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. 

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.

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, ... -

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. 

***

Troika: Some Thoughts

I hadn't read Troika when it first came out, and made a splash. I saw on sale as a PDF, and acquired it. Now, some thoughts.

***

Troika: you may know - but I'm going to restate it anyway - who this is by. 'Written by Daniel Sell. Illustrated by Jeremy Duncan, Dirk Detweiler Leichty, Sam Mameli, and Andrew Walter.' These chaps are attached to the Melsonian Arts Council. 

What's it attempting to do? Time for a quote.

Here is Troika!: a science-fantasy RPG in which players travel by eldritch portal and non-euclidean labyrinth and golden-sailed barge between the uncountable crystal Spheres strung delicately across the hump-backed sky. 

What you encounter on those Spheres and in those liminal places is anybody’s guess — I wouldn’t presume to tell you, though inside this book you will find people and artefacts from these worlds which will suggest the shape of things. The adventure and wonder are in the gaps; your game is defined by the ways in which you fill them.

 

Does it achieve this? Hmm. Apologies, this is going to get into the sub-genre weeds. Now, to my mind Science Fantasy is something like CL Moore's Northwest Smith or Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark. A twinning of Science Fiction and the Fantastical, something a touch more out there than the use of Barsoom for two-fisted adventures. 

I might suggest tentatively that Sword-and-Planet involves (whatever the mysteries required by the plot) a grasp of essential skills and understanding of the world: John Carter is of the profession of arms, and may apply himself to his chosen trade on Earth or Mars. Science Fantasy involves moving from the familiar to the strange by the characters: from the world of space flight and blasters to psychic aliens and time shifts. Cf. Star Wars: the mechanically-skilled farm boy enters not merely into a galactic war, but a journey with a spiritual dimension. Feudal Futures (or a category including Feudal Future) involve starting and staying in an unfamiliar place. 

But, of course, the most obvious influence on Troika! is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. If you've read both, this isn't news. Reference to Cacogens, Clavigers, Alzabo, the Phoenix Throne, a familiarly phrased 'Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners', Notules, golden-sailed space-faring ships....all due respect to the author, but this path of influence is fairly clear. Besides, the blatant isn't always bad: here are some tools for the Wolfe-like, use them as you will. 

Anyway, in some ways all I've written there is merely surface. The underlying meat is the mixture of science and magic, in less than clear-cut ways. In some media, the mixture or confusion is benign, and comprehensible: see the invocation of Clarke's Third Law in Marvel films, for instance, or the various magi-tech urban settings of some RPGs. In others, it is horrifying - whether one of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones is merely a incomprehensibly vast working-out of natural laws or a staggering violation of those laws, it barely matters, given the results. 

In The Book of the New Sun, it is dismaying to see such ruin as has resulted in a great confusion of science and magic, but not as such baleful. In Vance's Dying Earth, it is awe-inspiring (if still ruinous). If the melding or conflusion is thorough enough, we speak of the Weird, the uncanny. If I say New Weird, some minds will instantly move to Miéville's Bas-Lag. To my mind this is a less pure example than (say) Steph Swainson's The Year of Our War.

All this is to indicate, if I may, that Troika! reads as sufficiently immersed in its world to be more like New Weird and Feudal Future than Science Fantasy as I read it. It lacks a foot in the familiar. This probably suits its purposes, and is bolstered by the presentation. 

An example, if you will pardon me.

Troika, P.7, Character Creation

This is one of the pre-generated characters you can roll into. Now, what does this suggest to you? A retired reaver? Dad-bod Elric? Frank Frazetta's King of the Hill?

Well, here is how Dirk Detweiler Leichty chose to illustrate that entry:

There is a hammer, but not a Warhammer.

Now, Detweiler Leichty will be quite tightly linked in my mind to the grand decay and meshing of mechanical and biological and otherworldly shown in Silent Titans. Is this true for the bulk of Troika's intended audience? Perhaps. Either way, the restricted but vivid colour, the geometric slashes, the dense lines, the hints of a roiling interior, 'the interlacing of the imagined organic/personal with the imagined space', indicate a distinction from the familiar lines of fantasy art - the thousand variations on Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn on paperback covers, or the older technicolour depictions of the 'cod-archaism of a Renaissance faire'. Either way, this is a deliberate indication of something distinct: a suggestion of several moods rather than one set icon. 

So, Troika steps out boldly in a new direction. And doesn't trip over its shoelaces. 

Would I use it? You're talking to the wrong fellow, but I'll take a stab. Troika's a chunkier beast than the W-B&W-G-backed 52 Pages, but then it is seeking to indicate a mood and world definitely not D&D. Call it a hundred pages, minus the included adventure. 

The d66 system - simple enough once your head's in the right place. Luck as a stat always rings a little off to me - pace Fallout - but when other stats have been pared down so far or amalgamated into Skill and Stamina, I can see why you would want a nebulous 'significance' stat to move around a focus as desired. Thinking on it, a (relative) resignation to (or acknowledgement of) the whims of fortune or the workings of fate does seem fitting for the intended genre.

A few more words on how Advanced Skills are meant to be distributed in one's own Backgrounds would be preferable. There's some obvious models, but a step-by-step somewhere would be good.

The notion of a stack of items to indicate turns is all very well, but could be troublesome on the table -where does the stack live, who can see it, &c.

Pinch of salt to the above: this is all speculative. 

Gleanings: Things to pull out and use.

• Witch-hair ropes 'immune to manipulation via magical means.'
• 'Salt is the poor man's silver'.
• Brittle Twigs is an impressively folk-lorish spell.
• This description, from the spell Iron Hand - 'The common man does not appreciate exactly how close flesh and iron are when considered relative to, say, flesh and the smell of hot tea.'
• The Donestre: strange deadly melancholy many-headed lions.
• I think more settings can find room for Lamassu and Rhino-men.
• Beef and Liberty is apparently one of those perennial human obsessions.
• Pocket Gods seem an interesting extension on Lord Dunsany's various small deities. 

Conclusions: Well, I'm not certain that Troika hits a level of Conceptual Density for me. But then, I've read a bunch of Wolfe already, and even written something inspired in good part by him. So it might do something for you, and I cannot really regret flipping through Troika all that much. Modified rapture.

Manners Maketh ___?

Blame Montefeltro. A post like this is from time to time quite fun, and real life has been in the way lately. Something meatier soon.

Thriller of Manners: Crime's like anything else, really. It has rules - quite strict ones, with lots of people who'll be shocked if you break them - right up until it doesn't. 

Robinsonade of Manners: Trapped on a desolate isle and forced to contemplate his own isolation and the course of his life thus far, a castaway is obliged to fabricate an all-encompassing etiquette manual from scratch in order to rebuild his life and enable him to re-enter Society when rescue finally comes.

Urban Fantasy of Manners: I learnt it the hard way - when on your first date with that vampire with the tousled hair and the leather jacket and the beauty spot, don't order the steak tartare.

Bedroom Farce of Manners: "Gentlemen, now we have found ourselves all in the same lady's wardrobe, how exactly are we to pass the time? There is the signal possibility that we will be here for a while."

Solarpunk of Manners: In the pastel-shaded environmentally-friendly egalitarian neo-tribal future, is there a polite way to say that the neighbour's hollyhocks are overshadowing your solar panels?

Ostern of Manners: In the remote reaches of Pseudobaninsky Oblast, there's a band of desperate men: Tsarist lickspittles, quarrelsome treacherous profit-seeking capitalists, long-winded long-bearded priests - with minds as tangled as their whiskers. Then there's the man who has come to show them a new way to live. 

Submarine Film of Manners: "Cursing like a sailor? Lady, when you are obliged to spend life in close proximity with a double-dozen of your fellows in a tin can built for ten, I assure you that you will develop a very delicate set of customs."

Southern Ontario Gothic of Manners: In the worn Victorian residential quarter of Roxburghe, ON, we are supported - or perhaps impaled - by three pillars. Our British legacy, the frigid Northern weather and the continually twined sight of squalor and prosperity across the border. Nursing these delightful wounds, my fellow petite Roxbourgeoisie have produced a certain strain of propriety suited for scab-picking on Sunday afternoons.....

What else is there? Contributions welcome.

Lost By Translation

Before you venture into the Dreadful Dungeon, it would be wise to acquire a map, or some record of those dreadful tunnels. But the only scraps of information you can find on the subject have been translated - either from a form of the Common Tongue so old as to be unrecognisable, or from the writings of another culture.  

Such translations are rarely exact, of course.

1. Distances As it turns out, the Dwarven Foot is a little shorter than the Human Foot. Who knew? This is probably fine in Five Foot corridors, but when assessing longer distances, the difference will add up.
2. Similar, but not Identical Perhaps as a result of 'False Friends', or some other linguistic custom, the difference between varieties of Goblinoid are not well marked in the language this guide was written in. One cannot readily tell whether these tunnels are infested with Goblins or Orcs.
3. Genre The translator of this text describes a frieze depicting 'A Curious Static Dance, with Masks'. He appears to have no notion of stage drama.
4. Zealotry The translator of this text renders 'Highly Potent Idols of the Spider God' as 'Ferocious Idols of the Spider God'. It seems that he does not believe that anything connected to the Spider God could be more than a Paper Tiger. 
5. Biology The original text was written by a Dwarf (or possibly an Elf). They refer to Vinth and Aggal (or Ulvian and Briolant*) features on a tiled floor. The translator has not rendered this into a form humans can understand - possibly from a desire to remain literally accurate, possibly from a lack of knowledge concerning the tiles in question. At any rate, some of the tiles are trapped. 
6. Idiom According to this translation, within a certain high-ceilinged suite of the Dungeon, Felids and Canids will descend to rule over you. 
7. Prudery Be it a personal or cultural peculiarity, the translator has declined to uncover certain terms. The precise bodily features of a certain statue that must be pressed to open a secret door will remain a mystery.
8. Poetry The original had it that in a certain room, witchfire would burst in thin but intense columns from a dozen sculpted ram's head. The translation merely refers to many ram's heads and much fire.

***

This quick little post is the result of being partway through Umberto Eco's Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. First published 2003 - there is a description of the use of translation software it would be interesting to follow back on two decades later. I found Mouse or Rat? quite readable, but it helped to have read a few of Eco's own works beforehand: he references the translations that were made of those on several occasions. 

Having written all this, I do realise that this is effectively a Rumour Table with extra steps. But sometimes those extra steps do add flavour to an adventure - there is a difference between getting your faulty information from (variously) the Soaks propping up the Bar in the Local Tavern, the Few Scraps High Command has been able to Piece Together or a Crumbling Tome of Eldritch and Forgotten Lore. 

*To say nothing of Jale, Ulfire and Dolm.

Humanity's Elementals: Necessary for the Life of Men

The principal things for the whole use of man's life are water, fire, iron, and salt, flour of wheat, honey, milk, and the blood of the grape, and oil, and clothing.

Ecclesiasticus 39.26, Authorised Version*. 

(The Book of Ecclesiasticus is to be found in the Apocrypha and is also known as the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach.)

***

Water

Appearance Not the water of the deeps, not water of the torrent, not the water of the hillside spring, not the water of the life-giving rain. Man's water. Five legs, made of pipes, bottles, jars and jugs support a large sphere of water. Within the sphere is a curious face, with the fluid features of a brush-and-ink work.

Assorted Sense Data Strong light through the elemental's body casts a strange glimmering pattern on the ground. It has a voice like water chugging through a borehole. 

The Subtly Supernatural Wake this Elemental can Produce A scatter of droplets - either refreshingly cool or startlingly cold.

Disposition Serious-minded, slow-moving, lucid.

Threats and Assorted Offensive Capabilities Kicks from five legs, jets of high-pressure water.

Gifts the Elemental may Offer A small stone carved with the elemental's face. This can purify a tun of water.

Trophies gained Once the Elemental is Dispelled Five small stones that will each reduce a tun of water to a fine grey powder.

Fire

Appearance Not the wild fire, not the elemental fire, not the sorcerous fire, not the heavenly fire. Man's fire. Picture a being like a goat. This goat has a stone hearth for a torso, two fire pots for protruding eyes, two candelabra for horns, a clay oil lamp for a brief tail. A mouth of curiously unconsumed hot coals. Each leg is an iron poker, terminating in a human hand made of four fire-strikers and a pointed flint thumb.

Sense Data Walking over stone the elemental makes little clicks. A small trail of smoke follows the elemental, growing thicker in moments of conflict or stress. The elemental speaks in the voice of a furnace. A faintly caprine furnace.

Wake A startled elemental can create a great cloud of sparks. 

Disposition Hungry - ravenous, even - but curiously affectionate, not to say clingy. 

Threats Flame, Iron-shod knees, two big horns, sparks, four sharp thumbs, a mouthful of burning coals.

Gifts The elemental coughs up an ember. This is perpetually just shy of bursting into flame, needing only a good strong puff and may be extinguished only by magic. Storing it? That's your problem. 

Trophies Twelve of said embers, but they all hate you.

Iron

Appearance A tottering pile of iron plates, gathered around a handful of iron spits that rise up like a thick neck. About this, two overlapping slopes of plates descend to two ingot-like feet. Two sets of tongs protrude from left and right about the midriff.

Sense Data A voice like tuneless chimes, as of metal on metal. Thumping heavy footsteps.

Wake A strange cold sensation in the air, and a subtle oiliness.

Disposition Stubborn, inflexible, cold and reassuringly firm.
[Iron and Salt were once lovers. Or siblings, possibly twins. It's a little difficult to tell. They had an affair of alarming torridity and concerning intensity. Or a family quarrel over the supramundane equivalent of father's pocket watch. Either way, whenever Iron encounters Salt, the elemental goes a strange reddish-brown colour.]

Threats An iron-hard body. If provoked, the elemental can also make a noise like all the hammers of the Nibelungs, except so loud you can feel it like the mother of all migraines. 

Gifts The elemental gives little, but will reshape metal implements as desired. The elemental can also get just about any Fairy junior to Oberon to shove off.  

Trophies As much iron as you can carry.

Salt

Appearance Imagine the armour of a hoplite, but make it white, crystalline and translucent. Fill it with rock salt in the shape of a department store mannequin. 

Sense Data A soft white trail on the floor. A briny scent in the air. A voice like somebody taking rasping, softly crunching steps in fresh snow.

Wake Out of the air, something begins clinging to you, coating you, causing little tensions on your skin.

Disposition Melancholy but interesting. Occasionally florid, never insipid. 
[Iron and Salt were once lovers. Or siblings, possibly twins. It's a little difficult to tell. They had an affair of alarming torridity and concerning intensity. Or a family quarrel over the supramundane equivalent of father's pocket watch. Either way, whenever Salt encounters Iron, the elemental becomes highly flakey.]

Threats Ever been in a sandstorm that hated you? Plus two salty fists.

Gifts  The elemental can also get just about any fell spirit junior to Mammon to shove off.

Trophies A pile of white powder. If you shove your hand it, it comes out covered in razor-sharp flakes. They will not cut you, and they will not come off readily.

Flour of Wheat

Appearance Shaped as a human, wearing a skirt or apron that reaches to cover the feet. The wedge of the lower body appears to practically hover over the ground. The surface of the elemental's body is dusted in fine flour: if you wipe this away, it reveals a body of plain dough. Cutting into the body reveals a sticky, over-watered dough. Much like hair, a golden sheaf of wheat sprouts from the elemental's head. A set of facial features and muscle-mimicing details are formed by scores much like the top of a country loaf.

Sense Data If burnt by sorcerous fire, the elemental may begin to cook and give off the smell of fresh bread. The speech of the elemental is like wind through a wheat field.  Divots in the body of the elemental are easily made and easily smoothed out. 

Wake The flour on the surface of the elemental can be shaken into a concealing cloud. 

Disposition Placid as a pig; graceful as a deer.

Threats Two big doughy fists. An engulfing body. 

Gifts A pie-crust containing fine white flour. The flour may be used to create high-end baked goods; the pie-crust may be refilled with something more interesting to create a delicious pie. 

Trophies The flesh of the elemental taken without permission is a tasteless toxic paste.

Honey

Appearance A camel, the colour of brass, bearing on its back in the place of humps a hive and a large clay pot. The camel's eyes and hooves are hexagonal. 

Sense Data A tuneful but inescapable buzzing. A sweet scent on the air. The voice of the elemental has a certain sweet clarity.

Wake A sudden swarm of bees.

Disposition Charming, Optimistic.

Threats Hooves, angry and focused bees. 

Gifts A wax ampoule containing honey: a taste will sate any human hunger, a dressing of it will cure most wounds.

Trophies A vast pot of honey - which will attract ten times the amount of flies even the sweetest vinegar does.

Milk

Appearance A floating vesica piscis or pointed oval, apparently made of a hundred pats of butter shaped like rose petals. Milk flows perpetually from a spot near the centre. 

Sense Data The sound of dripping. The voice of the elemental is smooth, its diction unhurried.  

Wake You have the horrible, almost overwhelming sensation that something is wrong and it will not be fixed. 

Disposition Irritable, but mercurial. The mood will not last. 

Threats A bombardment of cream. Lots of it. Enough to clot in your throat. 

Gifts How much milk would you like?

Trophies A puddle of clarified butter, contaminated with whatever detritus was on the floor at the time. This makes an excellent - nigh-on supernaturally effective - grease.

Blood of the Grape

Appearance A voluptuous but androgynous humanoid form, the colour of red wine. It wears a crown of vines and had green eyes. Cutting into the body spills wine: if this is not drunk, it clots into a black scab (which tastes strongly of raisins).

Sense Data Songs pass the elementals lips at almost all times. It has a deep-throated voice. 

Wake The smell of brandy worms into your nostrils, bringing you to the point of giddiness.

Disposition A jovial host, by turns caring and attentive or wildly exuberant.

Threats Intoxication, the possibility of choking on wine, two fists each with the weight of a hogshead behind them.

Gifts The elemental sets a silver spigot into a finger tip and pours out some of the best claret you've ever drunk. 

Trophies A skeleton, soaked in what appears to be Malmsey. It's even in the marrow.

Oil

Appearance A hooded figure, with numerous folds in the cloth of its voluminous garment. The folds have the static quality of sculpture. The hood and cloak have the colour of dull gold. The cloak seems to cling at the ground. 

Sense Data Glistening traces of oil on plant matter where the elemental has passed. The voice of the elemental hisses and fizzes like oil in the skillet. 

Wake The air becomes startling humid. Movement in armour becomes tiresome. 

Disposition Ingratiating at first, but easily nettled. 

Threats The floor below you becomes suddenly frictionless. Your sword-hand coated in a glaze of lard, the pages of your grimoire stuck together. Life becomes very difficult, even before your mouth is stopped by a glistening hand. 

Gifts An unguent that comforts and speeds the healing of a great many wounds and infections. 

Trophies A vast tarpaulin - that is, an Oilskin.  

Clothing

Appearance As an octopus made of several bolts of cloth knotted together into a central mass which is bounded about with a broad leather belt. 

Sense Data An octopus made of cloth makes very little noise unless it wishes to. Naturally, the only odour from the cloth is a slight smell of cedar shavings. It has a voice like a shuttle being drawn through a loom. 

Wake The feeling of a dozen loose threads in your clothes, tickling and twining in inconvenient places. It becomes difficult to concentrate.

Disposition Fussy, detail-oriented, perfectionist. 

Threats Eight ensnaring tentacles and a great resilient head with which to butt.

Gifts A beautiful and nearly indestructible ribbon. 

Trophies Eight bolts of fine but fragile cloth, prone to ripping. 

***

*Cf. Douay-Rheims: The principal things necessary for the life of men, are water, fire, and iron, salt, milk, and bread of flour, and honey, and the cluster of the grape, and oil, and clothing
and the Revised Standard Version: Basic to all the needs of man's life are water and fire and iron and salt and wheat flour and milk and honey, the blood of the grape, and oil and clothing. I think the Authorised Version has the most fantastic possibilities with that pairing of iron and salt, and the 'principal things... of man's life' phrase. 

Faufreluches: A Thousand Days of Noise

Among the recent post series Faufreluches was my introductory post to the future feudal star empire, the Thousand Day Regency. Here is a recording of the central element to that post, 'The What' - largely becuase I wanted to see how the rhythm of the piece would develop.

Enjoy.

August '23 Miscellany - and a Notion Entertained

A few things to flag up for you, largely unrelated to recent posts - as well as brief section once again Entertaining a Notion.

***

A Return to Saxherm: if you hadn't already encountered it, HCK over at Grand Commodore has recently posted an audio version of his story 'The Crimes of Jack Daw', set in my own Saxherm, which was created using his city-state creator. (Check the comments of that post for a series of people drawing up their own cities, and perhaps make your own!)

***

I enjoy the work of Tim Powers, and so when I saw a paperback by his fellow Ashbless scholar James P. Blaylock, I decided to pick it up. That was The Stone Giant, and it rather left me cold. The obliviousness of its main character mixed oddly with the very directly fantastical elements. 

But seeing a copy of The Last Coin, I decided to try again.

This is more like his pal Powers. Set in Seal Beach, California (part of the greater Los Angeles area; I assumed reading it that it was a pastiche of somewhere rather than a real place), contemporary with the book's publication (1988) it is about the assembly of the Thirty Pieces of Silver paid to Judas Iscariot by an old man called Pennyman. But most of it is told from the point of view of Andrew Vanbergan, who is trying to open an inn, and deal with aged relatives, and get the right kind of breakfast cereal, and...

There is the perennial comment about how stupid people in horror films are, how they ought long ago to have gone down to the basement, and sat there with a shotgun pointed at the door. Vanbergan is, like the lead of The Stone Giant, oblivious and fussy and caught up with his own mundane troubles - and this is exactly as he should be. It is a wild leap for a man in 1988 to work out that someone is gathering thirty very particular pieces of silver, even if we know it from the prologue or the blurb. Watching someone not quite notice and not quite understand what is going on is exactly how this should be going. 

The grubby, furtive - petty, even - Vanbergan is an unlikely paladin (not that he ever really becomes one). Compare Indiana Jones, who is supposed to be somewhat ruthless and morally compromised, another unlikely saviour - but who has a handsome jawline and good suits and a winning smile, and eventually becomes another Hollywood icon. Obviously this man rescues the Holy Grail: that's just what he does. (Cf. Bond: 4/5 of his assignments were meant to be run of the mill, and lots of the books start with him grousing about paperwork. Fleming even intended his name to be boring! But a decade or so of movies and...) Anyway, Blaylock gets a portion of Grade-A kudos for maintaining the unlikeliness of his unlikely hero. 

The best book of its kind I've read? By no means. But the midpoint mix of obscure signs and obliviousness, mundanity and creeping horror is quite good. If I knew more about David Lynch, perhaps I'd call it Lynchian.

***

The Pantographia of Edmund Fry. A 1799 work collecting as many alphabets, scripts and writing systems as the author could get his hands on. It may be found here at the Internet Archive.

Rather lovely in its broad sweep and unique collection of printed scripts. Good to flip through, even if online. Fry does not quite distinguish continually between a script and an alphabet (e.g, on one page we have both the Gothic script found in High Medieval manuscripts and the alphabet of the Goths); likewise Danish is produced in the Latin Alphabet. Things like the Philosophic language of John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester are included - Cf. The Search for the Perfect Language, Umberto Eco. (Pantographia is at least of the spirit of TRoAPW).

Using it as a reference, it would irritate me that English and Saxon are distinguished - especially when one entry under English reproduces something by Alfred the Great. See also the entries for both High Dutch and German, or Ancient British and Celtic. The Pantographia reproduces languages from across the globe, some of them from quite far off and quite recent discoveries to Fry and his audience: see entries under 'Nootka Sound' or 'Friendly Isles'.

The colonial and imperial aspects are baked in, of course: the entry for New England (sandwiched between [pre-Rosetta Stone] Egyptian and English) does not appear to be in a dialect of the Pilgrims, but is possibly Wampanoag (see also Virginia and New Zealand). This practice is not consistent - see Ecclemach. The specimen text for many languages is the Lord's Prayer, be it Siamic, Orcadian, Formosan or Mohawk.

Terms are also unfamiliar - Esthonian, Esquimaux, Ethiopic, Sclavonian, Manks, Saracen (as well as Arabic), Servian, Thibetan. I am unable so far to identify 'Molqueeren'; it looks like Dutch and is perhaps a sort of Frisian. 

Fry also introduces as Welch the 'Bardic Alphabet' of Edward Williams. There's something of a collision in this between the Romanticism (and Nationalism) of the late 18th and 19th centuries and the (mid-18th) Enlightenment project of encyclopaedias and catalogues: see also Ossian. It's tempting to view this as a narrative of Romantic-Nationalist passions and obsessions colliding with Enlightenment naïve benevolence - but that's perhaps a little too neat. Cf. the 'alphabet of Charlemagne'.

Anyway, none of those last few paragraphs should prevent you from at least leafing through this online. An interesting work and I would very much like to see an annotated version.

***

Tales of the Alhambra: a collection of stories and essays by Washington Irving of Sleepy Hollow and Old Christmas fame, written while mixing travel and diplomatic work in Europe, published in 1832. It is set in and around (surprisingly) the palace of the Alhambra in Granada. This was a chance find and an interesting one. My edition was enhanced by a variety of colour plates: the publisher has not identified the artists, and the internet is little help. I have identified some, but others are made more troublesome to find, especially when they appear mirrored and differently coloured on image sites. (And yet still they lack the name of an artist! Pah!)

Tales is in part a description of the Alhambra and the countryside around it, together with sketches of its inhabitants. It is not as such uncharitable, but it is through the lens of a Protestant republican American observing the customs of a Catholic kingdom in the Old World. I would call it benignly disposed next to  The Monk or Browning's 'Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister', but they share certain elements. 

Anyway, Irving's Alhambra is full of earthy peasants, genteel poverty, Royal officials, guitars being played, chaperoned maidens in mantilla and basquiña, muleteers, maimed veterans and roguish contrabandistas. It's a more colourful account than that Sackville-West gives - in part perhaps because of the relative climates of Avila and Granada.

The other portion of Tales is stories, dealing either with the distant past or the present inhabitants of the Alhambra. In many of these, the presence of Moorish Spain makes itself felt - though of course Irving has already spent much time describing the architecture of the Alhambra . Sometimes honest peasants are shown the way to stashes of buried treasure in the ruins, or enchanted caves. This is frequently the work of ghosts. In others, the story is set during the Middle Ages and the conflict of the Emirate of Granada and the Kingdom of Castille. Some of this, with the presence of astrologers, gallant princes, talking birds and flying carpets shows the hand of the Thousand and One Nights. 

Other pieces, such as the chapter 'Mementos of Boabdil' (Muhammed XII), display a more grounded approach, with Irving ruminating on the history of the Moors in Spain towards the end of the Reconquista. This is, of course, not colourless: 'the splendid drama of the Moslem domination in Spain', 'if it be a true representation of the man, he may have been wavering and uncertain, but there is nothing of cruelty or unkindness in his aspect'. Likewise, there are some stories of intrigues between the Governor of the Alhambra and the Captain-General of Granada.

[That is, Captain-General of the Kingdom of Granada: united with much of modern Spain under the Crown of Castile but de jure separate until the 19th century. English Wikipedia will guide you inevitably towards the Captains-General of the Spanish Empire in the New World or modern high-ranking officers.]

All that aside, reading this made me entertain a certain notion. I have of late been marinading in Tolkien. My mind went to a great citadel, of the country and yet not of the culture, once a chief stronghold of the enemy, ruined and upon a time glorious, in strange relation to its neighbours...

"The Tower of the Moon" by Ted Nasmith

Let us look to Minas Morgul.

Once Minas Ithil, tower of the moon, renamed after its conquest to the tower of sorcery. Counterpart to Minas Tirith. Aragon II, King of Gondor and Arnor, commanded that it would be destroyed and that none would dwell there (The Return of the King, Ch. 15, 'The Steward and the King'). Ithilien, the land East of the Anduin that was once its territory became the domain of Faramir, Prince of Ithilien.

But even King Elessar would in time die, and pass the crown to his heirs: likewise the children of Faramir and Eowyn would take up the title of Prince. And how readily may a city be utterly erased? Minas Morgul would endure a time.

Generations on, none is meant to dwell in the ruins of Minas Morgul. But a watch is kept on the land once called Mordor, and this means that a guard must be kept in the Morgul Vale, as a principal pass through the Mountains of Shadow. So there is a garrison in Minas Morgul. And where there are soldiers, there must be armourers, and farriers, and cooks. And with settled non-combatants, there are families. And all must be fed, so suppliers and procurators and traders come and go.

But they must not dwell there: all say, and all are told, that they will one day leave and never return. However, in the meantime there they pause, and tell tales of the ancient decorated halls: of stashes of coin and precious gems found in the walls, of ancient yet keen-edged weapons of strange make, of charms and enchantments in flowing scripts. 

Yet it is firm law that Minas Morgul will not be occupied: if any go there, it is by the King's authority alone. So the Castellan of the Morgul Vale is directly appointed, unlike his near neighbour the Prince of Ithilien, who inherited his title. But even if Prince and Castellan get along quite happily, the men under each will clash, and claims of jurisdiction must be judged. Furthermore, any Castellan would rather be the Castellan of Minas Ithil, rather than bear the infamous name of Morgul - though any Prince would have none of it. 

Who comes and - pauses - in Minas Morgul, in the ruins from which all shadows have been chased? The regular soldiery of Minas Tirith. Detachments from the Fiefdoms, serving their term: archers of the Blackroot Vale, hillmen from Lamedon, Lossarnach fighters with great axes. Men of Dol Amroth, who wished to leave their homes, but would not be sailors. Work crews, that must one day be road menders or masons and one day be sappers and eidoloclasts. The Castellan, and such of his household as he cared to take into Morgul. Couriers and rangers of the Prince of Ithilien. Opportunistic traders of Near Harad, or from the Kingdom of Dale and the Lonely Mountain. Elves from the Gardens in Ithilien (see Appendix A of LotR).

Anyway, were I forced to create a Tolkien-derived fantasy dungeon, that's perhaps what it would look like.