survive in the Sahara in its modern desert state. One interesting painting, from a cave in southwestern Egypt, shows people floating or swimming in water.

Swimmers from the Cave of Swimmers, photograph by Ronald Unger via Wikimedia (Wadi Sura, Egypt; c. 8000-5000 BCE; rock painting)

Anthropologists have speculated that the swimmers represent souls of the dead floating in the primordial waters of the afterlife, in an early version of what would become the mythology of ancient Egypt. Whether this speculation is true or not, however, it must be the case that floating in water was something the people of the ancient Sahara could imagine, an experience that is hardly possible in the region today.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Winter is Coming, and He’s Got a Hare to Share

December 8, 2025November 30, 2025Erik1 Comment

Winter is upon us here in the northern hemisphere. We’re settling in for cold days and long, dark nights. Here’s how the winter season was imagined in late Roman Britain.

This figure comes from a floor mosaic at Chedworth Villa in western Britain. Each corner of the mosaic had a little allegorical figure representing one of the seasons. Winter appears bundled up in warm layers with a hooded cloak, carrying a hare in one hand (the reward of a hunt), and a symbolic leafless branch in the other.

Wishing you a warm, cozy, and cheerful winter season!

Image: Winter from Chedworth dining room floor, photograph by Pasicles via Wikimedia (Chedworth Roman Villa; 4th c. CE; mosaic)

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

A Peek into Color Gothic Aesthetics

November 5, 2025August 17, 2025EppuLeave a comment

I was browsing a ren faire board the other day for research. Someone there was asking for inspiration and advice, saying they usually dress “quite gothic”, which I somehow misread as “white gothic”.

That would be really interesting, I thought, and wanted to check whether it’s a thing… And of course it is! Known as white goth or ice goth: instead of the ubiquitous black, dressing only (or mostly) in white, but spiky or moody, sometimes puffy or lacy or ruffly, too.

Then I poked around some more. I already knew that various flavors of goth aesthetic exist, of course, but I was specifically interested in color-based ones. Apart from red and purple goth, less immediately obvious colors such as pastel goth (especially pink goth looks big), blue, and green goth do seem to exist. Yellow, orange, and brown goth seem marginal (with varying levels of recognition), but there doesn’t seem to be gold, silver, or bronze goth, per se.

The most intriguing find, I think, emerged from my yellow goth search. There seems to be some interest in dressing styles inspired by bugs, including bees. One seller on Etsy even used both the word bee and goth in their sweater description. (Personally, I couldn’t call that sweater goth style, but you do you.) Below is a bee-inspired ensemble by EJ on Pinterest that the user labeled as “yellow Y2K goth outfit”:

So, there’s bee goth now? Bee core? (Buzz core???)

Live and learn!

Images: Mashup by Eppu Jensen: red and black outfits by hystericb0y on Tumblr; purple goth by sabikuma on tiktok, found via peri on Pinterest; blue goth by dogmaz on Tumblr; green goth via Yasmin on Pinterest; white goth via Mabel Manley on Pinterest. Yellow Y2K goth outfit (bee goth) by EJ on Pinterest.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

ESA’s Video Flying Over Xanthe Terra on Mars

October 17, 2025October 12, 2025Eppu1 Comment

The European Space Agency has released a new three-plus-minute Mars flyover video based on images transmitted by the Mars Express orbiter.

According to Phys.org,

ESA’s Mars Express takes viewers on a flight over Xanthe Terra, a highland region just north of the equator. The film is a mosaic created from images taken during single-orbit observations by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The images were combined with topography information from a digital terrain model (DTM) to create a three-dimensional view of the Martian landscape. The main feature in this video is Shalbatan Vallis, a 1300 km-long (~800 mi) outflow channel that transitions from the Southern Highlands to the Northern Lowlands.

(Note: The image above is merely a screencap; follow the text links to see the video on ESA’s site.)

There are two amazing things about this video. First, as large as the area clearly is, compared to the rotating image of the planet in the very beginning, the features we see are completely dwarfed by Valles Marineris (the huge canyon south of Xanthe Terra). And second, the amount of detail is surprisingly ample. I wonder how much an exogeologist would be able to deduce?

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: it is a very good time to be a space geek. 🙂

(Also interesting to me, at least, is that since the video is silent, my brain started playing the main theme from the movie Gravity. Space imagery must be accompanied by majestic music now?)

Found via File 770.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

When the So-Called High Art Falls Entirely Flat

September 10, 2025September 7, 2025EppuLeave a comment

I’m not a huge high art aficionado, but at times it can be fun to visit a museum. Then there’s art I do not understand. At all.

Content note: this post contains one f bomb.

Case in point: the Ouroboros Steak, a project designed by Andrew Pelling, Orkan Telhan, and Grace Knight. On the Design Museum website, the project is described like this:

“Ouroboros Steak is a DIY meal kit for growing gourmet steaks from of one’s own cells. It comes as a starter kit of tools, ingredients and instructions that enable users to culture their own cells into mini steaks, without causing harm to animals.

“Commissioned for the exhibition Designs for Different Futures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the project is a critical commentary on the lab-grown meat industry and critiques the industry’s claims to sustainability.”

Judging by the museum website metadata, the… product… is also listed for the 2020 Beazley Designs of the Year competition.

Err, what? Art? Product? Gourmet?!?!?!? What the fuck did I just read???

I… just… What?!? I can’t even decide whether the name is clever or artsy-fartsy pseudo-intellectual crap. Or whether the project might be just a boredom-induced crude joke??? If it were, it would be in highly, EXTREMELY poor taste to not take the health implications of cannibalism into account DURING a pandemic. Unless that’s supposed to be a part of the project???

Just can’t fathom this, in any shape, size, or form!

(WHAT?!????)

Image via Designmuseum.org

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Imagine Being Surrounded by Maps

September 1, 2025February 16, 2025Erik3 Comments

The Villa Farnese is a gorgeous Renaissance palace in central Italy, built in the early 1500s and richly elaborated with sculptures and frescoes. One of the rooms in the villa features a map of the world filling the wall at one end, with detailed maps of the continents on the other walls, under a ceiling decorated with constellations. Standing in this room, the magnates of the villa could see the whole world, as it was known to scientists and cartographers of the day.

The map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Etienne (Li) via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)

Looking at this space, it occurs to me that a room like this would make an excellent setting for a scene in a fantasy or historical story. Many such stories play out over long distances, and knowing how one territory or city relates to the others around it as well as to the shapes of the land can make a huge difference in understanding the stakes and possibilities in play.

Africa, from the map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbèra via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)

In a visual medium like tv or movies, it could be very helpful to have a visual in the background while characters are discussing important movements or plans, but even in text, putting your characters in such a place could give you an opportunity to describe them looking at the map, tracing routes of travel or the borders between nations, and arguing for their plans.

Europe, from the map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Ulrich Mayring via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)

Maps make everything better!

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.