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. 

***

Riddles and Housekeeping in the Red Chamber

I have been reading the first volume of Cao Xueqin's 1760 novel The Story of the Stone, better known perhaps as The Dream of the Red Chamber. The translation is by David Hawkes, first published in 1973. It's one of the great classics of Chinese literature and a novel of manners; it even has its own field of study: Redology.

Anyway, Chapter 22 has a number of riddles, told as part of a game. I shall list these, with answers below under the picture - they all have fairly mundane answers, but Hawkes's translation, and the anthropomorphism of the riddles mean they could be used to describe divine messengers or elementals or other spirits.

1. My Body's square
   Iron-hard am I.
   I speak no word,
   But words supply.
   [A useful object.]


2. At my coming the devils turn pallid with wonder
   My body's all folds and my voice is like thunder.
   When, alarmed by the sound of my thunderous crash,
   You look round, I have already turned into ash.
   [An object of amusement.]


3. Man's works and heaven's laws I execute,
   Without heaven's laws my workings bear no fruit.
   Why am I agitated all day long?
   For fear my calculations may be wrong.
   [A useful object.]


4. In spring the little boys stand up and stare
   To see me ride so proudly in the air.
   My strength all goes when once the bond is parted,
   And on the wind I drift off broken-hearted.
   [An object of amusement.]


5. At court levée my smoke is in your sleeve:
   Music and beds to other sorts I leave.
   With me, at dawn you need no watchman's cry,
   At night, no maid to bring a fresh supply.
   My head burns through the night and through the day,
   And year by year my heart consumes away.
   The precious moments I would have you spare,
   But come fair, foul, or fine, I do not care.
   [A useful object.]


6. My 'eyes' cannot see and I'm hollow inside,
   When the lotuses surface I'll be by your side.
   When the autumn leaves fall I'll bid you adieu,
   For our marriage must end when summer is through.
   [A useful object.]

1. An inkstone.
2. A firework.
3. An abacus.
4. A kite.
5. An incense-clock.
6. A 'bamboo wife' - that is, one of 'those wickerwork cylinders which are put between the bedclothes in summertime to make them cooler'.

***

A brief piece of housekeeping for the blog - there's a number of posts I've written, on city or a region or a location, some moderately popular but without being tied to any given setting in particular and (generally) written to be quite self-contained. These are now under the label Translucent Polities, which seemed correct. Browse at your leisure.

A Double Century and Noisy Sheep Shearing

This is post number two hundred, so something different from usual: you shall hear me speak, interviewing noisms of Monsters and Manuals - the occasion being the Kickstarter for In The Hall of the Third Blue Wizard, a brand new 'zine with a variety of contributors.  

 

Things discussed include: 

• John Le Carre
• Dad's Army
• Open-air musuems
• The Fetial Priesthood
• The Great Fold
• In The Hall of the Third Blue Wizard (Submissions, Kickstarter)
• The Ordnance Survey and Thomas Pynchon's Mason-Dixon.
• Herodotus and Xenophon
• My creations: Punth: A Primer (and how it grew out of Terrae Vertebrae) and The Rest of All Possible Worlds.

I hope the above will be of some interest, and look forward to another hundred such posts!

Rogue Movie & 2021

Recent viewing (well, as recently as last year) has been the 1976 Rogue Male. I've praised Geoffrey Household's 1939 novel on here before, and so happily picked up a BFI DVD (a dedicated set of notes on which is here) when I saw it. Made for the BBC, directed by Clive Donner, script by Frederic Raphael (who also did script work on that seasonal favourite, Eyes Wide Shut). 

Peter O'Toole plays the protagonist, unnamed - indeed, deliberately anonymous - in the original, but here given the name 'Sir Robert Hunter' allowing a normal flow of conversation; and for the credits to read 'HUNTER - Peter O'Toole'. Other characters played by Alastair Sims, John Standing, Michael Byrne and Harold Pinter (yes, that Harold Pinter). 

Rogue Male had been adapted before - by Fritz Lang, no less - under the name Man Hunt in 1941. This had altered the story rather and bore the weight of anti-Nazi propaganda efforts in 1941. 

Of course, Rogue Male is a suitable source for such a thing. The book features the nameless protagonist and narrator (an English aristocrat and hunter) taking aim at an unnamed dictator from a state that borders Poland. Well, Household was being relatively discreet in 1939, but the feel of the protagonist's torture, escape and pursuit through both the unnamed foreign power and Britain suggest Nazi Germany rather than the Soviet Union. Household would later confirm that he was thinking of Germany; to my mind the ambiguity of the framing narrative is part of the essence of the novel, but there is no real harm in knowing this. Naturally, the film would struggle to make an actor (and the set, and the costumes, and the spearcarriers....) look like either Hitler or Stalin. Maybe it could be done in some form of animation, but hardly live action. 

Va tacito e nascosto,
quand'avido è di preda,
l'astuto cacciator!

The narrator is caught and contends that he was only going to point his rifle at [Possibly Hitler]; it was a sporting stalk against the most dangerous game of all. Here is one of the major points of divergence between book and film: the text of the book has been written by the protagonist (even noting where he stopped work and started again). It takes time for him to admit - both to us, and seemingly, to himself, that he A) intended to kill [Possibly Hitler] and B) did it because of his love for a woman killed by the tyrannical regime. 

Of course, this slow-maturing portion of the novel cannot be reproduced in the film. Flashbacks, imagined sequences and montage make Sir Robert's motivation fairly clear. Further, other characters know of his romance, originally oddly concealed in an otherwise somewhat well-known man. 

Further, the film introduces Alastair Sim as a doddering Earl and government member to explain the delicate political situation of 1939 - things the book's protagonist could work out for himself. I can't find it in myself to complain about his presence, though the first name references to 'Neville' and 'Winston' are a bit much. Likewise, the plausibly Jewish lawyer of the book, Saul, is made definitely Jewish (Saul Abrahams, played by Harold Pinter). There is at least one piece of clearly framed British Union of Fascists graffiti shown on Sir Robert's return to London. The half-German adversary who uses the name 'Major Quive-Smith' is in the film no more than he appears - a Nazi sympathiser and English hunter, played by John Standing. 

So, the 1976 film is less veiled than the book, and is made with a dollop of hindsight. But it still captures the mood well; even if we cannot get so much technical information about Sir Robert's burrow or the surrounding farms, or miss his musings on British society, the impressions of his efforts in concealment, or the nature of his interactions with wider society are adequate. If O'Toole and Sim are perhaps sometimes over-arch or stereotyped (an escape through London is probably more compelling if Sir Robert knows how to ride the Underground!), well, it's all very finely done. Even if the protagonist's injuries are downplayed - who wants to cover up any leading man's face, let alone Peter O'Toole's? - we get a very strong impression of what has been done to him and the problems this causes. It all looks very good, as well. Strong, well-placed actors and settings. 

As ever, read the book first (or listen to the Michael Jayston reading). But I enjoyed this, certainly. 

***

I'm not given to reviews of the year, but 2021 did see at least one watershed for this blog with the launch of Punth: A Primer - bolstered by some kind words and good publicity. TRoAPW is the next such item on the agenda, but is still half-formed. My review of Magical Industrial Revolution was popular, and I may have to do a little more review work. 

In the meantime, enjoy the last days of Christmas and Epiphany, and let us see what 2022 brings.

[Postscript to say that this has got a lot of views for such a brief, commonplace post - perhaps more interesting is this other Rogue.] 

The Monastery on the Sword: Part Three

First, a few things to mention:

Apologies for a month or so's absence. Things got away from me - and I had to devote a little time to back up the contents of this blog (it comes to over 150,000 words!).

During this time, there has been a massive spike in views, largely from Sweden. I'm not sure why this should be, but Swedish readers are, naturally, very welcome. 

Also, a recent entry - Tsoldiers of Tsymric, which is part of the ongoing 'Fantastical Enlightenment' material I've been putting together.  Other popular posts are reviews or based on something more famous - so why one of my setting posts should be so attractive is beyond me. Perhaps it is some sort of code?

Readers may also wish to take a look at the recent Kickstarter from Patrick Stewart of False Machine: Demon Bone Sarcophagus. There is also the first instalment of David McGrogan's Fixed World to consider.

Signals boosted; bulletins announced. We return to the usual content.

This is the - much delayed - capstone (figuratively and something like literally) to an older project of mine, set within Terrae Vertebrae. Here are the first two parts: One, Two.

We look now to the top of the Sword, as detailed in entry No. 3 in Part Two. The Abbot and several monks live at the top of the sword, lowering baskets for supplies, waste disposal and the occasional visitor - as well as to accept deposits. Several gantries are laced with rigging, offering a place for the favoured monks to make their devotions and for the storage of some few necessities. The Abbot is given a favoured spot, in the shape of an open pavilion on the very pommel. 

The height of the monastery means that newcomers are at a constant disadvantage from the height and winds. Vertigo will not only through off a swordsman's blow, but also a spellcaster's charms. 

In the map below - 

Black indicates the outline of the sword.

Red the timbers and platforms around it.

Green certain mechanisms.

Blue ropes and rigging.

Orange the hollowed-out vault in the hilt, as well as the Abbot's pavilion. 

1. Spare coils of rope for the winches at 9 and 13, and for the scouring mechanisms.
2. The shaft of the sword. Nigh-on impossible to climb.
3. The storage platform - access to 4 and 1 from here.
4. Thick, abrasive scouring pads hang here, to be used to clean the shaft of the sword. 
5. 5 and 8 are sides of the access platform. People and items raised up from the ground are received here, and other utilitarian functions performed. 
6. The cross-guard of the sword. Ancient, solid wood, pitted with monkish scrimshaw. 
7. A treadwheel here can used to raise baskets from the ground or drag scouring pads. It is powered by Patience the mule. Patience works harder than you. Patience deals with heights better than you. Patience might fundamentally just be a better person than you are. 
8. 5 and 8 are sides of the access platform. People and items raised up from the ground are received here, and other utilitarian functions performed. 
9. A wheel here guides a line dropping down to the ground. It can either be powered by a counterweight at 13, or by the treadwheel at 7.  
10. 10 and 12 are sides of the widest platform. In so much as the monks assemble with their brethren on the ground, they do it here. 
11. Two extended beacons are set here, together with flammable materials. These are the most obvious emergency signalling system on the hilt.
12. 10 and 12 are sides of the widest platform. In so much as the monks assemble with their brethren on the ground, they do it here. 
13. A wheel here guides a line dropping down to the ground. It can either be powered by a counterweight at 9, or by the treadwheel at 7.  
14. Prayer platforms extend from either side of the hilt at 14 and 16. At 14, a bore-hole four inches in diameter leads into the vault as a deposit slot (one of the monks has a staff with an appropriate scoop at the top). 
15. Here lies the main vault, carved into the hilt over generations. The treasures stored here are far from mundane - this is not a bank, being too far from most merchants. It is the rare, the dangerous or certain last-resort stashes that you find in the numerous cubby holes and niches of the vault. 
16. Prayer platforms extend from either side of the hilt at 14 and 16.
17. The pommel of the sword. 
18. The Abbot's Pavilion. The entrance to the vault is here.

Occupants of the Hilt: 1d6+2 monks, the Abbot, Patience the Mule.

The monks and Abbot can be treated as low-level and higher-level clerics/Prophets. They carry no weapons as such, but many long iron-bound poles used to assist with the winches or the business of scouring.

All occupants of the hilt do no suffer from the adverse conditions caused from height, exposure, &c.

The monks spend their time at 5, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16. 3 is not regarded as a place for regular use - like a  cellar. 

The monks consider themselves less a religious community than a 'conglomeration of hermits' - a little like the real-world Carthusians. Individual tasks, prayer and contemplation are more frequent than mass worship.

State of Play 2,018

A drop in posts over Easter, but I am still about. Further, somehow this little Blog with a mealy-mouthed name has garnered over 2,018 views. Many thanks! A slightly arbitrary number to commemorate, but not entirely unfitting.

Points about the Blog I am mulling over:

• An explicitly international audience, though the quantity of views apparently coming from Algeria is somewhat baffling. The bulk of readers seem to be Anglosphere.
• A lack of comments. If you have a pertinent remark, I should be interested to hear it.
• The 'default orange' look of the site. I might spruce things up at some point.
• The most popular posts are: Azoth, Fifty Religious Processions, Majipoor and both Sphinxes.

A few things for the near future:

-I might have said I was done with Terrae Vertebrae for a bit, but I have at least one thing of that setting I should like to put before you. Given Terrae Vertebrae's somewhat generic status, this should be easy enough to tailor to fit other settings. It started in my mind as (North) Western European Medieval, but elements of it could fit in quite nicely with what I know of Tang Dynasty China (for instance).

-That said, I should like to put the Land of Punth, the Qryth and some of the surroundings in a separate category (A new label will be affixed to posts). Besides it having an explicit different flavour to the rest of Terrae Vertebrae, it would be an easy 'unit of setting' for somebody to drop into a game un-tailored. Though I should like to flesh it out a little more first. A few random encounter tables, another hexcrawl perhaps, a partial list of the Codes and a few access points to Punth (Austergate being an example). 

-Progress grinds slowly on the 18th Century setting (referenced initially here, hinted at elsewhere), which probably would be (sub-) titled White Hot Sparks from the Crucible of the Enlightenment. I have some moderately fleshed-out World-Building stuff so I have named cities or gulfs or kingdoms. But the trick with this seems rather to be a feeling of magic that participates in the nature of the Enlightenment and that systematising of knowledge. I might post a reading list of things I've been looking at. 

-In mock-tribute to this post over at Monsters and Manuals, and with an eye kept on this, there will likely be further C.S. Lewis posts. (Though I can't say the same for Terry Goodkind or some others on that list).

-I should like to put Fallout: Home Counties in some sort of finished state, though any serious work on it is unlikely until I can ground myself well in a system that might support it.

-A few more reviews might accumulate.

***

Finally, to ensure this post isn't purely self-regarding and inward-looking, have a d8 list of encounters based on a collection of beer caps I recently saw.

1. A thistle half the height of a man. A red eye stares balefully from its centre. Its leaves rustle, even when there is no wind.
2. Crescent hounds, backs twisted into the curve of the moon scamper across the moor, yapping and snapping at anything crossing their path. How are these dog's backs bent into that cruel shape? No-one knows, or no-one tells.
3. The skull of a drowned mariner, still wreathed in seaweed. Who took it so far from the coast?
4. An elongated badger seeks something in the ground. There must be something in the beast to stretch it's body so - or to bring it out during the day.
5. A harp all of black - soundboard, pegs, strings, column. What kind of music does it make?
6. On a rock, the mark of a red hand. There is nothing out here to point towards; surely nothing to be avoided. Who spent time cutting and staining the stone?
7. Leaves grow through a red, demonic skull. Vines entwine barbed crimson limbs. Is this a possessed dryad or an ensnared devil?
8. Could that be a windmill on the horizon? What else would stand so tall - or wave its arms so?

***

Any thoughts would, as ever, be appreciated.

Fallout: Home Counties - Introductions

The New Model A.R.M.Y have taken over the forbidden City of Westminster.

The Chiltern Hundreds are excavating the secret vaults underneath Chequers.

There’s a bounty on your head put there by The Three Sabres Mercenary Company.

The Brethren of the White Horse continue their battle against smugglers from a hidden base on the Isle of Thanet.

The Forgemasters of Hammersmith are in a trade dispute with the Shepherds of Shepherd’s Bush, The Temple of Blackfriars are sending out crusades from their fortresses on the Embankment and the Barbican against the sinful Circuses of Piccadilly and Oxford, strange things that go on all fours have been seen near Limehouse and Battersea, something Yellow and Feathery is lurking in the Docklands and nobody knows what’s going on in Mornington Crescent.....

Welcome to Fallout: Home Counties

That was how it started.  A simple enough tongue in cheek little remark. All those on the FB feed for the Terrae Vertebrae game were well enough versed in Computer RPGs; including the Fallout series – principally Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I shall confess.

But the joke was one that stuck; taking the violent, devastated, barbaric world of Fallout and throwing it into the Home Counties. I am aware of the views this blog gets and know that some of you are Canadian or American (Hello! You are most welcome!); therefore, to explain things a little. The Home Counties are those English counties directly around London, forming a heart, a centre – a homeland. The cultural impression the phrase ‘Home Counties’ elicits is one of wealth, with the well-to-do enjoying the country life but working in Greater London, or the comparative Arcadia that is not so very far from the Metropolis in the Cotswolds.

Now, these genteel elements are scarcely the whole truth – there are less than pretty places in the Home Counties, as well as less than wealthy people - and there are a few sizable cities. But the air of country quiet persists nonetheless in Kent, Essex, Sussex and Hertfordshire. So the gag – Mad Max gangs and road chases through country lanes past drystone walls and thatched cottages – is at heart terribly simple.

But once one has recovered from the sheer hilarity of all this, the mind dwells on it a little. The sheer Americanness of Fallout is difficult to ignore. After all, the starting premise is rather good, relying as it does with the tensions implicit in the United States in the 1950s: post-war optimism, wealth and science-fiction wonders brought to life – contrasted bleakly with the looming Cold War, Racism – as expressed in laws and in the deeds of the citizens-, McCarthyism and all that followed it. This isn’t just in the background as setting details, it is a primary part of the aesthetic: finding oneself having a shootout with Buck Rogers ray guns over tins of food in the ruins of a white-picket-fence American suburb.

It’s a strong contrast, and a powerful setting for a story. There are a few things like it in the popular mind; of all things, one might point to Austin Powers, with the contrast of suave Sean Connery espionage and its enduring cool with dated 1960s fashion trends. Played for comedy rather than tragedy, of course, but nonetheless an effective contrast. Those pieces of steampunk literature that one might call relatively Hard (in the SF sense of the word) also play this up; the splendour and wonder of Victorian discovery and glamour contrasted with the squalor of the age and the fact of what that power might do in the hands of a world whose morals we now so frequently decry (The Difference Engine might be the best example of this.).

Anyway, I had lived all my life in or near the Home Counties (at the time we were all in Kent) and had a good working knowledge of some of the cultural influences one could draw on. There was some online discussion, but a certain amount of it was (I believe I may say) all my own work.

The following premises guided me.

• Firstly, it was in response to British 1950s themes and experiences – and would draw to a certain degree upon the Science Fiction of that time (a separate post for that later).

•          ….though the key elements of Fallout canon would be there: IE, the laser rifles work on roughly the same principally and patterns – even if there might be different models produced on different sides of the Atlantic.

•          Speaking of such canon, if Washington DC isn’t just a crater, neither is London. The theatre of operations is the South East of England – including the ruins of London. But those areas once though rural will have a vitality and life that the centre does not.

•          Following in the footsteps of one rather persuasive critical video, the importance of having a world that made some logical sense was important.

•          In the Nuclear War, the fallout was blown to the north and east of London; quantities of farmland were preserved fairly well in the Home Counties. Kent especially did well; it was surrounded on three sides by the sea, and was subject to fewer incursion from raiders and similar desperate fellows than other regions.

•          This has resulted in a number of factions forming around London in the Home Counties. These factions are, in the fashion of New Vegas various shades of grey rather than black hats-white hats.

So, that’s something in the nature of a starting premise. Whether everyone would latch onto the same things I did in the creation of what eventually came about is another matter. More on that to come.

Finally, I came up with the following little conceptual recipe: One Part Fallout to One Part The Napoeleon of Notting Hill. Stir well. Pour in a measure of Wyndham and allow to settle.

Terrae Vertebrae: A Summation

I rather think I have posted as much as I can adequately for now on the setting I called Terrae Vertebrae. It was perhaps my first attempt at such a thing; as such it is something of a loose sketch of influences; not only derivative but unpolished. It was possibly wise on my part to stick to tried and tested tropes in my first sessions as GM, but aspects of it seem a little shabby in retrospect.

I rather suspect I got a little worked up about making it all 'work'; that is, seem functional and sensical - no orc warrens within a days travel of a major stronghold full of troops. Not exactly adventure friendly and a little paralysing to consider.

Nonetheless, there are a few things that might stand a re-visitation or use elsewhere; not that are not only useful but pleasing.

The Giants and Half-Giants I like as a blend of influences; the willful semi-divine ids straight out of Tim Powers; the Atlantis as Iceland picture of vast ruins built for another race in another age; the opportunity to play a race twice the size of a man. All a little stronger and more resonant than the Caprines, the other house rules race.

Kapelleron has a wonderful through line in conception; if you ever want to play a Reconquista-Boer-Wild West-Mormon character, this is the place to be. It feels like Cormac McCarthy could do some pontificating on the whole business.

The Faith of the Eight is pretty robust, but does not perhaps stand out. The Heavenly Jury, meanwhile, has more potential.

The one entry in the canon that I think perhaps pleases me the most is the Land of Punth and its denizens; not only adventure friendly (all that wilderness, that hostile regime!) but the influences are a worthy blend of literary and pulp (Winston Smith rebels against the Ministry of Love inside the Tower of Babel by riding sandworms and fighting the Tharks!). The in-universe clash of Eurocentric Vertebreans against Near Orientalist-flavoured sword-and-planet folks is rather lovely in some ways. It almost seems worthy of a trans-dimensional setting as in False Machine's Great Fold.

Anyway, having reframed and cleaned up a lot of my old notes for this blog, it seems time to move on a little. I might come back to all this in time, but let this be a stopping point for now.

Introductions

Why have a blog? Why have this blog?

Effectively, the answer is that I enjoy tabletop gaming and speculative fiction - and the things that help fuel these.

I myself have a grounding in the Old School Renaissance of Dungeons and Dragons. This has principally with the concise and user-friendly 52 Pages, on either side of the GM’s screen.

Added to this is a lifelong enthusiasm for history, eventually manifesting itself in post-graduate study, as well as a scattered interest in related fields.

Finally, I read and write with some little enthusiasm. An awful lot of this writing has been in worldbuilding for games and it may as well be made available for public consumption and discussion; hence the title.

It seems a little impolite to just dump page after page of setting notes here, so some sort of proportion – perhaps two pieces of new or widely applicable material for every piece of archived, focused work – ought to be worked out.

Let us see what this produces.