A Trio of Chimerae

The Susvul, females of which are known as Sauvixen, partake of both the fox and the wild pig. They have the swine's distressing likeness to humanity, with the cunning of the fox. The torso of the Susvul is as that of a heavily haired pig - a red or sandy-coloured pig, though it has the legs and clawed feet of a fox. The tail is more like a fox's brush than the curled pigtail; the face is that of a thin-snouted hog, albeit with the ears and eyes of a fox.

All this might be outlandish enough. But from vulpine wit or porcine humanity, the Susvul somehow manages to make the sounds of human speech from its maw. It speaks, and if it attempts to converse, it will attempt to gain A) Food and B) Prestige. It is rare that a Susvul can negotiate human social structures with sufficient aplomb to obtain either, but this will not stop them from trying.

***

The Ippopolemos is a roughly equine beast, if larger than almost all horses: reddish in hue, with a human skull for a head and armoured forelegs. It is a horse as suited for battle as the hippopotamus is suited to the river. 

There are two legends of the Ippopolemos. Firstly, that it is the steed of the Great God of Battles - a fitting steed for the deity of the clash, and that it is full of yet more wrath than the rider. The Great God of Battles therefore carries not only shield and sword, but also the Adamant Bridle to restrain and direct the Ippopolemos. 

Therefore, if you see the Ippopolemos alone, there are two options. Firstly, that the Great God of Battles has let him off the rein - let him wander through the world of men.  A terrifying enough prospect. Secondly, that it is one of the Ippopolemos's progeny; as almost all divine beings, he is dramatically fecund - and not even the Great God of Battles would be able to geld him. These are perhaps less potent than their forebear, but less used to the bridle.

The second legend is that the Ippopolemos bears on his back not the Great God of Battles, but one of the many men who have thought that they might be able to control War, to steer and ride it to the place they desire. Those fools borne away by the Ippopolemos are rarely ever seen intact again.

***

Thanks to a very literal wizard, the lion has finally lain down with the lamb. The result was the Agneleon.

Having the head of a sheep and the body of a lion, it has all the appetites, drives and social inclinations of a herd ruminant with the physical might and range of an apex predator. The Agneleon laughs at fences, drystone walls and sheepdogs. It will cross many miles to find new pastures. If threatened, an Agneleon may run and pounce upon you, attempting to slash with its claws and butt with its horns. (Thanks to some quirk of enchantment, the Agneleon is more prone that most sheep to producing irregular numbers and shapes of horns).

The gold-ish fleece of the Agneleon can be used to produce wool, which is sold for a significant sum to a particular type of aristocrat. Actually sheering an Agneleon is, of course, rather troublesome. Their flesh tastes not quite like lamb (or hogget, or mutton) - it is also notably tougher. 

Agneleon Prideflocks are sometimes followed by very confused hyenas. 

***

The Ippopolemos originated here.

GW's Jackson's Tolkien's Middle-Earth

In a post over at Tales of the Lunar Lands I threatened to put together a grouchy nostalgia-fuelled comparison of Middle-Earth designs made by Games Workshop. Well, this is it - although I don't want this blog to become my Bespoke Whinge Manufactory. So the aim here is, if you'll pardon the phrase, ad astra per nostalgia. 

A note on my relationship with Tolkien: I am of an age to have seen and enjoyed the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films during their first release into cinemas. However, even then I was in a position to recognise the problems of adaptation. I had read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and portions of The Silmarillion. I had leafed pretty thoroughly through a copy of David Day's Tolkien Dictionary and seen the variety of illustrations there - Ian Miller, Jaroslav Bradac, Victor Ambrus and others. I had also found, in the local library, a copy of the BBC Radio adaptation of Lord of the Rings on CD (Ian Holm as Frodo, Bill Nighy as Samwise, John Le Mesurier as Bilbo. Music composed by Stephen Oliver).

All that is to say that I was capable (as a callow youth) of recognising the deficiencies of and gaps in Jackson's films - beyond the simple 'They left out Tom Bombadil!' approach. The use as broad comic relief of Merry, Pippin and Gimli. A skateboarding Legolas (however briefly). There was something off, to my youthful image of the Medieval world, for the armies of Minas Tirith to be clad in complete plate armour.

But they still had something to recommend them. And I am inclined to believe this still: they could have been considerably worse. A few years on, 'Good with Distinctive Flaws' seems like a near miracle.

I saw The Hobbit films. Even for research into this post, I have chosen not to see them again. If you are reading this blog, it is more than likely that you have seen them yourselves and have well-developed opinions on them.

At the same time as the Jackson LoTR films were being released, Games Workshop started putting out a range of miniatures and rules for the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. There was cooperation with Jackson and New Line for this: the GW LoTR SBG Frodo looks like Elijah Wood, their Urak-Hai are painted with the purply-red skin tones of the films. Designers Alan Perry, Michael Perry and Alessio Cavatore got cameos in The Return of the King as Rohirrim. My friend group got interested, as did I. We were apparently not alone - according to White Dwarf, the Fighting Urak-Hai box outsold Space Marine Tactical Squads that year. 

The production of miniatures is easier than that of cinema. So GW delved deeper into Tolkien's world than the films could. Here we return to my initial post in the Lunar Lands - accordingly, there are designs from GW that would later be contradicted by The Hobbit films. 

So, on the left is GW's Radagast. Perhaps a bit basic, a rather simple 'nature wizard' - but quite logical as an explicitly rustic, nature-orientated version of Ian McKellan's Gandalf. On the right is a model of Radagast as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy. I rather think there is something off about portraying an Istari with Ragged Trousers.

Here, into the bargain is an interior illustration from Shadow and Flame showing Radagast.

Who looks like he wants you to get off not just his lawn,
but his entire damn forest. Perhaps he could be played by Clint Eastwood?

This is Thranduil, looking nothing like Lee Pace. I'm not terribly fond of the miniature - sword and bow and staff looks a trifle indecisive, but the background inspiration of 'regal, mature version of Orlando Bloom's Legolas' makes sense.

The Elves of Mirkwood are in evidence as well: these were designed as Wood Elf troops to go with Thranduil, along with these musical sentinels. Compare the stripped-down, sparse look - Jackson LoTR elves minus the armour - with The Hobbit-derived rangers and household guard. 

***

By the way, I'm not intending to list every such point of comparison. You may peruse a catalogue from before The Hobbit films here. In a quick overview Wikipedia lists the material published - including rules for Tom Bombadil, the Scouring of the Shire, an extended Harad. But there are a few more things I want to touch on. 

Incidentally, the memorable characters of Lord of the Rings and recognisable actors in the Jackson films means that there are a great many character models for the Strategy Battle Game - as displayed to greatest effect in this post.

***

Gondor's fiefdoms would get attention from GW that the Jackson films could never offer. Firstly, in the form of an article detailing suggested conversions, and then in miniatures for Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth (Middle-Earth's resident Lohengrin impersonator and the real hero behind the Defence of Minas Tirith) and his men. I'm not too fond of these Clansmen of Lamedon ('Clans? Mountains? They must be Highland Scots, give them kilts and claymores.')

Better is Arnor, which would get their own short-lived range, who strike me as a sort of 'Arthurian Gondor' with their helmet torses and green, fringed, banners. See also King Arvedui's fur-trimmed robe and general affect. 

The Variags of Khand are Mongols with Axes and Sometimes Chariots - linking them to the Wainriders defeated by Gondor in the Third Age. (That's a lot of Central Asian peoples GW has skipped over: as ever, The Wicked City is a blessed alternative). Easterlings are all of the scale-armoured exotic look shown in The Two Towers film, but I have some appreciation for the palanquin.  

Some of the Haradrim expansions are sensible enough: cavalry and an elite guard (who look as if they've stepped right out of the Hyperborean Age). The appearance of assassins, desert ninjas and (for want of a better term) thickset Harem wardens we will pass over swiftly. From Far Harad, we have Mahud camelry.

Who make me ask vexed questions about the price of ivory south of Gondor.

In addition to the strange 'mounted Maasai' look, I am reminded of a comment by Fitzgerald of Middenmurk about how 'the Osprey Men-at-Arms series of books will interpret everything in the fightingest way possible'.

Speaking of the Kingdoms of Men, GW would eventually produce unique models for the Nazgul. These were first produced as the black-robed spectres of The Fellowship of the Ring: in time, the Witch-King and Khamûl the Easterling (the only ones that Tolkien identifies, if I recall correctly) would receive models. The rest followed. 

  

I don't care for the names ('The Betrayer', 'The Shadow Lord', 'The Dark Marshall') but I prefer these relatively mild designs to the inhuman animate armours of Dol Guldur shown in The Hobbit films (here's a longer break-down by another chap). GW also did a 'Sauron as the Necromancer' model before The Hobbit films, which works well as an 'incorporeal presence' Dark Lord.

***

All this aside, there is one productive comparison I think can be made between GW's Middle-Earth and Jackson's. Let us look to the Dwarves. 

In the Jackson LoTR films, we don't really see the Dwarves. We get Gimli and the other members of the Dwarven delegation at Rivendell, the desiccated remains in Moria, the 'Dwarf kings' of the opening sequence. The Dwarves were one of the first principally-designed-by-GW factions in 2003's Shadow and Flame. 

So: GW had relatively limited room to work. The Dwarves have to look like part of the world shown by the Jackson films. The Dwarves also can't look too like the Dwarfs of Warhammer Fantasy (I don't know that Cavatore or either Perry or someone actually stood up and ever said or wrote that, but I think that has to have been on their minds). It's an interesting set of limitations on a creative project, and an almost comic situation - we made a wargame with significant reference to Tolkien, now we have to make a Tolkien wargame without diluting either of these products.

I think they accomplished this. Here are the first few miniatures of LoTR-Dwarves; here are several images of WHF-Dwarfs. Aside from the obvious differences - ranks of square-based miniatures vs scattered round-based, no helicopters, no gunpowder, no crossbows, no mohawks - there's a few deliberate touches. Less ornament and figurative designs on the LoTR-Dwarves, smaller axes (frequently skeletonised), more exposed areas of cloth. No cartoonish touches - as the WHF-Dwarf Miners, or horned helmets, or vast runes. 

We have Dwarven heroes not shown by the films: Dain Ironfoot and Balin (Shadow and Flame contained a series of scenarios set during the reclamation of Moria). Dain looks like an ornamented version of John Rhys-Davies's Gimli, in a commanding static pose. Balin has a different approach - he is pointing onward, inward and wears a sort of crown with angular cheekpieces which looks (in a fashion) very Dwarven. 'He's so much a Dwarf that he has armour-plated his cheekbones.'

Later LoTR-Dwarf miniatures follow in this line. A more extensive range of Dwarf Warriors - shown painted with plain wooden shields, quite unlike any WHF-Dwarfs. The Rangers would make a good base for Thorin et al in The Hobbit and are an excellent contrast to WHF-Dwarfs in their lack of ironmongery. 

(If I say 'war games need more civilians' it will sound terribly strange, but I rather think that there should be some designs in miniature war gaming that refer to civilian life, rather than ONLY WAR. The profession of arms is not necessarily a common one, even if it has a distinctive costume - a pre-modern state should have few if any walking tanks. Anyway, the Rangers linked above look like they could have been working in the smithy half an hour ago.)

The Iron Guard are slightly ludicrous - how does dual-wielding help you protect trade routes? - but aren't out of place among their peers. The Vault Warden team seems to have derived solely from that cave troll wielding a trident in the film of The Fellowship of the Ring. Given that they must fight underground, direct fire is of more use than indirect, so LoTR-Dwarves have a ballista not a catapult. It hurls stones, which is at least fitting.

I trust you get the point: GW managed to balance things out fairly well. A variety of new Dwarven units in new but not unfitting designs. Then came along The Hobbit movies. Dain and Balin receive brand new designs. We see whole regiments of Dwarves pouring out of the Iron Hills or fighting at Azanulbizar. And they aren't remotely the same as those that have come before. 

Jackson and the team filming The Hobbit did not (of course) feel bound to copy GW's designs. Nor do I think they should have been compelled to do so - there is a difference in tone between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, there is a difference in forms between a tabletop miniature and a costume for a film, and in any case I would prefer to err on the side of artistic freedom rather than constraint. None of this means I like the armies of Dwarves shown in The Hobbit films.

Designs become more complex and aggressive. There are greater layers of armour, to a dehumanising degree. There is an unmistakably industrial look to it all - where the LoTR films fairly obviously pointed towards an anti-industrial theme. These chaps with mattocks aren't too bad, but seem to be entirely clad in oily-looking gun-metal grey armour. GW has shown masked Dwarves from the beginning, but these chaps are practically identical next to the Khazad Guard. Perhaps it would help if the beards were different colours. Likewise, contrast these Warriors with the Rangers. Why do they all have the same colour jerkin? I'm also not quite certain about those flanges below the spearhead - which in any case is suddenly quite large. 

I'm equally less than enchanted by these crossbow-carrying Dwarves. How the hell is that supposed to work? Where's the string? Moreover, it is so stripped down and vicious it looks like something an Orc would carry. Had we forgotten - 'Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.' As I recall, the only ones in the LoTR films with crossbows are the Uruk-Hai.

***

You take my point. Dwarves go from being akin to the other folk of Middle-Earth to suddenly and dramatically different. There's a few things I would suggest this illustrates.

Firstly, the change in what the LoTR films did to what The Hobbit films did. A different look, a different impression. There is the problem of the success of the LoTR films: battle scenes had to be equalled, martial ingenuity matched. Perhaps there is the effect of success: entering production of the first films with trepidation and the second set of films with swaggering confidence.

I don't know enough about the use of CGI to meaningfully compare the LoTR films and The Hobbit films, but the latter struck me as that much more egregious. Not merely bulking out battle scenes, but creating them. I know this will sound terribly rose-tinted (The films from my youth got it right! The films of the same series from my maturity got it wrong!) but I am going to stand by it. CGI is very useful for when you don't have thousands of Soviet troops to dress up as redcoats and grognards, but shouldn't dictate your art, in the same fashion that one doesn't plan a meal of any great worth around the capabilities of the microwave.  

I also invite a comparison between the audience receiving (and the people making) the LoTR films in the early 2000s and the The Hobbit films in the early 2010s. How many artists and designers in the 2010s had a set of cues from internet nerddom; from complex digital art, from video games? The Neal Stephenson novel Reamde refers to a conflict in a MMORPG between groups of players: the Forces of Brightness set against the Earthtone Coalition. Designs in The Hobbit films are hardly literally as bright as a World of Warcraft avatar, but if one adjusts for a notion of 'conceptual brightness', it applies. I don't know how life changed at (say) Weta Workshop between those two times, but it would be interesting to know. How many of them had encountered GW products, or things inspired by GW products? It's at least tempting to make the poetic suggestion that GW's success in one set of products utterly and unpredictably warped another set of their products.

Be this true or not, we see the strange intertwined and distorting nature of these franchise juggernauts. There's something unpleasant - even presuming a lack of malevolence on the part of all involved - of designing a piece of (near-original) art only to have it memory-holed not a generation later.

So, yes: Bennett of the Lunar Lands has it correct. There should be many, many interpretations of Tolkien's work at your fingertips. Even if I like or liked the consistency of GW's extension to Jackson's vision of Middle-Earth, Jackson's Middle-Earth should not be the only starting point. 

Wrecked Heptarchy: Bocage, Puritans, Stumps

I've written before about Silent Titans, and chances are you've heard of it anyway. You might even have an opinion on whether it's workable, or any good, or anything else. If not....see here.

However, what I'm really here for is the section Beyond Wir-Heal, specifically the sub-set 'Your Own Wrecked Heptarchy'. I don't suppose I'm the first one to write something like this, even setting aside the pre-existing Land of Rushes (to be found In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard). All the same, this stuff's been brewing at the back of my mind for a while. It's probably not going to turn into anything substantial, but I might as well share it. So here we go...

It’s History.

Silent Titans is set in a world wracked by time spasms and dimensional collapse. In its geography, society, environments and characters are warped or alternate versions of the Wirral Peninsula in North West England. Driven through this like needles through skin, are terrifying shards of a distant, ruined, high-technology reality whose broken weapons and poisonous ontological waste has been dumped and hidden in its own past. It has both sword fights and robots

Of course, I don't know the Wirral. That's difference one. As an effete Southron, this is going to be about inner East Anglia (largely). Let's call the region Estengle (for now?). 

The nature of the wreckage is different in this portion of the Heptarchy. No Titans, silent or otherwise. That's difference two. No terrifying shards, no peninsula girt by the tides of time. There's likely a drip-feed of displaced history, but it would be less flotsam and jetsam and more .... strangers riding into town? A ghostly train? 

***

Estengle. What's it like? A blend: market towns, dense bocage, the rolling fields of drained marsh, planned planed business parks, thorn-choked dykes, the lurking survivals of the old fens, chalk pits, golf courses, race tracks, abandoned airfields. The weather: aching, pitiless sun, sullen rain or oppressive grey cloud.

The people in Estengle:

Alchemy Puritans: clean shaven, simply dressed, well-read, soft-spoken. Keen enthusiasts for Better Living Through Chemistry. Probably taking some sort of mood-alterer, sense-enchancer, suppressant or relaxant. There is a sophisticated colour coding system to indicate this - different coloured badges, different coloured streaks in the hair, different jewelled studs along the cheek bone, different stripes of make-up spiralling away from the eyelids. 

They would be insulted to be call lotus-eaters. They know exactly what they are taking, how much, and when they will stop. Everyone requires some measure of pharmaceutical support; they're just being systematic and rational about it. 

Aiming to strike out into the Fens and bring them into order for the growth of cash crops. 

Fen Tygers: Want the Fens back for their own. Grubby and rustic; much more given to occasional excesses than the Puritans. Have somehow acquired several noisy motorcars and a pack of heraldic tygers.

Ferrymen: merchants, dealbrokers, expansionist middlemen.

Fane-raisers: raisers of great monuments, architects, devotees of order, ritualists, hierarchs, dwindling fraternities.

Aviscaputs: Could there be some of these around?

Dungeons:

The most obvious thing to point to, the most Titan-like would be the restless bones of Gog and Magog: thorn-tunnels in the spinney lead to actual tunnels in the earth lead to rib-caverns and femur-passages. 

There would be the vast heaven-seeking towers made by the predecessors of the Fane-raisers. Empty, chill - poisoned? Ruined?

Inspired by the likes of St Botolph's, Boston, St James's, Louth and other wool churches - to say nothing of Ely Cathedral, the 'Ship of the Fens'.

***

As above, I'm not sure that there are any plans to work this up any further. Certainly, I would need to do some further reading - the late Ronald Blythe, for instance. There is at least one piece in Anglo-Norman I'm currently working my way through. Anyway, I hope this has been of some interest.

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: The Wrong End of the Staff

There are two things that prompted the writing of this. The first thing is a few recent posts by noisms on the problems of writing from the point of view of humans in a fantasy - or even pre-Englightenment - setting. Of course,  TRoAPW is specifically an Enlightenment or Enlightenment-equivalent setting. So, how does one avoid writing a setting in which everyone sounds.....suspiciously reasonable and modern?

First of all, of course, our own age is post-Englightenment. Quite when it became 'post' varies, I think, with how you judge such things. In literature, the ideas of Modernism post-Great War suggests a world where the settled march of scientific knowledge and Whig history is interrupted by the death and devastation of the Western Front. Of course, nobody told the architects: witness the square, 'rational' designs and 'machines for living' of Le Corbusier. This is to say nothing of the grand schemes of the post-war 1940s: social democracy, the centrally-planned welfare state and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - all of which must, I think, count the Enlightenment among their forebears. Still, there is a sense of distance between us and the Enlightenment that would make the magical Enlightenment of TRoAPW as if not more distant.

Secondly, change does not occur equally. TRoAPW positions its Enlightenment as taking place mainly on one continent: Calliste. Even there, it might be centred around a few states or a few cities or a few social groups. My mind goes to Manola's Own Private WFRP (see Points One and Two): 

'There's a Renaissance in progress! The cities are growing. The economy is booming. The tax receipts are up. .... The progress celebrated by the elites is real, but it has been purchased at a terrifying price in social dislocation and human suffering.' 

Even in the compact and politically active Datravia, not everyone is going to be up-to-date and alert and with it (whatever it may be). I've written enough about the Majestic Vision to suggest that it is still a meaningful force in Calliste. 

The second thing is that TRoAPW was in part suggested by the idea of being wrong about things - hence 'White-Hot Sparks from the Crucible of the Enlightenment'. Are you a brief speck of light and heat, or are you part of the final product? When we're talking about a process occurring across an entire continent, you might well be going down one of the dead ends of the maze. 

The suggestion of Voltaire's over-optimistic Pangloss in the title is no error! You might be going as far wrong as he is in Candide. Indeed, if Valentine Sims and Principia Arcana are the most influential and important product of Calliste's Enlightenment (they quite specifically are not!) it should be possible for Our Heroes to encounter 'That irritating little squirt Sims who's always barking up the wrong tree' and get written into the popular history books two centuries later as narrow-minded dunderheaded hidebound reactionaries! I've written it before: It's all the discarded ideas and first efforts and groundwork that contributed, bundled up and dressed in a periwig.

Indeed, when building up the ideas for TRoAPW and the magical debates ongoing in Calliste I did contemplate writing in a few Red Herrings. Eventually, I decided this wasn't necessary. Firstly, some schools of thought (e.g, Ante-Grimoireans) are wilder than others anyway and can act as potential implausible explanations. 

Secondly, a number of the debates I was writing up weren't about anything as solid as (say) the orbit of the planets or the circulatory system - how one divides up Spells for use by human wizards isn't something one can answer in a mathematically correct manner. This isn't to say that a GM can't say that in their Calliste (to take a side at random) the Polycameralists have it mostly right and their opponents are wrong, but I have no wish to put that rule in place.

Thirdly, in my experience RPG players are quite good at picking the wrong end of the stick all by themselves. When it's something as open as TRoAPW rather than a mystery solving game like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, perhaps best not to through additional obstacles into their way. 

In addition to Pangloss, of course, there's meant to be a sense of possibility in TRoAPW. The Bastille has been stormed - now the future of France is wide open, and you are right there in the heart of Paris! You are a participant, not a tourist - Cf. Faufreluches - and unlike the rulers of Lakoto, you can make some bloody stupid decisions. 

Fine, some conclusions:

1. Even setting magic aside, the TRoAPW point of view should be in almost equal parts as like and as unlike to a modern PoV. There might even be an 'Uncanny Valley' effect - the reformers of Calliste trying so hard to be capital-M modern without succeeding that they end up becoming somehow repellant.
2. Players coming up with half-baked schemes is right in the spirit of TRoAPW. Players getting it utterly wrong is right in the spirit of TRoAPW.
3. You might be part of a movement with some overall positive effects - that doesn't mean you're a paragon of virtue.
     Likewise, that Calliste is presently free of Thirty Years War-style religious conflict does not mean it is free of strife. 

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee....."

There have been more deaths in Abermawr. These have been discussed and analysed sufficiently in the past, and I see no reason to add to any previous memorials.

But the adventuring doesn't slow down. New characters are rolled up, backstories compiled, adventurers take over empty rooms in the slowly accumulated compound. The newcomers pick up the notes of the previous party and pick up where they left off.

Who is briefing them? The domestic staff? Magical familiars? Friends and family? How would they come to know all this? A little unlikely. (Not that that this quite matches the Three Mile Tree scenario at present.)

A thought crossed my mind: what if one escaped? Maimed, injured beyond the level of fighting-fit, but possessed of all the knowledge needed to set up a new party of adventurers. If an agreeable trajectory for players is full-blown establishment and possibly even retirement, it should be no surprise that someone becomes a manager.

The most ghastly fate of all.

The process is thus: TPK. GM taps Player A on the shoulder, asks her if she wouldn't mind having Character X stick around via a tiny little Retcon as M to a pack of 007s*. (The less flattering comparison is presumably the maimed recruiting sergeant in Starship Troopers). Player A says Yes; off-screen Character X crawls out of the dungeon minus left hand, right leg and fearfully scarred over the left eye. Character X takes over HQ duties, including bringing the newcomers up to speed.

Does this appeal? Certainly, if this was a new season of a television serial or Book Five of the Chronicles of XYZ, the reappearance of Star-Captain Fletcher Irving or Lady Steelheart might delight an audience. Master Bernardus escaped from the Platinum Immortals of the Supreme Syndic and has undergone a change in appearance, mannerism and motivation....allowing his actor to display a greater range.

Would such a thing work at the tabletop? Well, recurring figures in campaigns can delight the players. If your mysterious employer in the concealing cowl turns out to be our old friend Ajax Barjazid, it could do likewise. If cleared with Player A, who has fond memories of Ajax's STR 18 and CON 17, and doesn't appreciate this shabby resurrection. 

But cue the seeking of magical solutions: Get Barjazid a healing miracle! Get him a magical iron hand! Tear it off a god! Let's Corum that beautiful bastard Barjazid! That might even be an interesting quest, but this is all in some sense the same as bringing them back from the dead.

Mike Mignola's Corum.
(Looking less than delighted by the Eye of Rhynn and Hand of Kwll.). 

Anyway, if the Adventuring Party is in the sort of frequent deaths-no resurrections arrangement, I at least like the image of a scarred veteran directing the next generation (though perhaps a surviving NPC is better). But this is the sort of thing where tastes will differ, and there's probably something I missed. 

*Or whatever the collective noun is. A martini of 007s? An Aston? An innuendo?

Six Strange Rivers

All these rivers resemble and behave like water. Most of the time. Sometimes it's murky water, luminescent water, weed-choked water, &c, but still water. Each river has a single course: there are no or few tributaries. Some may have gates, dams, cataracts and the like.

The Styx*

Flows Into: The Underworld.

Is the River of: Unbreakable Vows, Supernatural Boundaries.

One may cross it or travel it by means of: A dark, low, boat.

Piloted by: A grim, greasy, bearded ferryman.** 

At a charge of: A Coin, held in the mouth.

A Child dipped in the River: becomes Invulnerable.

Charon and Psyche, 1883, John Stanhope

The Bhallduin 

Flows Into: The Celestial Realm.

Is the River of: The Course of the Sun, Day and Night.

One may cross it or travel it by means of: A floating palace of mirrors and mosaics.

Piloted by: The Signs of the Zodiac, commanded by a Solar Hierophant.

At a charge of: The recitation of a litany from approved scripture.

A Child dipped in the River: Will never suffer the loss of his or her senses, other than by outright mutilation.

The Izonn

Flows Into: The Realm of the Forms.

Is the River of: Supernal Order.

One may cross it on: A giant bearded snake, with the voice of every single one of your schoolteachers speaking at once.

Piloted by: The snake decides where to go.

At a charge of: You must argue why you should get to ride the Snake in a dialogue with the Snake. 

A Child dipped in the River: Will always know what time it is, where they are and what is around them.

The Novar

Flows Into: The Prelapsarian Garden.

Is the River of: New Souls, the UnBorn, Virgil's Fourth Ecologue

One may cross it on: A canopied litter wreathed with plants carried by muscular tritons.

Piloted by: a pearl-white Pelican perched on the front of the litter.

At a charge of: One pomegranate per triton. (It is considered good manners to offer the pelican a fish.)

A Child dipped in the River: will be 'bonny and blithe and good and gay'.

The Thyrss

Flows Into: The Land of Cockaigne.

Is the River of: Intoxication, Second Helpings.

One may cross it on: A polychrome barge with numerous pavilions.

Piloted by: A mob of Maenads.

At a charge of: All the booze on your person.

A Child dipped in the River: will never suffer a hangover, or gout, or indigestion, or food poisoning.

The Sennus

Flows Into: The Dying Earth, the Age of Rust, the Æon of the Red Sun, the Slow Ragnarok.

Is the River of: Bitter Resolve, Leaden Darkness.

One may cross it on: A floating chariot decorated with Baroque statuettes pulled by moth-eaten mer-lions.

Piloted by: An old wounded soldier in a worn uniform.

At a charge of: A small bowl of your blood, mixed with myrrh.

A Child dipped in the River: will only die in battle.

The Eilex

Flows Into: The Blessed Lake and the Isle of Crowns.

Is the River of: Healing Rest, Useful Dreams.

One may cross it on: A carrack with an elaborate crenellated fo'c's'le. 

Piloted by: Twenty Assorted Medieval Kings under the command of a beautiful Damsel.

At a charge of: You must throw away all your weapons. Especially the magical ones.

A Child dipped in the River: will become a judge, a priest or a captain - if perhaps not literally, and in accordance with the circumstances they grow up in. 

***

You may decide for yourself what surrounds the river, and where in the realms of men it emerges. 

The cost of the ferryman's fee may be low, but actually making it as far as the ferry is hard. 

It is assumed that none of the various ferrymen below will drop you into the river accidentally.

This post is rather in the vein of Rheingold, et al - but somewhat less focused. 

* There's a bit of both Acheron and Styx here, admittedly. 

**Aeniad, 6.300

The Seven Principles of Governance

The Book of the New Sun is (rightly) a moderately famous bit of speculative fiction - the sort of thing brought up by the kind of book-reading type who blew right past Asimov, Tolkien and Le Guin long ago. I have to include myself in that - I've mentioned Wolfe's works enough times on here before. 

Anyway, of all the images or ideas or characters from The Book of the New Sun that get referred to or are popularly circulated, there's one that seems a trifle neglected: a passage on 'The Seven Principles of Governance'. This is found in Chapter XXXIII from The Shadow of the Torturer - and it is reproduced below.

I appreciate the Scholastic tone, reminiscent in its tone and form of Aristotelian Medieval thought - but clearly referential of systems of government we would not call Medieval. Which is, in a fashion, a perfect summation of a Feudal Future; though if one must put Wolfe's New Sun in a sub-genre, Dying Earth comes first. The drift into theology and mystical experience is also quietly fitting, and indicates the eventual direction of the quartet of novels. Not to chide unduly - but I hope the reader of the New Sun recalls the Seven Principles of Governance as clearly as Terminus Est.

Panther Skins and Golden Fleeces

I have, in the past, showed some interest in the Caucuses. I recently finished reading a copy of The Knight in Panther Skin, the Medieval Georgian epic. Here's some assorted thoughts.

Vepkhist'q'aosani ('The Knight in Panther Skin') was written by Shota Rustaveli in the twelfth century, during Georgia's Golden Age under Queen Thamar. I read the 1977 translation by Katharine Vivian published by the Folio Society (as pictured below); the Marjory Wardrop translation from 1912 is available online. Vivian attempts a freer, prose translation than Wardrop; neither is in the rhymed quatrains of Rustaveli. The name of the text is given variously as The Knight in the Panther's Skin, The Man in the Panther's Skin, The Knight in Panther Skin (these differences are not unique to English: 1889 saw Der Mann im Tigerfelle and 1975 Der Ritter im Pantherfell).

What's it about? Rostevan, King of Arabia has no sons, but one daughter, Tinatin. Avtandil is the son of his commander-in-chief and dear to him; Avtandil wishes to marry - and must go about this carefully. When out hunting with Avtandil, Rostevan witnesses a knight in a panther's skin crying by a river - who refuses human contact and attacks those sent to greet him. Rostevan sends searchers after the Knight - eventually including Avtandil. 

That's enough summary to work with for the time being. Why is this an interesting work? What's distinctive about it? Well, without dipping into the Boosterism one sees on the Wikipedia entry or the introduction to the 1977 text, it's neatly structured, with the stories of Avtandil and the Knight (eventually revealed to go by the name Tariel) mirroring each other neatly. There's a great deal of tension between social bonds - the bond of Knightly comradeship, the bond of lovers, the bond of King and Subject, the bond of parent and child, the bond of servant and master. The careful resolving of the plot without breaking these bonds is interesting to watch. 

Beyond that, this is clearly a book from a well-connected society. That the protagonist is an Arab rather than a Georgian is telling; Tariel, it is discovered, is an Indian prince. Characters from 'Khateati' - that is, Cathay - that is, China - appear. There is reference to Egyptians, Greeks, Franks, Russians, Persians - as well as African slaves and sorcerers. Rustaveli's own prologue indicates that this is a 'Persian tale I found in the Georgian tongue' that he has set in verse. One gets a sense of travel and the exotic: it would be reductive but not precisely wrong to refer to it as a mix of Chivalric Romance and the Thousand and One Nights.

It should be noted that Rustaveli's Arabia and India are not depictions of his own time. No particular depiction of the desert appears in his Arabia. India apparently has mullahs who recite the Koran, but who are unmentioned in Arabia. Likewise, the coronation of Princess Tinatin with crown, sceptre and mantle by her father is clearly European. The Epilogue calls these 'strange stories of kings of a far-off ancient time' - so don't obsess overmuch over such details. 

Vivian's introduction paints the poem as Universal in spirit: it does not sit in one tradition or overarching culture. The characters are not explicitly Christian - even if King David and the Apostles are mentioned, there are no prayers to Christ or the Blessed Virgin (apparently the poem was later attacked by the Georgian clergy). Neither are they heathens: a spirit of general monotheism suffuses things, with the sun as a symbol of the one God. Avtandil finds himself praying to the seven stars of the medieval heavens. Twelfth-century Georgia (which had been Christian before there even formally was a Georgia) had expanded under David IV (Great-grandfather of Thamar) to stretch from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea at Baku - capturing much land that had previously been Islamic, including the present-day capital, Tbilisi. It is not a stretch to associate Rustaveli with knowledge of a variety of religious traditions.

Speaking of Thamar, there are a number of redoubtable princesses in The Knight with the Panther Skin. More than in any work of courtly love? Perhaps not, but Tinatin's aforementioned coronation is a clear  reference to female royal power and position (however devoted she may be to her father). Together with passages in the prologue and epilogue, the shadow of Thamar lies heavy on this work.

Enough of that. A few things I wish to glean from all this.

Shota Rustaveli, apparently.

***

I've been interested before in historical or alternate names for the planets which can be used for a bit of quick worldbuilding when you can't really be asked to make up an entire new solar system. As I said above, Avtandil finds himself invoking the seven heavens of medieval cosmology (the planets as far as Saturn, plus the moon and sun).

Anyway these are named below, together with a brief extract from Vivian's text. The same section from the Wardrop translation is here.

Zual, whose nature is calamity - Saturn
Mushtar, supreme judge and arbitrator between heart and heart - Jupiter
Marikh the warrior and avenger - Mars
Aspiroz the fair - Venus (Hesperus)
Otarid - Mercury

***

The Terrae Vertebrae setting from which Punth was spawned had as a premise that each state in Vertebraea would be based on some medieval epic. I think I've said before that I wouldn't mind introducing some sort of mountain kingdom along with the rest of Punth's neighbours. Well, here's an obvious opportunity.

Marikylo, the Kingdom of the Eight Vales

In the mountains of the Spine of the World, there are the dwarfholds, the great peaks and plateaus only occupied by that stubborn, hardy and independent folk. But in the densest region of the mountain range, there are a string of valleys that have been the home of an ancient folk, who migrated there centuries before the Nirvanite empire ever rose. Marikylo.

Eight high but sunny valleys are joined by passes worn by centuries of use. At each of the handful of passes, a fortress lies: the High Keeps. These are in the gift of the King of Marikylo. Most of the nobility hold a position in their own right, as head of a clan or possessors of valuable estates - but the rank of Castellan indicates a greater trust, to say nothing of greater powers and privileges. Of course, not all High Keeps are alike. Some connection regions in the vales so long settled and so long loyal that the Castellan has very little in the way of active duties: these are regarded as a next to a sinecure. 

Others abut restive regions or passes to the outside world or are the sites of contact with the High Mountain Dwarves - these require a surer hand. The principal division among the elites, then,  is between those families that rely on Royal patronage and the profession of arms - the Panthers - and the stockrearers and farmers - the Rams. Naturally, ancient history and memory of autonomy as a petty kingdom animate a number of other interesting feuds.

How do the Mariklyne live? From the mountain herds of sheep - known for producing a very fine cloth - they take wool, milk and meat. In the sheltered, warm valleys they have citrus groves and vineyards. The Dwarves are glad to have an agricultural trade partner on hand and produce ironware for Marikylo. There is trade and carriage of items across the mountains - and here the Mariklyne prosper.

Marikylo lies between Nirvanite and Talliz and Punth: it has connections to Kapelleron lords and Ka-Punth tribes, to Fahflund merchant houses, to Talliz Boyar families. If you need to get something across the mountains in a hurry, you will be dealing with Marikylo. The necessity of trade and the security of their surroundings has produced a welcoming culture - so long as the High Keeps stand. It is said that Marikylo produces three things in abundance - Mountaineers, Middlemen and Masters (that is, scholars).

Of course, other things can be found in the mountains than Dwarves. Witches - Dragons - the bleached skeletons of ancient armies that still clutch antique swords. There are places where even the hardiest shepherd will not take his flocks. 

Salopian Youth

Stepping forward from the last such post, I mentioned Dorothy L Sayers. I suspect it is in the climax of one of her novels (Strong Poison) that I first heard and remembered a line from Housman's Shropshire Lad. This time, it did make it into the BBC Radio version - but I shall try to avoid sounding too much like Ian Carmichael. 

I've picked out two entries from A Shropshire Lad: XXXIV and LXII. XXXIV is shorter and, not just in subject matter, perhaps the most Kiplingesque. LXII's combination of classical reference, melancholy, bitter humour and rustic boozing is particularly memorable. 

Enjoy.

Marchbanks at the Breakfast-Table

Recent reading has included The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, by Robertson Davies (1913- 1995) and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes* (1809 - 1894). Both are the reported (comic) speech or writings of a slightly overbearing man of letters in their specific locale. Both were initially published in newspapers or periodicals; Autocrat in The Atlantic Monthly (as it then was) in 1857-58 and Marchbanks in the Peterborough Examiner (Peterborough in the Province of Ontario) in 1942. Holmes merely wrote for The Atlantic; Davies held various positions at the Examiner - both authors seem to have realised the possibilities of collection into a book fairly promptly.

Robertson Davies, 1982, according to Wikipedia.

A word on format and content: The Autocrat is a series of monthly columns collected into a volume. The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (1986) contains The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947, compiling weekly diary material from 1945-46), The Table-Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949, collecting observations of Marchbanks organised as if they were all uttered at a seven-course formal dinner) and Marchbanks' Garland (1986, made up from material in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack, 1967, which was apparently organised by signs of the Zodiac. The Garland contains letters and diary entries alike). Davies has continued the metafictional game in Papers by presenting himself as editor, making extensive footnotes contextualising or commenting on material from the 1940s and even preparing an introduction with an aged but still unmistakable Marchbanks. 

This isn't quite a review, of course, merely a collection of thoughts. Still, I shall say that while I enjoy both, they work in different ways. They are commenting on different times with different mores. A different tone, of course: the unmistakably Yankee voice of Holmes is different to the Canadian Davies (as to which sort of Canadian - "I am the usual Canadian cocktail: Welsh, Scots, quite a bit of Dutch, a dash of Red Indian, but no English. And all, of course, dominated by the old Empire Loyalist bias." From The Paris Review's Art of Fiction interview series, No. 107, published Spring 1989). The poetic Holmes is distinct from the playwright and novelist Davies; the audience of the Autocrat are largely more gracious than those confronted by the spiky Marchbanks - who is cantankerous and a little fogeyish, where the Autocrat is domineering but gracious.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I am reading both from books, of course, though The Autocrat may be found online. It would be interesting to see both in their original periodical context. If no-one has done so already, a coffee-table book of high quality pictures of chapters of (say) David Copperfield or The Three Musketeers as originally serialised and presented next to adverts or columns on goodness knows what else would be a fine thing. 

Rating or scoring either The Autocrat or The Papers is fairly pointless, to my mind, but I have taken to reading a chapter of The Autocrat in the early afternoon and a dozen pages of Marchbanks before bed. Davies was more the journalist. Indeed, he does seem to have played to the crowd more - a frequent theme of The Diary (later Marchbanks deals with slightly more literary material) is the struggles of Marchbanks with his stove and snow-shovelling - something with which, I take it, householders of Ontario in the 1940s could sympathise. 

Indeed, Davies does seem to have used Marchbanks as a means to vent. Marchbanks is more independent and pricklier than I think he could have been, either as editor of the Examiner or as Master of Massey College (discussed previously here). Of course, Marchbanks has a set of experiences and background roughly identical to Davies. Wish fulfilment? Well, Marchbanks doesn't have a beautiful wife, or a series of elaborate affairs (could one have even eluded to such in the Peterborough Examiner?) or a sumptuous lifestyle. But perhaps. 

It's interesting seeing Davies's footnotes to Marchbanks's material in The Papers. This was in 1986; Davies was in his seventies. Some elements are toned down, some are made more explicit. His introduction even discusses an outlandish fetish enjoyed by Marchbanks. But there's a definitely fogeyish element to it, particularly in Davies commenting on a proclamation of Marchbanks frequently to the effect of 'This has, of course, only continued and become more so, such that...." 

Has the cosmopolitan, loosely liberal Davies been suborned by his grouchy alter ego? You will find people saying that this happened to Evelyn Waugh, as if to say: 'How dare the author of Vile Bodies become a Catholic and try to live as a country squire!' Well, I believe that Waugh was probably more embittered and splenetic than Davies, but even Waugh had some self-awareness - witness his later novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Penfold, dealing with the hallucinations and paranoia of an elderly writer following a BBC interview (written not so long after Waugh's own BBC interview....). So I shall say that Davies is probably being a little indulgent, but I am not sure that this is a literary demerit. 

It occurs to me in writing this that columns of this kind have vanished - as far as I know from newspapers and periodicals. Humorous columns and comment remain, but generally at least nominally about something. If the desire for this sort of humour persists - and I think it does - where did it go? Into comedy as an independent entity, I suppose - the sitcom and the panel show. Ed Reardon's Week springs to mind. More specifically, I suspect that the most exact parallel to the Autocrat and Marchbanks might be online. The Blogger working under a nom-de-plume is a familiar enough presence. But the comic twists, the colourful griping, the conversations with fictional correspondents or sparring partners**, the chance to present yourself or an alter ego as rather neater and wittier - and dominating more conversations than you actually are - surely this is familiar? "In the future, we will all be The Autocrat for fifteen minutes." Of course, I suspect there is more self-discipline involved in creating and sustaining something like The Autocrat or Marchbanks than the common or garden Twitter account, which makes them worth revisiting. 

Anyway, a few items gleaned from The Autocrat and The Papers for your use and enjoyment.

Names of Samuel Marchbanks' correspondents include:

1. Haubergeon Hydra
2. Raymond Cataplasm, MD, FRCP
3. Minerva Hawser
4. Amyas Pilgarlic
5. Cicero Forcemeat
6. Mrs Kedijah Scissorbill
7. The Rev'd Simon Goaste
8. Apollo Fishhorn
9. Nancy Frisgig
10. Richard 'Dick' Dandiprat

Assorted encounters from the Breakfast-Table:

1. Frontiersman and woodsmen have taken to using knives patterned in replica of the short swords of an ancient empire. What could this portend?
2. A woman on a street-corner with a permanent lob-sided smile holds forth on the difference between the Albino Blonde and the Leonine Blonde.
3. You can hear the ticking of your own brain, the constant whirring of the human clockwork. What will make this stop? What will deafen the noise? Who has done this to you?
4. A group of pasty scholars have set up a sparring ring on the common. Their efforts to advance themselves in the Sweet Science appear sincere, but pitifully inexpert.
5. A wild-eyed gentleman starts explaining the process of divine revelation to you in terms of the pearly spiralling chambers of an infinite nautilus shell. It is unclear whether you are going in to the centre of the shell (and the heart of all things) or out into progressively larger and more wondrous spaces. Perhaps both.
6. Addressing an Assembly meeting, a veteran recently elected Consul stumbles over his words and uses some less than statesman-like expressions. His audience react with muted distaste to this, but are clearly willing to forgive him much on account of his scars. 

*Not to be confused with his son, the legal scholar and judge Oliver Wendell "You sure as shootin' better not be shouting fire in a crowded theatre down there," Holmes Jr.

**Who may not necessarily be Strawmen or Steelmen or what have you.