Boxing Day Present: The Sorcerers of Ainhoa, Complete

The Sorcerers of Ainhoa are a group of six magic-users of unknown origin who travel the high plains, moving from place to place apparently at whim. Capricious and unpredictable, they are at times benevolent and at times cruel. On some occasions all six are seen together, at others they appear only in pairs or threes. Two of them, Izotz and Hirune, are never seen together unless all six are present.

From left to right, the Sorcerers of Ainhoa are Itzotz, Elixabete, Eguzki, Patxi, Zigor and Hirune.

Itzotz, Magic User Level 8, Chaotic. 

Itzotz is handsome, aloof and silent, barely speaking and ever observant. In magic he tends towards illusion and phantasm, with which he horrifies or delights his victims. 

Spell Book (spells sewn in silver thread on the inside of his scarf): Dancing Lights, Erase, Find Familiar, Friends, Push, Unseen Servant, Ventriloquism, Audible Glamer, ESP, Fools Gold, Pyrotechnics, Rope Trick, Invisibility, Magic Mouth, Scare, Phantasmal Force, Suggestion, Tongues, Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Blink, Confusion, Fire Charm, Hallucinatory Terrain, Polymorph Other, Fumble, Distance Distortion, Telekinesis, Stone Shape, Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound.

Magic Items: Ring of the Ram (8 charges), Dust of Appearance  

AC 8, Hit Points 22, #ATT 1, DMG 1d4 (knife)  

Elixabete, Magic User Level 9, Chaotic.

Elixabete appears as a small and slight young girl in a faded dress, and is never seen without a bouquet of dying flowers. Her grey eyes seem to contain great age and experience. She favours spells which manipulate the weather or natural objects. 

Spell Book (written on threads woven into her flower bouquet): Affect Normal Fires, Feather Fall, Light, Enlarge, Hold Portal, Spider Climb, Continual Light, Darkness 15’ Radius, Invisibility, Stinking Cloud, Web, Wizard Lock, Levitate, Explosive Runes, Gust of Wind, Hold Person, Haste, Lightning Bolt, Protection from Normal Missiles, Water Breathing, Dig, Ice Storm, Wall of Ice, Plant Growth, Fire Shield, Airy Water, Transmute Rock to Mud, Stone Shape, Wall of Force, Animal Growth. 

Magic Items: Chime of Interruption, Dust of Sneezing and Choking  

AC 9, Hit Points 19, #ATT 1, DMG 1d3 (stiletto)
 
Eguzki, Magic User Level 7, Chaotic. 

Eguzki is a corpulent man who is always dressed in the crimson outfit of a jester. He carries with him a sack, whose contents are known only to him. He prefers spells which allow him to teleport or disappear.  

Spell Book (a bundle of quipu carried in his sack): Jump, Push, Shield, Spider Climb, Feather Fall, Shocking Grasp, Darkness 15’ Radius, Invisibility, Levitate, Mirror Image, Rope Trick, Blink, Fly, Slow, Invisibility 10’ Radius, Dimension Door, Polymorph Self, Minor Globe of Invulnerability. 

 Magic Items: Beads of Force, Figurines of Wondrous Power (Ivory Goats) 

 AC 8, Hit Points 24, #ATT 1, DMG 1d4 (club)

Patxi, Magic User Level 7, Chaotic. 

Patxi is gaunt and gangly, always bare-chested. His barrel, which he carries over his shoulder as if it weighs nothing, sometimes contains hundreds of gold pieces, sometimes silver, sometimes copper. He likes spells which give him power over others.  

Spell Book (carved into staves on the interior of his barrel): Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Shocking Grasp, Enlarge, Charm Person, Push, Fools Gold, Stinking Cloud, Strength, Scare, Shatter, Detect Invisibility, Flame Arrow, Hold Person, Slow, Suggestion, Feign Death, Polymorph Other, Fire Trap, Fear, Enchanted Weapon.  

Magic Items: Iron Bands of Bilarro, Dagger of Venom +2  

AC 8, Hit Points 16, #ATT 1, DMG 1d4+2/poison

Zigor, Magic User Level 8, Chaotic.
Dressed in flamboyant but pale blue robes, Zigor, apparently a small boy, is the most exuberantly magical of the group, ever ready to demonstrate his power. When he is not practising his magic he likes to dance, performing for food or money.  

Spell Book (written on handkerchiefs he keeps up his sleeves): Affect Normal Fires, Charm Person, Dancing Lights, Magic Missile, Light, Nystul’s Magic Aura, Unseen Servant, Jump, Pyrotechnics, Web, Mirror Image, Knock, Levitate, Magic Mouth, Explosive Runes, Fireball, Fly, Lightning Bolt, Hold Person, Ice Storm, Wall of Fire, Fire Shield, Wall of Ice. 

 Magic Items: Scarab of Insanity, Pipes of Pain  

AC 7, Hit Points 19, #ATT 1, DMG 1d6 (short sword)

Hirune, Magic User Level 12, Chaotic.

Hirune is almost as a sister to Itzotz in appearence, though her skin is paler and her eyes sadder. Like him she rarely speaks, though she often sings in a melancholy and quiet way. She is the most powerful of all of her comrades, though she rarely displays her strength.

Spell Book (in a bundle of scrolls she carries around in a pottery vase): Detect Magic, Find Familiar, Magic Missile, Push, Shield, Sleep, Write, Tenser’s Floating Disc, Identify, Detect Invisibility, ESP, Knock, Leomund’s Trap, Locate Object, Ray of Enfeeblement, Scare, Strength, Stinking Cloud, Dispel Magic, Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Fireball, Monster Summoning I, Protection from Normal Missiles, Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Confusion, Charm Monster, Massmorph, Monster Summoning II, Wizard Eye, Wall of Fire, Ice Storm, Animate Dead, Cloudkill, Teleport, Wall of Iron, Contact Other Plane, Bigby’s Interposing Hand, Monster Summoning IV, Control Weather, Repulsion.  

Magic Items: Staff of Withering (12 charges), Robe of the Magi  

AC 4, Hit Points 36, #ATT 2, DMG 1d4/1d4 (dagger)

On encountering the Sorcerers of Ainhoa, the DM should roll a d3; on a roll of 1 two of the sorcerers will be present, on a roll of 2 three will be present, and on a roll of 3, all 6 will be found. The DM should roll a d3 to determine the mood of the sorcerers, with a score of 1 being hostile, 2 being neutral, and 3 being friendly.

[This is the completion of a post I did a very long time ago.]

"What it does out at sea, no one can tell..."

"Supposing on Tuesday, it is morning in London; in another hour it would be Tuesday morning in the West of England; if the whole world were land we might go on tracing Tuesday morning, Tuesday morning all the way round, till, in twenty-four hours we got to London again. But we know that at London twenty-four hours after Tuesday morning it is Wednesday morning. Where, then, in its passage round the earth, does the day change its name? Where does it lose its identity?

"Practically there is no difficulty in it, because a great part of the journey is over water, and what it does out at sea no one can tell: and besides, there are so many different languages that it would be hopeless to attempt to trace the name of any one day all the year round. But is the case inconceivable that the same land and the same language should continue all round the world? I cannot see that it is: in that case either there would be no distinction at all between each successive day, and so week, month, etc., so that we should have to say "The Battle of Waterloo happened today, about two million hours ago", or some line would have to be fixed where the change should take place, so that the inhabitants of one house would wake and say "Heigh-ho, Tuesday morning!" and the inhabitants of the next (over the line), a few miles to the west would wake a few minutes afterwards and say "Heigh-ho, Wednesday morning!" What hopeless confusion the people who happened to live on the line would be in, is not for me to say. There would be a quarrel every morning as to what the name of the day should be.

"I can imagine no third case, unless everybody was allowed to choose for themselves, which state of things would be rather worse than either of the other two."

- Lewis Carroll, from The Rectory Umbrella, c. 1850.

Review of The Chin P'Ing Mei

I recently read and finished the Chin P'ing Mei, subtitled in my version as The Adventurous Story of the Mandarin and His Six Wives. It's a naturalistic novel set in medieval China and written somewhere around 1590, but don't let that put you off - it is surprisingly readable, at least in my translation by Arthur Waley, and provides a fascinating insight into how people lived during that era. Essentially a social novel, it follows the travails of one extensive family as they rise, and ultimately fall, through the social ranks, and I found it both surprisingly psychologically realistic, especially in its portrayal of the female characters, and also amusingly weird. The characters are all recognisably and authentically human, and in some ways their behaviour is strikingly modern, but all the time you are reminded that this is China and China in 1590 was a very different place to Britain in 2015. (An example: towards the end of the book two women are brutally murdered. But the correct thing to do, to all concerned - including the police - is to leave their bodies lying in the roadside until their murderer is captured. Why? No idea.)

I was also struck by how Yoon-Suinish the whole thing is: anybody who had read Yoon-Suin and this would probably think I was strongly influenced by it. This is a society of bureaucrats and judges, poets, prostitutes, gossip and a certain louche depravity: everybody is after money and sex, but they do it with such decorum that it almost seems polite. I loved it.

Some observations:

1) I've never had six wives, obviously, but the depiction of polygamy in the book struck me as extremely authentic. The women are in a sense rivals, but also in a sense sisters. That fundamental conflict is very sympathetically portrayed: there is an astonishingly moving scene towards the end of the book, indeed, which encapsulates this, as a solitary wife who finds herself living alone realises her profound loneliness without the other five around (despite the fact that she spent the whole book wanting her husband for herself). And while the husband is one of the great fictional anti-heroes and an all round cad, bounder, and whatnot (I reckon he has somewhere around 20 sexual conquests in the book, and isn't averse to having husbands and rivals killed off or falsely imprisoned), you also get a strong sense of his charm. The author was a keen observer of human relationships.

2) The legal system is amazingly corrupt. All the judges are venal and investigators either stupid or amoral. Becoming a judge so you can do away with your enemies on trumped-up charges is a matter of course.

3) While strikingly modern in some aspects, in others it feels a product of a world with a very underdeveloped sense of what a novel should be. The plot is sprawling and has a kind of "broken back" structure in which, three quarters of the way through, the hero dies (that's not a spoiler alert - the chapter titles all tell you what happens in each chapter) and we suddenly find ourselves following the exploits of his dissolute son-in-law for the last portion of the book. The author also starts off by presenting us with a story which is apparently going to focus on Hsi Men, the hero, and his gang of male drinking partners. But within a chapter or two this is abandoned and the plot becomes more and more about the relationships between the different wives and concubines and Hsi Men himself. The drinking partners appear from time to time, but have basically no role to play in the story. It's as though the author slowly but surely became more interested in the wives than the men - and indeed that's where the reader's attention is gradually drawn too.

4) Sex. If you're a teenage boy I reckon this book would be like mana from heaven.

In any event, I strongly recommend tracking it down and seeing for yourself. It's a long book but nothing like the marathon that you might expect, thanks to the very breezy and light-hearted style of the prose and the breathless speed of the plot.

The Need to Delegate Imagination

There is a new TV series of Star Trek coming out, in case you've been living under a rock. I'm not quite sure what to feel about it. I am pleased in principle; I am not a boxed-set watcher at all (my TV watching is limited mostly to Match of the Day, live sport, and the odd quiz show or wildlife documentary) but I do own the complete series of Next Gen and DS9 on DVD. I don't do visual SF or fantasy, really, in other words, except for Star Trek.

And yet on the other hand there is so much that could go wrong. Everything in popular 'geek' culture at the moment seems (from my limited experience, anyway), to be dark - not to say grimdark. If the producers of this new series think that dark is the way to go for Trek, it will be a gargantuan error. Star Trek is and always has been fundamentally optimistic. It is not childishly or unrelentingly so, but the core message of each series has always been: humans (and aliens too, for that matter) can surmount problems if they work together. That USP shouldn't be sacrificed.

I'm also terrified that the "let's all have fun blowing things up in space and not think about anything too much" approach of the JJ Abrams films will bleed into this new series. There has always been derring-do in Star Trek but there has also always been contemplation. Its traditions are thoughtful. And promoting the idea that being thoughtful about things is good is so counter-cultural nowadays that sticking to its roots could really make the new Trek stand out.

All of that said, however, I do wonder why it is that I care. What is it about fans of a series, or book, that makes us so passive? We start off watching a TV programme or reading a book, and we start to enjoy it, so we keep doing so. We follow along. At some point, though, our attitude changes: we become in a strange way dependent on the writers. I care about what the new Star Trek series is like because I am sure I'll end up watching it and I want it to conform to my expectations. I am worried about what the producers might do to it. But why?

I still have my old Star Trek episodes. That won't change. And nobody will force me to watch the new series. Moreover, if the new series isn't to my taste, there is nothing to stop me imagining my own version of it - where a plucky kid from Merseyside captains the Enterprise and gets to shag Counselor Troi while exploring the Delta Quadrant or whatever. I can even write fan fic if I want. (Just to be clear on this: I don't.) I can play RPGs in the Star Trek universe with my mates or people on G+. Why do I delegate the imagination of future Star Trek series to a handful of writers and producers somewhere in LA, now that I know what Star Trek is and can think up my own version of it?

The Heron Men

I am working on a new project for release early next year. Await further instructions. For the time being, however, here is a sample.

Heron Men

They live amongst reeds and bull rushes, on the shores of lakes and rivers. Long limbed, lurching walkers, with the feathered heads and beaks and sharp yellow eyes of the heron, and the gracile limbs of the man. Like the birds which are their namesakes they are patient and quiet; they prefer to wait for the chance to kill. Though they are neither great makers nor thinkers, their intelligence in the hunt does not waver; their eyes are as adept at spotting a chink in a man’s armour as they are at seizing on the silvery flicker of a fish darting from shadow to shadow in the shallows of a pool. During the day they scatter around the waterways to hunt alone or in pairs; in the dusk they gather together in their reed huts, and sit with their heads hunched between their shoulders to sleep, stooped against the cold of the night.

HD 1+1, AC 7, #ATT 1, DMG by weapon (spear, axe, dagger, club), ML 7, No. Enc.: 1d2, or 3d20 in lair with a 3+3 HD big man and two 2+2 HD shamans

*Heron men receive a +2 bonus to hit rolls

*Heron men are never surprised, and surprise opponents 5 times out of 6

The Death of HP Lovecraft

To write is to reach, through a pre-existing impersonality...that point at which language alone acts, "performs", and not oneself...

- Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author"

In case you've not heard, HP Lovecraft is no longer the model of the trophy for the World Fantasy Awards, because he was manifestly a racist. Long-term readers of the blog will probably be able to guess at my views on this, and I don't particularly have any urge to sally forth into the lists of online debate over it, but I do think HP Lovecraft is a fascinating illustration of the way "the absence of the Author", as Barthes put it, "utterly transforms the modern text".

There are very few authors I can think of who, more than Lovecraft, embody the way in which a text can go through Barthes' process of "opening up". Anybody attempting to close his ouvre off, to put a "stop clause" on it, by interpreting it as the product of a racist has to ignore the way it has been plucked from his grasp and transmogrified into something utterly different from anything he may have intended. We readers have created an extensive mythos which he never envisaged and which still evolves and develops to this day. We have turned his ostensibly most terrifying creation into a child's stuffed toy or a joke for crude political satire. We have re-worked his stories into terrible films. Those of us who are Japanese, Mexican or African have recreated his work through our own cultural lens. We have flipped his male-centric universe. We have based board games and hard rock albums on his stories. We have joked about Necrotelecomnicon and created dishes like "Eggs Sothoth". We have mangled it and stomped all over it, smashed it up and put it back together, over and over and over again, and that process only seems to gather pace as Cthulhu in particular becomes a kind of internet totem or touchstone for nerd culture. Just as any Reader takes the text and interprets it in his or her own way, we as collective Readers have done precisely the same thing with HP Lovecraft's work as a text - writ large and to the extreme.

And players of Call of Cthulhu, perhaps more to the point, individually and collectively do the same thing in miniature for every session they play. They run games set in Norway, Australia, Egypt and Kenya and anywhere else in the world besides. They create new Old Gods, reinterpret existing ones, bastardise Lovecraft's stories and invent their own. They imagine themselves as black female Harvard professors, Chinese artists, Irish philosophers and English rugby players engaging in his world, and it doesn't matter in the slightest because the text is now theirs and not his. The man himself was a bigot and an appalling one. But his work as a text is constituted by us and not him, in a myriad of ways limited only by the number of individuals who read it and the number of interpretations they give it.

A History of Violence

Violence is at its most shocking when it is presented as a matter of fact, without dramatic trappings. See examples below:

[Marsyas] stumbled upon the flute, which he had no sooner put to his lips than it played of itself, inspired by the memory of Athene’s music; and he went about Phrygia in Cybele’s train, delighting the ignorant peasants. They cried out that Apollo himself could not have made better music, even on his lyre, and Marsyas was foolish enough not to contradict them. This, of course, provoked the anger of Apollo, who invited him to a contest, the winner of which should inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the loser. Marsyas consented, and Apollo empanelled the Muses as a jury. The contest proved an equal one, the Muses being charmed by both instruments, until Apollo cried out to Marsyas: ‘I challenge you to do with your instrument as much as I can do with mine. Turn it upside down, and both play and sing at the same time.’ 

This, with a flute, was manifestly impossible, and Marsyas failed to meet the challenge. But Apollo reversed his lyre and sang such delightful hymns in honour of the Olympian gods that the Muses could not do less than give the verdict in his favour. Then, for all his pretended sweetness, Apollo took a most cruel revenge on Marsyas: flaying him alive and nailing his skin to a pine (or, some say. to a plane-tree). It now hangs in the cavern whence the Marsyas River rises. 

-Apollo's Nature and Deeds, 1700 BC?? 

* 

Egil was matched to play against a boy named Grim, son of Hegg, of Hegg-stead. Grim was ten or eleven years old, and strong for his age. But when they played together Egil got the worst of it. And Grim made all he could of his advantage. Then Egil got angry and lifted up the bat and struck Grim, whereupon Grim seized him and threw him down with a heavy fall, and handled him rather roughly, and said he would thrash him if he did not behave. But when Egil got to his feet, he went out of the game, and the boys hooted at him.

Egil went to Thord and told him what had been done. 

Thord said: 'I will go with you, and we will be avenged on them.' 

He gave into his hands a halberd that he had been carrying. Such weapons were then customary. They went where the boys' game was. Grim had now got the ball and was running away with it, and the other boys after him. Then Egil bounded upon Grim, and drove the axe into his head, so that it at once pierced his brain. After this Egil and Thord went away to their own people.

- Egil's Saga, 1240 AD 

* 

Thenne launcelot vnbarred the dore / and with his lyfte hand he held it open a lytel / so that but one man myghte come in attones / and soo there came strydyng a good knyghte a moche man and large / and his name was Colgreuaunce / of Gore / and he with a swerd strake at syr launcelot myȝtely and he put asyde the stroke / and gaf hym suche a buffett vpon the helmet / that he felle grouelynge dede within the chamber dore / and thenne syre Launcelot with grete myghte drewe that dede knyght within the chamber dore / and syr Launcelot with helpe of the Quene and her ladyes was lyghtely armed in syr Colgreuaunce armour

-Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory, 1485 

* 

Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy’s name. 

“Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai ——” 

Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. 

-The Great Gatsby,  F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

The F. Scott Fitzgerald scene may be the most affecting of all of them. Not just because it's a man hitting a woman, which is quite rightly something that retains its capacity to shock, but also because of the efficiency of the description: Tom is quite deliberate in his brutality, and you understand that in just a dozen words.

It would be wrong to say I "like" violence in an RPG session to be presented in that sort of fashion, because that's the wrong word, but I think violence which is sudden, quick and matter-of-fact (even casual) is the most interesting kind. It is more realistic, but it also makes you reflect on the consequences. Not as in "Ooh, isn't it awful?" But as in, "Okay, the person is dead. Now what is going to happen, and also what did it mean?"

Is Enthusiasm the Most Important Thing?

On blogs, discussion forums, and so forth, it's common to discuss all manner of DMing "best practices", which I'm sure people reading this blog will be quite familiar with. Some of the most obvious best practices for me are no railroading, rolling dice in the open, and never fudging a result. You will likely have others.

But I do increasingly wonder whether the most important thing is not merely enthusiasm. I work at a university, so I deliver about two lectures a week during term-time. There are all kinds of lecturing "best practices" which fill the instruction books and compulsory work-based-learning courses we poor saps have to do, but one absolute categorical, cast-iron requirement that rarely gets mentioned is simply that the lecturer has to be enthusiastic. He has to make the subject interesting, or the students won't engage, and while there are all manner of tricks for that, he can really get away with doing anything as long as he brings energy and enthusiasm and positivity to it.

(Now, of course, that requirement is subject to a lot of common sense caveats. If I am delivering a lecture on contract law and I talk enthusiastically and passionately about how to keep koi carp for 50 minutes, the lecture will not be successful. But you get my point.)

The same really holds true for DMing. As long as you are doing the basic things, I don't think it matters a huge amount as long as you are communicating a sense of interest to the players. I hesitate to use the word "fun", because that doesn't necessarily describe the sense that the DM wishes to convey; "interest" is broader and more appropriate. If you are interested in the game then nine times out of ten that's probably sufficient to keep the players interested too. I think back on good gaming sessions that I've enjoyed in the past as a player, and I can think of quite a few where things were a bit railroady or the DM was fudging dice results, but which I liked all the same because of what the DM brought to the table - literally and figuratively.

The Economics, Anthropology and Sociology of Small Press RPG Publishing

If you were going to caricature neo-classical economics you'd say that it's bullshit because people don't just act to maximise their wealth and react to economic incentives in their commercial behaviour. Actually what they choose to make, what they choose to sell, and who they choose to sell it to, is governed by all manner of irrational choices. This is perfectly true. People do things because they like them. Or because their father did them. Or because they don't think they can do anything else. And so on.

I listened to this episode of Econtalk with huge interest earlier today. It's full of fascinating observations, but one of them is that traditional economic textbooks and economic studies of the firm tend to start off with supply and demand: what determines how much stuff a firm produces? But actually this is in many ways the least interesting thing you could possible discuss, and ignores much more fundamental questions - how do people choose what market to be in? Why do they make the things they make?

Somebody could write an interesting article about the DIY RPG hobby. Here you have a selection of people around the world who are largely working on RPG products part-time, who are doing so mostly because they enjoy it (and partly because it makes them some money), and who seem to plough quite a lot of the profits they get back into the industry by buying other people's stuff. Customers buy products partly based on what is good, but also, I think, partly out of a sense of good will: there is a feeling of comradeship in the hobby that influences purchases. There no awareness of or care for economic profit - I daresay I could have made much more money using the time I spent producing Yoon-Suin by doing something else. But that doesn't account for the pleasure I got out of it.

Adam Smith was a genius because he understood this so well: we may "truck, barter and exchange" in some contexts, but actually things like emotion, reputation, and our sense of how others see us is of much greater significance in others. Yoon-Suin may not have been economically profitable, but it was certainly profitable in other ways, if you mean by "profit" the enjoyment of seeing the finished product (despite its flaws), the pleasure of hearing that other people are using it, and, let's face it, the ego boost that comes from people telling me it's good. There may have been an opportunity cost associated with the project (I could have made much more money doing freelance translation work) but think of the opportunity cost in pleasure associated with doing things that you find boring!

Somebody could write something very deep, rich and textured about the economics, anthropology and sociology of small press RPG publishing. They really really could.

The Duke of Doves

In the cold, quiet halls of the Mountain, the Duke of Doves stirs. His shrouded heavy head rising from under sheets of purple silk which slowly fall away. He is the first of the guardians the Ancients left behind them as they journeyed upwards, and he has lain silent and sleeping for many years. Yet for the first time in a long eon he senses something: An entrance. It is enough to wake him and enough perhaps even to invigorate him sufficiently to remember the reason for which he was created. In the cold, quiet halls he feels life creep over him like the fingertips of a lover tracing over the dozing body of her man.