I could not help myself—this is an affliction, you know. Cammilia Fragmullah once declared that artistic inclinations are the sign of a damaged personality. It is how I got into writing in 1987.

Battle

An Introductory Table Top War Game Simulation

And there is this, ahem, from early on in my dissolution...

Crag Mouth

A 44-Year-Old Role Playing Adventure Reconstructed

what is it about playing?

Inbox

Crack Man

Fri, Nov 10, 2023, 12:35 AM

to me

Hey JL,

how are you doing, hope the eye and brain are still holding up.

[Thank you. The brain is foggy from the nerve meds, which is great for writing fiction, but hard for losing hats and such.]

I was wondering, while, after a long time, reading on your blog again, what is so enchanting about games and playing. Do you have an opinion to that?

[For the men of Antiquity, gaming intersected with war and heaven. Knucklebones that men gambled with, little girls prayed with. Chess is an abstraction of war. Tamerlane, after defeating the Ottomon Sultan, kept him alive for two reasons: to serve as a stool for mounting his horse and to play chess. The mix of calculation and chance in dice and cards reminds the player that success is more than calculation, but of the awareness of chance, friction, fog and the intercession of heaven. For this pagan religious reason, cards and dice have rarely been sanctioned by the church. Not so with chess, where the bishops are powerful pieces.]

Sometimes I feel games and playing are a mythical divine seed, a leftover from the paradise of eden. Gambling, pretend-plays and chesslike board games as old as human history. And even many grown men are often still intrigued by tabletop or roleplaying games. As far as you going back to a dnd adventure 40 years ago.

[I have noted that working men who play cards and dominoes have better mental stability. Dice seems more of a high/low experience, where cards tends to calm someone down after work. In the Pacific North West, most people have exchanged social gaming on tabletop for the hypnosis of the electronic gaming machine.]

While playfully interacting physically with my daughters, they never can´t get enough of it. But when I sit down with my oldest (4 years old), there is something special going on. Her eyes widen, mouth slightly open in anticipation and a big smile is seemingly glued to her face, when I engage actively in her play with little toy animals, dinosaurs and dolls.

In my observations the joyfulness and curiosity of engaging in games and roleplaying leaves women more frequently than men after maturing. My wife has many qualities but she struggles to connect on this level with our children, saying she lacks the creativity and mind for that.

[Children are wired for play. Most women and some men lose this under social stress. The creative advantage in warfare that barbarian tribesmen usually enjoyed over civilized foes, was that the children in hunting societies play a lot, the boys mostly at war, while those of farming societies were put to work by 8. I think the mass and individual hypnosis of smart phones and video games—many games played on phones by women—are expressions that men and women all miss play, play being scenario building for life, lost when we are overtaken by the rampant pace of economic life. My editor tells of her girls making paper dolls, involving them in stories and aging the dolls. Such activity would have gotten them burned by most Christian sects from roughly A.D. 400 to 1700. This type of play is an imitation of The Creature, our maker, narrator, punisher and Savior.]

What gets a child more going, the prospect of playing or working...? And I have to admit the same often still does apply to me.

[Playing beats hell out of working. In physical occupations gaming the activity with co workers has helped improve our performance. Playing helps develop planning and solving skills that can be applied to work. The memory development in gaming is a huge advantage over the submissive cadence of work. There is a reason why the barbarians that conquered the agrarians in 2,000 B.C. reserved work for slaves and played at war in sports. That said, by encouraging active gaming such as cards, darts, billiards, dominoes and dice, as industrial society did in the 1800s and early 1900s, put into play Аrуаn men with a huge work ethic coupled with creativity and made for military actions previously attributed to heaven.]

Maybe you have some thoughts to share.

Greetings,

Crackamn

[Thank you so much, Crackman, and keep those girls playing through their teens.]

James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com>

Wed, Jan 3, 9:25 PM (13 hours ago)

to Crack

Thank you, Sir.

This will be an article soon writ.

I appreciate it.

Tue, Nov 21, 2023, 3:56 PM

to me

James,

Have you ever considered publishing some of your tabletop games online?

[We have published Triumph here for $7 and numerous small role playing games for free here on this page. I cannot do any graphics. It is just text. I am designing Battle, a war game using dominoes, dice, coins and cards for units and randomizers. This will be developed on video at InTheseGoingsDown this spring. The front matter is scheduled for May 3 and the body of the text will be posted for summer, here.]

Copies of Pizza Wars sell for $50!

[I lost about $1k on Pizza Wars after selling some 1700 copies. I have given my last physical Pizza Wars material to Lynn for her to publish, making it part of the roughly 85 books in her backlog.]

There are lots of "Print 'n Play" games (usually PDF form) that sell for $1-5/ea ... could be worth it if you can find the right type of nerd to format it for you! Just an idea.

[I have no one to do this and lack the energy to solicit and hound some nerd. If you would like to publish my gaming material I have an almost 500 page book titled Knuckleheads and Wonderboys that I gave to Polynimbus to publish 4 years ago. I will send it to you in my next email after posting this article. Online Pizza Wars and that book are yours if you want them—keep the money. There will not be much. ]

Best regards and looking forward to official Napoleonic warfare dominos,

[Mister Grey and I will develop it live this spring.]

- JW

James LaFond <jameslafond.com@gmail.com>

Jan 3, 2024, 9:15 PM (13 hours ago)

to J

It is your's if you want it—keep the money.

Lynn has 84 books on backlog, Incognegro 13 and my niece 2

JW. hope you have a great new year.

Old White ranges the Silver Gate of Wormz, which is the winding canyon track pass wending ever upward among the crags towards The Keens of the Scarlet Kells. Most of his time is spent collecting fire wood from the surrounding mountains, to include evergreen boughs for his bedding and tea. He hunts in the taigia north of the Scarlet Mountains, and 2 in 6 portions of his time is spent away there, leaving only Eesh, his son by Bess Long, behind.

Old White keeps this path as his toll road, demanding gifts. He prefers food, beer and trinkets, the latter which he hopes to form into a great collection to woo Bess Long. A day’s trek up into the towering peaks where the air thins, Old White has made a wooden gate of pole pine lashed with rawhide wedged between the narrowest portion of the trail, being three paces, or a good spear length, one pace for Old White, who is as large as Big Crag but less agile and lame in one arm.

He stands behind the gate while his grog, Eesh, crouched above on a rocky platform with a boulder to squash offenders on the west side of the gate. From the east side, Old White speaks, haltingly, slurring, with a perpetual mumble, not as articulate as Red or Big Crag. The latter has maimed Old White, his jaw broken and imperfectly healed and his left shoulder half lame, that arm barely as strong as that of a strong man. He keeps a large stone that he throws under-handed with his left and a great club that he wields one-handed with his right.

Eesh is the oldest grog in the mountains, the son of a nomad woman from the north, who was the woman who transformed his sire and who died in childbirth. He is gray, nearly as hairy as a skunk ape, has a wide square head and sings beautifully but never speaks, only communicating in song in the nomad language of the north, which he learned form one of their shaman, who fostered him for Old White.

Old White is lonely for human company and remains in love of Bess Long, who he released, [1] but hopes to draw back into his lair with his great collection of trinkets, feathers and art [being chalk and dye portraits of Bess on the cave walls]. Any who agree to view the back portion of his cave where he has made a chamber for Bess, and decorated it to the best of his ability, even attempting a rude cabin within the recess, [2] will be escorted past the Silver Worm by Old White, who knows the incantation to stay the keen of the steely beast. Old White had been a shaman of his kind, a Feathered Contrary, once, before transforming. Old White will ask those who take his leave to speak with Bess on his behalf. Not only is Old White afraid of Ranger Jon, he has promised Bess that he would not harm her human husband.

Orl Phane, malformed monstrous son of Bess and Old White, will aid his father against any evil acts by the adventurers. If Big Crag is still active behind them, Orl Phane will enlist his sire to aid the party.

In order to access The Keens of the Scarlet Kells, wayfarers must take the canyon, situated at about 9,000 feet, up through a tunnel. If it is snowing they may require Eesh and Old White to push the snow for them, which is accomplished with short timbers once cut for a mine and evenly planed. At the highest point, Silver Wormz Pass, where the lower mountains and, the Red Hills, the Willows, the rolling plains beyond to the west, the greater cedar forest to the east and the bog to the south may all be seen in the lower distance, is a tunnel.

This tunnel descends and appears to have been made by man, with timbers still bracing the entrance. A point of light may be seen at the lower distance, down a 15% grade of perhaps sixty paces.

The tunnel is three paces wide. Halfway in, is a silver-chased, steel dragon head embedded in the right hand wall, looking like, the head of a battering ram, which it was. There is a cone like ear on the left hand wall just before this menacing device. Old White and Eesh know than incantation and will speak it for gift bringers and others who have proven friends of them, rescuers of Orl Phane [who also knows the incantation].

The incantation is whispered in a language unknown to humanity, it being the hoots of the Skunk Ape, and prevents the head of the ram from keening. The keening of the dragon head causes a save versus charisma or will. Failure results in abject panic and flight back to Willow Hamlet. Success results in The Keening of the Scarlet Kells described in the next and final encounter, cursing the survivor and reversing the boons granted by the Kells. The latter should be done to effect a quest for a further adventure, placing them in the position of redemption, not ruin the character.

Characters that flee to Willow Hamlet will not be molested by any creatures as they will be regarded as cursed. The people of the hamlet will be kind and understanding and seek to induct the shaken adventurer to join their community. A consultation with Lisa Dream Catcher can purge the fear and panic and enable a return to the Tunnel of Silver Wormz.

The Keens of the Scarlet Kells are all that remain of this adventure unpublished. The complete work may be had from the author at by emailing him at ϳаmeslаfond.com at gmаil.com

Crag Mouth was re-plotted in memory of Randy Boyer, and play tested by Felix, age 14 and Dominic age 12, in Portland, Oregon in March of 2023.

…

Notes

-1. Bess Long actually cares for Old White, is terrified that she might abandon her ranger husband for a return to the mountains and feels an abiding guilt for leaving her malformed son, Orl Phane, half-orphaned. If she knew that Orl Phane was being held by Big Crag, she would assist the party in gaining the help of Old White, via a mountain goat track that only She, Eesh and Old White know of. This track traces due north from the point where the Red Hills and Hide Forest meet and comes down to Silver Wormz Pass at the point where Eesh camps on clear nights above the gate.

-2. Old White is making a sincere and ham-fisted attempt at appointing a living space that could be tolerated by a woman. The main portion of his cave is drafty and hung with bison and mammoth hides, with a great pile of various hides where he and Eesh sleep, between the fire pit and the back recess where he hopes Bess will return. Old White moans by night and sniffles by day.

This is the lair of Big Crag, the Stonnish Giant, inhabited by nine of his grogs, who but visit to bring food and wives, tend his armor, comb his hide [part of the same task] and polish his great sword of ivory. Big Crag addresses each grog, first as “grog” followed by “Son” when pleased, “son of a wench,” when in need or haste and in matter of fact command, and when angry or displeased, “son of a witch.”

Like other Stonnish Giants, he may also communicate in hoots to Skunk Apes and Feathered Contrary. Big Crag is the most powerful of his kind, is surly and uncompromising, reacts in rage to fear of strength and contempt of weakness in the same measure, and should be stat blocked in such a way as to be equal in combat ability to the adventuring party. Fighting grogs and their sire will be a terrible mistake. The grogs should be befriended, outwitted, seduced, charmed or bribed. [0]

Weaker parties might be captured and cast into the lower cavern, [see below] giving them a wit’s chance after Big Crag celebrates drinking contrary berry juice and arguing with his pet grisly. An individual could be given an advantage by Big Crag having just feasted, gotten drunk, or mated with his unfortunate bride, one of which is ever in stock, his grogs devoted to keeping him supplied on threats that he would demote them to wife!

The first chamber is lit by a brazier set in the floor, with the walls literally lined with fire wood. A stair rises into a higher cave, improved with the mason’s art, and winds up to the east.

The eastern wind of stair rises southward, to the right, and empties into an abandoned armory, lit by 2 cressets next to the entrance way. The chamber is vaulted from a natural cavern and is 40 feet wide and 200 feet deep. The north and south walls are each lined with 6 round shields with brass bosses. The west wall has a rack of 12 spears. The east wall is hung with 12 battle axes. The grogs do not use these weapons as they are their sire’s trophies, what formerly armed the ancient garrison. Aim, however, lusts after being armed like a man, and will take a chance for or against his sire to so arm himself and do battle like a man.

A set of double doors top a short stair to the south.

These doors pull open and reveal a widening flight of ten foot high stairs opening into a vaulted cavern. At the top a 20 foot wide open doorway is flanked by two cressets.

The cavern is Big Crag’s throne room, 40 foot deep 20 foot wide vaulted chamber, again an improved cavern.

Two great stacked stone pillars are ten feet in on either side of the doorway.

Big Crag, possessed of acute Skunk Ape hearing, will always make his way to his throne to great a visitor, even one he regards as an invader. The Stonnish Giant reeks terribly, regarding it as humiliating to bathe off blood, gore or the fluids of love. He is a rapacious sex fiend and will seek to capture and rape any female.

His great Mammoth Tusk saber and shield are on either side of his throne. However, if dealing with a single male opponent he will opt to throw these weapons and then close to rend and bite. His greatest joy is to bite the head off of a man and eat it raw while the eyes yet see into his maw!

To his left is chained his pet grisly bear, who he will attempt to throw secondary foes to while he seeks to bite the head from the primary foe.

To the right is his great hanging of mutton, elk and bison, smoking over the hearth attended by one of his grogs constantly. Big Crag has no idea why he coughs so much. Fire wood lines the wall, wood of various kinds for smoking meat.

In the center of the west wall is a carven tunnel of 8 feet in height and 4 feet in width, which is difficult for Big Crag to get through.

At the end of the hall on the left is a fir plank door that opens into a lantern lit chamber only 12 feet high, vented in the ceiling to a natural fissure. This chamber will be occupied by a slave girl, who is not chained, as escape from the mountain is impossible for a barefoot woman. She occupies a bed heaped with hides and blankets, which has been broken by Big Crag’s rude attention to his captives. The conditions are as follows:

-1. fresh caught and raped runaway slave girl

-2. fresh caught and raped slave girl, newly pregnant

-3. 3 months pregnant

-4. 6 months pregnant

-5. giving birth to monstrous child, all sterile males, save 1 in 16 fertile demon apes

-6. broken in and rocking her little monster ape baby in a cradle made of broken chairs lashed together by Toot Grog, who is the midwife in these parts.

The attractiveness of this woman, to a human man should be made on a 2d6 roll, with 11 and 12 re-rolled, for a rating of 2 thru 10. Slave girls who are 1s have their head bitten off by Big Crag after the first date, so they do not exist.

These women will be eager for rescue, except on a roll of 6, in which case they actually love the cruel giant. Various junk, coins and trinkets, treasured as prizes by Big Crag, are heaped in the corner behind the door, before the cradle, the bed taking up most of the small room.

Five paces further down the dead end hall, on the north, or right wall, is a tunnel, not carven, but an extension of the natural cavern complex, which winds down. This debouches into a small cavern with a spring in it, where the bones of various dead wives and unfortunate infants, largely the result of disastrous births, are curated in a touching shrine by one Orl Phane. [1]

Orl Phane is the youngest of Bess Long’s two sons with Old White, the elder, Bee’s Wax, having been killed by Big Crag. He is half brother to and on fair terms with Aim and Spy, he being smarter than either and able to play them off against each other. He has a very wide head, with knobs on his temples suggestive of horns that did not properly grow. His ears are over large and apish and used by his captor as handles while he makes empty threats towards Bess Long and Ranger Jon and lies about Old White not loving him. Orl Phane has atrophied legs which he must drag along, only able to sit on them. His arms are so strong and long he can move as quickly as a human swinging his dead legs along.

Big Crag has trained his pet grisly, artfully named Big Grizz, to hate Orl Phane, and promises to unchain Big Grizz to track him if he should run, not trusting his grogs not to be outwitted by the sly Orl Phane, who is more intelligent than most humans and has a kind voice. He has made a stone knife, which he may use in his right hand as he swings in a circle off of his big, hairy left hand. He has also fashioned a loin cloth and shirt, unlike the naked hairy grogs of “the general herd,” as he calls them, where he hide three stone darts that he fletched with eagle feather. He is the “Royal Tailor” as he says, making hide garments for the wives of his captor.

Orl Phane would like to visit Bess Long and would like to live with Old White. He might assist a party on the verge of defeat, or assist a defeated captive tossed into the cavern, where Big Crag does not enter for fear of being stuck. Orl Phane is fed scraps of food in return for cleaning up after Big Grizz while Big Crag takes the bear for a daily walk on his chain. This would be the worst time for a party to happen by the fort, between dawn and the second hour of the day, when they would have to deal with the giant and his pet bear. They walk up the rock slide just to the north of the crag and look down over the world they resent, afraid of the bullshit magic arrows of Ranger Jon.

This information could be gleaned from a sympathetic interaction with a disgruntled grog or with Red.

Notes

-0. Bess Long will know about the poor treatment of Big Crag’s grogs and of course, of the captivity of Orl Phane and be eager to impart this information to the party, though modest about her parentage of Orl Phane, Spy and Aim. Ranger Jon will suggest parlaying with grogs to gain an audience with Big Crag, which would only be attended by one grog, as they are only permitted entrance to his room one at a time.

-1. In the original dungeon, Orl Phane was a gnome played by Randy Boyer.

Crag Mouth is an old toll fort built to control the silver mines in the mountains above in Olden Times. Once The Keening of The Scarlet Kells began, the mine and fort were abandoned. Both became the center of monstrous births, where Skunk Apes, who became possessed by The Keening of The Kells, absconded with their human brides, sired grogs upon them, and thereby suffered a monstrous transformation which increased their size, granted limited human articulation, and increased their intelligence. [1]

The mountain side trail, literally cut into the stone along the path of a goat trace, is between one and three paces wide the entire way, with red and black stone soaring 500 to 1000 feet to the right and east. To the left and west, is a red cliff, gorge, impassible except by Skunk Apes, Stonnish Giant, Grogs and the most nimble rogues. The sheer cliffs plunge from 100 to 2,000 feet down to the left, and in most places are too steep even for the above mention primates to scale.

Three rockslides break the this carven track and make a chute of tumbled boulders and rocks that are hazardous for humans and horses to cross, but are like a highway from high to low elevation for cats, bears, goats and apekind. These are the likely places for ambush and a place to access the mountain tops.

The fort itself is a stone-walled camp built on a natural ledge with a cold spring, under a natural wind-carved stone arch of black rock. From a distance, the black arch, with the jagged red stone wall broken by the sharpened log gate, appears as something of a stony mouth, and hence its name.

The south wall is 20 paces from cliff to cliff. The 12 foot high wall is easily scaled and is of stacked sand stone with iron cressets on either side of the gate. There is a stone stair and 8-pace-long stone ledge cat walk behind the wall, on either side of the 4-pace-wide gate. The gate is barred with a timber beam. One grog is on watch here:

-1. Very alert, afraid of his sire and eager to prove himself

-2. Awake and wondering about his next meal

-3, 4, 5. Sleeping, dreaming about his next meal

-6. Sulking over being beaten by his sire, despairing of his next meal, and inclined to abandon his post.

This is the mountain side camp of The Sons of Big Crag, nine grogs, all half brothers, two being full brother, Aim and Spy, the monstrous sons of Bess Long, [1] who command the rest, the younger brothers. Aim is the eldest and his conception was the occasion for Big Crag’s transformation into a Stonnish being. The seven other Grogs include, Toot, the nephew of Big Crag, and 6 various grogs, called by their brutal sire, only ‘Grog.’ These grogs were all sired on runaway slave girls that Big Crag mistreated until they died of injuries, abuse, terror or suicide. Big Crag rules through fear, whereas his rivals, Old White who loves his last remaining sons, and Red, who has a clannish affinity with his sons, lead different lives outside of the storied fort of Crag Mouth.

The camp is 20 paces by 20 paces to the stone arch.

To the right is a hide roofed wood shed.

To the left, next to the cliff, is a log cabin bunk house, three paces wide by 9 paces long, occupied by 1-3 grogs.

1-3 grogs are on patrol on the mountain and down in the Red Hills.

1 grog is attending his sire within the dungeon.

The ground is bare stone.

To the left of the bunk house is a set of crap holes above the sheer droop to the river 500 feet below.

Under the black stone arch, harder than the red stone around it, a fountain bubbles out of the mountain and carves a small stony channel 2 feet deep which plunges over the cliff in a water fall. The arch is 30 feet high where it attaches to the mountain.

On the north side of the arch, ten more paces bring the wayfarer to a shorter wall, built in the same fashion with a like gate, guarded by no one.

To the left is a 12 by 12 foot log cabin where Spy and Aim live. One of these are supposed to be away leading a patrol. They are fortunately as lazy as their sire, who never leaves his lair when he has a woman to ravish or a kill to eat.

-1. Spy is home, wondering about the possibilities of life among humans and with his mother.

-2. Aim is home, wondering if he would be accepted by Skunk Apes.

-3. Cabin is empty

-4. Both are home, arguing.

-5. Both are home dicing and drinking.

-6. Both are home sleeping.

To the right, a stone staircase, lit by two cressets, rises up into a drafty cave mouth that has been improved with masonry tools by beings far more inclined to work than the lazy grogs. The cave mouth is worked in the shape of a harp frame, a final attempt by the ancients to appease the Keening of the Kells that rose in anger over the silver mine above and drove the garrison to one by one cast themselves over the cliff side. The language is carved into the mountain side:

“Oh Madams Three, Have Mercy on We Graceless Wee.”

It is very possible, if the grogs can be bi-passed, to simply steal by the fort and head upward towards the Kells, those higher, snow-clad mountain peaks from whence an awful howling keen can be heard wafting down, even, and especially when, there is no wind to make a sound.

The north gate does creak terrible not when opened, but when closed behind.

On a die roll of 1d6:

-1, 2. No pursuits

-3, 4. delayed pursuit, the grogs consulting with their sire.

-5. Immediate trackers, one above and one behind.

-6. Flat out pursuit. On a second roll of 5 or 6, Big Crag will participate.

Notes

-1. In my original teenage version these were ogres producing half ogre scions who officered orks under their ogre master. For a traditional campaign I suggest that the Kells cause ogres that mate with women to become superior examples of their kind, approaching a Stone Giant in intelligence but as tal as and more slightly built than a hill giant.

-2. Bess Long was taken to wife by Old White, the Stonnish Giant displaced in battle and exiled to guard The Keens of the Scarlet Kells. When Big Crag defeated Old White he took Bess, a runaway from Barrier Town, and sired two sons on her. Old White sent his grog by Bess, Orl Phane, to beg for her release, and Big Crag imprisoned Orl Phane, inspiring Bess to flee. Big Crag sentenced Bess to death and sent his and sent his younger brother, Little Crag, to hunt her down and bring back her head. Bess escaped with the help of was rescued Aim and Spy, who remained loyal enough to their sire not to escort her. She was rescued by Ranger Jon, who slew Little Crag and still holds his ear as a trophy. Ranger Jon holds all Stonnish as enemies. Ranger Arn has parleyed with all three giants on behalf of Bess and has woven such a legend of death dealing about Ranger Jon, that all three of the giants live in terror of the man who can loose arrows that loop around entire mountains to find their target. This is, of course, bullshit. But Jon did put an arrow through Little Crag’s throat and send his head up the mountain with Toot Grog, Little Crag’s only son.

The Willows

Ranger Arn and Eda Berry hold lore on The Willows.

The Willows are pleasant to the eye and seductive to the ear, the rush of the Scarlet River below filtering up through the weeping branches of the willows and the hanging boughs of Weeping Spruce. There is little ground cover other than moss, fern and black berry. The margins of the Forest and the willows are dominated by vine maple, which Jailer Joe favors for whipping rods, being light and hard.

Numerous small seeps and brooks drain the higher forest and hills to east and north. The bull moose that bed down in The Willows tend to be very violent due to their berry intake and will attack wayfarers on a 3 in 6. Moose cows and their young avoid The Willows.

The problem with the Willows is also its allure, The Contrary Berry. These appear like black berry, with thick, thorny stalks, fronted by two creeping vines that wend along the ground and tend to trip passers bye. The Contrary Berry has a deeper purple to black fruit that fruits all year round. Its thorns are red and its creeper vines aggressive and ever seeking the track. These vines are vampiric, able to dart like snakes and bite with leech-like, white mouths at the end of each vine.

The bite of the vine does no damage. The bitten must save verses poison or spend a number of hours, equal to the margin of failure in constant disagreement with their fellows. Eating the berry has the same effect. Eda gathers these berries for sale to Border Town, where the Sheriff sells them through agents in Overwatch. These are valued by sorcerers, hangmen, inquisitors, alchemists and wytchfinders in their various pursuits. Durst purchases these berries for making Debate Night Wine, during which tavern goers, two chosen by lot, will be compelled to drink a thimble full and then argue upon the subject posited by the crowd.

The Red Hills

Ranger Bob and Hiedi Eggs hold lore on the Red Hills.

The low range of sand stone and clay hills, shelved in ochre colored slate is inhabited by wild and feral goats, gray lions and patrolled by rangers and their enemies, the Grogs and Stonish Giants. The hills are covered with scrub oak, big tooth maple and lone, towering, black bark pines.

Grogs [1] are the bastard monstrous births resulting from the rape of human women by Stonish Giants [2] or Skunk Apes [3]. Some suggest, that a Skunk Ape transforms into a Stonish Giant upon impregnating a woman. These ape men are confirmed bachelors. Once they have abducted and impregnated a woman, and she gives birth, that woman will be found a year later where the track down out of the Red Hills debouches into the vine maple between the Hide Forest and The Willows.

Grogs know who their mother is by scent and will not harm her. Both Hiedi and Eda have been abducted as have one of Durst’s slave girls. Bess has three grog sons but will not admit it. They are normal height men, extremely broad, with strength and toughness at the top 10% of the human range. They have a penalty to hit for throwing missiles, which are rocks and clubs, but do excessive damage. Their weapons are simple rocks and clubs. They dress in goat hides and fleece, with mutton their favorite meat.

Grogs have an ability to bite and rend for half a die of damage and are excellent climbers and cannot be outrun by a man. They do not seem as intelligent as their human parent, nor as wise and cunning as their Stonish parent. They are sterile 15 out of 16 cases. If this odd 16th Grog manages to mate with a woman he will transform into a Stonish giant and challenge his father. These creatures are called Grogs for their perpetual bloodshot eyes and their thirst for alcohol, which makes them more violent but impedes their mobility and already dim wits. Grogs are encountered like so as determined on a 1d6:

-1, 2, or 3: 1 grog, scouting

-4 or 5: 2 grogs, hunting

-6. 3 grogs, raiding for women for their lusty Sire

Stonish giants encountered in the Red Hills will withdraw into the Scarlet Mountains. [There are only two of these, Red and Big Crag. All three are known on sight to the Rangers and by name to Arn.]

The Scarlet Mountains

Ranger Jon ranges the Scarlet Mountains, while Arn and Bob avoid the depths of the range, skirting the lower shoulders of the mountains. The red rock and iron stone striations of these mountains are crowned with evergreen: pitch pine, black pine, pole pine and fir. Aspen and larch clothe the lower saddles of these rugged mountains.

Ordinary wildlife include, grisly bear, bison, black tail deer, gray lion, a pack of wolves, mountain goats, elk and bison. The wolf pack have a truce with the grogs and Stonish Giants.

The Great Stote ranges the Scarlet Mountains and has no natural predator. These will not attack a Stonish Giant but will attempt to feed on lone Grogs. Grogs are loyal to those who render aid, and if saved from a Great Stote would make a reliable ally, though they will not raise a hand against their Sire in less mated with a woman and tarnsformed.

The Great Stote is 6 to 9 feet tall, a giant flightless starling, a solitary animal that uses its beak to stab and then suck out the lungs and brains and other innards of mammals. It is the apex predator of these bleak mountains and the reason why grizzly bears behave more like mountain lions, sometimes pouncing on these wicked birds from cover. 2 of 3 of these birds have pouches, where they keep their single egg, and then their chick, which will be released as a Minor Stote in the Cedar Forest, someday to range the mountains above.

A Stonish Giant is a transformed Skunk Ape, more gray and white than brown and black and red of hair. He has had intercourse with a human woman and has had his mind expanded in the encounter. He has a hatred for men that replaces the fear of men of a Skunk Ape. He is as intelligent as an average man and apes mankind in his arts, making swords and axes of wood and bone, knives of stone and even fashioning armor.

Armor is made by taking bones, inscribed with symbols by the owner or a Feathered Contrary. These bone plates are then woven into the thick fur coat of the giant making of his own hide a kind of scale coat. It is one of the chief occupations of the Grog at rest to make, add to, repair and dress his Sire’s coat of bone. The skulls of slain enemies, to include bull bison and grisly bear, are treasured for armor scales. Bison heads are preferred for fashioning great, shaggy horned helmets.

There are three Stonish Giants in the Scarlet Mountains.

Red, is the smallest and has red hair, and only has three grogs. He lives west of the Scarlet River in a bleak cave. He prefers to throw a brace of clubs and fight with a stone knife and bone ax.

Big Crag is the prime and largest Stonish Giant and resides at Crag Mouth, having 9 grogs under his service. He is an awesome, towering specimen with deep gray hair. His weapon is a great curved sword fashioned of a mammoth tusk. [4] It has been worked and ground, and filed and polished until it is actually sharp. He also hefts a shield made from mammoth hide that a normal man may not even lift. It is 7 feet tall and three feet wide and shaped like a figure of 8 bowl. Big Crag is 12 feet tall and five feet wide at the shoulder.

He does not throw stones. But does have one of his grogs stationed above the mountain pass behind a boulder to roll down on intruders.

Old White, is a white and silver backed giant who has been ousted by Big Crag. He has but one grog, the rest killed by his bitter rival. He wields a massive club and throws large stones underhanded. He is a potential ally and lurks to the north and east of Crag Mouth, cut off from access to women by his bitter rival.

…

Notes

In my original teen age draft of Crag Mouth, these creatures were as follows, out of convention, with this version leaning on my Elder Earth novels Sorcerer!, Ranger?, and Wife—, in preparation for the writing of Slave. This did development work for my fiction and grants the reader of this something unique for his campaign.

-1. These were orks.

-2. These were ogres.

-3. These were Robert E. Howard’s Ape man of Valyet, as depicted in Rogues in the House [the ape man Thak] and Iron Shadows in the Moon.

-4. The mammoth herds live to the north of the Scarlet Mountains.

The lore below is held by Joel, as the clearing house of local lore, and by the parties named as having this knowledge.

The Cedar Forest, as named by the rangers and their women, is also known as Hide Forest to the rest of the Willow Hamlet folk. The story goes, according to Captain Crane and Jailer Joe, that it is where fools run and hide, and are then caught, if lucky, and brought back to have a tan applied to their runnagate hide.

The typical girth of the cedar trees at the base exceeds the combined reach of three tall men, it taking four tall men to join hands around the base. These cedar trees have palm like fronds that hang rather than bristling with needles like other evergreens and flare dramatically at the base. Thus they are cut 7 feet from the ground for the straight timber that can be rolled as sawed rounds to be split for firewood, and or sawed into planks we they are felled.

The chief undergrowth is moss and fern and mushroom. The moss climbs the trees and coats the lower branches, which, in the shade lose their palms as their tops reach for the sun. The trees on the forest edge have lower branches by far, especially on the east and south side. Rangers use spiked seaman’s hatchets and steel dew claws buckled to the inside of their boots to climb the cedars for a vantage on the mountains and countryside.

Ordinary wildlife are:

-Grey Wolf, with one pack running between the southern bogs and northern mountains. These avoid parties of men but will attack individuals, especially in the cold months to come.

-Black bear who den in the mountains above and prowl through the cedar forest, grazing on mushrooms to access the berries in the bog and the willows. These bear avoid groups of men but have dined on runaway boys and girls often enough to develop a taste for female flesh.

-Panthers prowl the cedar forest. Their typical prey is black tail deer. They will attempt to poach lone dogs from camps by night. The chief danger of a panther is the possibility of it being possessed by a feathered contrary and used as a sending.

-Great owls and red hawks dominate the tree tops by night and day respectively and serve as the familiars of feathered contraries.

-Grouse, or blue forest chickens abound here.

-Moose do transit the forest and will attack groups or individuals on site in 1 of 6 meetings.

-Great Bristle Boars are by far the most dangerous and aggressive being of the Hide Forest and tend to attack men on sight.

…

Strange Creatures and Things

Hiedi Eggs is the chief expert on Minor Stotes.

The Minor Stote is a three foot tall flightless starling, a ravenous bird that attacks individuals of any type, not to kill, but to drink, each bird darting in to peck deeply and slurp blood from thighs [usually] and then run off. 3 to 12 Minor Stotes run in three rival flocks. These vicious birds chatter and screech and regard testicles and eyes as delicacies. Their beaks are classed as small dirks. They are extremely agile, do not stand and fight, but run and bound over and along deadfalls to hunt and evade. Their flesh tastes like pork and is valued by Stonish Giants but detested by humans, who know where the pork taste comes from—human blood. Stote eggs are found in clutches within hollow deadfalls and are similar to goose eggs. Black bears and wolverines seek these eggs. Every Minor Stote that has pecked at Hiedi has been hunted and killed by Bob, so that both are left alone.

Bob is the expert on Skunk Apes, avoids and respects them, and claims they are harmless if left alone.

Skunk Apes, are 6 to 8 foot tall apes which hoot and do not have the power of speech. They climb and wade well but do not swim and avoid deep water. They have long hair and thick matted fur, stink terribly of a musk, avoid human contact and are formidable combatants, whose only enemies are found in the Mountains, with no bear, wolf or panther risking a fight with these intelligent loners who never seem to be encountered in a group. No young or family groups have been encountered.

Bob, Hiedi and Arn share knowledge of this amazing creature below:

A Feathered Contrary is a being of apish stature, seeming at a distance and in dim light to be a Skunk Ape. Seen closer it is similar in gait and stature to the Skunk Ape, but gaunt legged and bony armed, its lower limbs having a downy fur and its upper limbs, torso and head being clothed in emerald green feathers. This creature is molested by none of the ordinary animals and has been seen in conclave by Bob, Jon and Arn, indeed seeming like a teacher or advisor, to Skunk Apes and Stonish Giants.

Bob thinks that there are only two feathered contraries, one with a red feather behind the arm pit and the other with a black feather. Hiedi has heard them sing by night as Skunks Apes hoot. They sing like owls, she claims, and suggests they are the result of a mating between an owl and a Skunk Ape, which Bob sneers at. Arn believes that these are the two gods of the Skunk Apes and Stonish Giants. Jon posits that they may be elder Stonish Giant priests.

The feathers of the Feathered Contrary are greatly valued by Lisa for making her dream catchers and are said to hold memories, dreams and even visual scenes of sorrows that have been witnessed by these beings. Feathered Contraries will not fight under any circumstances, are very difficult to catch and trap, but, when chased sometimes shed valuable feathers.

Any human who shoots at a Contrary will be stalked by a panther sending and face clawed, but not killed. If the Contrary is injured the panther will seek to kill.

If touched by a human or a handheld weapon one of seven effects may occur against which the violating human must save according to the governing ability score listed. The Contrary will sense the most vulnerable characteristic and act through that means, for instance, afflicting the stupid with dream:

-1. Sleep for a number or hours equal to the die roll difference, against constitution.

-2. Affliction of doubt, against level, with failure causing the character to return to the nearest settlement.

-3. Stunned, against charisma, by a day terror or night terror into reversing his course of action. The terror will hold valuable information about Crag Mouth, a glimpse of a location within it.

-4. Dream, against intelligence, permitting the character to receive an informative vision that may assist him. The character will then be unable to make eye contact with or harm this creature. This is called by Arn, “a contrary parley.”

-5. Tangled, against dexterity, causing the character to trip or slip or get caught on some aspect of the forest.

-6. Curse, against wisdom, causing the character who fails to obsess over a possible failure such as falling, losing a combat or miscasting a spell, triggering a disadvantage roll in that category of action until which time the character is blessed by this or another Contrary of by a holy figure, talisman [1] or shrine.

-7. Waking Dropsy, against strength, with the character failing, falling to dosing for a moment and then waking with a feather in his hand. So long as the feather is on his person, this person gains strength in the measure he failed his roll. When without this feather, he re rolls strength actions at a disadvantage, but gains an informative, though riddlesome dream at each new moon.

These creatures are not evil, are not aligned with the Kells and do work for the benefit of Skunk Apes and Stonish Giants. It is they who have carved the Mountain Organ described in The North Track. They feed on mushrooms and contrary berries and are sighted often in The Willows and Weeper Bog feeding.

…

Weeper Bog

All of the rangers avoid this place and will advise others to do likewise.

Weeper Bog is infested with Stotes, whose chief prey is moose, whose backs they jump upon to drink their blood. These bounding birds are 5 feet tall and attack alone, from ambush, by jumping on the back or shoulders and thrusting their blood sucking beaks into chest or back. They are incredibly strong and used to feasting on moose, bear and boar blood. Being stabbed with their beak is like a rapier sword thrust for maximum damage. There will only be one stab, these beasts being notable conservationists among vampire kind.

There is nothing worthwhile in this hellish bog, draped as it is in bearded black willow, and infested with contrary berry, which is described in the North Track.

There is a sinkhole that bubbles an acrid stench and is said to be a vent of Hell, filled with water and impassable.

…

Notes

-1. Lisa’s dream catchers are valuable for this.

West Ranger Cabin

The rangers appear almost like brothers, all being long haired and heavily bearded and larger than normal.

Ranger Bob and Hiedi Eggs

Bob is the tallest and strongest longbowman in camp and brings in the most meat. With beef and swine not grown in Willow Hamlet, moose, elk and bison are highly valued. Bob avoids contact with Stonnish Giants and thinks Arn is insane for having parlayed these creatures. His wife, Hiedi collects the eggs of wild animals, most importantly the eggs of the Stote, Great Stote and feathered contrary. Bob does not use dogs on the hunt, but prefers a pack horse.

Central Ranger Cabin

Ranger Arn and Eda Berry

Arn, a stocky powerful man, specializes in hunting boar, using a spear and four great mastiffs, and keeping his longbow mostly as a ward against the Stonish Giants, upon whom he is an expert. His wife, Eda, studies the feathered Contrary and their relationship with the creeping Contrary Berry. Her best friend is Lisa Dream Catcher, to whom she provides contrary feathers.

Eastern Ranger Cabin

Ranger Jon and Bess Long

Jon is the senior, lead ranger, is the closest to normal size and is by far the most skilled tracker, shrewdest hunter and most feared man in Willow Hamlet. Jon has three mute scent hounds with whom he whispers. Jon has taken 6 runaway ears, which he wears on a rawhide chord about his neck. His hat is decorated with Great Stote plums and an ear of a Stonnish Giant he once slew. He cannot out do Bob in archery, but is such a good huntsmen that he has taken kills with his knife alone. Jon specializes in hunting: men, giants, wolves, lions and panthers.

Bess Long, Jon’s wife occupies herself curing meat and mushroom picking. She lives under an assumed name and is in fact the escaped bride of a merchant of Deep Sound. When she was recovered by Jon, she seduced him, naming his uncollected bounty as her bride price. Bess is the smartest woman in camp, by far and not easily outwitted.

Brewery

Brewer Bent is a far too scrawny to be a brewer, yet he is, silver bearded and bald, wearing a high bear fur hat. He is a cuss and operates a still, which he reserves mostly for his own use and for the members of the council and select visitors. He is a cuss who plays knucklebones, which he makes from Ranger Bob’s kills. The Breweress Megs, is the chief beer maker, her husband mostly concerned with distilling from her efforts, “the real drink.” Megs is a tall, fat woman with long black hair who is lusty in laughter and grows her own hops in her garden, as well as night ferns, which she gives to Lisa Dream catcher for her creations, in return for advice.

Maid Cabin

Lisa was a Sent Wife from Deep Sound whose husband died while she was in route. The husband was a taxidermist and scalp hoop dresser. She, along with her Lady Confessor, Nunny Glens moved into the taxidermy den where they do something similar, using the hair of Stonnish Giant, the feathers of Contraries and other such elements as night ferns, contrary vines and Raven feathers to construct dream catchers. A dream catcher must be made for a specific person, over the course of three nights, while Lisa consults her tarot cards and the catcher in the dream sleeps upon the couch maintained for that purpose. The effects of these dream catchers range from the storage of terrors in a blame well and the revelation of mysteries, to include especially the Crag Mouth Heap, the Silver Gate and the Well of Kells.

Moderator note: use the information in these destinations and place them in a dream through some anxiety to which the dreamer might be prone.

Nunny Glens, is a young petite bride of Faith. As a Lady Confessor she assists, listening to the mumbles of the dreamer and playing appropriate tunes on her mouth organ, an array of seven flute pipes, each as thick as the ring finger of: a lass, a lad, a lady, a factor, a monk, a knight, and a stone deacon or mason. Nunny Glens was conceived out of wedlock by the Elder Lord Bund, upon a hand maiden to his Lady Wife, and was given over to a nunnery. She was detailed to guide wives as penance for her crime of conception. In Lisa she found a more agreebal purpose.

Matron Cabin

Mamma Herb is a short round drum of a woman with a mob of thick white hair, who serves as the hamlet healer and herbalist.

Apple Spinster is a less robust and more reserved apprentice to her station, who was freed by Durst on completion of her service of 14 years served for picking apples off the ground in the Lord Bund’s orchard.

Smithy

Black Bront is a big, broad, sooty handed iron maker who dreams of forging swords, if only war would be kind enough to come to the Scarlet Mountains.

Slag Boy, a youthful and somehow fat slave, is his apprentice.

Bellows Boy, a thin, blond fellow of wasted face and sunken eyes, looking older than his 20 years by double, hauls wood, works the bellows, banks coals and rakes ash. Black Bront is proud that he beats his own boys, despises Joe the Jailer, and often challenges him to arm wrestle. His boys are well behaved, with bellows bow secretly wishing to escape and be adopted by Stonnish Giants or Dreamed off by a Feathered contrary.

Jeweler

Teigler Finder is the cousin of Joel the silver smith and makes a modest living fashioning devices for Lisa’s creations from his cousin’s silver wire. He is quiet and tight lipped and does know the secret of Silver Gate, overheard from his cousin’s conclave with a pair of doomed prospectors.

Willow Inn

Innkeeper Durst is a tall, shaven headed larch of a man with proper trimmed and oiled chin beard and sweeping mustache. He dresses in silk shirts and pressed wool pants and adores broad belts with a silver buckle. He was a noted duelist and gambler in Deep Sound who took his winnings and his well-earned leave from that port town, just ahead of an angry Captains Five and married good wife Durst, even taking her name, her deceased husbands name. He is a shrewd judge of character and capacity in people, is a cold blooded killer, and maintains a cold business relationship with his wife.

Goodwife Durst, cook to the Plantation, is a lusty woman, with long red hair, broad features and well fed figure. She looks away as her husband of record beds her serving wenches, even as he pretends not to notice his wife’s adore for Captain Crane, who stays one night a week at the inn, in a room reserved for him. Goodwife Durst, the famous cook of the frontier, is in love with the captain, who is utterly controlled by her contracted husband, who she rightfully fears, not even knowing his given name, he was so eager to take hers.

Durst’s House Slaves

Within the Inn, no one is called a slave, not under Goodwife Durst’s roof. They are all honored servants, glad to be toiling in the fine house rather than in the forest or gardens.

Big Thump, doorman, is near seven feet, active, coordinated in the normal way and having huge hands. He carries a leather paddle to discipline unruly visitors and servants.

Toothless May, baker, is a wrinkled old wench.

Grist Gray, butcher, is a leathery old man with one glassed over eye, who adores toothless May.

Piss, crap house tender and garbage hauler is eprpetually discontented with his lot. He has a very bad case of pox scars and his curly brown hair does not want to grow below his cropped ears, where the hangman at Low Bund burned him with the thief brand.

Toothy May, barmaid, has a fair figure, a loud cackling laugh, big bucked teeth, plump lips, a plush head of curly red hair and dresses in a low cut blouse and short skirt, going barefoot on the boards. May is the property of the Dursts. As he mother a slut from low Bund, died in child birth under their roof, in their service.

Busty Britches, laundress of middle years, long hair still blond though streaked with gray, smiles little as she is missing some teeth. She is buxom and short and was expelled from Low Bund for sluttery, though she claims she was merely a slattern that refused to pleasure the mayor and was disposed of as a laundress to this “gloomy front tier, what drives from a girl many a lonely tear.” Busty keeps the entire Inn cleaned and is ever seeking a man who might buy her from the Dursts and take her away.

Goatherd Camp

Dan, is a tall dark skinned boy, a runaway from Raven Watch, with brown hair and said brown eyes who loves his dogs.

Clem, is a tall, freckle-faced redhead, a runaway from Raven Watch, who loves his dogs but is obsessed with his slinging ability, fancying himself something of a warrior goatherd.

Essaw is an old, tired goatherd who has adopted Dan and Clem as his freed sons, after paying their capture price. He can no longer run but can walk all day bent upon his stave. His slinging days are also long gone. He is perhaps the oldest member of the camp, as the people of the Plantation Willow Hamlet collectively call themselves. Next to Joel the silver smith and Jon the ranger, he is possibly the most informed about the wild lands.

The lore about the surrounding wilderness may be gleaned from certain persons of Willow Hamlet who possess this knowledge. Every occupant of the Plantation is detailed in brief below. The Lore itself and who possesses it is contained in:

Weeper Bog and Cedar Forest

Crag Mouth #6

and

The North Track

Crag Mouth #7

Jail

Jailer Joe is a brutal coward, a large shaven headed man who beats slaves regularly in the pen and is terrified of the forest, swamp and mountains. He regards the rangers with a superstitious dread. He is in fact a slave for life to Willow Hamlet, held jointly by the Plantation Council:

Captain Crane [Controlled by Durst]

Innkeeper Durst [effective governor of Willow Hamlet]

Joel Hedgesmith [Independent]

Black Bront [Controlled by Durst]

Brewer Brent [Controlled by Durst]

These five men vote on any article of concern and bar any persons engaged in external duty, like goatherding and hunting, from political influence. Joe is responsible for whipping, beating, torturing, boring, cropping, shaving and hanging malcontents, by order of their owner or the Plantation Council.

Slave Pen

name, employment, employer, past

Kink, Cook, Innkeeper Durst, vagabond orphan, a red headed freckle faced boy with kinky hair, bound for 5 years to Durst after running from seaman’s service in Deep Sound, where he was a cabin boy.

Slack, porter, Innkeeper Durst, vagabond orphan, a stocky blond boy with shaven head and wiry frame, held for 7 years by Durst after his laundress mother died, being beaten by Joe, for laughing at Prentice Neal’s lisp.

Slink, porter, Innkeeper Durst, orphan apprentice runaway held for life by Durst based on theft of eggs, the second son of the slain laundress, Ellen.

Chuck, wood cutter, Innkeeper Durst, a pauper who is going lame in early middle years and begs each harvest moon to be held bound for another year. He expects to be sent off this coming winter, as his shoulders are giving out, and would offer his service to a wayfarer who seems less cruel than Durst.

Gar, fisherman, Innkeeper Durst, idle pauper, black haired and gaunt in his middle years, held by Durst annually, who is jealous of his fishing and afraid to return to Bund where he will be put to harder use.

Slouch, porter, picker, fisher, Innkeeper Durst, encourageble rogue and rapist, beaten every Friday by Joe at the post and often caught humping that very post. He is slave for life to Durst, who spared him yet bars him from staying in the house due to his extreme lust.

Little Girl, chicken maid, skinny bed warmer half price in winter, full price in summer, held by Durst for life, she is a half orphan runaway who was quite cute before Slouch knocked her front teeth out for a bloody kiss.

Big Girl, wet nurse, bed warmer and laundress, held by Durst annually, a slut who has no marriage prospects and must prove her usefulness always to earn another year of jail life, preferable to her to being humped by ruffians in the alleys of Low Bund. She has stabbed Slouch twice with hair pins and glares at him regularly. Her baby, born of rape, was sold three years ago and she was sold for a year to Durst for the crime of sex out of wedlock. She would love to be sold to an adventurer and would extol her value as a camp follower to any likely man with money in his purse or sand in his soul.

Pretty Girl, bed warmer, Durst’s favorite slave, a black haired blue eyed hour glass of a wench, an orphan of a raped orphan girl from Deep Sound, who she sings songs about, idolizing her mother, who, she is told, died in child birth bringing her into the same cruel world that now used her. She does harbor romantic notions about almost everything, except for sex. Durst’s wife is cruel to her and refuses to let her live in the inn, even as propriety bars her from the maid or matron house. Both of these places she constantly seeks for advice and refuge whenever a chore can bring her there. The inmates of the maid and matron house care for her very much and have extracted a pledge from Captain Crane to prevent the worst.

Fink, held by Durst & Crane for five years, is a young orphan lad with broad shoulders and bouncing brown curls, who loves going barefoot even in winter and fancies himself a Ranger one day. He will seek to attach himself to an adventurer as an apprentice, bought from Durst & Crane. He is in love with Pretty Girl, who he has been warned off by Durst and Joe, being beaten twice for looking at her.

Block House

Captain Crane, is a tall silver haired man in late middle years, a middling swordsman armed with a broadsword and a good pistoleer armed with two wheellocks. He is loyal to Durst, not confident in his own judgment, but gritty and steadfast in a crisis. Crane is not a brute and cannot bring himself to whip or beat his men. He is not chivalrous in nature but is easily engaged by oath to people he respect. These include those men wiser and more intelligent than him, as well as women of high moral standing, such as matrons and nuns. For all of his faults, Crane knows that he is in the middle range of reasoning and sees his place largely as taking the wise counsels and commands of holy men and politicians and applying them to the bottom portion of humanity.

Footman Bust is a short, stocky, black-haired freedman with smashed in nose, who guards the foot bridge with a halbred, having a hammer hanging from his belt as a side arm. He dresses in a long gray cowl and tunic and is proudly fond of his bear hide shawl, made for him by Mamma after he slew that very bear that had gotten into her garden. “I am Captain Crane’s man,” is one of his favorite stock phrases. He is painfully stupid and loyal beyond all reasonable fault.

Musketgee Pete is a freedman of early middle years, a runaway from Deep Sound where he had jumped ship as an impressed seaman. Recovered by Crane, Pete was named Musketgee based on his excellent long gun handling and has been retained as a soldier for life to Crane, who has promised to adopt him on his deathbed and elevate him to the Captain’s rank. This has been publicly agreed to by The Council. Pete is brave, cool under pressure and a crack shot as he levels his long beaked nose along the stock of his prize weapon. Pete is charged with the care and use of both of the muskets held in the Blockhouse.

Wood Shed

Watchman Daniel, is a woodchuck bound for life to Willow Hamlet in return for care in his old age. He is afraid of dying cold and alone as his brothers did back in Low Bund. Daniel is intelligent, hard working, attentive and a coward.

Underwatchman Span is a fearless logger who is apprenticed to Daniel under Durst and Crane as second woodsman. He has been promised freedom in 5 years. His open, freckled face and glinting blue eyes betray a confidence in his ability to run the woodshed and eventually take a 6th council seat, an idea put into his head by Durst.

Woodschuck Brem is stupid, lazy, but not willful, sulking often from under his beetle brows and brown bangs of bowl cut hair, his brown eyes beady and worried. Brem lives in constant fear that he will starve and is a glutton. He is a slave for life due to food theft increases in his service time. He was an idle pauper in Low Bund, sold into service by order of The Mayor. “by order of the mayor,” is his must commonly uttered mumble of phrase, anytime he is called to account or asked for information.

Woodchuck Jon, is active, intelligent, competent, works only as hard as he must, never shirking. He idles away his spare time carving totems of Angels as gifts and seems ever lost in thought. He is a gray-eyed, blond-headed, athletic and a gifted fighter, who ran away from service at Raven Watch out of hatred for the Warden. His word is judged good and he has sworn to Crane, who holds him, to serve three honest years in return for not being sent back to the Warden. Jon is secretly an Alienist who has developed a great thirst for angelic lore and has theories backed by dreams as to the Silver Gate and the Well of Kells. He alone has not confided in Joel, who he does not trust and names “the Silver Monger.”

Silver Smithy

Joel Hedgesmith does excellent work transforming silver brought down out of the scarlet mountains by the rangers and occasional prospectors. He will engage wayfarers in silver finding and actually knows all of the lore that the individuals of Willow Hamlet know, except for that possessed by Woodchuck Jon. He will only impart such lore to those who he maintains as prospectors and silver finders.

Silver Chapel

Prentice Neal is a man of hazel eyes, wispy brown hair and malformed nose and lip. He wears a silver mask below his eyes and speaks with a strident lisp and is haunted by the killing of the laundress, who he will not name, for the crime of laughing at his lisp. He is the younger half-brother of Joel Hedgesmith. Neal is conflicted in his theology, secretly afraid that as his brother whispers to him, that there is no God and that only monsters stalk humanity. He has qualified for a deaconship, but lacked the confidence to attend the rank and clings to his brother. He would dearly welcome and cling to evidence of Godly and Angelic intervention to renew his faith. He will pray avidly to The Mother of God, to any named Angel, and also scold “the False God of Scarlet Mountain,” on behalf of any wayfarer kind enough to describe the Dawn Angel chapel, which he is afraid to visit, and bold enough to strike out into the wilds.

West Ranger Cabin

Ranger Bob and Hiedi Eggs

Central Ranger Cabin

Ranger Arn and Eda Berry

Eastern Ranger Cabin

Ranger Jon and Bess Long

Brewery

Brewer Bent

Breweress Megs

Maid Cabin

Lisa Sent Wife

Nunny Glens

Matron Cabin

Mamma Herb

Apple Spinster

Smithy

Black Bront

Slag Boy, slave

Bellows Boy, slave

Jeweler

Teigler Finder

Willow Inn

Innkeeper Durst

Goodwife Durst, cook

Durst’s House Slaves

Big Thump, doorman

Toothless May, baker

Grist Gray, butcher

Piss, crap house tender

Toothy May, barmaid

Busty Britches, laundress

Goatherd Camp

Dan

Clem

Essaw

Willow Hamlet is a modest Plantation now 60 years old, that was originally planted to serve as a base for mining operations in the Scarlet Mountains, which are known to be rich in Iron and Silver. No significant prospecting or mining has been conducted in living memory, which is to say 30 years.

The hamlet is situated across the watered gorge known as The Scarlet River, from the foot of Old Knob, the lowest, baldest and most southern of the Scarlet Mountains. The west side of the river is not fordable north of the heavy rope bridge that sways across the River, 40 feet above the swift cold waters and the jagged slabs of red slate and sandstone. Neither is the way passable on foot north of Willow Hamlet on the west side of the gorge.

South of the Hamlet, 100 paces are The Falls, a thirty foot drop in the gash of a river bed, which takes it down into swampy meadows favored by Moose and less ordinary creatures. This expanse spreads out to the south, east and west, as the river threads its lower way to the sea through this maze of pools, sinkholes, seeps and gullies.

Opposite the hamlet, across the inconvenient and dangerous gorge, threads the Goatherd track among the low grassy hills that attend Old Knob at its feet. Old Knob itself is bald above 500 feet, towering as it does to 1500 feet, below this chalky pile of red striated walls and rusty black stone buttresses, the waist of the mountain is covered in stunted oaks and maple.

Away south and west the land opens up to even pasture dotted with low hills of a hundred feet of less, clothed in spreading oak and bunched maple about their feet and topped with pitch pine and fir.

To the east of Willow Hamlet, its soaring boughs looming far and above the mere 15 foot high stockade wall, is a great old cedar forest. This dark green expanse rises to east and northeast with the increase in elevation. These increasingly massive trees, some with trunks 20 feet thick, march like sentinels up into the Scarlet Mountain, red cuts of stony mountain face visible among the misty greenery in the rising distance. This is known as Hide Forest.

To the north of Willow Hamlet, as the rope bridge is crossed on wide cedar planks, the wayfarer can see whence the small Plantation got its name. For a league along the river, between the red stone mountains to the west and the soaring green cedars to the east, runs a half mile wide expanse of weeping willows, seemingly sheltered on one hand from the red rocks and on the other under their gigantic cousin trees. A narrow road wends its way between the wall of great cedar trunks and the willows up towards a curiously rounded set of ochre-tainted hills.

An easy musket shot, being 50 paces, above the bridge, in part overhanging the scarlet gorge is a block house with firing ports, a sturdy garrison house for refuge in battle and command of the bridge. A sentry with musket ever stands on the widow walk upon the roof, between a Silver leaf on Green banner either fluttering or hanging limp, and a bell, what actually appears to be a ship’s bell far from home.

Beneath the front porch of this important house, a small swift creek passes under a footman’s rounded bridge, narrow enough to admit only one broad man or horse and being made of a five foot ramp, a five foot top span and a five foot ramp, a bridge built to be defended by a single man if necessary. This bridge debouched onto a beaten track—the continuation of the North Road—north between the Block House and a great woodshed. The creek splashes out in a little horsetail fall beneath to south west corner of the block house.

On the south side of creek, known simply as The Creek, the road has been widened and improved with red slate flags that take the wayfarer past the jail and gated slave pen, to the Willow Inn.

The area encircled by the Scarlet Gorge to the west, the creek to the north, and the stockade wall to the east and south, is a mere two acres. The central building, being the inn, a great plank house with kitchen, great hall, cellar, and 14 rooms on the second story, is as large as the other buildings combined, which are described below, all of which are log cabins. Small cabins are 12 by 16, large 16 by 24, all with a red brick fire place and chimney and red slate hearth, firewood lining the outer walls.

From east to west, behind the Inn:

Brewery, were the Creek emerges from the forest around which the stockade wall has been built with an axle for the waterwheel placed there. The brewery is built up against the southeast corner of the inn.

Under the east wall behind the brewery is a maid’s cabin.

Directly behind the Inn is a matron’s cabin.

Between these two cabins laundry is done in casks and hung from poles.

Against the southern wall of the stockade are three cabins:

The largest is the iron smithy and forge, to the east next to the maid’s cabin.

Behind the matron’s cabin is a jeweler’s cabin and silver smith’s cabin.

To the southwest is The Crap Door, where a wooden gate to the crap house outside of the southwest corner is guarded by an unhappy soul.

Against the west wall of the stockade is the Silver Chapel, the shrine of Willow Hamlet Plantation, a cabin topped with a star of beaten silver, which is polished by a slave daily.

Between the west wall, the chapel, the inn and the jail and slave pen, which is the first building to front the bridge from the west track, is an extensive garden, positioned for the best sunlight.

Between the east wall of the inn, the brewery and the waterwheel is a shade garden, kept by the brewer.

North of the Creek, the wall extends 40 feet to the hen house, with the chicken coop preventing the birds from fouling the creek water.

Where the wall terminates one may draw a straight east to west line to the Block House and footman’s bridge along the open south face of the wood shed. The track north leaves between the block house and shed.

The woodshed is 18 feet high, built with cedar top beams between four massive trunks of trees that were cut 18 feet up. Hand holds are notched into these four 8 foot thick trunks, so that each of these stumps serve as lookout towers. The tops of each have been hollowed to chest high, so a man might stand and deliver musket fire or loose arrows.

The wood from the tops of these four woodshed pillars provided planks for the inn 60 years ago when it was the third building after the block house and the shed to be erected. The rest of the wood required to build the great inn was got from the main spans of the three cedar stump houses to the east, between the shed and the line of the stockade.

These structures are called the Ranger Cabins, but are not cabins at all. Rather these are watch towers rendered from standing trunks. These three massive cedar, 60 feet apart, each, one from the wood shed and the other two from each other, the second in line with the stockade and the third outside its geometry, have been hollowed out, floored for a second story and roofed for a watch platform.

While the Hide Forest looms thick and high over the stockade, an entire acre of clear ground is kept scythed down and used to graze the few milk cows and ranger horses, the former belonging to the Inn.

The goat herds bring their flocks across the rope bridge at dusk and make camp outside of the western stockade wall, between it and the Scarlet Gorge above The Falls. The space between the stockade and the gorge, also occupied by the ramshackle crap house, where the goatherds camp, constitutes nearly two acres, denuded of plant growth, overlooking the naked, roaring gorge.

A rocky slope to the south of this, covered in a thick tangle of thorny blackberry, extends below and to the south of the stockade wall, to the southeast corner, where the great cedars shade that end of the slope, choking out anything but moss and ferns.

As the wayfarers journey east along the beaten clay earth track, the grazing grass seems to be fairer the further east one goes, begging the question why flocks and herds are kept west of the shrine. The ground is high light clay and not good for planting. The many small hills and low end morains, pushed into place by giants ages ago, are thickly wooded with alder, maple, oak and pitch pine.

The Scarlet Mountains to the north march further south the more eastward one goes, with some being seen in the distance in the direction taken by the strictly westerly track. That, where the track seems to reach the foot of the most southern peak, is, the traveler has been told, where Willow Hamlet stands as the very last outpost of the Front Tier of Bund.

The shrine of the Angel of Dawns is formed of black and red stone taken from nearby end morains. The winged roof eves of the open loft are pleasing to the eye and apparently impractical. Most astonishing is that the 20 foot round tower has a westward reaching hand of long delicate feminine proportions laid into it, seemingly reaching out to the traveler from the western walls. For the majority rock of the construction was glassine obsidian to black and gray slate and the minority rocks were scarlet sand stone stained with ochre that were inset so as to form a westward reaching hand of Dawn.

Though no fire has been seen trailing smoke from this location, or any, during the day’s march, a fire is lit in a red brick kiln before the shrine. The beaten track wraps around the kiln, with the chapel dominating the space with its long evening shadow. A well is visible to the north by ten paces, the road around the kiln having obviously often served to herd livestock.

Three figures stand about the kiln, in an attitude of parley, rather than menace. A fourth figure is seen standing under the angel wing eves of the open loft, 18 feet above the ground.

These four men will judge the strength of the party, no matter their number. A strong party will be treated as guests, have their mounts cared for, will have mutton and rabbit prepared to eat and will be given honest information about Willow Hamlet in hopes of reward.

These men pose as agents of the Sheriff, though nothing has been said of them back in Barrier Town. They operate as porters, guards, horse thieves, murderers and even outright brigands depending on the strength of the party. The only weak party that will not be molested will be a holy man charged with tending the shrine, who they will serve and not molest, though they might beg somewhat for donatives.

These men are:

Gallant, a tall, angular-faced swordsman, armed with a rapier and a main guanche, wearing a boiled leather cuirass and gauntlets over loose pants and wide cuffed shirt, all shrouded by a worn black cloak. His boots were once rich but are very worn. He is literate, speaks an upper class dialect unfamiliar to Bund and is a formidable swordsman, but not fool hardy. Any man who seems his to be near his equal he will negotiate with, having little confidence in his fellows.

Crumb is a thin, slightly short, bald man with one eye patched over and possessed of a bushy white beard. He is armed with a hatchet and a knife and is usually engaged in firewood collection, a service these men provide for strong parties. He is dressed in a threadbare wool shirt and canvas trousers and goes barefoot. [0]

Tick is a small red-headed youth armed with a knife and three throwing daggers in his broad leather belt. He wears a dirty buckskin tunic, a buckskin head band to confine his unruly locks and goes barefoot. Tick keeps watch in the loft and is quite fearful of combat and fittingly accurate with his daggers.

Brick is a block-headed man with a black mop of hair, armed with a club and wearing a fleece vest and kilt. He is obviously stupid, strong, and to Gallant, loyal.

Large black and brown bears do journey down out of the Scarlet Mountains and may pose a danger to unwary lone travelers. There is a mountain lion who has developed a taste for dogs and hunts by night.

Gallant and his men, if they had made some kind of arrangement with the party, will not accompany them, claiming falsely to be charged by the Sheriff with guarding the shrine.

The shrine contains a working fountain, constructed above a pressurized spring, which does give off steam. The water of the well is very different. Female pilgrims will be asked to sleep sitting in the fleece lined brick chair next to the fountain and tell of their dreams. Men sitting in the chair are thought to be cursed, and youths turned into a hermaphrodite. Gallant does maintain this much of a command of the angelic lore.

The altar is worked in rose pedals from a block of red limestone raised on an obsidian block. A small cresset for burnt offerings occupies the center of the modest altar. Protruding from the east wall over the altar is a relief statue of a youthful winged woman extending her hand towards the west.

Blessings and curses may be dispensed based on the actions of the traveler about the fountain, altar and chair. Silver coins have been deposited to the number of 9 in the steaming fountain waters [which are said to be healing and may be drunk from without causing affront] and have not been molested by Gallant and his men, who are quite poor. Though they are not men of much faith, the four of them have become increasingly loyal to the Dawn Angel and believe in her powers. It pains them that there is no attendant chaplain, and any lone man of learned type they will seek to convince to stay, and offer to “serve” him, to include preventing him from deserting his post.

A small hearth of brick has seen much use and is kept clean against the west wall. It is vented through an internal chimney that pierced the wood plank roof above and gives off smoke from a hooded tin pipe. This is the stealthy camp site of gallant and his men, who clean it for visitors and offer the space tot hose they judge strong or faithful.

Half a day east from the Chapel goat flocks will be encountered, tended by 6 dogs, two youths, Dan and Clem, and a man, Essaw by name. These flocks will be well spread out and not encountered together. Due to the lighting of the kiln at dusk the previous night [1] the goatherds will be expecting travelers. Each is armed with a sling, a stave, a small knife and accompanied by two wolfish collies with grisly black coats. They graze separate by day and camp together under or within the walls of Willow Hamlet by night.

The Scarlet River is a ghastly red gash, a 30 foot deep canyon with a stream at its base. The rocks are of red sand stone. The river can be forded on foot and by horse at many points. This requires a careful crossing or a serious fall might occur. It serves as a treacherous natural moat for the small village on its eastern bank.

Notes

-0. Based on the author.

-1. Gallant and his men typically refrain from lighting a fire outside that issues smoke unless there are visitors, and prefer to camp inside using the small hearth.

The Sheriff always knows when wayfarers are headed east along the Bund Road. The fief is not called Overwatch for nothing. Messenger pigeons are kept in the eve loft of North Tower to communicate with Raven Watch. Likewise the South Tower has a flock of pigeons for communication with Castle Bund.

Men fit to serve in numerous dangerous capacities are desired by Sheriff Madoc. Likewise, the Good Lord Bund is possessed by a constant need to avoid financing Barrier Town, crucial as it is to securing his long border with the dangerous wilds to the east. Thus, when fugitives, hunters, adventurers, merchants, strangers, and even holy pilgrims to the Angel Dawn’s shrine, travel east from Bund, the gatekeeper there, unless he has been engaged with a bribe or directed by his Lord, will send a description of the wayfarer to the Sheriff.

Thus, any first time visitor to Barrier Town will happen to arrive on Tax Day! Woodchucks, hay bailers, swineherds and garden girls will be summoned to Barrier Town by the tolling of the bell in the Shrine of the Mother of God, erected on a scaffold opposite the gallows, facing west. Hence a visitor, pilgrim, even a traveling teacher, will have the terrible ill-luck to arrive as flocks are driven into town for tax assessment. The entire town is in on the grift. Every servant and slave will act his part and not give over the secret to the stranger who he or she secretly hopes will replace them in their toils.

The herald will interview the travelers between shrine, in line with the north tower, and gallows, in line with the south tower, directly between the western gate and the eastern drawbridge.

The Acolyte of the Shrine of The Mother of God, alone, does not engage in the deception, though he will not actively inform the travelers.

The henchling knights, Briss and Trent, will seek to arrange a duel with any likely swordsman. If either of these is slain, the slayer must serve the Sheriff in his stead.

The interview of each wayfarer is conducted by the herald, who informs them of the Terms of Passage:

Pilgrims, Priests, Teachers, Monks and Mourners will be engaged to serve for a week in the gardens from sun up to sundown, except for the Sabath. Or, such folks may have such toilsome service waived in return for their pledge to serve as Chaplain at the Shine of the Dawn Angel for the remainder of the current month.

Those who seem to be likely combatants or adventurers, who do not take the bait to duel one of the knights, will be engaged as agents of the Sheriff with some duty to discharge in Willow Hamlet, generally to help defend or expand the place.

Merchants, traders, prospectors, teachers and ordained holy men will be asked for a donative sum, their treatment contingent on their generosity.

Magi, Alienists, Alchemists and Rangers will not be taxed in this way, but will be issued a letter of introduction and a pledge of service to the Captain of Willow Hamlet, signed by Sheriff Mordoc. Each such person will be bound to complete but one task assigned by the Captain.

Likewise, any fighter type who bests a knight in duel will be engaged as an agent of the Sheriff. A man who loses the duel agreed to will be locked in the stocks and given a choice of being whipped upon the morrow and sent in fetters to Willow Hamlet as a seven year slave, or of pledging to serve a full year to the date as a ranger charged with protecting Willow Hamlet.

An obviously strong man will be asked to wrestle the local youths and to participate in a friendly drinking bout.

Prices for those goods and services that may be had are double the normal rate. Food, beer, leather goods, woolen clothing and blankets, axes, knives and spears are in good supply, though expensive.

Visitors must always leave with the dawn the day after tax day, to the tolling of the eastward bells. Two small bells rung from the gallows, the same used to announce a hanging or whipping.

The wayfarers will be informed that the Chapel of the Dawn Angel has no Chaplain. The Chapel is so placed halfway between Barrier Town and Willow Hamlet, so that he who departs either place with the dawn will arrive just before sunset on the shortest day of the year at this holy halfway point. The chapel is a simple one room stone building with a roofed loft. This roof is so designed like an angel’s wings to cast a shadow at dawn and sunset upon the beaten track and is known as a sacred destination for penitents, mourners, holy men and, so it is said, prophets as far away as Deep Sound and Low Bund.

For those who have coin or valuable goods, the Sheriff may be disposed to sell any of the following malcontents, the three of which are locked in half of the six stocks.

Brand the Swift, has shifty, narrow green eyes under curly red locks. He has been branded on both cheeks for running away. He will not talk before the Sheriff or the herald—the latter of which he snarls at habitually—who will explain that Brand was a cut purse, pick pocket and burglar in Low Bund and was sold into bondage here. He is locked in the stocks, though he is regarded as no danger, because he is infamously lazy and has a knack for slipping out of his fetters. Brand makes no promises and seems too proud to beg.

Chunk the Black, has greasy black hair, is tall and thickly built, and was a deserter from Raven Watch, a watchman sold into service by his widowed mother, who escaped the Warden of that place and is regarded as an excellent wood cutter and formidable wrestler. However, Chunk is also feared, as he is thought to have purposely felled a fir so that it would squash his overseer, which it did. There being no witness to this possible murder, and Chunk being unable to speak due to having his tongue cut out by the Warden of Raven Watch for striking a sergeant, this fellow is being sold cheaply to whosoever might risk his service. Chunk is surly and slope shouldered. Any alienist or expert commander set to examine him will note that he is predisposed to loyal behavior and seems subject to some lowly, inner code. His ears have been bored and his thumbnails torn out by the farrier. He seems immune to pain.

Clyne is a convicted pirate, survivor of an infamous crew broken up by the Captain’s Five of Deep Sound and their henchmen. He speaks quickly and in curt fashion, denies ever having been a pirate and claims to be a first rate seaman and allergic to livestock. He will swear to loyally serve any who would buy him and free him from the stocks. Both of his ears are notched at the bottom and he has deep scars upon his back. His hair is bright yellow and his teeth better than normal.

Overwatch Fief is in a northern temperate zone. Overwatch is a littoral fief, roughly ten leagues from west to east and 50 leagues from north to south. The land is hilly and well watered by many creeks and seeps, which flow southwest into Sable River, a navigable watercourse, and southeast into Barrier River, a swift-flowing and rocky watercourse.

The center of this territory is Castle Bund, situated to the extreme west upon Sable River. The Lord of Bund is a bastard, barred from the line of succession, but traditionally granted a fief on the Front Tier of Civilization by The Prince.

The Principality, proper is to the west.

From north to south are three distinct regions of Overwatch Fief. To the north, running 5 leagues from south to north is Raven Watch, a stone tower, occupying the only pass through the western extremity of the Scarlet Mountains, which halt their march there. Below the tower, to the southwest, is Palisade, a goatherd village of some 90 souls enclosed with a yellow pine stockade. Thanks to the tower, manned by ten ax men and a man-at-arms, and the sling stones and stony valor of the 20 odd goatherds, the tribesmen, reindeer herding nomads living to the north of the Scarlet Mountains, are wont to trade at Raven Watch rather than raid.

The Castle Bund is a simple affair of three towers, walled about in brick, which stands on a hill overlooking Sable River and the town below. The Town is named Low Bund, with a population of some 500 souls, chiefly employed fishing, ferrying and trading from poled rafts. A ferry house does occupy a low rise on the west side of the river, which is some 200 feet across. The Lord Bund employs a captain, a sergeant, a corporal, 10 pikemen and 10 musketeers.

Meat, hide and leather production are the chief produce of the region, which spans 40 leagues from Raven Watch in the North to Deep Sound in the south. Cowherds, swineherds and shepherds have sparsely-manned, unwalled plantations among the wooded hills, with gardens tended by women and servants. Nearer Barrier River to the east individual hunters and fur trappers occupy a handful of cabins.

Deep Sound is the steep-hilled inlet where Sable River enters into the Sea. This town of fishermen, wool merchants and whalers is the population center of Overwatch, counting near 700 souls. A counsel of ships captains carry out the rare demands of, pay tariffs to, and make petitions to the Lord Bund of Overwatch. The town is un-walled and sheltered by steep hills covered in Cedar, maple, Alder and fir.

The eastern leagues are settled only by the rare hunter and fur trapper in his cabin, except for Barrier Town, situated upon the Barrier River. This stockaded settlement is built to guard the drawbridge over the deep rocky river on its high west bank.

The dirt road from Castle Bund, which is thus central, connected by the river to Deep Sound and to Barrier Town by the only beaten track, has a circuit of yellow pine wall of 180 feet, anchored on two bends in the river. There is no wall upon the river, but an earthen rampart. Above the west end of the bridge stand two wooden towers which operate the two rope cables of the draw bridge with separate windlasses placed at their base, drawing the cables through great pulleys mounted at their top. The bridge is 32 feet across this narrowest span of the deep gully of the riverbed. On the far side it comes to rest on a raised earthen platform.

14 simple cabins and 12 servant shacks occupy the interior of the stockade, with Barrier Town being more of a place of refuge and gathering, where taxes are paid and flocks are sheared and slaughtered, then a true town. Two large pine pole gates open on the road, flanked by two, one-man ladder watches and secured by a simple square wooden bar. There is a smithy, a tannery, a butcher shop and a granary within the walls. The gate is manned by men chosen by lot from the resident members of the militia.

The center of town is dominated by a gallows, whipping post and stocks. There will be whippings on Friday. The stocks hold 5 miscreants, but are usually occupied by only one at a time, as the farrier and smith are renowned whip men and not to be taken lightly, both having killed more than a dozen boys at the whipping post.

Outside of the walls are gardens, oat, barley and rye fields, a hen house, a goose pen, a milk house and a slaughter yard. The north wall meets the river at a water wheel which is used to power the saw mill. Where the south wall—the 15-foot wall describing a semi circle with the gate at its center opposite the draw bridge—meets the river, another waterwheel is positioned, which is used to operate the grist mill.

The entire garrison resides within the two two-story stone wall and wood roof towers above the bridge. Each tower is occupied by 2 archers provided on rotation by the herdsmen and huntsmen from among their sons. These bunk on the open upper level, which is shielded by a high peaked roof. The lower level is a one room cabin with a ladder up to the roof gained through an open hatch. In this room resides a henchling knight [1] and his servant. [2]

These men are commanded by Mordoc, Sheriff of Barrier Town, who resides in the largest of the 14 cabins with a footman [3] and maid. [4] The Sheriff exacts a 10% toll from all travelers going east and a 20% toll from those coming west across the bridge. It is not legal to cross the Barrier River other than by the bridge. All broken laws are punished by fine or death, with death commuted for bondage. Whippings are reserved for servant infractions.

There are a mere 120 regular inhabitants of Barrier Town, with the population swelling at brewing and slaughtering and shearing times. Most of the residents are girls tasked with gardening and mending and boys tasked with ploughing, reaping and logging. Keeping the smithy, brewery and tannery and the cabin hearths supplied with wood occupies most of the boys year round.

The Sheriff, who acts as the town judge, also employs a herald, who is also the brew master, who serves as legal counsel, two huntsmen who serve to place food on his table as well as return runaways to their labors. The farrier [7] and the blacksmith serve alternately as servant floggers and hangmen. The Sheriff owns also two greyhounds and two mastiffs who obey his voice commands. [6]

The Sheriff and Captain are armed with braces of 3 flint lock pistols each and a small sword. The Sergeant and Corporal are each armed with a single edged curved broadsword, the Sergeant with a flint lock pistol and the Corporal with a blunderbuss. The huntsmen, have one a long bow and the other a rifle and a fowler, [5] each plying long knives.

…

Notes

-1. A henchling knight has no fief or lord, is an aspirational man at arms, similar to a Ronin or knight errant, who is unpaid and works for pillage and status. These are armored with gauntlets, cuirass, beaked helmet with scale coif and T bar face cage, with straight sabers and lances.

-2. A horse tender armed with a blackthorn cudgel, an unfree man promised apprenticeship after a term of service.

-3. A servant with a staff and dussack, a large slashing knife.

-4. A female housekeeper and bed tender.

-5. A black powder, flint lock shot gun.

-6. Other canines include heelers used by cowherds, scent hounds used by the huntsmen, and border collies used by the shepherds, who represent half of the rural inhabitants of the fief.

-7. Horses: The farrier is also the horse trader and seller and keeps a small supply of pack horses and cattle horses. The Sheriff and Captain have each a war horse, and these are not destriers, but a caracole mounts, trained in wheeling away when the rider shoots his pistols. The two henchling knights have destriers, trained to charge, trample and bite.

-8. Militia, a levy of some 50 swine herds with cudgels, wood chucks with axes, shepherds with staves and slings and cowherds with hay forks and spears, and various tradesmen with their tools, can be called up in times of crisis.

-9. The politics of passage into the Front Tier, across the Barrier River, is covered in the next section.

Copyright 2023 James LaFond

A Crackpot Book

Lynn Lockhart: Publisher

…

Dust Cover

In Washington, Pennsylvania, in June 1979, a 16-year-old boy, who had been playing Dungeons and Dragons for three years, was asked to design an adventure for a group of players he did not know. He was driven to a large house with a long narrow kitchen where the game was played while parents were at work. The upper middle class boys that had invited him were by turns offended, horrified and disappointed by his working class adventure.

James was not invited back. But one of the players, Randy, much approved of the adventure and continued to game with the role playing pariah for a decade, even conducting an interactive story by mail when James moved to Baltimore.

In Portland, Oregon, in March 2020 James introduced two preteens to role playing. As poor eye health prevented him from running games through 2021 and 22, the boys took over moderation duties. In March 2023, his eye health improved, James was asked to run an adventure. Busy with two novels, the aging gamer decided to reconstruct the adventure he had run in his own youth.

Crag Mouth is an old man’s recreation of a youth’s idea of an adventure. The research I have done on social conditions for people living outside and before the industrial age, being essentially the iron age, has been used to flesh out the frontier setting.

Crag Mouth has no gaming stats and shall be compatible with any gaming system. The author’s own systems Triumph and Grog are compatible with the style of adventure presented.

Also includes Dive Bar Denizens, an adventure source book intended for adventure role playing in modern and post modern settings, suitable for use with the author’s Street Scene RPG.

…

In Memory of Randy Boyer

…

Play Testers

1979

Randy Boyer, Orl Phane the Assassin

2023

Tony, Orbitus the Astrologer

Felix, Amon the Rogue

Dominic, Keptis the Barbarian

To the Reader

This setting describes a region meant to be compatible with games set in an ancient, medieval or early modern technology level.

The unique and supernatural beings presented are taken from my novel Slave, set in the alternative world of Elder Earth, a catholic America of 2031, at the end of an alternative historical trajectory in which there was no Protestant Reformation. These aspects of that fantasy setting are not important to the structure of this adventure. The saintly and angelic shrines and chapel appearing here, would, in the typical polytheistic fantasy role playing setting, be the sanctuaries of minor local deities, which indeed many Christian saints descend from.

The standard Tolkienesque demi-humans of Fantasy Role Playing convention are absent, though such might be included without corrupting the story arc.

I hope this setting is enjoyable and useful.

James, Tuesday, March 21, 2023 Portland

…

-1. Overwatch Fief

-2. Barrier Town

-3. The Front Tier

-4. Willow Hamlet: Stockade

-5. Willow Hamlet: Camp

-6. Weeper Bog and Cedar Forest

-7. The North Track

-8. Crag Mouth Heap

-9. Stonish Dens

-10. Silver Gate of Wormz

-11. The Keens of the Scarlet Kells

Note to Players

Realistic human social interaction in the shadow of horrific supernatural happenings are central tot his adventure. As such the non player characters, as with the horde of NPC that afflict us in real postmodern life, offer by turns the building blocks of success and the back breaking sticks of social entanglement that might make or break the player character engaged in piercing the evil that separates society from mystery. Each player should keep a brief sketch of each NPC he interacts with. The name, station, and a brief on the information imparted by and about that NPC, may, or may not aid a character in his quest to explore the Scarlet Mountain.

…

Legend of the Scarlet Mountains

It is said of old that a heap of stone, tended by giants of stony hide, known as Stonish Giants, named Crag Mouth, bars the stairy approach to a Silver Gate. It is supposed by a certain unnamed learned one, that such unseen gate keeps from men the very Organ Pipes of Time upon which a Godly hand might reverse an up-welling of evil into the World of Man.

The poetical tradition of the bards hold that behind said Silver Gate keens a harp that has sung down through the ages and holds the secrets of the Medicine Kells, a source of power only accessible in times fraught with tribulation and stalked by what issues up from the Nether Hells.

Such are the two tales that might lure certain souls along an uncertain trace.

…

Note to the Moderator

I sketched numerous maps by hand for this setting and adventure. However, I lack the means to reproduce any of these electronically or in print. They are most crude and ugly besides. You are left to decide on the means of mapping, which I think is best left to the players.

The setting of Overwatch and the adjacent Front Tier of civilization has been rendered as socially authentic for the Iron Age technology level and feudal hierarchy supposed by the boy who made the adventure in 1979, who knew little of such things. The work of presenting this creation from my youth has been chiefly to couch the adventure I remember in a more realistic social setting than could have been managed by a 16-year-old fantasist.

The supernatural elements are drawn from my fictional mythos of Elder Earth, rather than from standard role playing convention. The social setting is drawn from my research on Plantation America. Crag Mouth was always conceived as a frontier adventure of a medieval kind. Plantation Culture in Ireland, Virginia, Maryland and New England in the 1500s and 1600s were enterprises taken under feudal auspices, with no technological or industrial means of supporting these ventures that were not available to the manorial cultures of Late Medieval Europe.

To be specific, the technology level is the same as that supposed for the original Chain Mail pamphlet that Dungeon & Dragons was based on, as well as that of the English offering of the game War Hammer: renaissance, including firearms and not excluding alchemy.

Felix and I were playing chess with his favorite Christmas present, a magnetic set with the hollows of the folding board lined with padding with cutouts for the various pieces, given to him by his dad. The 14 year old has been beating me 3 games to 1. As we were pulling out the pieces I asked, “Why are there two queens? Is this a specific Portland lesbian chess set?”

“No! Oh, that is so sick—I bet there is an LGBT chess club out there. What the extra queen is for is when I get one of my pawns to the end of the board, I can bring in a second queen.”

“I like that, a king should have the option of being served by two queens.”

“How would that work?” wondered Felix.

So we tried it out.

All the rules are the same, except queens can castle, since they are both bitch kings.

Tranny chess is about alternative goals, about victory conditions. Just like lesbian relationships compared to traditional relationships, tranny chess is more violent than standard chess.

The chief object is to exchange a pawn for a king.

Hence, genocide occurs when one player has lost all of his pawns and then has no chance of developing a king. A player with no pawns and no king loses immediately.

Once a victory level has been achieved the victor my declare that he is resting on that condition, define it as victory, and collect his points. Or he may seek a more definitive victory.

-1. Dynasty, placing a pawn at the opposite end of the board and bringing into play a king is a 1 point victory. The player may opt to go for tranny king and the entire 15 points.

= 1 point

-2. Genocide, killing all the other player’s pawns is a 2 point victory.

= 2 points

-3. Theocracy, killing both enemy queens permits that player to declare the patriarchy, and transform one of his bishops into a king. The king know moves as a bishop and once he returns to the kings throne victory is complete for 5 points.

= 5 points

-4. Hero King is occurs when a player who has lost one queen advances a knight to the back enemy row. That knight may now be exchanged for a king, who moves as a knight. Victory is complete when the knightly king returns to the throne.

= 8 points

-5. Seraglio king is achieved by meeting three conditions. The player must have two queens in play. One queen must castle. That rook is now eligible to advance to the enemy back row. Once this is done, he becomes a king that moves like a rook. So long as he returns to the throne he is a Seraglio King, even if one of his queens gets whacked, as he can get another, for 10 points.

= 10 points

-Tranny King or Bitchking, is achieved by placing a queen in the enemy back row and exchanging her for a king, actually getting the surgery, and then getting the king back to his starting point. This brings 15 points.

= 15 points

I received this missive from a good friend, former coworker and training partner. It has long fascinated me that some very dedicated combat artists, such as Electric Dan and The Atom Bomb, practice the escapism of gaming, as have Sensei Steve, Tattoo Rick and other combative men. This is a natural past time that stems from pulp fiction reading and, in the form of role playing, is like interactive story telling. Even James R. Anderson has an article on grappling for role playing games on his site.

I have been unable to view this item, due to terminal techtardism. But, noting the thousands of reads that the few gaming articles on this site garner, I thought that this should be put out for the readership.

Thank you, Atom.

The best of health to you and yours.

“O' Caliphate of Culling, hear mine words and be praised. This digital text contained herein has been hereby branded TOO MASCULINE by the powers-that-flee at the premier digital download site for RPGs on the internet (DriveThruRPG). Verily I managed to obtain a copy, and present it to you, the Sultan of Stick-Fighting, for your imperious consideration. Do with it what thou wilt, and forever walk the path of the uncaring and the free.

Your brother in this life and the next,

The Atom Bomb

 MEN_digital_optimized-jkhjtz.

Baltimore, Maryland

Emma was thrilled with the packs of cards for her birthday: Standard Bicycle, cheap easy shuffle, mosaic, mural, animal, and Unicorn decks, Unicorn being the best. She knew go fish and trash, two children’s games, but wanted to learn adult games.

She liked Rummy, 200 Rummy, with me throwing 3 in 4 hands so she could get enthusiastic with counting and recording scores.

Once I told her what the suits stood for, the three social estates of the Western World, she became obsessed with suits, laughing at clubs, and admiring spades and seeking to organize like with like.

War, of the variation where same suits can only be added and that a hand of 7 cards is kept, with POW side hands and a draw deck for reinforcements, is much to her liking.

Tunk, or 31, is her favorite adult card game, for she had declared that she wanted to play kids games with kids and adult games with Uncle JIM! Tunk is like blackjack, or 21, without a house dealer, in which an ace may be a 1 or an 11, a hand is 3 cards, only the top discard is available to draw and only cards of the same suit may count towards 31. In Tunk, you deal more 3-card hands from the depleting deck to each player on a rotating basis as players “drop” signaled by a “tunk” or knock on the table.

In thinking up a card game for Emma, I wanted something halfway between trash and solitaire. Trash is played by marking ten spots, drawing a card from the deck, and filling in the spots denoted, with the ace counting as 1, jokers not used, queens and kings trashed, jacks wild and a card that had already been placed is passed on to the next player. I do like the class warfare politics of trash, and think it no accident that children are taught this card game in first grade public and private schools.

So, a player that places an ace in the #1 spot, flips the face down card that had been holding that space in anonymity. If that card is an ace it is passed along. If that card is a 5 it is placed on the 5 spot and the face down card is flipped. If it is a jack it is placed anywhere. If it is an ace, well, this player can’t use that so it is passed on.

-This semi cooperative passing aspect is the basic design mechanic for Jokers’ Dozen.

-All cards may be used.

-Suits must matter.

-Beauty must be accounted for. For instance, Emma likes playing dominoes but not keeping score. She likes the mechanic that each player is alternately matching a like number, but wants the object to be the prettiest shape, preferring swastika shape flower arrangements and multiple spinners. So Jokers’ Dozen is fun to play with special decks, like the unicorn deck.

-Scoring is multifaceted to assist in math.

This game was designed by me in Ocean City, Maryland after playing trash with a ten-year-old Emma, my brother’s step daughter.

Jokers’ Dozen was developed with 7-year-old Emma in Baltimore City, for whom it was designed, keeping in mind that jokers and one-eyed jacks are her favorite cards.

The special card is retained if playing with art decks, this being the two sided cover card, showing the art on the back of the card on both sides.

The big handed adult fan shuffles.

The small handed human slot shuffles.

The big handed adult deals 13 cards, so that the human goes first all of the time and has an advantage over the money-bound adult; the moral hierarchy of natural law thus being respected. Besides, little hands bend the card sometimes when dealing, and they are pretty.

Each player lays out their cards face down in 13 spots in two rows, 7 on the top 6 on the bottom, with the ace in the first spot and the jack, queen and king occupying spots 11, 12 and 13 on the bottom row of 6.

The little human then draws a card and play continues like trash, with the card placed, causing the card that it replaced being flipped and assigned, passed or discarded, like musical chairs, but with cards.

After the first player goes out, the score of the hand is recorded.

Jokers are wild and may go anywhere. Jokers permanently become that card, and may not be used again, unless they are replaced by a Pretty Card [only one to a deck] or a jack, queen or king. So use jokers accordingly as royal place holders. They are the usurper card.

One-eyed jacks may be used to peek under one card, before the player decides to lay down the jack there, or on another spot. So, a one-eyed jack would best be used to peek under a spot other than the 11 spot, and then placed on the 11 spot. This encourages memorization.

The one-eyed king may peek under two cards in this fashion.

The first player to reach 131 points is the winner, so going first matters. This teaches leadership. The score keeping encourages counting, addition and pattern building.

Card values are:

+1 for every placed card

+1 for the low joker

+2 for the high joker. In decks with identical jokers, they are both high, because, as Emma reminded me, “It Is Jokers’ Dozen!”

+2 for the Ace of spades, because it is the prettiest standard card.

+3 for the pretty card

+1 for three cards in a row of the same suit.

+1 for the 4th, 5th, 6th, card of the same suit, and so on.

This last valuation brings into play covering of placed cards.

Example:

Emma has placed a jack of clubs, a queen of spades and a king of clubs.

If Emma draws or is handed off a queen of clubs, she may place her on top of the queen of spades, thus imprisoning her in her own tower, taking her place, and earning that player a bonus point. In games with more than two players, this tactic will also deny a card to another player who could use it.

If the deck wrecks a hand, with no player placing all 13 spots, then the player with more suit rank gets the difference in bonus points. This is done to utilize subtraction.

Suit rank is valued like so:

Each card has a value.

-Clubs [wands or peasants] = 1

-Diamonds [pentacles or merchants] = 2

-Hearts [cups or nobility] = 3

-Spades [swords or royalty] = 4

-Joker = 5

-Pretty card = 7

The highest suit ranked stalled hand of 12 places, beaten by the deck, would be 9 spades [36], 2 jokers [10] and 1 pretty card [7], for 12 places and 53 points.

A median stalled hand of 10 places of 2 clubs [2], 3 diamonds [6], 3 hearts [9] and 2 spades [8] would rank 25.

The player with a rank of 53 would subtract the lower ranking players rank of 25 from his rank of 53 and gain 28 bonus points.

Variation

Utter Ruin

To encourage cooperation while competing, any hand that is wrecked by the deck, where no players complete their set of 13 cards, results in utter ruin, trashes the game and Cruel Fate is declared the winner. Play no switches to the game chosen by the player with the lowest suit rank—a lesson in “based social accelerationism.

That is Jokers’ Dozen, play-tested with Emma, the developer, one Sunday summer morning in Outer East Baltimore, in Aunt Georgia’s kitchen, while MumMum cooked breakfast.

In the attached email a reader describes the reason, purpose and end result of African importation, to clear land of its European-spawned vermin:

…

Life is Tough RPG

I have read your post on the RPG rules a couple of times now, and it fortuitous as I have been working on a RPG for a little bit now partially based on your political musings. 

[Role playing die mechanics are redacted as the design is in progress.]

The basic idea here is that your classical "skilled wimp" could reasonably survive against an unskilled brute. But if that brute has any level of skill (ala Brock Lesnar) woe will fall on that skilled wimp. 

There's more to it but I have written enough already.

On a different note I drove through a place the other day that may interest you. Cairo Illinois. At the absolute southern terminus of Illinois. Population is supposedly just under 2k today, at a height of 15k prior to the civil rights act. The black population was a third of the total population at its height and it once had 5% of the entire black population in Illinois. Why is it of interest? The buildings for such a small town were obscenely wealthy. I have seen little ramschackle towns whose better days are behind them and urban blight as well. Cairo is unusual for how absurdly nice these building are and how compact it was. My current theory is the mob was involved and the decline of the town follows the decline of the mob. The only businesses I saw open were two liquor stores. It has an art deco national guard armory that is still beautiful despite being vacated for several years now. It has a down right palatial post office. I attached a picture of the aforementioned art deco national guard armory.

Signed,

Bedford (if you post this, I'd appreciate it if you left the mechanics part out. Not that they're so genius someone will steal them, just out of fear of unwanted attribution)

…

Thank you, Bedford.

I wish you luck in your game design. My game design has featured inspired design and poor to dismal development.

Cairo seems like the perfect American town. Cairo is the promise of the lately ruined Georgia Guide Stones. I have noted that what has been done to African Americans by the white elite is only rivaled in cruelty and as deeply immersed in the ever-hating lie by what the white elite have used the African American to do to the paleface American.

Africans were taken from a Tribal, Patriarchal, Iron Age, tropical, agrarian, environment and thrust into a mercantile, matriarchal [Anglo (1)], modern, temperate setting, where their population boomed but their souls were trampled, their men placed under women and their identity linked to the leisure class sensibilities of an evil, alien race.

Then, these people, who had only ever adapted successfully to the agrarian nature of their imposed lives, were invited and driven in mass into industrial cities in order to displace working class palefaces and have since, for a hundred years, been socially pressurized in soulless cities designed to accommodate an alien mind, an evil mind that hates nature as much as it hates the toil required to reap, burn, bury and pave nature at the feet of man’s obscene ambitions.

I have worked with and trained with and spoken with some two dozen men from Africa, who are all horrified at what insane beasts their half-breed cousins have become under the pressures of the American Melting Pot. Everything about urban America, from law enforcement, politics, education, religion, charity and real estate acquisition is adapted by accident or design to make of all Americans nomads across an artificially deranged crime-scape.

Africans are brought in to drive Europeans out and then are prevented by many subtle means of sustaining themselves in their newly conquered urban or suburban landscape. They are thence pointed at the next enclave of working Europeans to drive them out as the elite whites economically parachute in behind them and gentrify.

I recall a white social studies teacher, an urban history teacher, laughing about how stupid African tribesmen were in practicing “slash and burn” agriculture. Yet, his class, his cadre of academic elite technocratic money worshipers have practiced slash and burn civics since the year I was born.

It is common in dissident circles to blame the government, and cast USG as the enemy of America.

This is an evolution of the liberal-progressive-conservative delusion that there is such a thing as good government.

However, governments are things of pure power that do good and evil.

I have lately come to realize as a hobo, what people like Simon Girty, Dan Boone, Simon Kenton, Lewis Wetzel, Hugh Glass and William Garrison realized when they fled from America into tribal lands and wilderness, that Americans are the problem, that the worship of money makes of us all either monster whore lords or zombie dupes. America is nothing but the Transexual Spawn of Britannia, that endlessly fecund whore with no udders to nurse her legion of damned orphan sons and no grace to impart to her debauched daughters.

…

Notes

-1. Britannia, whore quean of nations, has always been envisioned as feminine, as far back as the statue of Mars ravishing her in Rome after Vespasian’s conquest. The shrill, cross and disrespectful nature of English American women, compared to the more respectful and gracious tribal and German women, are mentioned by numerous Plantation Era chroniclers.

“What do you think about the halting of the plague narrative and an immediate same-day switch to news revolving around the war? Is that not proof that the plague narrative is false and now that a real event comes about it is swept away? Or perhaps, the war was engineered to take the eye of the people away from the unfolding evidence that these unprecedented plague measures, like quarantining healthy people, wrecking the economy and denying basic, cheap and proven effective medicines while pushing an experimental treatment has killed upwards of a million Americans?”

-British National

…

Wow, sir, what a fantastic stream of thought. I cannot take a drive for an hour with you without the insertion of the need to write an article above my pay grade in response to the conversation. First, I do not think that there is any threat that the American people will ever “wake up” and see reality, or call their vile shepherds to account for the manner of their sheering. Americans are not capable of perceiving actual real time physical events or of conducting even the most rudimentary level of thought, fact finding or critical thinking. Indeed, critical thinking has been ruthlessly persecuted in favor of ideological cheer leading, cultivated by every form of media since my childhood at least.

I would cite Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer, here. The protagonist, Severian, an orphan boy raised in The Guild of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, is dispatched by his ancient and nearly forgotten order to a far outpost of a billion person empire in a distant future. While on this quest, in his traditional garb, people regard him with terror and he is brought to speak to the commander of a bridge garrison.

This city of the future is so massive, that the main bridge spanning the River Gaol [which is the Amazon of a dying Earth] has millions of people traversing it a day—nigh millions squatting in its nooks and crannies—and is garrisoned by 10,000 men. When Severian asks why he has been detained, the commander informs him that panicking the populace must be avoided at all costs, for the hundreds of millions, once risen to revolt, must be an unstoppable wave of humanity.

Yes, Severian ends up using his trade, for crowd control, by performing public executions and entertaining the crowd in such a theatric manner that they fancy themselves being served by him, even though any one of their number could be denounced by their fellows and placed in a cell to be interviewed by the torturer who would then cut their head off on stage the next day.

In this, the most deftly handled science fiction composed in the 20th century, the century of Ideology and mass industrial warfare, Wolfe treats the individual and collective human condition in dynamic interaction; he sketches Reality, reality as people of Post Modern America can never experience it. For we believe only in good guy bad guy polarity narratives which have never mimicked reality throughout history, but are presented to us as reality from our cradle to our intubation chamber.

…

The disease narrative did not go away, but was maintained as the subtextual element in the ongoing, unending reign of fear that spans both narratives. The American mind can only consider one thing at a time. We have been collectively taught that only one important event or moral question or threat may be important to us at a given time. We have been conditioned.

We are retarded. No previous population of humans has been so blinded to reality than the gaslit media herd of Late Modernity. The real miracle of the Atomic Age was not the splitting of the atom, but the harnessing of that awful happening to terrorize a planet with fear of nuclear annihilation. We are creatures of fear, nursed at Fear’s raging tit—the TV, which now everyone of us has in the palm of our hand.

As soon as the Cold War was over the War on Terror was built and ramped up out of its ashes—recycling some of the same characters like any good pulp writer whose last story has failed to sell and then crafts another. As the War on Terror lost its grip in the wake of the last Afghan tribesmen being gunned down on the beaches of Miami and Asbury Park as they landed in their amphibious SUV’s and were defeated by Minute Men, new menaces must be created:

-2016, the Orange Man from Planet Permanent Tan usurped the Cuckmurican Throne…

-2020, Brovid Jiveteen and the Crucifixion of Floyd Christ brought down the Orange Man and increased fear to include most of the population, rather than the half who feared the interplanetary menace of the Orange Man.

-2021, The 10,000 man natzi gang rape of Orgazio Putez on January Sick in Boughtington Dee Cee shocked the world, but there just were not enough natzis to go around. So Brovid Jiveteen was amped up, new strains invented in the lab, and fear continued at the heart of the dimwitted beast that is America.

-2022, just as German paratroopers are deployed in Canada to arrest Canadian truck drivers, No.Ass.Today.Oleg, yanks on the leash of the great Roosky circus Bear and goads it out of hibernation to maw...really...that’s all we could come up with...YouGotGrain natzis fighting for a Geebrew hero president who used to be a cross-dressing standup comedian?

Bro, Brovid will be back, in new versions. I am predicting that the Domnicron Birus, that targets transgender Trekkies [look, every Star Trek fan is a closet Klingon] will be announced, scheduled, released, updated and the masters of fear will again take up our reigns in our very veins.

The point about the last paragraph, is that it would be easier for American Meet Puppets to believe the Trekkie Plague narrative once people start getting runny noses and coughs again. It is just hard to sell respiratory plague at home when no one knows anyone who is sick. It is easier to sell us a distant threat, a large scale conventional war in which one side has absolute air superiority and has yet to use two MIGs to take out a lead vehicle and the rear vehicle and then drop anti-personnel munitions and create a 10,000 corpse highway of twisted metal and death.

That an army that has supposedly lost over 7,000 killed in combat that has yet to produce a single grisly battlefield scene, would not call in serious air support, suggests that Doctor Evil is in on the fix too. What reporting I have seen on this war thus far reminds me of two video gamer nerds doing a pro wrastlin’ style “work” to entertain the slo-eyed media herd drooling in their gaslit stalls.

Like Theadore Sturgeon once said, “95% of everything is crap.” I would say that is likely true of the Domnicron plague and the Roosky War.