Tuesday 12 March 2024

Conquistadors of Tartarus

There was a great wind, and darkness on the face of the sea. Then the proud ships vanished.

In 1571, the Holy League was fighting the Ottoman Empire. Their ships met in the Gulf of Patras, atop the Peloponnese. Spaniards, Savoyards, Venetians and Tuscans all fought the forces of Selim II from an assortment of ships. 

And then they didn't. They disappeared, on the cusp of victory. A great enchantment fell upon them, and  they were sent below.

Rumours abound: some say the spell was cast by a Turkish wizard. Others, that it was a disaffected Christian, a Transylvanian woman with a fixed grin. Some set the blame on a wizened Egyptian. One piece of esoteric gossip places the blame on a blank-faced boy North-East of Babylon. One utterly discredited suggestion suggests the culprit was a disgraced German academic. 

What happened to them? Where did that battling knot of warring ships end up?

They went below.

Tantalus, by Hendrick Goltzius

The ships fell. And then they slipped into the Styx. Thousands of confused, bloodthirsty knights and marines and sailors thrust into Hades. They found there sulphur and charcoal, and lead from fetters - and so there was gunpowder and shot. And there were allies among the Shades of the Dead, and the heroes of legend: Alexander and Pompey and Agamemnon.  

Ixion, by Hendrick Goltzius

 

So there are fiefdoms in the underworld, and rivalries - at first good natured, but developing swiftly. And there is struggle, against giants or beasts or furies or demons. 

Some of the Holy Alliance, driven by Renaissance ideals of the Classical World have banded together with the 'Virtuous Pagans' to create a New Rome. Yes, another one. 

Those Turks that were taken down into the Underworld have formed their own enclaves, and follow the old patterns of trade and conflict with the Christians. 

Set against both are the hardliners and restorationists, dedicated to crawling out of the shadowy pit they find themselves in. 

They all find themselves, it must be said,  in a world where Cervantes is allying with the Giants to destroy dark Satanic mills.....

From Matteo Perez D'Aleccio's Engravings of the Siege of Malta.

SO, WHAT IS THIS?

Conquistadors in the Classical Underworld of the Renaissance. Mannerist in style, muscular and elaborate. Ghost-fighting Spanish tercios supported by centaur squadrons and led by Julius Caesar. 

Captain of Infantry, Hendrick Goltzius (Netherlandish, Mühlbracht 1558–1617 Haarlem), Engraving
This guy's probably there. He got that sash for cutting one of Cerberus's Heads off. 

Alchemy and diabolism. Penitent brotherhoods in conical fire-proof robes. Jesuits arguing with the shade of Heraclitus. Achilles getting into arm-wrestling contests with landsknechts. Stray Protestants keeping very quiet. 

undefined
Imagine these guys lobbing rocks at descending Furies. 

Inspirational Media:

Dante's Inferno.

I guess some of the guys from The Faerie Queene are there. 

16th Century depictions of Classical Antiquity. 


[This post written after trying to figure out where the River Acheron was said to emerge on the west coastline of Greece, and a hazy memory of Lepanto being in the area.]

Tuesday 5 March 2024

Coffin Nails: "Oh, so you like Feudal Weirdness, Solomon? How about you smoke the Entire Pack."

It should have happened the other way round.

Last Saturday I saw Part Two of Dennis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. I enjoyed myself, and think I shall do so if I rewatch it. Regarding adaptation, it goes deep in some places rather than shallow all over, to its credit. A decent enough picture.

However...

It goes quite hard on the minimalism. That works well for Arrakis, well for the acquisitive mania and pared-down souls of the Harkonnen, but not for everything. The first part had scenes that mystified and captivated more. The arrival of the herald (shown here) had me squinting up at the screen, examining the crowds of courtiers. What are they wearing? Why are they wearing it? What does it convey? Where did they find a carpet that long? Are those helmets functional or symbolic? See also the meme-spawning introduction of the Sarduakar. 

Spoilers of a mild kind - but the Imperial Court, as shown in Part Two, should share twin elements of both those scenes and doesn't quite. It looks a little spa-like. Which is a proper comparison with Arrakis (created by God to test the faithful) but still a little disappointing. Though there would be something interesting in an Imperial Court which wasn't full of Rococo decadence or Feudal display but full of athletic, highly religious, pleasingly-natured types. Everyone in it a superb physical, social and mental specimen, for good or ill. We've not had a really good Shaddam IV yet, in any of the three Dune screen adaptations. Not that it's necessarily a plum role, mind you. 

But before last Saturday, I had read Vladimir Sorokin's Telluria

Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin

This was picked as part of an ongoing reading group I tie into, so I read this in tandem with other people and their thoughts online. 

I will reproduce the back-cover summary of the above edition (New York Review Books). Written 2013, translated 2022.

Telluria is set in the future, when a devastating Holy War between Europe and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the Middle Ages. Europe, China and Russia have all broken up. The people of the world now live in an array of little nations that are like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or identity, a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no one power dominates. What does, however, is the appetite for the special substance tellurium. A spike of tellurium, driven into the brain by an expert hand, offers a transforming experience of death; incorrectly administered, it means death.

***

Well, what to say of this?

Telluria is deliberately lush. It colours feasts of a reborn Knights Templar, drugged indulgences by starving Bohemian artists, woodland rural scenes, entranced Russian peasants. Tailormade as a counter to Villeneuve's Dune? Not quite, but the contrast is stark. 

There is no main character: barely any ongoing narrative. There are fifty chapters, and perhaps forty-four stories. 

An early thought of mine was to compare it to Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. A book that hit me at just the right age, I think. There's an obvious comparison between the teaming phyles of The Diamond Age (Chinese, Japanese, Anglo-American Victorian, Boer, Zulu, Ashanti, Mormon, Maoist-Gonzoloist....) and the new feudal states of Telluria. Aside from a range of set dressing and interesting technologies bespoke crafted for the new states, a historical or geopolitical interpretation reveals itself: Stephenson writes 'after the end of history': The Diamond Age is a 1995 work, looking to the end of nation-states and the rise of distributed republics. But it sees the surpassing (in symbolic plot terms) of free-wheeling cyberpunk anarchist types and is a thematic (and possibly literal) sequel to Snow Crash. Telluria doesn't see the end of history, but does see the collapse of the great powers. There is the repeat of the Crusades, even as there is the repeat of the Boxer Rebellion. There are long stretches of Telluria discussing the fall of Russia, its post-imperial nature, its rapacity. Travel in The Diamond Age is rapid and frequent; in Telluria, rare, difficult and often reserved for the rich - cue reference to climate change, even if this is unmentioned in the text.  The Diamond Age looks beyond (from the American zenith of the mid-90s) to the collapse of states in a world of slickly manoeuvring corporations to the rebirth of state-like entities. Telluria looks beyond the final collapse of Russia, after the Tsar and after the Soviet Union (in a Russian moment of buttressed decline) to a variety of new polities.

Enough of the ripped-from-the-headlines material. That's not quite adequate for our purposes, anyway. I should also say that neither The Diamond Age nor Telluria are meant to be viewed as Eutopia or Dystopia. But I suspect Sorokin experiences higher highs and lower lows in his vision of Telluria than Stephenson for The Diamond Age. Some bits of Telluria would definitely look preferable to the present day to Chesterton or Tolkien, but by no means all of it. A deified Stalin (among other things) sees to that. 

Telluria is also thoroughly fleshly. I said lush above: there are some moments straight from Jonathan Swift, detailing the various horrors of human bodies and appetites. Orwell's essay on Gulliver's Travels is worth reading for detail and comparison. My mind also goes to Anthony Burgess - see his 'eschatological spy novel' Tremor of Intent or the lurid dystopia The Wanting Seed (that flips fascinatingly on its axis part way through). There are also some moments that seem as if they needs must come from a world that has had a time to saturate in widely available pornography, thanks to the internet. That's not that were Sorokin writing ten years earlier it would have been sexless, or even that I think Telluria too sexy for the Middle Ages! But the tone of variety, explicitness, repetition and niche appeal suggest a particular background influence. Gulliver is also worth mentioning because of the post-human appearances: Lilliputians, ogres, centaurs, cynocephaloi and more: engineered as toys or slaves. There is a thorough-going range of grotesques - all enjoying some of the same appetites and pleasures of baseline humanity. Which is as unmoored and adrift as the various polities of this new age.

Then there's Telluria itself. The shining nails. It's possible, tempting even, to see this as some sort of symbol for the Past's Inspiration (I resist the term nostalgia). Hazardous, intrusive, captivating, capable of inspiring love and courage and great deeds. That seems too simple - it is a way of accessing dreams, of achieving a fresh vision. It may be the fault of the age that so many of its dreams are so terrible. There's some portions that make it look redemptive, mind you, including some Ginsburg pastiche in the penultimate chapter than perhaps reframe earlier portions. Is the coward who 'bangs a nail into his head before battle' really an absolute coward, if his dreams of courage can be manifested? Of course, Telluria itself comes from a post-Russian republic in the Altai mountains. This is led by a remarkable caudillo, a former French soldier - and an 'Alpha Male' two short steps from being tongue-in-cheek (Cf. The Eiger Sanction?). It's difficult on to imagine that his policy with the nails is definitively good or redemptive (contra some interpretations), however red-blooded and life-affirming (a blasted slippery term) his chapter seems.

There is an awful lot of meditation and consideration - by foreigners and natives alike - of dead Russia, the scattered remnants of its culture, the appetites and drives and genius of the Slavic Soul. It doesn't actually conclude much about it, mind you. I'm almost certain missing one element or another of all this, thanks to reading this outside that cultural context. 

That said, Sorokin feels willing to dart around Europe (with some exceptions - the British Isles, Italy, only a sideways look at the Balkans and Scandinavia). There a variety of languages used in such cases to offer the proper tone for that locale. This is something of a polyglot work. There is no common language or culture - even the looser culture of international liberalism. 

Throughout there are smartphone like devices and AI assistants. It's unclear to what degree these are plugged in to something like our internet, but they certainly seem to be capable of an awful lot. Traditional literacy seems to have slipped out the window with their arrival - another link back to the Middle Ages. Or The Diamond Age. At any rate, they appear largely benign - and are unlinked to any one set of norms of cultures, which makes them a trifle more charming that the Alexas of this world. 

In the end, though, a frustrating piece. Theoretically, Telluria should be like walking through a room at the museum: Room 43, Art of The Low Countries, 16-17th C. Some of the paintings are religious scenes, some still-lifes, some group portraits - maybe there's one or two busts or cabinets with painted panels. But it should all be of a kind, share a family resemblance. I'm not sure Telluria really does always. In any case, in a gallery I can keep half an eye on other paintings as I examine one particular pieces, have an awareness of things. No such luck with Telluria: no sooner than you take your eye off it, it vanishes. 

For a contrast, I direct you to Patrick Stewart's review, to be found here.

And to this recent relevant image of his


Thursday 15 February 2024

Early February 2024 Miscellany

A little less highbrow than other iterations, but perhaps of use all the same.

***

Are you in need of a random background table for your next Character? Get out three d1000 and roll them in any order.

Using the United States Department of Labour's Dictionary of Occupational Titles we have a wealth of material! This was published between the 1930s and 1990s, and clearly has roots in that style of mid-century managerialism and compromise between state and corporation. Flipping through entries brings to mind all manner of stereotypes about vast sprawling heartless bureaucracies - but you shouldn't spurn it for this reason. In its precision (or, rather, precise tone) and comprehensive overview, it can suggest a possibilities of focus one never contemplated otherwise. 

Example: You roll:  231 - 503 - 034

There's no exact match, but we have something either side.

230.687-010 ADVERTISING-MATERIAL DISTRIBUTOR (any industry) alternate titles: distributor, advertising material

    Distributes advertising material, such as merchandise samples, handbills, and coupons, from house to house, to business establishments, or to persons on street, following oral instructions, street maps, or address lists. May be designated according to type of advertising material distributed as Handbill Distributor (any industry); Pamphlet Distributor (any industry); Sample Distributor (any industry).

GOE: 07.07.02 STRENGTH: L GED: R1 M1 L1 SVP: 2 DLU: 77

and

235.132-010 CENTRAL-OFFICE-OPERATOR SUPERVISOR (tel. & tel.)

    Supervises and coordinates activities of CENTRAL-OFFICE OPERATORS (tel. & tel.) engaged in operating telephone switchboards: Conducts on-the-job training for inexperienced operators. Assists operators in placing unusual types of calls. May discuss service problems directly with customers. Performs other duties as described under SUPERVISOR (clerical) Master Title.

GOE: 07.04.06 STRENGTH: L GED: R4 M2 L3 SVP: 6 DLU: 77

Round up or down, according to choice. 

Not enough for you? Well, lets get out of the clerical and sales section.

689.387-010 CLOTH GRADER (textile) alternate titles: cloth classer; hand inspector; seconds grader; seconds inspector; table inspector

    Classifies cloth into grades according to number of defects: Examines cloth for defects marked in previous inspection and determines whether corrections can be made to restore cloth to standard quality. Cuts defects from cloth with scissors or routes cloth to mending, dyeing, or refinishing department for reprocessing. Classifies cloth that cannot be restored to first quality according to standards for various grades. Records disposition of cloth rehandled. May inform weaving room of repeated imperfections requiring loom adjustments.

GOE: 06.03.01 STRENGTH: L GED: R3 M1 L2 SVP: 5 DLU: 77

--

550.685-010 BATCH MIXER (soap & rel.)

    Tends mixer that compounds cleaning powder: Opens valves to admit specified quantities of ingredients into mixer or weighs and dumps ingredients into mixer, using scale. Presses button or moves lever to activate mixer that blends ingredients for designated time. Stops machine and opens valve to discharge cleaning powder into storage bins. May draw sample of blended ingredients for laboratory analysis. May keep production log.

GOE: 06.04.19 STRENGTH: M GED: R2 M1 L1 SVP: 3 DLU: 77

--

613.362-018 ROUGHER (steel & rel.) alternate titles: bulldogger

    Operates roughing mill roll stands to reduce steel billets, blooms, and slabs to specified dimensions, using knowledge of rolling practices and steel properties: Reads rolling order to determine setup specifications. Installs rolling equipment, such as roll stands, guides, bar turners, and repeaters on rolling line, using handtools, bars, levers, and sledges. Moves controls to set specified draft between rolls at each stand. Observes color of heated steel to determine rolling temperature and starts roughing stands. Examines product passing through mill for surface defects, such as scratches and cracks. Verifies specified gauge of product after each pass, using calipers. Gives directions to mill crew in readjusting roll draft and realigning guides. May set up and monitor computerized roughing roll stands. May be designated according to type of mill operated as Rougher, Bar Mill (steel & rel.); Rougher, Hot-Strip Mill (steel & rel.); Rougher, Merchant Mill (steel & rel.).

GOE: 06.02.02 STRENGTH: L GED: R3 M3 L3 SVP: 7 DLU: 78

--

737.387-010 DROP TESTER (ordnance)

    Tests cartridge primers for sensitivity to impact by dropping weight onto sample primers from measured heights: Secures primer or primed cartridge case in test fixture and positions firing pin over primer. Raises steel ball in electromagnetic holder to specified height on calibrated column. Presses switch to cut power from electromagnet which drops ball onto firing pin in test fixture to detonate primer. Tests groups of primers from same production sample at several specified drop-heights, and records percentage of fires and misfires at each height. May plot test results on graph to develop primer sensitivity curve, or apply standardized statistical formulas to estimate sensitivity characteristics of entire production lot of primers.

GOE: 06.03.01 STRENGTH: L GED: R3 M3 L2 SVP: 3 DLU: 77

--

[Obligatory snigger.]

825.361-014 VIBRATOR-EQUIPMENT TESTER (machinery mfg.) alternate titles: tester, vibrator equipment; top-lift and automatic-window repairer

    Tests electrical and mechanical vibrator feeders and conveyors for conformance to specifications: Clips cable of test board to electric vibrator equipment. Turns dials and observes meters to operate electric vibrator equipment at specified cycle, voltage, and amperage levels. Holds end of scale against vibrator equipment to pick up vibration. Reads scale mark that shows distinct double image and determines vibrating frequency on conversion chart. Starts motor of mechanical vibrator equipment and verifies vibrating frequency. Advises ASSEMBLER (machinery mfg.) to add or remove vibrator bars from electrical vibrator equipment or weights from drive shaft of mechanical vibrator equipment, to correct vibrating deficiencies. May inspect vibrator equipment for loose bearings and bolts, using stethoscope. Records test data.

GOE: 06.01.05 STRENGTH: L GED: R3 M3 L3 SVP: 6 DLU: 77

-- 

I find some of these quietly fascinating. "Did you know that XYZ was a job? Do you reckon it still is?" (Which presumably says something a little unflattering about a desk worker as myself.) Anyway, one to use for Electric Bastionland?

***

Does Heraldry seem too mainstream for your new campaign? Do you spurn mon that you may ward off the label  'Nipponophile'?  Perhaps you can consider horse-racing colours!

***

Charles Sargeant Jagger: a British sculptor, whose most prominent work is the Royal Artillery Memorial in London. The clearly-lined central howitzer is certainly eye-catching (Wikipedia calls it Phallic). The artillerymen round the edge are fascinating pieces of realism - the gunner's harness full of shells and exposed, bulging forearms are noteworthy.

(Said shells are definitely not ones meant to go in the howitzer - which is a breech-loading 9.2 inch howitzer, firing an eye-watering 290lb shell.)

His work in less specifically historical pieces have an more distinct Art Deco line - as, perhaps, this image of Britannia, or these lions. He died in 1934, but this all looks like it would fit in quite well to something in the 50s - as the Festival of Britain logo

To return to an old punching-bag, it's something Fallout: London might have found of use. Returning to that soon-to-be-completed project, incidentally, there are a few signs of something a trifle less stereotypical - as the use here of 'Protect and Survive' iconography. Still a bit less than focused, though. ('Constable Cruel' indeed!)

***

A recent find: Urgent Copy, a 1968 collection of literary essays and reviews by Anthony Burgess. I have found that I prefer Burgess's non-fiction to his fiction (if you want a flavour of both, try 1985), so was delighted to find this. Burgess is clear in his introduction that this is journalism (hence the title) - but I think it a rung or two above that. A good review, which hasn't been written with too many refereences to that year's fashions or people or debates can help you pin down your own views by acting as a fixed point. 

A certain amount of it, therefore, is given to decades-old literary debates. I have little objection to this; I find Burgess's style fairly readable and have enough assorted background knowledge to skate through pieces on things I've never read. It's not like this is homework, though I suspect the sheer number of authors mean that Urgent Copy could profitably be used in an intense course surveying English literature. 

Further, there is a use in reading over old literary debates - aside from the fact that you may find a faction to your liking. If you know how this stuff has sintered out in the past, there's an extent to which you won't get bent out of shape by it when it crops up again. Cf. These discussions of Milton.

Burgess's subjects include: Milton, Kipling, Dickens, Joyce, Shaw, Saul Bellow, Waugh, Greene, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bagehot, Marlowe, The Brothers Grimm. The pieces sometimes relate to a new book or a new edition of some work (as the first volume of Waugh's autobiography, or Robert Graves's 1967 translation of The Rubaiyat - inevitable comparison with Fitzgerald). 

There is also a few pieces dealing with censorship and cultural shifts - 'What is Pornography?' is a fascinating essay to look back on. 

More diverting is Burgess's review 'The Democracy of Prejudice' of Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without by Brophy, Levey and Osborne. It steps away from the discussion of an author's work or influence, and instead looks at a contemporary piece of popular criticism. Burgess is in an entertaining and vitriolic mode. It's curiously familiar, modern-feeling both for a 'Digital Era' spiky, combative style and 'Who stays in the canon' content and/or discussion. I know next to nothing about Fifty Works... other than what I have read of it. Here and here are two modern reviews. I note in passing that I have read perhaps half of the Fifty Works mentioned (often without the urging of a schoolmaster, sometimes even on this blog!) before ever hearing of Brigid Brophy, Michael Levey or Jonathan Osborne. 

[If you wish to review the contents for yourself, check the first exterior link.]

You may wish to compare this to Burgess's own Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939 — A Personal Choice (An occasionally eclectic list, Cf. PJS-led discussions of the Hidden Genre Canon). The International Anthony Burgess Foundation has a podcast centred around these - I've not found the few I've listened to terribly interesting so far, but you may differ. 

***

There has been a second series of the radio series Medici, subtitled 'The Inheritors'. The first series was discussed as part of this post, along with much other of Mike Walker's work. The inheritors in question are Alessandro de Medici and Catherine de Medici.

Alessandro I hadn't heard of - granted, he died fairly quickly in an assassination attempt as part of a sexual encounter. Catherine Johnson wrote his episode, which dwells on his reputed Moorish ancestry. I've only made a brief survey of the field, but this appears to be at least somewhat disputed by historians. Certainly, he was nicknamed 'The Moor' and the rumour that his mother was a slave was repeated after his death. His portraits certainly show a man with darker skin and tight curly hair - though obviously in the same costume and context as other wealthy Italian men. 

Johnson writes Alessandro's episode as if his Moorish background was basically true....with some caveats. Firstly, the narrator is Alessandro himself - who feels the sting of these insults, as he might either if they were true or if he felt they indicated some truth about him and how he would never be accepted in Florence (&c, &c.) There are some scenes with his mother, who appears as a beggar - but no-one other than Alessandro seems to speak with her, and he downplays the encounters. Could he be hallucinating? It's an interesting approach, and one that I think can be deployed fairly well on Radio.  

I'd heard of Catherine, of course - as a noteworthy personality of Early Modern France. Her presence as an outsider is emphasised across two episodes (Alessandro gets just the one).  The net of personages - King, Heir, Queen, Mistress, Catholics, Huguenots - is an impressive feature of the two episodes, and I would call it a good primer on the mood of Early Modern Europe before the Thirty Years War. One to contemplate for would-be WFRP games?

No Anton Lesser, sad to say. There may be repercussions...

"Gentlemen - the Medici have spurned us for the last time!"

***

So, apparently principal photography has concluded on the Rogue Trooper movie. Which I rather thought might have withered on the vine. Website here; if you wish to gen up on the Genetic Infantryman in advance of the film and - doubtless - become the envy of your friends and co-workers, you may read an old blog post on it here

Saturday 10 February 2024

Faufreluches: Where are the Inquisitors?

Because I definitely expected the Imperial Inquisition.

To begin: I've spent a month on-off ruminating on and writing for Investigating Censor. One of the things I praised that for is its titular Player Characters.

Players are the titular Censors. It's a wonderfully evocative set of ideas - the mix of legal, customary and religious authority could be quite heady. The very title of 'Censor' throws you into a different set of social expectations and ideas. This is a strength of Dave Greggs, I would say - the Investigating Censor, the detectives of Starling and Shrike. It's reminiscent of 40k's Inquisitors or Rogue Traders, and rather more successful than Mass Effect's Spectres.

Starling and Shrike is a sort of mercenary burgher republic described here in a little more depth (with a discussion of the inspiration in the comments here). This is something I should sort of dislike - the same way 'Adventurers' Guilds' rub me up the wrong way. The notion of a free-roaming highly-trusted professional hero who apparently can dictate the legitimate use of force...it doesn't work most of the time. 

Where is does (as above), it's submerged in maximalist settings - self-proclaimed in the case of Starling and Shrike, self-evident in the case of 40k. The Jedi of Star Wars also sort of work - however toned down the setting details is versus 40k, the operatic characters and emotions of those Space Operas sort of fulfil a comparable function. The Emperor's Questing Knights in Fading Suns likewise, in part because of the all-but explicitly Arthurian angle. 

To speak on where is doesn't necessarily - the Spectre Rank in the Mass Effect games. Although the strong presence of Jennifer Hale's Commander Shepherd rather stopped this from dragging things down,  the rank of Spectre with its self-consciously tough name and roughly sketched presence looked rather like an excuse to get Shepherd out into the Galaxy. 'First Human Spectre' could readily be replaced by 'First Human Alliance Marshal' or 'First Human Investigative Magistrate'. That the iconography of the games settled on the N7 rating code is no surprise.

Likewise, the notion of the 00-Rating in the MI6 of James Bond: sensical (if sensational) when it is merely a Field Agent who can kill in the course of duty, strange and stretched when they turn into Spies and Commandos alike - as in the opening of Goldeneye (a film that leaves me rather cold, even by the standards of the Bond flicks). 

+++

So where are the Inquisitors in The Thousand-Day Regency? (Hereafter Faufreluches to refer to the setting rather than the setting-defining polity). I admit that Faufreluches was written with one eye squarely on its relative position to 40k - so where are the Rogue Traders?

My response is this: everywhere.

Read enough 40k material and it becomes apparent that at a certain level of authority, Adepts and Commanders and so forth possess, are entrusted with or can acquire not only highly-trained personal protection and a bunch of assorted legbreakers and enforcers, but legally-sanctioned, armed (do I repeat myself?) savvy investigators or their own pack of ultra-loyal black-ops hardcases. This includes the administrative, commercial and navigational authorities, and even if the various system governors don't get the cream of the crop, they can still muster all the above.

[Is this crazy? Well, A) 'Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those who prosper may truly judge what is sane.' and B) It's an exaggeration of overlapping spheres of legal authority in the Middle Ages; compare legal pluralism and scorpion men.]

If you have to give any meaningful thought to or act on matters outside your planetary system, you probably have many of the powers of an Inquisitor. Thus, the Magnates in Faufreluches.

But that's not how any of this works, is it? The attraction of the Feudal Future of 40k is both for simpler Faufreluches-style reasons as sketched here and also for Hobbesian complex-web of influence reasons. The adventures of Inquisitor Tewt'nphonheem are the spark to which fuel is brought - the ridiculous grit thrust into the rational oyster to make the pearl of art (which is cast before swine....). We're right back to the question of whether or not GLORIOUS TULLY HEGEMONY is possible.*

+++

Setting that aside, here's a model of how Faufreluches (or something comparable) could string these together. 

There are Champions, Retainers and Scum**.
[The Faufreluches-adjacent Lazarus has the similar Waste, Serfs and Family, but let's draw away from that.]

Champions are setting-defining larger-than-life sorts, who presumably leap tall buildings in a single bound. Individual Characters have a great deal of strength, autonomy and potential (rises are swifter, falls greater). In Faufreluches, see Paladins and the Janissariat, despite their different tones - the one being Arthurian and the other Homeric/Wagnerian.

Retainers are bound into a wider system, giving them an awareness of the world around them, if not the power to change it. This is where the intrigue and politicking happens - firstly because of the number of factions that are involved, secondly because you might actually need to persuade, petition or bully people to get what you need.  In Faufreluches - the Magnates and the Seven Pillars. 

Scum are trying to survive. By law or choice or circumstance, they are in the midst of struggle for survival, against the foe or wild beasts or the elements - without major greater awareness or assistance from on high. Resources are limited, true friends or even reliable business partners are few. Faufreluches has some of these outlined on Zhiv-Moroz, and they likely exist elsewhere.

EXAMPLES. Zelazny's Lord of Light is Champion. The Metabarons is Champion. Emphyrio is ... Scum who get lucky? A Song of Ice and Fire is big enough to have strands of all three. Ancillary Justice is Retainer. The Empire Strikes Back is Champion, Rogue One is Retainer. 

So, for 40k: Abnett's Eisenhorn is Retainer, tending to Champion. Abnett's Ravenor is more purely Retainer. Feheravi's Dark Coil is Scum, occasionally reaching a strange Retainer status for metaphysical-supernatural reasons. Farrer's Enforcer is Retainer. Wraight's Vaults of Terra is Retainer, tending to Scum. Anything focused on a Space Marine is probably Champion. 

Macbeth and other Tragedies are likely Champion. The Henriad and other history plays are likely Retainer. 
The Guns of Navarone is a Scum narrative. Where Eagles Dare is Retainer.
The Maltese Falcon is Retainer, Chinatown is Retainer with a tragic close. 
Robinson Crusoe is an introspective Scum narrative (it's not all battles in the mud). 
Mythago Wood is dreamy Scum. The Well of the Unicorn is Retainer. Fury is embittered Champion. Votan is Retainer frequently out of his depth. Dr Syn is antagonistic Retainer (at least, in that first book).

One shouldn't push this model too far, but that probably helps you calibrate things. 

NOTES. These categories may characterise an episode, or an entire narrative. Something chronicle-like may pass between them. Thus, Dune passes from Retainer-category among the Atreides (Is an heir a sort of Retainer? Close enough for these purposes.) to Champion-category with the Kwasitz Haderach. Gaunt's Ghosts sees the regiment of the Tanith 1st go from Scum to Retainers (if not evenly so: see the Gereon mission).

This doesn't precisely match onto Social Class - but we are talking 'Feudal Future': it is impossible to avoid. Yet a protagonist from the Upper Crust can be thrust into a Scum Narrative - as the nameless hunter of Rogue Male, who is in the midst of a pretty Scummy episode. The aristocratic Gaunt of Gaunt's Ghosts is a useful window to demonstrate the predicament of the regiment when in Scum-category: he can get answers - polite answers, even - just not results. 

Nor is this meant to correspond to a levelling system.

+++
So, if this model is useful, the next step would presumably be to sketch out Champion and Scum narratives, even as Vorontsov at Bay was (roughly?) a Retainer narrative.

And in the meantime, if you need to know who the Inquisitors in Faufreluches are:

Pastorate Witchfinders and Wardens, Mint Auditors, Secretariat Assessors, The Mews Long-Range Security Detachment, Schematician Troubleshooters, Division 5 of the Maioral Guard, Siegneuria Heralds, the Vorontsov Office of Occluded Defence, the Salammboan Green Veil Circle, Stadtholder Circuit-Riders......



*Per Bret Devereux, it's perhaps desirable - see the section titled 'Other Problems'.
**'Footsloggers' would be more dignified and as accurate. The single syllable of Scum has more impact.

Friday 26 January 2024

The Cape of Four Pleasances

As suggested last time, here's some material put together for Investigating Censor. I have tied this to some of my own Rest of All Possible Worlds - I quite liked the idea of newcomers to the region, and this was a way to do it. A deliberate sort-of expansion pack. The two aren't supposed to be drawn too tightly together, so I haven't been too specific about (say) a newcomer being from this bit of Malmery or that bit of Tsymric. Anyway, off to.....

***

The Cape of Four Pleasances is quite a way from High Dreaming Citadel, on the South-Westerly tip of the coastline. Largely flat, but still full of plant life, it hooks round to provide ample shelter for ships from the winds. It was once home to four villa complexes, the sea-side getaways of landowning families from the farming valleys deeper inland; a place to send invalids or troublesome younger sons - or to escape plague. Stables, bathhouses and colonnades welcomed guests; gardens, pavilions and gaming terraces entertained them; wall-hangings, scented breezes and palisades surrounded them. 

Those families have now all been killed, or exiled, or subdued. The Cape of Four Pleasances should be the haunt of pirates, turning well-appointed chambers into sprawling plunder-pits or airy courtyards into open-air debauches. But somehow, it isn't: the estates remain empty, slowly decaying in the absence of gardeners, scullions and builders. 

Any successful strike against the Cult of Protection should be welcome news to an Investigating Censor - or so one would imagine. Then, from traders and travellers comes report of newcomers: strangely dressed, heavily armed and highly inquisitive. They are the ones who have driven the pirates back, and created an orbit of relative peace.

The Hub        Port Houndsfair

Port Houndsfair was named for a regular gathering to sell hunting beasts to bored nobles. It nudged a fishing village into a full-blown port town, accommodating the Four Pleasances. There has been no-one to sell scent-hounds or other luxuries to for quite a while, and so Port Houndsfair was slowly decaying, and gradually earning that unfair nickname - 'Muttstown'. So it went, until a few years ago.

There are three principal areas one could divide Port Houndsfair into.

The Harbourside Narrows of the Old Town

Shacks and wharfs and slipways, and smokehouses, and nets in the sun - until you get close, and see the carefully varnished timbers of the buildings, the rows of pink and gilt tide-charms or pale wooden nereid bells hanging from the balconies, the fold-away street booths and the painted sunscreens of taut canvas. 

Most of the Port's well-off families are elsewhere, but there are a few reasons to keep them coming into town - including an increasingly perfunctory set of civic rituals and the annual regatta.

The South-East Processional

Warehouses face each other along a straight new road, with walled gardens and large houses behind them. The new trade has meant that traders of Houndsfair have re-established themselves, to accommodate new volumes of goods going out to Fort Baculum and to house their increasingly prosperous families and retinues. 

This is the place to find both a dozen cartloads of Musth and those dealers in it flaunting their new finery, and gossiping, and thinking of ways to embarrass one another at the next Cartel Assembly. Every two hundred yards of road was paid for by a different merchant, who attempt to outdo one another with elaborately carved man-high milestones, conspicuous scarlet roadside shines or numerous bright flags. 

There is no formal Centre of Gravity to the merchant class of Houndsfair: the Chair of Cartel Meetings is always a carefully chosen second-stringer. However, many individual merchants might show themselves as Key Personalities.

The armed portions of a Merchant's retinue typically carry Man-catchers, Whips, Throwing Clubs and Dirks. Several of them will carry Cur-pipes: lightly enchanted bone flutes that produce a wince-inducing shriek, designed to make crowds clear the road, slinking and cringing into alleys and gutters. 

At night, perhaps one in four will be given Tether Lamps. The retainer wears a large flat pectoral amulet, which attaches to him and sustains (through his heartbeat) a glowing paper lantern hovering several feet above. (It takes a small act of magical will, generally clutching the amulet in the right hand, to oblige the lantern to lower itself to go through an archway.)

The Blue Light District

Trade of a different kind. Small by the standards of the pirate coast, the Blue Light District is at present dominated by a band of cutthroats who call themselves - with desperate, leaden gaiety - the Elephants who Trample Care

Their boss is generally called Trunk, and is a Centre of Gravity in his own right. He owns a bludgeon made of ivory, terminating in a metal spike tip. This looks very impressive but he only recently acquired it and hasn't yet had to use it in anger.

Acuity: d10
Archery: d4
Fetches and Fetishes: d6
Gambling: d6
Poetry: d4
Prowess: d10

The Old Power        The Temple of Suspended Heads

Set down the cape, between the abandoned Pleasances (which it predates), there is a temple complex. This is dedicated to a figure called the Mother of Cormorants and a collection of sea-spirits called the Parliament of Tides. However, this is fairly far down the list of things people remember about the temple, for one very good reason.

From the broad eaves of the temples in the centre of the complex hang upside-down human heads. These are made of every material imaginable - stone, wood, wickerwork, metal, leather, ivory. These are decorated in as wide a set of styles with paint or chalk or gilding or carving, though the heads are all still recognisably human. These are suspended by a variety of chains, rope and cords.

The influence of the heads makes the Temple precincts within the ritual line of the ceremonial gate a sort of magical blind spot. Confused by the myriad symbols of dislocated and inverted sight, auguries fail, scrying produces an absolute blank and witchsight just gives wizards a headache. 

This has made the Temple very popular over the years with people wanting to escape magical detection - and likewise with those who want to conceal themselves from divine attention as well. 

(Which is to say, the Temple is a resting place between sins rather than a place wonderfully suited for one to commit them. The Three-Precinct Master and the temple brethren drive out the more obvious Blue Light types of vice and would be aghast at cold-blooded murder.
[Hot pursuit is bothersome and unpleasant, but only a minor problem.])

Consequently, The Temple of Suspended Heads wields a great deal of relatively subtle power on the Cape, as well as owning a broad estate in its own right. And it has wielded this a long time: twisting the arms of visiting nobles, sprinkling a dust of ritual propriety and moral rectitude over the grasping merchants and truculent fisherfolk of Houndsfair, and baffling Pirate Warlords into a rough semblance of good manners. 

Young Men from Port Houndsfair volunteer (by custom) as wardens at the Temple of Suspended Heads. They spend several non-consecutive seasons in this role, and are expected to live temperately in this time. They wear Lovat green tunics, brass lozenge-shaped ornaments and dull crimson head wraps; they are armed with long poles with a sharply curved blade on the end. From these they take their name - the Pruning-Hook Serjeants.

They are not usually called upon to do more than break up fights or chase off intruders, but will use deadly force in the event someone fails to back down. A Serjeant who decapitates someone in the course of his duties will dine out on the story for the rest of his life.

Centre of Gravity            The Three-Precinct Master

The Arch-Priest of the Temple of Suspended Heads. A deliberately inscrutable and taciturn man, who allows his subordinates to bear the brunt of daily administration and boring meetings. He concentrates on the cycle of Temple ritual, and on what he terms the 'higher mysteries'. Decades of sermons, spiritual tutelage and formal authority give him an aura of power enhanced by the tricolour chequerboard robes he wears.

He possesses the Twenty Cormorant Rosary, a string of jet beads that allow him to dive and glide like a seabird and breath underwater for a surprisingly long time. In the Master's Chambers he also possesses the sinuous enchanted glaive Immortal's Expectorate. This rests on the wall of his chamber and looks like an unused decorative piece - an impression prompted by several ornate nacre panels. In fact, the Three-Precinct Master practices with it daily. 

Acuity: d12
Fetches and Fetishes: d6
Poetry: d10
Prophecy: d12
Prowess: d10

Key Personality        The Vernal Provost

As the name suggests, the Vernal Provost is appointed every spring. No-one holds the position for consecutive years. He acts as the daily overseer of the business of the Temple, and is usually an elder of the brethren. The Provost exercises control over the central temple buildings, the lodging and feeding of the priests and acolytes and minor infractions between them. The Pruning-Hook Serjeants report to him.

The current Provost has been in the post four times previously, and is secretly rather exasperated by the need to put all his projects into the hands of another priest. He would happily prolong his term of office in the case of a 'state of emergency'. He would also happily become Three-Precinct Master, though is (at heart) aware that the position of Master would thrust him into the sort of context where his concerns as Provost would immediately dwindle or shift.

Key Personality        Head Usher

Overseer of the Visitors' Lodge in the Temple. Harried by his duties, he has slipped into a mental and social rut of repetitive cheerful cliche, which is dropped only and shockingly when he must upbraid an underling. A careful tender of power relations and niceties in the mixed surroundings of the lodge.


The Young Power    The Whetstone Pundit

Thirty years ago, a scholar from an obscure cadet branch of a wealthy family moved into one of the Pleasances. He began to teach, providing an elite education for those that could afford it along the coast. 

Twenty years ago, they began calling him the Whetstone Pundit - though whether this is in honour of his flat, stony features, his rasping voice or his ability to bring a degree of keenness to even the bluntest young minds is open to dispute. 

He has become prosperous beyond the prospects of his birth. He is in his 51st year, and could happily retire now and live on his accumulated wealth and the products of his estate. He will not do so, because he is also highly respected. The Cartel in Houndsfair frequently consult him on all matters not linked to personal profit. Indeed, on almost all matters not related to public religion or wholesale commerce, he has managed to enact his ideals for public policy across the Cape. Further, he has managed to do so while retaining the image of a scholar pottering within the bounds of his own (flourishing!) walled garden.

Naturally, he is not alone. The Whetstone Estate has perhaps a score of young students each with a body servant staying there, as well as a household staff and a village of workers. This was intended as a model of harmonious, mannerly rule, and is a charming blend of parkland and agriculture. However successful this presently is, the extent to which it is all a façade has varied from year to year. 

The Pundit also has a trained band of Guards, who have been trained as loyal, ferocious huscarls but largely find themselves acting as night-watchmen and lodgekeepers. They would need sometime to gear up into near-equals of anyone in Fort Baculum. 

Centre of Gravity           The Whetstone Pundit

Never strictly vigorous, the Pundit has remained active in his maturity - including some of the martial skills necessary for a noble. He does not openly embrace the minor magics of Fetishes and Fetches, but will make use of them.

His library would be immensely valuable to someone in Fort Baculum.

Acuity: d12
Alchemy: d6
Archery: d8
Fetches and Fetishes: d6
Flute: d12
Gambling: d4
Poetry: d12
Prowess: d4

Key Personality        Millrace

Millrace is the Pundit's Bailiff and has been busy with the practical application of his principles for decades. She is a squat, tireless woman in her middle years, typically clad in a set of blue-green robes. A common remark by the Pundit's servants is that she is the Iron Hand that allows him to wear Silk Gloves. She is also one of the main conduits of the Pundit's will to the outside world and really enjoys the occasional moments when she gets to browbeat someone far richer than herself.

Acuity: d12
Gambling: d10
Poetry: d4
Prowess: d6

Key Personality        Head Disciple

The Pundit's head scribe, secretary and sounding board. He actually regards him as wonderful, but distant from the practicalities of instructing aristocratic adolescents. This manifests as grousing, rather than resentment. Changing this way of life at his age would be a costly process, though it would not be so very hard to set up himself up as a tutor or similar riding on the Pundit's reputation.


The New Power    Fort Baculum

Strange visitors from another land live here. They arrived in the face of piratical opposition, but fought it off in spectacular fashion, at what they now call the Battle of Journey's End. Revealing themselves to be traders, they acquired land across from Port Houndsfair where they set up a fortified compound - a secure anchorage for themselves, stores for their goods and a battery to ward off pirate raids. Their new goods have enriched the merchants of Houndsfair, as has their willingness to fight in defence of the Cape. 

The residents of Fort Baculum are from Calliste. They represents an assortment of nations and peoples, gathered into a company of merchant venturers based in Datresse. They have an outlandish religion (or, depending on the individual, an outlandish irreligion) that makes them poor targets for the persuasive arts of an Investigating Censor. They have telescopes, coffee, tobacco and remarkable weapons, called fire-arms.

(Unless you'd rather they didn't, in which case they have highly advanced crossbows. There's precedent for that.)

Buy Darkest Dungeon®: The Musketeer - Xbox Store Checker
Musketeer and Arbalestof Darkest Dungeon.

Arbalest - Darkest Dungeon Guide - IGN

Several trade runs have now gone from Fort Baculum back to Datresse. It is showing a profit, and Fort Baculum is slowly gearing up for the long haul. 

The Fort itself is a square, boxy affair - with a small stream fifty yards off for water. It has a battery at the tip of the Cape, a hundred yards off as the crow flies, but far further to walk up the series of switchbacks and curves that allowed the Callistans to haul their cannon up to the top. Someone sufficiently active could scramble up quicker, but probably not in armour.

No-one at Fort Baculum can play the Flute, and their poetry is far too elaborate and fanciful.

The Sailors, Marines and Armed Labourers at the Fort carry Boarding Axes, Marlinspikes and Messers - as well as Muskets. Some officers carry long, slim swords - an oddity on the Cape. Their instinct, if attacked, is to stick to prepared defences - the ramparts, stashes of powder and shot, the ditches, the switchbacks up to the battery.  They can be remarkable effective in these prepared positions. If overwhelmed they go into No-quarter-asked-or-given mode, and become particularly paranoid and dangerous. 

Centre of Gravity    Warrant-Holder

Licensed to deal in strange foreign goods, and defend his ships while doing so. Merchant, mariner, fighter, amateur linguist - and here for the long haul. He has people he owes, as well as interested officials that call on him whenever he steps back into port. The only way to get out of this is to make his packet. Then he can settle down and reminisce about the taste of the local hooch and the bizarre shellfish-based cuisine and the erotic frescos. A stable and steady man - until it pays not to be.

Acuity: d12
Archery: d8
Poetry: d4
Prowess: d12

Key Personality    Wizarding Matross

You can either pay through the nose for Wizard College, or bugger off to the ends of the earth to dodge the debt collectors. Somehow, she did both. The Matross is a key component of the Fort Baculum battery, speeding cannonballs into pirate vessels with uncanny accuracy. The trouble is, there is only one Matross in Fort Baculum. She spends most of her freetime on a rough cot in a shack near by the guns. 

The Matross has no desire to visit the Blue Light District and cut loose, no time to engage with the local culture and no immediate prospect of going home. The Warrant-Holder still feels the Cape is not yet secure against pirate raids. 

Acuity: d12
Alchemy: d6
Archery: d20

Key Personality    Second-Son Scholar

One officer of the Fort nurses a set of ambitions - to apply his scraps of magical knowledge to this new world, starting importing to Calliste fetishes and fetches - or making them himself. This could make money. This could build prestige. This could make a name in the lecture halls and wunderkammern and salons of Calliste.

Except, of course, that for the Warrant-Holder, it is already huge. No need to push the envelope too far when we barely know the language and are making quite enough money already. The Warrant-Holder, naturally, has more shares apportioned to him of the Fort's trade. 

Still, the Second-Son is trying. He probably has less of natural gift for languages than the Warrant-Holder, but he's using his in so many more different new contexts - and gradually building a far better cultural understanding of the region. Apparently. 

Acuity: d10
Archery: d4
Fetches and Fetishes: d4
Poetry: d4
Prowess: d8

The Empty Pleasances

These are now haunts of wild beasts, desperate beggars and bandits. Anything valuable was sold or removed long ago. There is one notable exception, however.

A Pirate Intelligencer has arrived and is making slowly gathering news of the Cape and Fort Baculum. This is generally accomplished through prompt payments of large amounts of hard cash or interesting new drugs, and the Intelligencer needs somewhere to store these. The Intelligencer has chosen a Pleasance to do this*, for their remoteness and ill-repute. Any beasts or itinerants were driven out and the crumbling manse has been rigged with numerous traps. 

In theory, one of the Pleasances would be the first choice as an operating base for a Pirate assault on the Cape, but the Intelligencer has not got anywhere near making this a reality. 



*Possible Variant: Hide the Lady. The Intelligencer is in one of the old Pleasances, but has booby-trapped all three.....

Thursday 28 December 2023

December '23 Miscellany

The same form of miscellany post as ever - nothing immediately festive, though I hope you have feasted.

***

I watched a film: Danger Close - about the battle of Long Tan, this being a prominent event in the Australian experience of the Vietnam War. 

The film is (in the nicest possible way) unexceptional. An interesting event, to be sure, and appealing in the way that films from outside Hollywood are - you've never seen any of these actors before, and can't attach stereotypes or type casting to them. And, of course, it's Vietnam shorn of the accumulated imagery and emotion of the American experience. Further, Danger Close has an utterly explicable but still faintly funny trait, in that it is a film from, for and by an English-speaking country about the Vietnam War that shows more Viet Cong faces than American ones. 

So why am I talking about it here? Well, it has some very fine procedural elements: we see the actions and reactions of platoons, of D Company (6th Battalion, Royal Australian Rifles), of the battalion's Lieutenant Colonel, of the task-force commander at Nui Dat. As well as the actions of artillery sections, fire control officers and air force liaisons. Communication, for artillery barrages, ammunition resupply and airstrikes - to say nothing of simple reports -  is a running feature. Hence, the title: Danger Close

Communication - accurate, timely, swift and clear communication - of this kind is a challenge.  Is this one that should be worked into tabletop play more? 'Roll a d20 to blow the correct notes on your bugle'?  Well, that's less satisfying. And I'm not sure the presence of (say) harmonicas or mobile phone keyboards at the table would be terribly pleasing either. 

One point of comparison is the video game Radio Commander, a strategy in which you keep track of units (once again in Vietnam) via conversations. Though the pre-recorded selectable responses there are a little dissatisfying when all else is raw and comparatively grounded.

I dare say this is the sort of thing that the more traditional sort of wargaming has worked out somewhere. More research needed.

***

The degree of 'punk' in Steampunk is a perennial discussion here and on associated other blogs. Generally, I've held that '__punk' is an artefact as a label and that Retrofuturist is a more helpful designation. 


Well, here's a gentleman tracing the history of Steampunk and making the case for punkishness. You might compare it with some of the ideas discussed in my Faufreluches posts. I can't say that I necessarily agree with the conclusions in the last part, but otherwise it's rather good. 

***

I found a second-hand Penguin edition of the Lais of Marie de France. They're pretty short, authentically of their time and nicely spiky. A useful reference point for Medieval Europe, as well as full of assorted supernatural happenings and vengeances. Read a couple over lunch.

***

Investigating Censor is a work on Itch.io by Dave Greggs - AKA HCK, the chap behind Grand Commadore, whose work may be known to readers of this blog. You'll find a few samples over at Grand Commodore if you want to go over those before taking the plunge.

Anyway, 'Investigating Censor is a dark rules-light RPG wargame set amidst a campaign by oracular warrior monks to eliminate a sect of human-sacrificing pirates.' For more first impressions, here's some art. 

It's been interesting interacting with a piece of Greggs's work as a PDF rather than a blog post. Things have a little more room to breathe. Greggs writes a lot - and I like it! But I do sometimes idly wonder what would happen if a seven-foot hairy-chested Editor with a pick handle and a set of brass knuckles sat behind him as he wrote. 

"So, Dave, what are you working on this morning?"

A few things I like about Investigating Censor:

Player Characters Organisation - Players are the titular Censors. It's a wonderfully evocative set of ideas - the mix of legal, customary and religious authority could be quite heady. The very title of 'Censor' throws you into a different set of social expectations and ideas. This is a strength of Dave Greggs, I would say - the Investigating Censor, the detectives of Starling and Shrike. It's reminiscent of 40k's Inquisitors or Rogue Traders, and rather more successful than Mass Effect's Spectres.

Setting - A febrile coastal region, recently gone through regime change and approaching some measure of equilibrium. I suppose I associate it largely with South-East Asia, but it's clearly not a neat one-to-one comparison. Appendix N of IC urges readers to make and share regions for IC, so I may have to do just that! 

(I also quite like Appendix P's tonal variants.)

Framing - The various districts you move into are described socially with 'Centres of Gravity' and 'Key Personalities'. I quite like this encounter framing: whether the local magnate is Young and Feckless or Old, Careworn and Senile or a vigorous Capital-S Schemer to rival Iago, there's still an awful lot that has to go on around them. Whether the planet is volcanic or stable, it is a planet and the moons better recognise that.

Layers - Every level of social encounter has a variety of motivations proposed, with further reaching in as needed. Naturally, a Vice District has its own set of power struggles and problems and obsessions - but then there are region-wide political plays, or secret societies trying to accumulate clout and leverage - or just run-of-the-mill psychopaths. 
  Add to this the various tendencies of your NPC Allies, who do not have your monastic background. Antipathy, opportunity, infatuation, addiction, social pressure can all make them crack. (Maybe you could treat this like Darkest Dungeon's afflictions. The Investigating Censor sending out another expedition is not unlike the Heir sending out another band....)

Alchemy, Fetches and Fetishes - This is a world rich with low-level magics and wonders, without falling into the video game-esque problem of brigands carrying Claymores that shoot Ball Lightning. The presence of Alchemy and various charms enhances this, and feels apt. IC is about a prosperous land ill-used, rather than a blasted heath. This wealth finding its way into narcotics and easing nostrums works better than some potions in RPGs.

I disliked nothing immediately in Investigating Censor. Some worked examples might be good, but one has been released on Grand Commodore. I might care for a little more unifying detail for the Cult of Protection, though it's not strictly speaking a bad choice to keep them loosely sketched against the strong presences of the Censors themselves. (In any case, too strict a 'Pirate Code' will make them sound altogether too Blackbeard-Caribbean).

If the above wasn't quite clear, this may be considered a recommendation. 


Friday 22 December 2023

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Civic Constellations

I've had this in mind for a while. There are those states of Calliste chosen as exemplars for TRoAPW, described in the Gazette here. Anyway, there's a way to quickly illustrate my point in that post with simple diagrams. These aren't pointcrawls, and if they're maps, they're pretty highly abstracted ones (you could probably leave off any of the identifying letters and they would still communicate something about the state in question). If you will, they are as like to a map as the constellation of Cassiopeia is to the figure of an enthroned queen.

Majestic Pavaisse!

Blue circles for regions listed in the Gazette; crossed circle for the capital. Blue lines for major internal arteries* - there are most likely other roads or rivers or passes, just none that make sense with a wagon train or a laden barge. Red lines for major trade links. 

Sea-girt Malmery!

Bustling Datravia!

Sharp-eyed readers will have noted that there are some places hitherto unmentioned for Datravia. Of course, Datresse is still the central point of that fair land, but there are some outskirts. Think of them as the region of Veneto to La Serenissima. Anyway, these are....

  • Uitbrig, the ancient town with its long-established academies and seminaries.
  • Ghaivera, Datresse's granary.
  • Noysdam, known as The Citadel of Noysdam or The Noysdam. The rationally-planned recently built fortress city covering the main approach to the centre of Datravia.
Anyway, I hope these go some way to focusing on the ideas presented in the Gazette.

Far-reaching Tsymric!


*Internal in the sense that we are concentrating on these polities and seeing how they link together internally. If you were to tell me that the road from Purlitz to Loughdaine was built centuries back by the Horatione Cohorts and leads directly to Horato crossing five different principalities to do so, it would make complete sense.

Tuesday 12 December 2023

How to Read the False Machine

TO REVEAL AN ANSWER: The piece of writing at the end of the last post was derived, basically, from some fairly negative and somewhat fantastical feelings about the experience of reading the Horus Heresy books. With a little element of the King in Yellow mixed in.

Roboute Guilliman: You, brother, should remove your armour.

Horus: Indeed?

Rogal Dorn: Indeed, it is time. We have all set aside our pauldrons except you.

Horus: I wear no pauldrons.

Roboute: [aside, to Rogal] No pauldrons? No pauldrons!

And on that revelation, trailing corposant, I move to another lurid book.


CONTEXT: P J Stuart, author of the blog False Machine, a version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  and several interesting RPG products ran a Kickstarter to take a majority of that blog material and preserve it in a weighty tome. Behold, the above. It is as larger as many editions of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, if a little lighter. (Quite a pleasing weight, really.) The cover is a distinct orange, with letters that seem to shift as you read them. That might just be a faulty bedside lamp, or fatigue on the part of Yr. Hmbl. Crrspndt., but I wouldn't put it past Patrick to have hexed it somehow. Illustrations from several artists, often former collaborators with PJS. Fascinating set of marbled end papers by Scrap Princess.

....but I don't need this. I've read a bunch of the original posts, even commented on them. (Some comments are reproduced in the text of the book above. It's remotely possibly I'm there, I haven't checked thoroughly yet. Full Disclosure, &c, &c.)

Anyway, if a charming visitor to my snug garret were to ask over a glass of Oloroso 'My dear, what is that fascinating book on your shelves?', how would I answer them?

[QUICK NOTE: the Blog is False Machine. The Book is Speak, False Machine, whatever it says on the cover. Occasionally, I'm going to need to compare the two so they need different names.]

MOVING ON: On one level, everything in False Machine is either an RPG product or fuel for RPGs. Patrick Stuart is a man who will read and review works of fantasy - EG, Gormenghast or The Worm Ouroborous, or histories of the sort of period that have inspired fantasy fiction, as A Distant Mirror  - as readily as a work on the Psychoanalysis of Fire. This isn't to posit this work as merely fuel for the capital-P Product, but it is to indicate that there is a final aim in place for much of the work in here, a set of objectives. 

Now, most of the stuff that went into the actual books isn't in Speak, False Machine. The posts for Veins of the Earth became Veins of the Earth. Good thing too. But this references character and action on the part of the author. So, a newcomer should think on that.

The various articles have been changed slightly. Spelling mistakes and ungainly turns of phrase have not been corrected, we are assured. But other things have changed. Some comments are included, many are not. Illustrations that offer context have gone. See for instance the post called on False Machine 'Five.. Four... Three.. Two... ONE!' It must be shorn of the referential images that indicate the origins of the work without interrupting the flow of the fiction, or the end table that lays out the similarities in several works. It must rely on the title alone, which may be reference enough

Of course, one understands why such images are not included, but something may be lost. To refer back to my own work at the top of the page - how clear was that little mystery?

The material is not only presented in a reduced form, it is also framed differently. Blog posts that may have been weeks or months apart can now be put side by side, and there is benefit in this. Now we can read all about the Horus Heresy back to back (Hoorah?).

Back to back, and also in two columns. This sounds silly to make into a point in a new paragraph, but if you're used to a post being in one column, with a predictable set of links and gadgets at the side, it is a little strange to see it in two columns, and have the experience of your eye wandering across.

TO CONTINUE: It is very online. Sometimes that phrase is used as an insult: in this case, it is basically descriptive. False Machine was and is a web-log. It should not surprise a reader that Speak, False Machine bears the hallmarks of the internet.

There's a freedom of tone. Speak, False Machine has a good number of reviews. There is also a great deal of flippancy, plenty of cursing and a pool of references deriving from online cultures (hence a section titled 'Weebery'.) As good as these reviews may be, they would not appear in this way in the pages of a high-brow weekly. Certainly not at this length: word limits online are a very different thing to those in print. Quotes can be longer, explorations more discursive.

Thus, the rough set of points or ideas expressed by the (hilarious) 'WWII - Written and Directed by JJ Abrams' could be expressed by the sort of less strait-laced weekly magazine, but would probably not take that form or be expressed to that degree and so would be X degrees of magnitude less memorable. Now, do I prefer the rough-hewn original of that post on False Machine, or the smoother-formatted version in Speak, False Machine? The former has my fondness as the original, but the latter is superior. The evenness of the columns and text allow the wit to shine that much more.

To speak also on something I have kept at arm's length - there is also a portion of interpersonal drama. False Machine allowed for others to comment on it: it is a social medium of a kind. Further, Patrick Stuart has and has had long-term collaborators. It was honest and correct to include it - certainly, I might have been tempted to leave it out. 

So, a mix of material. Review, essay, fiction, comment, verse. Sometimes niche, sometimes universal, usually interesting. 

But is it any good?

Yes. Some of it was probably more interesting to live than to read about, but this is not a Curate's Egg. 

Is it a book you would have lying around your own house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?

Well, I have no wife, but should a paramour in the midst of a certain charming entanglement of limbs and digits start talking about the Dover Beach Expanded Universe - well, my heart's beating would doubtless reach a furious tempo.

Can you not give us any real criticisms?

I suppose it's a little odd to be holding a weighty tome full of stuff that has the internet aura of disposability, but to that's more an issue with context than content. In any case, this is less offensive in that regard than some books of Current Events I've seen reproducing an activists social media posts.

I see. Thank you, Mr, umm, ... -

Saturday 2 December 2023

A Milestone and A Millstone

You blink, and then it turns out you've hit Two Hundred and Fifty posts. I'm not certain that there's a really good way to mark this (though the suggestion of 250 paragraphs of 250 words each on 250 topics was advanced). Well, instead I have compiled the following list: 250 artworks, topics, images and so forth discussed by this blog. If the entry is in bold, there's probably most of a post devoted to it. That's at least one way to review the changing character of the blog.

To make this more than a list, please see also a little piece of writing afterwards. There is an extent to which the former is a clue to the latter, but I shall say no more.
  1. Jack Vance's Dying Earth
  2. Goblin Market
  3. Wolfe's The Wizard Knight
  4. The Song of Roland
  5. The Kalevala
  6. The Stress of Her Regard
  7. The Cosmic Trilogy
  8. The Banner Saga
  9. Procopius
  10. Count Belisarius
  11. Marco Polo in the Court of Kublai Khan
  12. The Pillow Book
  13. The Book of the New Sun
  14. Gormenghast
  15. Virconium
  16. Julie Taymor's Titus
  17. Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder
  18. Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle 
  19. Gulliver's Travels
  20. The Chronicles of Narnia
  21. Van Dyck
  22. The 52 Pages
  23. King Solomon's Mines
  24. The Pilgrim's Regress
  25. The Pilgrim's Progress
  26. John Ruskin
  27. Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser
  28. The Mignola-illustrated Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser
  29. Macbeth
  30. Coriolanus
  31. Othello
  32. MR James
  33. Where Eagles Dare
  34. Ice Cold in Alex
  35. Shadowrun
  36. Tim Powers's Declare
  37. The Ill-Made Knight
  38. Anathem
  39. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  40. Mass Effect
  41. Last of the Mohicans
  42. Castle of the Otter
  43. Aguirre, The Wrath of God
  44. Mad Max
  45. The Anabasis
  46. Yoon-Suin
  47. The Thousand and One Nights
  48. Snow Crash
  49. The Tower of Babel
  50. Barsoom
  51. Cyclopean architecture
  52. Ruritania
  53. Appendix N
  54. Popski's Private Army
  55. Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour
  56. The Mughal Empire
  57. Henry the Navigator
  58. Dune
  59. Fallout 
  60. The Difference Engine
  61. The Napoleon of Notting Hill
  62. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  63. Shada
  64. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
  65. Discworld
  66. John Wyndham
  67. The Quatermass Experiment
  68. Dan Dare
  69. The Prisoner
  70. Elric
  71. Strontium Dog
  72. Judge Dredd
  73. Rogue Trooper
  74. The Children of Men
  75. Neverwhere
  76. A Canticle for Liebowitz
  77. The Saga of Recluce
  78. Silverberg's Majipoor
  79. The Third Man
  80. Erast Fandorin
  81. Rendezvous with Rama
  82. Star Trek
  83. The Culture
  84. Firefly
  85. The Blazing World
  86. Lamentations of the Flame Princess
  87. Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey
  88. Blake's image of Urizen in The Ancient of Days
  89. The Man who would be King
  90. William Morris
  91. The Poetic Edda
  92. J R R Tolkien
  93. A Sing of Ice and Fire
  94. Tom Holt
  95. Mere Christianity
  96. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
  97. Isaac Watts
  98. Isle of the Unknown
  99. The Winter's Tale
  100. The Aeneid
  101. Twelfth Night
  102. The Tempestuous Voyage of Hopewell Shakespeare
  103. Pygmalion and Galatea
  104. The Steel Bonnets
  105. The Dark Tower (CS Lewis)
  106. Riddley Walker
  107. Puck of Pook's Hill
  108. Nathan J Anderson's Malacandra illustrations
  109. Castle of Days
  110. The Rivan Codex
  111. The Mysteries of Udolpho
  112. The Mausoleum of Thoedoric
  113. Maria Lack Abbey
  114. Trier Cathedral
  115. The Book of the Long Sun
  116. A Voyage to Arcturus
  117. Nebulous
  118. Iain Moncrieffe and Don Pottinger's Simple Heraldry - Cheerfully Illustrated
  119. Clark Ashton Smith in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition The Emperor of Dreams 
  120. The Monk
  121. The Castle of Otranto
  122. Ivanhoe
  123. Arms and the Man
  124. Flashman
  125. The Mask of Demitrios
  126. Barry Lyndon
  127. Veins of the Earth
  128. All Saints, Margaret Street
  129. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race
  130. Journey to the Centre of the Earth
  131. The Gardens of Ynn
  132. The Talos Principle
  133. The Critias
  134. The Timaeus
  135. Journey to the West
  136. Equestrian Portraits of Charles I
  137. St Mary Le Strand
  138. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  139. The Diamond Age
  140. The architecture of John Outram
  141. The Ishtar Gate
  142. Age of Mythology
  143. St Peter and St Paul's Church, Pickering
  144. Seeing Like a State
  145. Reflections on the Revolution in France
  146. 'Catapaulta' by Edward Poynter
  147. The Stygian Library
  148. The Name of the Rose
  149. Roger Corman's 1964 film of The Masque of the Red Death
  150. Paul Kidby's Discworld illustrations
  151. Votan
  152. Not For All the Gold in Ireland
  153. The Ancient Greece of Odysseus
  154. Marian and Trinitarian columns
  155. Ilium and Olympos
  156. Thackeray’s History of Henry Esmond 
  157. Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon
  158. A Song of Ice and Fire
  159. The art of William Nicholson and James Pryde
  160. Silent Titans
  161. Seven Pillars of Wisdom
  162. Shardik
  163. Vita Sackville-West, The Eagle & The Dove
  164. An Atlas of the Soviet Union
  165. Doctor Syn
  166. Mythago Wood
  167. Stardust
  168. Rogue Male
  169. The Day of the Jackal
  170. HCK's Maximalist City-State World
  171. The Fall of the House of Usher
  172. The House on the Borderlands 
  173. HMS Apollyon
  174. Excalibur
  175. The Cruel Sea
  176. Electric Bastionland
  177. Francis Spufford's Red Plenty
  178. Mistress of Mistresses
  179. Tip & Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa
  180. The Vorrh Trilogy
  181. Tumanbey
  182. The Well of the Unicorn
  183. Joseph Wright of Derby, 'A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery', 1766
  184. Appian's Roman History
  185. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Monday Starts on Saturday
  186. Garth Nix's 'Down to the Scum Quarter'
  187. Fallen Empire
  188. The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch
  189. A Tale of Two Cities
  190. Costumes from the 1883 Cambridge Greek Play production of The Birds
  191. Fading Suns
  192. Passion Plays
  193. Richard III (1995)
  194. Candide
  195. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  196. Magical Industrial Revolution
  197. Tales from the Mausoleum Club
  198. Max Beerbohms's Seven Men and Two Others
  199. Henry Kuttner, Fury
  200. Northwest Smith
  201. Fever-Dreaming Marlinko and Slumbering Ursine Dunes
  202. The Bas-Lag Cycle
  203. The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China 
  204. State of Emergency
  205. The Taheiki
  206. Anvil of Ice
  207. The Cthonic Codex of Paolo Greco
  208. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
  209. Warhammer Fantasy
  210. A Very British Civil War
  211. Conquest: the Last Argument of Kings
  212. Demon Bone Sarcophagus
  213. Time Bandits
  214. John Dryden
  215. Hic Sunt Myrmeleones
  216. Spanish-suited playing cards
  217. They Were Defeated
  218. Lazarus and World of Lazarus
  219. The Dragon Waiting
  220. The history plays of Mike Walker
  221. The Dream of the Red Chamber
  222. Jack Vance's Emphyrio
  223. The Metabarons & The Incal
  224. Pilgrim (not the radio plays)
  225. Layer Cake
  226. The Search for the Perfect Language
  227. Dr Zhivago
  228. The Ring Cycle
  229. The High Crusade
  230. Giulio Cesare in Egitto
  231. Lord of Light
  232. Dorothy L Sayers
  233. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
  234. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
  235. The Knight in Panther Skin
  236. The Last Coin
  237. Tales of the Alhambra
  238. Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
  239. Mouse or Rat?
  240. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
  241. Conan the Barbarian
  242. Diplomacy
  243. Holinshed's Chronicles
  244. Tales of Hoffman
  245. Indo-Saracenic architecture
  246. Ely Cathedral
  247. Ronald Blythe's Akenfield
  248. Towers of Trebizond
  249. Evelyn Waugh's Helena
  250. Troika!
***
So, you've probably been cursed.

You opened the book. You touched the little statue in the dark alcove. It was something like that, surely. Now you see things.
    There's a world beyond this one. A world of constant violence, of struggle. You see men there, or things very like men. They fight and they talk: they talk about fighting, they fight about talking, they fight about fighting, they talk about talking. It's riveting, but it shouldn't be a surprise to you. The ancients, after all, could enjoy rhetoric and wrestling both.
    For a time - for a few times still - you walk the pavements, you sit at your desk, you sway in the train carriage, and there's a thrill to it. You know what's waiting for you when you close your eyes. There a world beyond this one, and there's always something happening there, monumental in every moment. The details flash into your head: place, costume, mannerisms, scene, weapons, names, faces, deeds. 
    And then you concentrate a little, and you see a little more. There's someone telling you all this. Even if there's no narrator's voice, there's a choice in what you see, what you hear. So you think about them, and maybe there isn't only one. Or maybe there wasn't ever any more. But you are locked into the deciphering process. When you sleep, when you speak, when you drink, part of you is working away at it. Work is fun: don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Labouring away at something you love is rewarding and satisfying and occasionally beautiful, and now you can do it all the time. 
    Really, you're quite lucky.
    But anyway, that part of it all aside, you also reflect on the events playing out. The characters - who fold and refold on one another, archetypes or commentaries or variations upon a source. If the things you see didn't vary so wildly in its people and moments or appear on so vast a scale, you might become dizzy with the degrees of sameness. And this too is a mystery, and thus an amusement. The ticking of your brain, as familiar and as alien as your heartbeat, or the music of the spheres, is slowly changing its rhythms to match.
    Then there's a slight change in the visions. It started with a slowing, an approach to the sort of crescendo you expect. It didn't quite stay that slow, and it didn't quite ever stop being that slow. There's an oddness to it. Figures - men - beasts - demigods - angels - circle you, warring and declaiming and crying out and beating their breasts. They clash and reset: swing, address, return. The motion round you is faster and faster, the figures ever more solid, ever better-defined in detail, ever more ready to spring to life. It is like staring at a circle of monoliths, framed gloriously against the sun, and knowing at the deepest conceivable level that these rocks will leap, will blur into sudden, astounding motion - and perhaps they did, and perhaps they did. 
    Again, you think again. You dip your head in cold water. You stretch. You ease your body. There are those sorts of problems that you need to step away from occasionally. Again, you think, again.
    It isn't like it was - well, of course it isn't! Never could be: some processes change you. Not something to lament overlong. But maybe you can capture a glimpse of what it was, once in a while. 
    Perhaps you might talk it over with someone. But this isn't really the sort of thing for polite conversation. Too much finicky background to lay out. Too much violence, too much religion, too much politics. Other people must know of it, though, mustn't they? 
    You can't recall who gave you the book. If it was a book. The picture. The play. The mezzotint. But it had to have come from somewhere. The world - this world - is not so strange that such things can creep up on you all on there own. There was a chain of cause and effect. Somebody gave you the book, long ago.
    So you search, and you do not search in vain. There are people who have seen something of what you've seen. But they won't talk about it, or they'll talk about all the wrong bits in tedious detail and in obvious ignorance of all the most vital points. The process is fruitless, and you get some very scathing looks into the bargain. 
    That doesn't matter, though. You've got work before you, and a handful of social ties to cultivate and maintain, and at the end of it all, a whole other world to go back to. 
    So you do. There's something coming, you can feel it. Something terrible and thrilling and revelatory, so literally apocalyptic, in its content and implications. 
    And then it's not there. Not there at all. Neither climax nor anticlimax, but still it persists. Believe it or not. The stone gathers neither moss nor speed, but it does keep rolling. There's a hint of tedium in the air, like the fug of men trapped too long indoors. Hell's bells, but it's dull. Still, you have to dig in. The initiate into new knowledge undergoes several trials, remember. 
    There is a biting of the bottom lip, a gnawing of fingernails, a wanness of countenance. Has someone commented on it? Vanity: most people you know have far better things to do than comment on your appearance. Whether or not they are, you apply nose to grindstone for a solid fortnight. They might call you a boring So-and-So now, but that's probably preferable than remarks about bloodshot eyes.
    You go back. You think things have changed. Perhaps they even have. Things move slowly, like a cinema reel put into a slide projector. There's a whirring from somewhere, and the sight of dust motes in a beam of light. The image is changing, slowly, resolving before your eye into what you always knew it would be. There should be comfort in that.
    The day is overcast. It is cool, but not chill. Your lunch hour is almost over. You pick up the little book from the bench, and slip it into your pocket. You'll be going back soon. 
***