January '23 Miscellany

At time of writing, the Kickstarter for Yoon-Suin's second edition is still ongoing. But you probably knew that.

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The Dragon Waiting, by John M Ford. Another second-hand find, another Fantasy Masterworks edition. No introduction by Neil Gaiman, but he did apparently review it in 1985.

So, this one's a little troublesome. There's a tendency in this little corner of the Blogosphere to talk about that reaction a reader gets when they find some very D&D-esque moment in a book published before 1975. (For my money, early Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser is the place to go.) Well, this was published 1983.

To continue: It is 15th century Europe - or Ford's strange variation on it, where Julian the Apostate died far later in life, allowing the various classical religions to live on in an atmosphere of state secularism. Yet all the same, Edward IV, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Louis XI and other historical figures exist with roughly similar roles to those they possess in reality. There is no Cathedral in York, but there is a Pantheon. The Hagia Sophia is the Kyklos Sophia - 'Circle of Wisdom'. The Dragon Waiting is subtitled 'A Masque of History', and this is so - historical figures in a series of masks and guises. But there are traditional alternate history elements - a still-potent Byzantine Empire with territory in southern France, for instance. Oh, and magic is real.

The Masterworks edition, image found on Goodreads.

[The Masterworks edition errs heavily by describing it on the back as 'an alternate world in which Byzantium was not extinguished in 1453'. Yes, but that's not the point of divergence!]

Hence, then, my remarks about 'D&D-esque' - medieval characters (including a wizard and a fighter and a doctor...) apparently worshipping pagan deities but with odd analogues to Christian structures. It's probably a personal failing that I was lightly vexed by this at first: "Why do we get identical Medicis and a very similar Florence despite the point of divergence! It doesn't make any sense!", but you have to get your mind out of the 'What if Napoleon won the Battle of Leipzig?' mode. Ford tells you upfront: this is a Masque of History. A 'Historical Note' in the front matter points out that section heading quotations are from Shakespeare's Richard III - itself famously a masque of history. The list of real-world personages are set in a section called 'Shadows as they Pass'. Approach it more like Philip K Dick's Man in the High Castle and less like Robert Harris's Fatherland.

So, that's the attitude in which you should approach it. Is it in fact worth taking all that effort to read it? Frankly, the question will be how entertained you are by Ford's characters and the background. Pastiche (not that this is a pastiche) can feel a little cold, not losing itself to laugh-out-loud comedy (as parody) or a deliberate message (as satire). Ford is playful, but you might find it a trifle arch - "Dante Alighieri's Commedia dell'Uomo? Oho, well played, Mr Ford." (Cue sensible chuckle.)

But that's not all, I'm glad to say. There's a world ticking away under a thin mask, fully realised and interesting. The integration of magic feels quite naturalistic (no fireballs); the pressure of a Byzantine Empire that has preserved this great diversity of faiths yet seeks dominance is well-sketched. There's travel involved (Florence to London) that takes an appropriate amount of time, and apt limits to the power and reach of a pre-modern state. 

The religious elements are not outright fanciful, either. There's an interesting feature with men belonging to all-male Mithraic cults and women worshipping Cybele - a whole 'men's mysteries/women's mysteries' thing that feels out of place (and therefore fascinating) in a (quasi-) Renaissance context - the sort of thing that would be interesting in the implicit setting here. 

Aside from this, there are sort of two responses to Medieval figures worshipping classical deities. First is to associate it with the sort of (Occidentalist?) Japanese video game where (as it might be) Sir Percival, Joan of Arc, Miyamoto Mushashi and Ulysses S. Grant are all (secretly?) devotees of Athena and fight Siegfried, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Mary Queen of Scots and Isaac Newton, who are champions of Hades. That's not entirely wrong for a book in which Richard the Lionheart worshipped Apollo and Saladin was a Zoroastrian, but it's not exactly right either.

Second is to observe that the division of the Medieval world into Christian and Pagan is fairly artificial: the Nine Worthies included Hector and Alexander the Great, Chroniclers tracked the foundation of Britain back to Troy and Chaucer's Knight's Tale invokes Theseus and Saturn. This is leaving aside, for instance, the flowering of Classical subjects in art produced under the patronage of the aforementioned Lorenzo de Medici. Again - this is a Masque. There is no great distress if (when?) the costumes come off.

That I've written all the above is hopefully indicative that there's at least something to chew on here. People agree with me - hence the website Draco Concordance (read the book first!) which tracks certain story elements (and made writing this a lot easier). Gene Wolfe called it 'The best mingling of history with historical magic that I have ever seen,' and in my research for this I was unsurprised to learn that Ford enjoyed Wolfe's work. There's more I could write about this - which is a good sign.

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Baroque Dance Notation, more especially the Beauchamp-Feuillet notation: something an old friend introduced me to. I've been doing some reading on it since, from the odd place between supremely detailed art and academic history. Quite fascinating and beautiful, really. It would make a fascinating pattern for wall-paper. See here for more.

My avant-garde ideas on interior design aside, I imagine that there are a number of constructs or golems in TRoAP that use this as a pattern for motion. It has a likeness to the stuff in The Search for the Perfect Language that inspired the Polytaxists. Presumably the hyper-detialled Appendix P version of Inquisitor uses it. Or the Terpsichorean Sodality. 

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The Vikings in Clown Trousers idea, illustrated. Just try getting Hollywood A-Listers into some of those outfits.

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Lazarus & World of Lazarus

I reviewed World of Lazarus here and re-read bits of Lazarus in the process. I was arguably a little harsh to the latter in that post (though I left out my niche pointless Soleri gripe) - there's a decent techno-thriller element to them, with plenty of in-universe documents and messages and the like. Still, 'not always good' is more frustrating than 'definitely bad'.

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The Medici: Gangsters, Bankers, Popes

Speaking of feudalism, corporations and a family mentioned in The Dragon Waiting, another trio of Mike Walker's history plays was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His dynastic history plays are going to get their own post soon, but these appeared in January 2023 and so get a mention here. 

World of Lazarus: Some Thoughts

Lazarus, come forth.

I have been repeatedly disappointed by Greg Rucka and Micheal Lark's Lazarus. It always seemed to skirt the edge of being good and ended up as, well, adequate. Well drawn (if a little too close visually to something that a high-end television studio might produce), fascinatingly detached in its depiction of violence, suggesting a great deal. It's been running on-off since 2013: Green Ronin applied it to its Modern AGE system in 2018, publishing World of Lazarus. That's where I come in.

The premise is this: the year is X + 65. In the year X, the sixteen wealthiest families in the world signed the Macau Accords and divided up the globe amongst themselves. Nation states broken or eroded by crises and catastrophe folded relatively easily. A new age of feudalism begins: there is Family, there are Serfs and there are Waste. 

Why is this setting called Lazarus? Well, each family has a champion, enhanced by the technology of the new era. They are stupendously capable in combat and may survive injuries that would be death in the unaugmented. Accordingly, if you want to kill a Lazarus, apparently you need to dismember them: therefore, each Lazarus carries a large sword, or something of the sort. A Lazarus is one of the Family, and is quite possibly a propaganda icon. The series focuses on Forever, Lazarus of House Carlyle. 

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At this point, some of you will be rolling your eyes. I sort of am myself. Would these amoral capitalists really set up a world where the term for their chief enforcers is Lazari? Is one of them also at work on the Icarus Project?

Allow me to suggest the following, springing in part from the 'Chimpanzees in Cambridge' debate. Most grand speculative settings have in them some key element that, simply, looks really cool to somebody regardless of how much sense it makes. There's exceptions here and there, I suppose - largely I should imagine alternate history, which occasionally produces literal histories of another world rather than a thriller set in another timeline - but the beautiful pearl is created by some speck of grit in the oyster. You can extend this further, if desired - how many historians writing detailed papers on barley production in Swabian monasteries got their start reading about Agincourt?

That's probably not too controversial a thesis. But I rather enjoy (and am not alone in enjoying) settings that hold together: where vast armies don't teleport, where horses need oats and curry-brushes and horseshoes, where rulers have to acknowledge laws and customs even if they wish to ignore or trample them. There's some tension with all that and wizards or dragons or psychics or laser swords or Lazari - and resolving that is an interesting problem! Likewise, not resolving it or failing to find an adequate fig-leaf is dissatisfying: some critiques of the latter seasons of Game of Thrones focused on this. 

And so this leads back to Lazarus. Sometimes it all clicks together and works wonderfully, sometimes it lapses into smallness - not quite the 'worst of all possible worlds' version of it this discussion in the LA Review posits, but still not great. It can dwell on the few members of a Family without much regard for the greater system around them (be they Serfs or other Families - Cf. treatments of House Tully or Tyrrell). Which is what engages me about the possibilities of an RPG for Lazarus. 

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So, some thoughts on World of Lazarus. 

• This isn't a review of the Modern AGE system from Green Ronin, but from what I can see it looks a touch unwieldy. Characters get Backgrounds, Professions, Drives, Specialisations and more - I'm used to something a little lighter. Where's the 52 Pages for assault rifles, smartphones and defibrillators?
• Various modes of play are suggested based on a group of Wastes, Serf or Family - survival, service and intrigue being the centre of each. 
• This said, the specimen Campaign seems rather railroad like, darting from Scene to Scene. Waste campaigns at least should have a rather more open form of play (A Hexcrawl through contested Morray/D'Souza territory in Columbia? Guerrilla operations against Vassalovka?), and Family constraints are limited (though subtle). 
• An Appendix contains notes for how to play as Lazari. The variant where a Lazarus is a shared PC sounds best, and most like the depictions of Lazari as military assets or political footballs. 
• There's a nice section on how an organisation a GM creates might grow and plot to advance itself. A component I can see myself using elsewhere. 
• The two major families in the former United States - Carlyle and Hock, divided by the Mississippi - receive the most development. This is in part due to their place in the comics, and the contrast between Carlyle's 'Longitudinal Capitalism' and what we might term Hock's pharmaceutically assisted juche is pronounced. 



All the same, one finds a use for this evergreen image.

• Sub-genre taxonomy enthusiasts! Worry not! World of Lazarus has you covered: Isn't this cyber punk? .... In cyberpunk, corporations are faceless, implacable......In Lazarus, the Families are anything but faceless. These sixteen dynasties make their political dramas and infighting aggressively personal.  
• Grumble One: Why do so many of the Families dress in business casual? What sort of Neo-Feudal future is this?
• Grumble Two: If you are including maps of a setting that is dynamically changing (EG, Rausling absorbing Bittner territory) those maps should be clearly dated. That those maps have the Americas at the centre is understandable (see above) if hardly comfortable.



Before the aforementioned absorption. 



• A nice touch of the worldbuildng contained in Lazarus is that not all the families grew from big obviously sinister tech or pharma companies: sugar processing, entertainment, insurance and 'Elfsaga video game cartridges' enabled some of them to get their start.
• There's some appropriate variations on the Family-Serf-Waste schemee in different territories: different terms used or attitudes taken. (EG, Carragher serfs refer to themselves as Workers and shun conspicuous consumption. This does not necessarily make their lives any less comfortable.)
• Inamura's intensive use of robotics for labour feels, if not stereotypical, then uninspired (Japan = Hi-Tech). One notes the problems of an ageing Japanese population in the present day, though this seems like it would be corrected by one means or the other in X + 65.
• Armitage is based in 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland-Made-One'; the head of Armitage eventually became the Duke of Lancaster and benefited by the marriage of his daughter into the Royal Family. The authors of World of Lazarus note: 'Armitage arguably benefited from a culture more readily familiar with its feudal roots and class system than almost any other Territory.' Hmmm.
• The Armitage Lazarus is a Bond pastiche named Sir Thomas Huston, complete with Idris Elba references.
• Minetta (apparently descended from a family associated with the Dutch East India Company) is described as 'the last true Capitalist power' for being more centred on trade than territorial dominance, and relatively laissez-faire internally. They are willing to work with 'local powers—be they warlords, junior signatories, religious leaders, or others', which explains how they've kept hold of Iran.
• The effects of climate change are felt in Lazarus: indeed, 'The vast majority of the Meyers-Qasimi Serf population live in idyllic, microclimate-controlled safety in cities such as such as Tel Aviv, Riffa, Cairo, and Dubai'.
• Speaking of which, a recurring security issue for Meyers-Qasimi is religious fundamentalism. The old world does not die so quietly.
• Vassalovka was once a Lesser House in service of Sidorov, the initial signatory. The vastness of their territory means they have given up on enforcing a shared culture and a great deal of autonomy is given to Lesser Houses.
• The impact of social media seems to be downplayed in Lazarus - perhaps unsurprisng in a setting dreamt up around 2012. Still, later material on Vassalovka does have a certain emphasis on Grief Farms and social media personalities. 

There's more I could note for your attention; I'm not certain it's super necessary to go over tech levels or what have you. Does World of Lazarus provide the information you'd need to write your own material in this setting? Yes. Do you really want to? Well, that's the question. I don't suppose I've sold it marvellously here. There's potential untapped. But I wouldn't tap it in this system.

 

Bandwagon: The Bloggies and the Rule of Five

Hope the New Year is treating you all well thus far. 

Anyway, a time-sensative (hah) post addressing other blogs.

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Prismatic Wasteland has proclaimed the Bloggies - 'Awards for some of the best OSR/Post-OSR blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.' Voting is, I understand, on Twitter. 

[I am not now on Twitter and have not been in the past, under this nom-de-plume or any others. The current moment would be an unlikely one to join.]

Now, this may be of interest to you as a reader of this blog. It crossed my path when I found out I was on the list for my review of Demon Bone Sarcophagus. I suspect that this made the list because it was a fairly prompt, timely review that made it onto The Glatistant. I'm not certain this was my best piece for this blog*, and it's certainly not better than some of the competition, which includes False Machine and Against the Wicked City. Anyway, here's hoping this persists. I quite like these whole blog arrangement.

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Thought I'd try applying the Rule of Five discussed here to The Rest of All Possible Worlds. I suspect that this is better suited to smaller regions than Calliste, but let's give it a try anyway.

Five Quincentenaries Ago: [.....millennia seems like too much.]

• Procophon has the Majestic Vision.
• The City of Horato begins to flourish.
• Some of the first known grimoires are received into the Library of the Supreme Satrap.

Five Centuries Ago:

• The Kingdom of Pavaisse takes on something like its present boundaries (plus the Prizelands, but minus Joachimsland).
• The School of Malicarn institutes the role of the Overseer.
• Lhulache of Laldiel pens her Great Rule and Compromise, which becomes the popularly accepted model for colleges of magic thereafter.
• Lictors in Datresse storm the Guildhall and throw fifty alderman into the river.

Five Generations Ago: [Generation = 30 years. Seems a better unit of time than Score for this]

• The Printing Press becomes viable and widespread in Calliste.
• Serious competitors emerge to the School of Malicarn, with their own interpretations of the Majestic Vision.
• Sailors reach what will one day be the Buccaneers' Archipelago and (more importantly) decide to return next year.

Five Decades Ago:

• Emperor Boniface II marries Beatrice von Dottore.
• The first Anti-Grimorean pamphlets are published.
• The Armies of the Sublime Prince retreat from the Arpadhian plain.

Five Weeks Ago: (but you might only be learning of these now)

• The Governor of Transmontane Tsymric is recalled on charges of corruption.
• A second permanent Malmeric factory is granted land by a Prince of the Alamgir Empire.
• The first Manual of Nematism is issued by the Grand Academy of Caspianstadt.
• Tabulators set up the 'Society of Elevated Grocers' in Datresse.

Go forth into Calliste, and perhaps beyond!

Speaking of The Rest of All Possible Worlds, I have elected to update the Mechanics and Gazette post with details of the various magical debates.

*Not that I have any definite idea what actually is, of course. Suggestions in the comments, I guess.

November '22 Miscellany

Once again, material I have rather enjoyed over the last month.

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Don't know how it happened, but this is the first time I've read any Hoffman. One had a certain remote image of what went into his works, and a notion that the Sandman was involved, but that doesn't really compare to the reality. I read an old translation by J.M. Cohen, released in the wake of the Powell and Pressburger film in 1952. 

It's good - an excellent blend of mitteleuropan domesticity and exterior threats. 'The Lost Reflection' and 'The Sandman' are perhaps the most up-front memorable ones, but the others are just as powerful, in their fashion - the slow draw of the underworld in 'The Mines of Falun', for instance or the interweaving of artistic impulses in 'The Jesuit Church in Glogau'. 'Gamblers' Luck' is perhaps a little too much in the way of moralising melodrama, but taken as part of the whole I had no objections.

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Le Cercle Rouge is a 1970 film of Jean-Pierre Melville. It's a heist film with a fairly simple plot - but it looks absolutely gorgeous. There's something seasonal about the long wintery shots of the French countryside for the first-act manhunt - it has that lack of gloss that I associate with my own drab eyesight, combined with a clarity sufficient to display the action.

It's a heist film: police and thieves alike scheme and clash: third parties have hidden motives. The plot isn't simply an exercise in cliches, but I wouldn't necessarily say you are here for it over anything else.

Costume and sets are fairly lavish with the imagery of France at the time, which is something of a delight. I'd be interested to plug this into the Maximalist Weird Fiction Industrial Era material over on Grand Commodore. And speaking of which...

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The City of the Dead. Read this late November, a month after it's debut. It's the tale of a city falling to revolution and invasion - already a poignant and perilous setting - with one man trying to escape through it. Anyway, I knew that HCK could bring together the Maximalist 1920s pulp, but what it lacked was a necessarily fantastical element (Starling and Shrike are fantasy trope-like without being necessarily 'magic'). Anyway, as it turns out HCK can fit that in pretty damn well: there's an excellent pivot in this.

More to the point, there will shorlty be a full recording of this online: see this latest post. That's two ways for you to enjoy this.

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Rose Macaulay already had my attention with The Towers of Trebizond (those who know this work are even now reciting the first line) and kept it with several of her others (even if they circled the same themes and ideas). They Were Defeated is her historical novel set just before the English Civil War (I wouldn't call Told by an Idiot a historical novel - it covers the life of a family over something quite like Macaulay's own life). 

They Were Defeated was published in 1932; my edition is from 2002 with a 1959 introduction by CV Wedgwood (of Thirty Years War fame). It's written in the language of the 1640s: in Macaulay's own phrase 'I have done my best to make no person in this novel use in conversation any words, phrases, or idioms that were not demonstrably used at the time in which they lived; though I am aware....that any attempt must be extremely inadequate'. Given that a great many of the characters in They Were Defeated actually existed (e.g, Robert 'Gather Ye Rosebuds' Herrick), there is a certain onus to try and get them right which Macaulay seems to have felt. 

All that said, why do I enjoy it? The tone is ideal, living and swimming in the countryside and university of 1640s England. The restricted language referred to above makes this feel more definitively of another age - in addition to occasionally being quite fun: I would not object to the term 'she-darling' making a reappearance in popular usage. 

In terms of historical weight - I quite enjoy the discussions of contemporary verse and it makes me ashamed I don't know Herrick and Cleveland and Milton better. The episode of the witch-hunt (coming in Part One, Bucolick - Cf. Academick and Antiplatonick) is particularly arresting as (variously) depressing, addressed by even the sympathetic, reasoning characters as basically necessary, drab and anti-climatic. If you aren't taking a turn for the pulpy, exploitative or melodramatic, this is how it should be done: I know everyone likes The Crucible, but not necessarily because it deals with the 17th century honestly. 

Anyway, go and read more Rose Macaulay.

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BPRD: The Devil You Know: in which the Hellboy story lopes into a finale. I'm glad - amazed, almost - everything wrapped up and that the promised apocalypse was formally delivered. Is it a little overstuffed? Yes. Does this reduce the weight of certain given moving parts? Yes. Could I have done with some more art by Mignola himself? Yes. Was it worth reading? Not on its own.  

Episodes from Horatione History

The Empire of the Five Senates

In the fifth century after the formation of Horato, the reign of the Emperor Mamilian was marked by campaigning. He spent the best part of two decades in the lands that would one day become Hentzay, extending Horatione control into those territories and shoring up the border forts elsewhere. 

The absence of the Emperor from the capital was not, strictly speaking a problem. His sister took over most of his ceremonial functions - taking an immoderate pleasure in donning male costume for the purpose. Day to day domestic policy was set by not by the Imperial bureaucracy (which had its hands full on ferrying men, money and material to the frontier) but by the Senate of Horato, and four cities of near-comparable splendour and prominence.

So long was Mamilian's absence from the heartlands that his nickname became 'the Sentinel Emperor' - or, in the private circles of his critics 'the Porter' or 'the Gatekeeper'. No single senatorial lineage had representatives in all five cities, but enough had two or three magistracies to their name. Co-ordination between the five became ever-smoother and the senators prospered. 

It is for this reason that Annullina Perpetua in her Annals of a Pensionary, writing with about two centuries of hindsight refers to this not as the Empire of Mamilian, but 'an Empire of Five Senates'. (Orlando Babbon, in his rather later Withering and Descent attributes her harsh judgement to 'the bitterness of the defeated').

A Tauroctony

When, in the later days of the Popular Despotate, the sun-arc was replacing the bull's head in the iconography of Horato, one of the last major Imperial centres was the great garrison of Porsena. This was home to the XII Legion, long posted at the border and thus earning a cognomen perhaps best translated as 'Margraves'. The XII were notoriously battle-proud and, when the Legate Nallian came to present them with fresh battle-honours and a new war-shrine objected, crying 'You are here to take our horns!' Nallian, fearing a mutiny had the presence of mind to reply 'Gallant Margraves, as I rode hear I heard the sighs of half the maidens of the Empire. Had you been doing something with your horns, I would not have come to take them.' The welcome reminder of leave and the border-term bonus mollified them - but some memory of it resided in the XII and rankled, for Nallian would eventually gain the bitter nickname 'Bullslayer'. 

(or at least, that was the nickname that junior officers felt able to pass on to the Legate)

Berenician

The brother of the vigorous Berenician succeeded him as Emperor. The new Emperor moved into the Volsinian Palace near Mandalium. There he was greeted by the Grand Chamberlain Danpherus, who ushered him swiftly into the patterns of his deceased brother. At each turn, the new Emperor would be met with the whispered reminder 'This is how blessed Berenician did it'; 'This was the favoured hall of Berenician'; 'The mighty Berenician burnt incense here every other week'; 'Would Berenician approve?'

Eventually, Danpherus was rejected from the Imperial Household with the accompanying statement 'I am the Emperor of Horato now.'

Soon after, the Volsinian Palace burnt down.

The Pastoral Secession

In its first days, Horato's alliance with the countryside around was shaky. The union of the Horatione senate and people with the shepherds and land-owners was re-affirmed every year in a great ceremony. But in order for the union to be remade, it had to be broken (in order to demonstrate the independence of the countryside). A large crock of goat's milk was broken on the steps of the assembly house and twelve stout shepherds would stare in a hostile silent vigil at the Gate of Astur. 

By the time of the Popular Despotate, the Secession ceremony had taken on a different tone. The new Despot (whoever that was at the time) would have to go out the country for a day and a night, where he would eat plain food, wear a course tunic and listen to shepherds playing the reed pipes and having poetry competitions.

It is not recorded when the Pastoral Secession came to an end, but it is recorded that the Emperor Servilla did not like goat's milk or chestnuts. 

Consider reading this and this.

Wilderness of Taroc

The Wilderness of Taroc: maybe it's over the mountains, maybe it's behind the hedgerow. Maybe you reach it on the wings of dragons, maybe you simply step through a door. However you get to it, the wilderness is divided into four parts.

The Forest of Swords

Acre upon acre of sabres, falchions, rapiers and gladii. Each taller than a man, and at least as broad. They stand point-down in the earth. Each sits at a slightly different angle. Material blown on the wind drifts into them: it might stick to the flat of the blade, or snag on the hilt, or get sliced by the sharp edge. Moss and lichen cover some surfaces, and vines link the hilts, covering the ornaments. Some say that the hilts become brighter and more decorative in Spring and Summer. Others say that the summer light merely shows the hilts off to better advantage.

The Swords do not need oiling or sharpening. They only appear to start rusting after they have been up- rooted. 

Do not travel the Forest after heavy rains. Soil erosion means that the top-heavy swords can fall unpredictably. It would be like walking through a thousand hair-trigger guillotines. Do not travel the Forest during a Thunderstorm. 

The Chalice Mountains

At a sufficiently large and well-resourced party, coupe glasses may be stacked in a pyramid and sparkling wine poured to fill and overflow the bowl of each glass, filling each with some of the bubbling wine. 

Whatever made these mountains was clearly a very large and very well-supplied party. Deep goblets stack one on another until they reach higher than the trees, higher than Church spires, higher than the flight of small birds. Thicker-stemmed than the glasses above and made of darker materials, no light penetrates the piles of cups. 

Not every cup is set neatly upright, but enough remain set so that the bowl of the cup catches material - rainwater, snow, seeds, guano. Birds may nest in them. Plant life has developed, drooping great beards of lichen from cliff edges. Accordingly, those climbing these mountains are recommended to wear waterproof boots and heavy waterproof gloves - thrusting your hand into cold puddles over and over gets rather wearing after a while.

Most cups, if extracted from the mountainside, are no larger than most ornamental vessel you may might encounter. However, there are rumours of vast, lake-sized cups set high in the mountains like gilt tarns. 

The Desert of Coins

There's gold in them there hills. And nothing else. Piled in glittering dunes are a myriad myriad coins - of a variety of different sizes, but all seemingly the product of the same mint, with similar eroded features - which don't quite correspond to the legal tender of any state you ever recall having heard of. 

There is no shelter unless you can melt or stick coins together. There is nothing to eat. Sometimes at dawn and dusk you can find water condensing on the heads or tails of coins. At noon everything stinks of hot metal.

Also, the sun in the Desert of Coins looks like one of these smug bastards.

If you want to travel the Desert of Coins, bring sun goggles. Watch your footing - coin-dunes can shift unpredictably. Even a flat surface can be treacherously smooth. You'll need a big baggage train. You can see where others have been, where the piles of dried dung provide some of the few places where little plants grow (it is considered good form to create a midden and perhaps one day encourage vegetation). 

It is possible that first-timers (when they are finally deep enough into the Desert to lose sight of the border) will suffer the Ecstasy of Gold. 

The Plain of Clubs

There is nothing between you and the horizon. There is the wind and the sun and the open sky. Perhaps you hear the cry of a hawk. But look down: high as your knee, for miles in each direction are row upon row of knobbly wooden clubs. If you push one, they are as light as a blade of grass, but if one hits you, it will at least bruise. As you watch, they sway in the wind. There is a dull knocking as they strike one another.

Travellers on the Plain of Clubs must use robust stilts, or wear heavy leg armour. Taking a horse or a draught animal into the plain is considered either cruel or very desperate. Some have designed transports with a heavy roller in front, pushed by patient oxen, but this is a slow means of passage for the wagons behind. Still, you won't go short of firewood.

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Made with reference to these two recent posts over on False Machine. And bearing in mind that musing about the practicalities of turning the world to one substance is scarcely new.

If all the world were Paper,

And all the Sea were Inke;

If all the Trees were bread and cheese,

How should we do for drinke ?

If all the World were sand'o,

Oh then what should we lack'o;

If as they say there were no clay,

How should we take Tobacco ?

If all our vessels ran'a,

If none but had a crack'a;

If Spanish Apes eat all the Grapes,

How should we do for Sack'a ?

If Fryers had no bald pates,

Nor Nuns had no dark Cloysters,

If all the Seas were Beans and Pease,

How should we do for Oysters ?

If there had been no projects,

Nor none that did great wrongs;

If Fidlers shall turne players all,

How should we do for songs ?

If all things were eternall,

And nothing their end bringing;

If this should be, then how should we,

Here make an end of singing ?

Arborcrawling in the 27th Century

In which a setting frequently referred to as 'Space Hulk in a Tree' is taken back into space.

It is the 27th Century. Everything is in space and everything is very exciting.

On the fringes of humanity's stars lies the Cardigan system, home to five gas giants. Orbiting one of these is the moon of New Llanabba. This is a 'hollow moon', home to a thousand tunnels and extensive cave networks. The intense and rather unpredictable gravity field of Cardigan-3 has drawn into countless asteroids and assorted space junk into New Llanabba, making it a haven for prospectors. A great crater in the surface of the moon called 'Abba's Maw' gives access to the tunnels.

Orbiting New Llanabba is a space staton run by an eclectic ecological group called The Five Mothers. In order to pay for bulbs, fertiliser, seed cuttings, trowels, &c, they allow prospectors and other opportunists the a place to stay in return for a cut of their findings. However, numerous hostile aliens and space bandits lurk in the hollow moon - aside from more natural perils. 

Exploring New Llanabba: Really, you should use Veins of the Earth here. For a quick and silly alternative:

Roll 1d6. That is the number of passages into the cave. 

Roll 1d8. 1=N, 2=NE, &c. That is roughly where the passage enters the cave. 

Roll 1d10. If you get a 9, there is a hole in the floor of the cave. If get a 0, there is a hole in the celling of the cave.

Pick a county at random. That is the shape of the cave.

Perils of New Llanabba: It is very easy for an explorer to run out of oxygen, fusion generators, food pills, &c. And the caverns of the hollow moon are filled with chasms, rubble, unexpected drops, shifting debris, pockets of flammable gas, &c. But you want to know if there is anything you can fight. There is.

Insectoid Horrors: mindless beasts that skitter and whoop. Want to eat you.

Termite Men: organised bands of hostile aliens, who fight with crystalline spears, mucus grenades and packs of giant centipedes. Want you to kill you and take your stuff.

Rock Lobsters: ponderous stone-covered beasts with great pincers. They can spit bio-plasma. Cutting them open reveals them to be filled with tiny glowing shrimp. Want you to go away and stop disturbing their meditations. 

Giant Moths: Attracted to light, hypnotic pattern on their wings. Want to steal your power cells. 

Stranded Precursor: Member of a long-dead ancient species. Confused, powerful, distressed. Want to return home: if this turns out to be impossible, they want to attain dominion over the younger sentients of the galaxy.

Robotic repairman: Looks like a hermit crab made of Meccano. Want to repair something that once crashed in the cave. Willing to use your remains to do so.

Space Amazons: Stronger than you, better hair than you, not terribly interested by you. Wear highly customised spacesuits. Carry beam rifles, heat-seeking slug-guns, attack drones like carbon-fibre falcons and kukris. Interested in opportunities for glory and plunder.

Rival Explorers: Just like you, except they have at least one prominent unattractive trait. You are proud and confident free-spirited mavericks, they are smug, cocky, self-centred renegades. Want what you want. 

One prospecting group has recently made great progress in exploring the hollow moon. These include...

Orsino, Prince of Illyria. Apparently the heir to an entire planet. Looks like a young Shakespearean actor, doesn't always sound like it. Improbably dashing. Equipment: monomolecular sabre, Art Nouveau hunting rifle, dress uniform that makes him look like the pilot of one of the Thunderbirds.

Elrich Kilpatrick. Recipient of a mysterious vision at the galaxy's edge. Now leads a spiritual movement centred on a cosmic power called 'The Destiny'. Quite what this is is unknown, but apparently it means that Kilpatrick must wear a jet-black spacesuit and spend hours on the observation deck staring into space. He is accompanied by his followers, dressed in brightly coloured cheap spacesuits. Equipment: Ornate plasma fusil, energised broadsword, Babel-76 translation circlet.

The Rinians. No taller than a thirteen year-old, skin periwinkle-coloured, there are never less than four of them. They are a hivemind, choosing personal names almost at random from nearby literature. Their origin is unknown, but apparently they have some connection with the second world of the Searle system. Equipment: Aside from the small arms available on New Llanaba, they have an apparently never-ending supply of switchblades, Molotov cocktails and marbles.

Agamemnon. A product of Corinth Cybernetics, an android counsellor and confidante. Stylised bronze plating and chassis, with a detailed unmoving bearded face. Despite being sexless, a previous employer programmed Agamemnon with the mannerisms and social presence of Rudolf Valantino.* Equipment: Sophisticated mapping gear and sensor array, Web grenades, Three Fire-and-forget suicide drones, One-shot Inferno Projector, Tiny laser-derringer for when everything else runs out or breaks.

Gower Macmorris. The Merakians are tall, broad and six limbed. They are covered in thick black fur with distinctive off-white stripes. Each limb has a number of thick claws, quite capable of rending a man in twain. Gower was, for a time, the foremost cat-burglar in the Merak system. He was considered slight and lithe. This makes him an absolute unit of the awe-inspiring variety in human space. Equipment: four big claws, assorted Merakian-sized lockpicks and electronic bypasses, ornate studded war-club stolen from a vault somewhere.

The above have recently come into possession of several Hippogriff-class shuttles. These are aged and require much maintenance but extend their reach marvellously over New Llanaba.

*Or some other suitable matinee idol. 

Referring, variously to this and this. Post written in memory of the departed Pandion. 

Image from the 1981 film Time Bandits, Dir. Terry Gillam.

Rheingold, et al.

A companion piece of sorts, to We use Every part of the Dragon.*

Rheingold

If you take the Rheingold and forge it into a suitable personal ornament, it will give you.....worldly power.

But you have to give up......Love.

And it is guarded by......Seductive beguiling maidens.

It was set there by a Demiurge who may well work against you -.......A maimed manipulator with a rune-carved sceptre.†

Alberich, from Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924, Fritz Lang).
See also here.

Nile Tin

If you take the Nile Tin and forge it into a suitable personal ornament, it will give you.....Power over depictions.

But you have to give up......Artistic Taste

And it is guarded by......Ibises with poisoned talons and sagacious arguments.

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......A feather-cowled cosmic charioteer.

Ganges Iron

It will give you.....power over conflicts, contests and contention.

But you have to give up......Regret.

And it is guarded by......Humanoid snakes who know all your shameful secrets.

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......A four-faced mother of many riding a crocodile.

Mississippi Lead

It will give you.....power over transactions.

But you have to give up......All hate, wrath and enmity.

And it is guarded by......Ghostly, loathsome, mocking horsemen.

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......A dark-suited cigar-smoking shady patrician.

Yangtze Silver

It will give you.....power over records and truth-telling.

But you have to give up......Sleep, forgetfulness and the ameliorative effects of time.

And it is guarded by......Giant, officious, bureaucratic carp.

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......A smiling, flower-wreathed immortal Princess.

"I have been in love with [RHINE] gold. I love its colour, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I love the texture of [RHINE] gold, that soft sliminess that I have learnt to gauge so accurately by touch that I can estimate the fineness of a bar to within one carat. And I love the warm tang it exudes when I melt it down into a true [RHINE] golden syrup. But, above all, Mr Bond [SIEGFRIED], I love the power that [RHINE] gold alone gives to its owner – the magic of controlling energy, exacting labour, fulfilling one’s every wish and whim and, when need be, purchasing bodies, minds, even souls."

Mekong Copper

It will give you.....power over the 'terrestrial spiritual'. You cannot bar the doors of heaven or hell, but you can lead people into temptation or block chakras or make the worldly man into a saintly hermit.

But you have to give up......Trust.

And it is guarded by......Singing mummified monks.

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......Spiteful, demonic twins.

Volga Zinc

It will give you.....power over wildness: human passions, beasts and wilderness.

But you have to give up......Any sense of community or togetherness. You can become 'one flesh' with a partner, but cannot bond with anyone else.

And it is guarded by......Restless, boisterous warriors clad in pelts. 

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......A muscular temperamental thaumaturge who carries his ever-glowing furnace on his back.

Niger Platinum

It will give you.....power over 'Higher feeling' - elevated, refined sentiments or anything aspiring to the same.

But you have to give up......Any sense of novelty, invention or discovery. Nothing will ever be new to you.

And it is guarded by......Abusive lion-headed apes.

It was set there by a Demiurge -.......A Crone in elaborate robes and a tall headdress.

Cover of Tom Holt's Expecting Someone Taller - an introduction to Wagner parody for me.
Don't pay too much attention to the cover.

If you gain and try to alloy any of the above metals, every single listed Demiurge will appear and start hitting you with cricket bats until you stop. 

*Other inspiration from this review. I have moved away from the previously encountered scheme of the metals of the ancients - getting liquid mercury out of a river seems a troublesome business. So, I refer to this list, excluding the non-metals, as well as mercury and bismuth.

† So.....The origin of the Rhiengold is never entirely clear, either in the Volsungsaga or the Ring Cycle. I have elected to associated each metal with some distant creator - with their precise level of power kept fairly vague - hence demiurge rather than deity, &c. This is in keeping with one piece of inspirational media and also with the whole 'Gods brought low by their own tools/schemes' element of the Ring Cycle. 

Demon Bone Sarcophagus: Some Thoughts

A recent edition to my library is Demon Bone Sarcophagus, the latest production from Patrick Stuart (of False Machine) and Scrap Princess (of Monster Manual Sewn From Parts). The two have cooperated jolly successfully on several other things (Deep Carbon Observatory, Veins of the Earth, Fire on the Velvet Horizon), so I rather wanted to see what this adventure would be like.

[I imagine that everyone who reads this little scrap of the internet knows who Patrick Stuart is, but I do sort of feel I have to for the one lonely stranger who wandered in out of the cyber-cold.]

Of course, I wanted to see it so badly I backed the Kickstarter and you are reading the words penned by a TRAITOROUS CLERK. Beyond that, I'm a semi-regular correspondent with Stuart via blog comments and so forth. I don't think anyone was coming here drawn by the steely-white glare of my absolute objectivity, but that's how things stand, anyway. 

***

I'm not certain one should really try to describe what's going on in Demon Bone Sarcophagus (hereafter DBS). The discovery is part of the charm. Suffice it to say that there is a underground tomb to house the titular sarcophagus, ancient fire elementals, corporate overlords, china dolls and baboons. As you pick through the below there will be mild spoilers, at least.

***

***

The most obvious thing to mention and get out of the way: DBS had a troubled production, and the final product is less than perfect. Troubled production sounds like a euphemism - but it's merely the result of the sort of international disruption of which 2022 has seen plenty.  

There are errors in the text. Typos, portions outright missing, a few misplaced paragraph breaks. Page 60 refers to a carnifex where I'm fairly certain it should refer to a carnyx. Mind you, a trumpet that makes the sound of butchered swine and tortured minds* seems like a very Patrick thing.

I can't pretend I much like this, but I also can't pretend that that sort of regularity was what I was reading DBS for in the first place. The False Machine needs somebody to work on this - Obnoxious Pedantic Smilodon, perhaps?

***

Triangles: I hope you like them. It's thematically apt (the Fire Triangle) and acts as a form of constraint: the room shapes and entrances are going to be near-identical so the contents and inhabitants are what matters. The back fly-leaf has a player-facing map that gives away the structure upfront, even.

It would interest me to see how many dungeons or dungeon-like things come from this set in strict geometrical megastructures.  Crossing hexagon after hexagon of some vast hive. The megastructure angle is interesting, and ties DBS to Deep Carbon Observatory (hereafter DCO) - not just as portions of some elemental quartet of adventures, but the presence of the great chasm in the Observatory and the vast dam echo the fifty-foot triangles. 

***

DBS starts, well, rather in medias res. Not only do Our Heroes come across the site of an awful massacre (somewhat like No Country for All Men**), but it ties into the history of exploitation by the Frictionless Blue Glass Merchant Company and the vast tomb complex below them, which itself has been used and abused by different parties. It's all so much that it requires three pages from the charming Backstory Gastropod to explain it. Not that the energy built up by all this is discharged all at once, but unfurls gradually as the players (hopefully) get deeper and deeper into the tomb.

This is a Patrick Stuart speciality by now: see the beginning of DCO, or Silent Titans - "You Fools! My Dementia Bomb has wrecked your very minds!" One suspects that he knows this, and that this is why the proposed next part of Broken Fire Regime will be a heist - a matter of careful premeditated plans and calculations. Presumably. Until it all falls apart.  

I quite like all the backstory and strange opening scenario. It makes the whole thing more than a glorified travel guide. 

***

Speaking of the backstory, the Ancients and the Nobility of Fire are good. There is an element of the appropriate alienness to this. Part of this is down to the third sex, I suppose, but really it seeps in throughout: the vast strangeness of the war against the ice, the toys and treasures sealed up in the tomb, the shadows of power.

The characters encountered throughout are all quite nicely drawn. Some are notable as whizz-bang fascinating sights, but others have a little more to them.

The Ice Demons are highly unpleasant and persistent in their own hyper-focused varieties of particular cruelty. This is so much worse than most depictions of a supernatural generalised or abstract malevolence.

Anaracket Bonvive...Hmm. Well. There are a few books I have noted over the past few years, speculative fiction, that depict (or attempt to do so) a flawed female protagonist grappling with a vast (usually imperial) power structure. Some I've only read the blurb of, or a review, or other word of mouth. Some I've read, and quite possibly enjoyed. Ms Bonvive strikes me as in this vein, but living up to the hints of the publicity material of the above books. Twitchy, rebellious, paranoid, destructive of self and others.

***

I'm not good at talking about art. Or I don't think I'm very good at talking about art. Patrick Stuart has by this point, worked with artists other than Scrap Princess (IE, Dirk Detweiler Leichty) but their collabotation is pretty well estalished by this time. It's difficult to conceive of illustrations of Stuart's material not in the many-lined scrawly style Scrap has worked to develop. John Blanche or Klaus Kopinski maybe, some of Blake's neater stuff; for somebody cleaner perhaps this chap's stuff - though that's a little close to the 'dark, grimy painterly' style referenced here.*** (Wish I had a better term for that.)

Anyway, despite the Scrap-typical spiky images of the baboons or the angular scorched Flamethrower Skeletons or the hook-monster Reductor, there are some interesting variations on line and colour, as in the Obsidian Assassin or Boreala or Mordant Kaust.

This is on top of the twining fire-language glyphs and murals. These bridge the gap between intelligibility and alienness well. While looking like tongues of flame (Oh....). Map segments keep the overall big illustration designs while compressing it as suitable for presentation as part of a larger scheme. Actually, reading DBS over felt like staring at one of the more complex Gothic cathedrals and trying to identify saints and kings and twining floral motifs - and then somebody guides you through it all statue by statue with a telescope, and then you can step back and see the whole design again. Very different from, say, DCO's journey upriver or the slowly unwrapping Silent Titans.

Design and layout is not simple - but neither should it be. The colour and font choice fits the impressions of what is being discussed beautifully. There's a suitably arcane twisty font for titles and a few shades of beige and umber for backgrounds that hint at fire without trying to make a book with vermillion pages. Praise is presumably due to Maria Ku.

***

Maybe I could say more, but to attempt a summary... this isn't really like anything else you have on your shelves, even (really) other things by Patrick Stuart. Harping on originality when we have been told for centuries that there is nothing new under the sun isn't so very useful, but at least this shake of the kaleidoscope put the sequins in a very pretty arrangement. Take a look while there are still physical copies available. 

*Doubtless the first album of a Ruritanian Death Metal group.

**Josh Brolin sees the morass of dead baboons, wounded sloths, &c and mutters to himself "Bugger this for a game of Tiny Knights."

***Degenesis (a name I kept forgetting until I started saving the link) uses a lot of this. 

Four Moderately Bizarre Musket Balls

1. "...you are pleased to smile, I think. You conjure that these little silver orbs, that they are blessed? That they make your children grow strong and your wife smile, make your enemies stumble into the nettles and make your organ of generation pendulous? No. Very much no. The School of Malicarn, it does not deal in such superstitions. Perhaps you do not believe a humble village reader, from a little place up in the mountains? You may talk to Magister Liutprand in the Great Hall in Pandolfstadt. He will tell you just as I have. Perhaps even better. These do one thing, and they do it very well. They have been stamped with a symbol that ghosts dislike. Fire it at them and - off they go!"


2. Musket balls of meteoric iron, despite the name, are not forged from falling stars. Rather, they are enchanted to pick up dust or powdery substances in a trail behind them, and keep it there until a spark hits them. This makes reloading rather easier: no wadding is needed to keep the bullet in the barrel. As for the name, you may roll them through the sand and watch them pick up little comet-tails.


3. Piotr Ploughdriver was, as anyone might tell you, a prudent man. He was also a highly envious one, for there was a shooting match held in the town every year just before the King's Birthday, as part of a little fair. Piotr was known as a good shot, and was a popular hunting partner for this reason, and was well liked they had. Still, Casimir Towheaded had won the match for the last ten years, and he was not even known to go after waterfowl, let alone wolves.  So, when Piotr heard of a mage passing through the district, he decided to pay her a visit. The mage was in the best room of Fenenna's Inn. Fenenna had issued instructions that she was not to be hassled, badgered or disturbed - and so there were at least five people who were trying to sneak into her room after dark. Piotr stood in the inn's courtyard and watched two heartbroken maids, one fat merchant, a curious boy with irrepressible hair and Fenenna's gouty husband approach her room with their own strange variations on stealth before deciding that the time was right.
     He was a little disappointed by the mage. Her manner was far from mystical, and the dirty plates from dinner remained on a side table. She had a slightly puggish nose, like Piotr's sister and her breeches, if strange in cut, were made of dull cloth and were slightly stained with sausage grease. Piotr would say that he tried not to show that he thought any of this, and the mage's abrupt manner may simply have been the result of her many visitors.
     Piotr's wish was simple: that his musket balls would fly straight and hit the bull's eye. He had a goodly sum with him to pay for just this. Easy enough, said the mage, and asked if he had the musket balls with him. Piotr had. Marksmen made six shots in the competition, but he had been obliged to leave home hurriedly that evening, and had had to bring his entire stock with him in a small chest. He extracted his half-dozen bullets, and laid them before the mage. Then he stopped, thinking of the weight of the chest, of the steep fee. How many more could the mage enchant? As many as you like, said the mage, and she stifled a yawn. Piotr put the lot before her.
     On the day before the King's Birthday, Piotr, Casimir and a dozen other shooters gathered to compete. The lots were cast, and Casimir was to come before Piotr. Casimir made his shots and they were all good ones. Spectators clapped. Piotr then took up his gun and stepped forward. He looked at Casimir and smiled. He took out the enchanted bullets and his powder horn, loaded, aimed and fired.
     There was a bang and a puff of smoke, same as always happened when Piotr fired his gun. But not a mark on the target. Then there came an awful lowing, and the sound of something falling over. Someone had brought an ox to sell, and Piotr's ball had struck it in the eye, despite the fact that the poor beast had been penned behind the shooters.
     Piotr didn't really notice this, and he was loading and firing for a second time. The musket ball tore right through the dead bull's flank, and carved a neat passage to its undestroyed eye. By this time, everyone had put two and two together, and made Piotr. No-one quite knew what he'd done, and he was in no hurry to explain, but he was forced to pay for the dead bull. He had to carry it to the butcher's himself, and he was not given a good price for the carcass.
     In paying for the bull, Piotr was obliged to sell (among other things) his little stock of ammunition, and seethed mightily. Piotr's balls were purchased by a travelling salesman, and have since appeared in quite a few places. They have shattered little round windows in the mansions of the district, decapitated oxeye daisies and perforated jars of boiled sweets. A gentleman from Caspianstadt bought one, and went out to a little island all by himself in the sea, and fired it off straight up into the air. He follow the path it made with a telescope: apparently it was flying towards the constellation called the Charging Bull.
     Apparently, one even hit the dead centre of a target - but only because it was the quickest way to put a hole in a new portrait of Lord Fowlhead's prize bull. 


4. Sir, that is a most natural question, the most natural in the world. It shows you to be a man with a quick eye for detail, which is a fine feature to have. Here you sit in a surgeon's house, with all manner of medical curiosities in shelves around you. You pass over that distended liver, pass over the ghastly face of that stillborn manticore pup leering at you out of the alcohol, and you fix on a leather-covered jar on the bottom shelf. In what is, I confess, the darkest corner of the room.
     Well, Sir, no doubt I can tell you. Let us place it here on the desk. Your glass is full? A good succulent madeira. Toothsome. There are some little biscuits here that go with it well.
     Ah, then I shall remove the cover.
     You see them? Eleven, in total. Quite round.
     Yes, uncannily like, Sir! Uncannily like it.
     Perhaps a little snuff? No?
     Where precisely they came from is somewhat difficult to say. I know where I was, or think I do.   As some of my effects here may have shown you, I was once on campaign with the Duke of Sorghomme, in the Malach country by the border with the Prizelands. I was a young man, and perhaps callow.
     You may not know it, but a physician is not quite at home among miltary men. It is clearly, sir, clearly a necessary role, and is filled by someone who is if not a gentleman, then very close indeed. Still, he is not part of the officer's fraternity. So it was that I fell in with a mage, a young man and one who felt quite as much a civilian as myself, given that he was a simple earthmover. His name was Hilaire.
     Hilaire was a good friend of mine, and I am sorry that this story is not about him. I am also sorry, I think, that I must tell this story involving him.
     Hilaire knew an older mage, a veteran. He had left Malmery many years ago as a young man, for he had been part of the fallen rebellion that called themselves the Ascendancy. His name was Domhnall Sheridan and was ever full of advice for us. At the lightest persuasion he would tell you about his past - how he had failed to hear the last sermon of Achitophel, about the Passage to Tyrconoway - and endlessly about the ferocity of the Davidian troops.
     Perhaps I have made him into a man of one story, but in truth he had spent far more time away from Malmery than on it by now, and was a seasoned war-wizard. He had acquired a soldier's appetite for drink, sir, and spent no little time trying to pass it on to us.
     I am now far more, sir, far more moderate in my habits.
     It was a spring evening, I recall that much. A little time after a battle for a little village called Genevcourt. A far smaller action than those that were to come later that season, no-one remembers it now. Indeed, I mainly remember a trickle of wounded men brought to me.
   But they were all healing nicely now - or, sir, they weren't, sad as it is to recall. But that day at least, I was able to relax a little. Both Hilaire and I were used to the smell of powder, you see.
     We had been billeted with Domhnall, which was largely convenient. He had brandy, and wanted to share it. Now, apart from the events of his youth, Domhnall had all sorts of innovation he would talk about. His was the profession of arms now, and he made it his business to work well at it.
     That night he showed us a box of painted wood: a wide horizontal slit in one side, and a little ramp into a trough out the other. He had spend years making it, and there was a little trick to it which he showed us. He took a slab of lead, and had us weigh it. We got scales from a quartermaster, who clearly knew what Domhnall was doing, and rolled his eyes. Then he pushed it into the slit of the box. There was a whirling noise, and out came around a dozen musket balls.   Perfect spheres, and when taken all together, weighing exactly the same as the slab he had had us weigh.
     Well, we were suitably impressed, and had another glass of brandy.
     You must take one yourself, sir, should you wish. Good!
     Then he explained to us the advantages, the lack of spilt molten metal and off-cuts. Well, we were more impressed, and listened to his theories for some time longer. More brandy was taken.
   Hilaire was inspecting the box, with professional curiosity, and was prompted to ask how Domnhall kept his fingers from going into the box. Surely they would interfere with the workings?
     Domnhall turned to him sharply, and said that they certainly would not, and that they would work as well on fingers as any thing else.
     I have noticed, sir, that when men are in their cups they can become very careful, very careful indeed - but only about one thing at a time. Hilaire snatched his fingers away from the box as quick as if it had been quite white-hot.
     The trouble, of course, was that he had aroused our grisly interest. What more could this box do?   So I left them opening another bottle and went out and found a - pig's trotter.
     It was something the cooks had left out, which I thought odd at the time.
     Anyway, I got back and had to take a bumper to catch up with the other two. The - trotter sat their on the table. I had found a little basket to carry it. I believe Hilaire called attention to it first.   We weighed it,  hefted it, and pushed it slowly into the slit.
     The whirling noise was not quite same this time, and neither was the sound of balls rolling down a ramp. Lead is a soft metal, sir, but still a metal.
     There were a dozen of them, and quite round. I felt obliged to inspect one closer, despite my revulsion. I draped a napkin over my hand and then hefted them, prodded them, rolled them.   Eventually, I felt obliged to go a step further and slit the pink flesh of one with my pocket knife. There was blood, sir, and fresh blood at that. What is more, there was bone beneath. I do not know how many bones you have seen, but they should not be quite that smooth. Nor do I know any bones that are a perfect sphere.
     The three of us did not feel like any brandy after that, so I used it to preserve them as best I could. I was unwilling to return them to the cooks, and felt like even the midden would be ashamed by these.
     Perhaps I shall put the cover back over them now, and perhaps, sir, perhaps you would enjoy another drink?