What Kind of Spellcaster was Margaret Thatcher

A Facebook campaign running in England at the moment is driving the song Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead up the charts, in celebration of Margaret Thatcher’s death. This has the right-wing media up in arms, and has led to an open case of attempted censorship of the BBC. But old school role-players should also be up in arms with outrage at this attack on the legacy of the ’80s: although Margaret Thatcher is clearly a spellcaster of some kind, the Witch was not an authorized character class in the 1980s role-playing canon! Nothing is more frustrating than to see important aspects of the original system mis-used in the popular press, and so in the interests of accuracy, I think we should tackle the question of what kind of spellcaster Margaret Thatcher actually was. Being an ’80s phenomenon, Margaret Thatcher has to be fitted into the character class options of the old school canon: that is, she has to be either a magic-user, druid, cleric, paladin or ranger.

First of all, we know that “the lady’s not for turning,” so she can’t be a cleric or paladin. She doesn’t seem to have been very out-doorsy, and I think it’s safe to say she wasn’t true neutral, so druid is out. And by examining her history of spell-casting, we can rule out ranger.

So what spells did Maggie cast? First and most obvious is Mass Hypnosis, a fairly high level spell. Many northern newspapers claim that she destroyed whole areas of industry in the north, so maybe she could cast Earthquake as well. Along with Ronald Reagan (who was surely a Paladin!) she could use Detect Evil – before they joined to cast that spell, no one (no one!) knew that the Soviet Union was an evil dictatorship. It’s also fairly clear that she regularly used the Domination spell on members of her cabinet, and her resistance to assassination attempts suggests the use of Contingency and possibly also Resist Fire. From this list we can see that she had access to spells that were outside the ranger list. Thus we can conclude that she must have been a magic-user.

Finally, however, there is one additional power she had that suggests the ’80s was being run as a house-ruled boutique campaign. Many editorialists are claiming that Margaret Thatcher created Tony Blair; but Tony Blair is clearly a Vampire, and as far as I know there is no spell that can be used to create Vampires. So either she was so powerful that the GM had to create a whole new set of spells for her, 1980s Britain was being run based on an obscure supplement of Dragon magazine, or the entire industrial and economic wasteland that was the UK from 1978 to 1990 was being run on a unique set of house rules.

So, based on the available evidence, Margaret Thatcher was an extremely high level magic-user character being run in a homebrew post-apocalyptic UK campaign. And definitely not a witch.

 

Simplifying WFRP3: Magic

Continuing my thoughts on developing a simplified version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3 based on the Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars system, in this post I will present some suggestions for simplifying the magic system. It is likely that my suggestions for magic will tend to over-power magicians, because that’s exactly what I like in a system…

Introduction

Magic in the simplified WFRP system should be based on strain, rather than magic points, and will use a simplified spell system in which wizards choose three or four ladders of spell types. Each ladder has a first, second and third rank spell, approximately equivalent to the spells in the cards currently available through the WFRP3 set. Spells are cast using a spellcraft skill check, with  difficulty determined by the rank of the spell and the attribute of a target. Spells will have a strain cost, and will incur additional strain from rolling banes. Spell casters also have a talent tree (as in the case of the rogue) but will have to purchase spells using development and experience points.

Spell-casting and strain

All PCs will start with a strain score equal to 8+WP. Strain is incurred through failed combat actions, and can be recovered after battles through discipline checks, and then through rest. When a spell is cast it costs 2+Rank strain; so a rank 1 spell costs 3 strain. Each additional bane rolled on the spell check incurs an additional point of strain; chaos stars incur an additional point of strain + a miscast card. Thus the average level 1 wizard with strain of 12 can safely expect to cast 3 spells in one battle; the 4^th spell will carry a risk of being rendered incapable of further action.

If a spell takes a human target, the difficulty of casting the spell is set by the target attribute (usually WP, but this can vary); the spell incurs an additional misfortune die per rank above 1. If the spell has no human target, the difficulty is set by the rank: one misfortune die at rank 1, and then an additional challenge die for every rank above 1.

Spell types and effects

The basic role of spells in WFRP3 is to apply conditions to targets, or to damage them. This is easily represented through revised spell descriptions in simplified warhammer. A simple approach is to set the damage done by a spell at 2+Spell Rank+ Int. Conditions can be more diverse than those described by the cards in WFRP3. For example, a rank 1 spell can apply one misfortune die to checks with one attribute; a rank 2 spell can apply this misfortune die to all physical or all mental actions; a rank 2 spell could alternatively apply one challenge die; and rank 3 spells could apply two challenge dice or a combination of effects. Duration can be the caster’s intelligence, with modifications available from the talent tree. Other enhancement options could be damage modifiers in combat (e.g. +1 dmg per rank), stance dice enhancements, soak and defense modifiers, and other aspects of conditions (manoeuvre restrictions, changes in critical states). These effects will vary according to the ladder down which the spell steps, and don’t necessarily even need to have spell names – every player could make up their own spell names for their particular set of effects.

Table 1 shows an example of the key spell ladders and the effects that might be contained in differing ranks of one ladder.

 

Table 1: Example spell ladders

Class	Order Equivalent	Effects
Elemental Fury	Aqshy	Elemental damage attacks
Elemental Body	Aqshy	Elemental melee enhancements (defenses, damage)
Elemental Mind	Aqshy	Enhancements to social checks, reckless stance dice, bravery
Celestial luck	Celestial	Force target rerolls, improve luck, regain fortune points
Celestial movement	Celestial	Fast movement, flight, teleportation
Illusion Stealth	Grey Order	Shadows, Hide in plain sight, Invisibility
Shadow Damage	Grey Order	Conditions affecting int, willpower, control enemy
Shadow Transformation	Grey order	Fear, disguise, doppelganger
Shadow Body	Grey order	Defence effects, become insubstantial
Alchemy	Gold order	Damage machines, transform items, enchant items
Alchemical Enhancement	Gold order	Improve soak, improve int based checks, improve defence
Necromantic Protection	Amethyst	Prevent damage; prevent criticals; prevent death
Necromantic Perception	Amethyst	Detect living/dead; enhance int-based checks; speak with dead
Necromantic Attack	Amethyst	Cause fear; cause damage
Transformation	Amber	Change shape (wolf, crow, bear)
Wild Combat	Amber	Enhance damage; cause damage

 

Each ladder should have its own general spell effects, determined using a willpower check, that last WP in rounds during combat, or WP in minutes out of combat. Spell effects out of combat should last WP in minutes, with an extension to hours by increasing the challenge.

Wizard talent tree

The Wizard talent tree is shown in Figure 1. The extra strain talent can be taken multiple times. This talent tree doesn’t allow any option to increase duration of spells, which may be something that could be changed.

Figure 1: Wizard talent tree

Alternative: spell-less magic

It would be fairly easy to categorize most magical effects in terms of conditions, damage and their equivalents, and to use an entirely spell-free magic system in which magic has a difficulty value and causes strain as the total of number of failures + number of banes. In this case magic would be equivalent to just a different and more interesting range of ways of doing skill checks. It would probably require a simple table of difficulties (comparing, e.g. applying one misfortune die to a single ability score vs. all ability scores vs. granting a target one additional reckless die, or a training die, and so on). This would lead to a very flexible and interesting magic system that gave magicians the ability to directly affect dice pools and character traits in complex and interesting ways. It could be worth a session to try out…

 

A Brief Note on the Religions of the Steamlands

The people of the Steamlands view faith in a practical light, preferring mostly to avoid the attention of the greater powers in the hope of a peaceful life. That there are Gods and magic imbuing the entire land is a fact unquestioned; the utility of loyal service to them is noted; but the ultimate benefits of fealty are weak, and questionable. This is because the gods of the Steamlands divide into two bitterly opposed factions: the uncaring, capricious and probably not-even-sentient gods of the main churches, whose beneficence is limited to their closest servants; and the malicious gods of Chaos, who offer greater but uncertain rewards to those sick enough to join with them, in exchange for a life of secrecy and pain.

The gods of the main churches are universally accepted as real, but to show faith gains nothing. Even to their closest followers they offer no eternal salvation or redemption. Their teachings offer no hope for a better future, no life beyond death, no reward for goodness and no benefits to casual faith. Those who attend church regularly to offer their prayers to these gods are given no promise that the gods will attend to their needs. The ordinary citizens of the Steamlands are simply told that ruin follows from a neglect of fealty, and expected to believe in all the main gods, and accord them respect, for no better reason than the fear of floods and earthquakes that are visited upon unbelievers. Only those who dedicate their lives to service of a single church gain any benefit from their faith: for these select few, temporal power can be gained through the power to cast benedictions and to have prayers answered. For the rest, faith and worship are reflexive acts, practised to avoid the wrath of unfeeling and unsentimental elder powers rather than out of love for or hope of a greater good on this world or any other. All followers of the main gods of the churches will live out their short, nasty lives in pain and suffering, eased only by the occasional ministrations of the Shallyans, and when they have served out their allotted mortal term will be coiled up into the earth, to return to the worms and the darkness. The best hope for ordinary mortals in the Steamlands is to live their lives unnoticed by church, god or secular powers, to avoid major mishaps (or to be tended by the Shallyans when they occur) and to die with dignity, hopefully not in too much pain, and hopefully surrounded by loved ones. Thus do the gods promise that all humans are equal.

The Chaos gods whisper in the ears of some arrogant or cruel folk that they can rise above this tawdry cycle, and offer commensurate benefits. There is no ever-lasting life in Chaos, but the Chaos gods do promise a longer life, possibly much longer than any human can hope for naturally, great temporal power to aid their followers in pursuing whatever corrupt material goals they desire, and freedom from disease and pain not through the humble ministrations of healers, but through the domination and ultimate subjugation of the human condition: in short, long life and the ability to ignore or control disease, pain and terror. Those who serve the gods of Chaos well do not go to some dark and horrific hell, as is often threatened by the preachers of Sigmar: they die peacefully and return to the earth as do all mortals, all their cruel deeds and corruption unpunished forever. However, very few of the followers of the Chaos gods live long enough to gain this reward, because the Chaos churches function on hatred, cruelty and treachery. Those who first enter the church are pawns for their more powerful brethren, used horribly and treated cruelly so that only the strongest and bravest survive. Those who fail to rise to the early challenges of entry into these creeds of darkness die soon, and horribly, or are cast out to suffer the flames of the established churches. Those few who succeed in rising above the level of initiate are then able to inflict the same cruelty they experienced on others, and to use their followers as they see fit. But for those who reach these higher echelons of the Chaos church, a more dangerous fate awaits. For though the Chaos gods reward their longest-lived and most faithful followers with peace after a long life, they punish those who fail them terribly. Leaders of chaos cults or disease sects who fail to achieve the tasks they are given, who are revealed and captured by the churches, or who betray their cult, are given the worst punishment of all: their souls are thrown into hell, and tortured until the Chaos gods tire of them. Some scholars contend that it is only through this punishment that the Chaos gods are able to generate the supernatural power they need to reward their followers, since they have been cut off from whatever godhead underlies the powers of the gods of the main churches. Others contend that so long as there is pain, suffering and treachery in the world of ordinary mortals, the Chaos gods will always have supernatural power to bestow on those they seduce away from the path of righteousness. Whatever the truth of it, the reality of the Chaos cults is always the same: the new entrants are abused and used as their elders see fit, but those same elders must always succeed, lest they be fed into the great and terrible cauldron of punishment that the gods of Chaos reserve for their own kind. Should they avoid an early death and conduct themselves well in the service of their gods, however, servants of Chaos can hope to live long lives blessed with temporal power and fanatical followers who will do their every bidding.

This is the choice that faces ordinary mortals in the Steamlands: thankless piety to uncaring, capricious gods who offer them no sanctuary from the bitterness of ordinary life; or a brutal struggle to gain the favour of dark gods through fell deeds, in the small hope of extending their mortality beyond that of their kin, and slaking their lusts on the weak and the innocent. The preachers of the main churches contend that humanity is weak and morally frail, and this is why the majority of ordinary people show a cynical view of the churches and offer only the weakest semblance of piety. But the truth is that neither the gods of the main churches or the Gods of chaos offer any reason for mortals to respect them, and none to love them. For the majority of the residents of the Steamlands the presence of immortal powers is a curse, the churches a bane, their promises empty and their threats vexing. It is in this spirit that the people greet their preachers – is it any wonder, then, that the Chaos cults always seem to spring up anew, no matter how hard good folk try to destroy them?

 

Steampunk Warhammer Session 5: Confronting the Plague Captain

Falconfox often begs tobacco off of strangers…

When we left our heroes, they had just entered combat with the Cavalcade of Ruin. They were joined almost immediately  by a dwarf of dubious intent, Colonel Cornelius Lodestone XIX of the Glass Hills (15th Assistant to the Grand Artificer) (2nd Class Airship Pilot in His Majesty’s Royal Air Corps, Group 5, Wyvern Squadron, Azure Wing) (Field Agent 85A , Hazardous Delvings Department, Section 6)… Colonel Falconfox to his friends … This short and generally not very useful man appeared at the window of the Healer’s Hospice almost as soon as battle was joined, firing his loud but largely useless black powder pistols into the fray. Fortunately the party had another, much more effective dwarf to aid them, the indomitable Azahi the Trollslayer, and though the battle was tough they ultimately prevailed.

The battle was a raucous affair. Azahi took the Plaguebearer – the great, fat, rotting ogrish figure – front and centre, and while he slugged it out with this ham-fisted and abhorrent creature the elven Scout, Laren, and the wizard attempted to deal with the Chaos sorcerer and his marauders. This didn’t work out so well for the party: Laren found herself inflicted with three diseases, and the wizard suffered two diseases before he was knocked unconscious under a bevy of critical injuries. Laren the elf managed to distract the Chaos sorcerer’s Nurglings from battle through judicious application of a well-cooked kidney pie, freeing her up to concentrate on the sorcerer himself. The initiate attempted to aid Azahi to little avail, but finally Azahi crushed the Plaguebearer and they managed to overcome the sorcerer. The surviving Chaos marauder fled, but was cut down by the newcomer Dwarf; and after a few minutes of chaos and slimy, bloody confusion the party managed to destroy the Nurglings. The poxy cavalcade threatening Separation City had been vanquished!

Though they were largely too sick to stay upright for long, the party searched the bodies of their foes. They discovered nothing of value, but they did discover a large object wrapped in cloth. Upon unwrapping it, they found that the cavalcade had brought with them to the healer’s hospice the body of a mutant. Though they couldn’t be sure, their suspicion was that the cavalcade of Ruin intended to install the mutant in the empty hospice, so as to imply that the Healers had been attempting to cure a mutant. Throughout the Steamlands, mutants are killed on sight, being servants of Chaos; but there are rumours – never confirmed – that some healers are so zealous in their pursuit of Shallya’s mercy that they will even try to heal mutants. By placing the corpse in the Healer’s hospice, the cavalcade of Nurgle would have been able to discredit Separation City’s healers and give strength to an old rumour. This would have guaranteed that the town’s healers were burnt at the stake, and freed up the town for the forces of Nurgle to infest. Fortunately, our heroes had defeated this nefarious plot.

They searched the cavalcade’s caravan and captured their remaining servants, but got nothing useful except more diseases. Finally, exhausted and afflicted, the party returned to their tavern and collapsed in a pox-ridden heap, to await the accolades they deserved – and some healing.

The healers returned after two days, and the party received all the healing they needed; but with the healers came Madam von Jungfreud, who after some perfunctory apologies for her mistakes demanded that the PCs should head off into the wilderness to find the leader of the cult of Nurgle, and destroy it. Our heroes, being in possession of certain letters to the doctor, were fairly sure that the leader of the cult was not located anywhere near Separation City. However, they realized that the plague afflicting the lands around Separation City must have some cause, so they set off the following day to find – and destroy – whatever outpost of Nurgle had afflicted the lands west of Separation City.

On the evening of the first day of walking, the party came to Monkey Mountain. This mountain holds a community of creatures somewhat like primitive humans, who cannot speak any language humans know but are peacable enough to be able to communicate and trade with local farmers. When our heroes reached it they soon found themselves accosted by an enraged Monkey Man, who was clearly also very, very sick. The Initiate calmed the Monkey Man by gestured signals indicating he could help, and the Monkey Man led them to his community on Monkey Mountain.

Sadly, the Monkey Man’s tribe were dead – all but about 10 of them. They had died of some kind of plague. Familiar by now with the machinations of the cult of Nurgle, the party soon found a bag of pus secreted at the source of the Monkey Mountain’s streams, and identified here the cause of the clan’s disease. Noting also a pile of goods obtained from recent trade with the nearby farmers, they guessed that the Monkey Men had been used as the locus of disease throughout the area. Though subsequently the party found other streams with the same contamination, it was obvious that the Monkey Men had been infected en masse as a source of disease for the farmers in the area. The Initiate identified that the disease disseminated here was ghoulpox, and since the party had cures for the ghoulpox, obtained from the doctor in Separation City, they were soon able to cure the few surviving Monkey Men. This cure, unfortunately, renders its victims suggestible; so when they left the Mountain the party had secured themselves a force of 11 loyal Monkey Man followers …

They passed on through the ravaged farmlands west of Separation City. For two days, they found nothing but occasional sources of infection, but in the evening of the second day they stumbled upon something new …

By now they had passed beyond the farmland around Separation City and were passing though typical highland forest: silent stands of eucalyptus forest, eerily silent but for the occasional lone cry of unnamed birds. Near evening, they heard a new and strange sound over the silence of the forest, like a huge swarm of insects; and over the subtle lemonbalm scent of eucalypts came the strong stench of ordure, as if they were nearing a military encampment. Thinking they might have stumbled on the military mission that left Separation City a few weeks earlier, they headed to the source of the smell …

… and found a horrific site. They entered a small clearing, at the centre of which was an onsen of medium warmth. Floating in the middle of the onsen was a strange construction, consisting of two canoes, one upturned over the other and the pair locked together. Trapped within them was the body of a man, and about him thronged a huge horde of stinging, biting and parasitic insects. They had stumbled on a scaphism – someone was being tortured by means of the boats. Drawing the boats into the edge of the onsen, the PCs were assailed by a terrible smell. The wizard used his spell The Howler Wind to disperse the insects, revealing beneath a sight to horrify even a Dwarven graverobber such as Colonel Falconfox: beneath the cowl of insects was Separation City’s priest of Sigmar, reduced to a moaning and suppurating mess, all his skin punctured and ruined by insects. Worms swam in his eyes, and ran down the streaks of vomit that smeared his cheeks; the stench that came off him was horrific to mortal men, and his arms pulsated with larvae and grubs soon to hatch. He had been tortured most foully, and his last delerious days were upon him.

The priest opened his cracked lips to reveal a swollen, insect-infested tongue. He begged the party not to kill him, and told them that every morning at dawn two cultists came to his pool, and these two cultists had a key to the tower. The PCs saw their chance: they set the priest adrift on the water again, and laid a trap for the cultists.

The following morning two cultists came to the water, and were duly caught. Azahi, showing no patience with them, dragged one down to the water. He drew in the boat, smothered the priest to death against his (feeble, human) will, and tore him from the boats. Then he picked up the cultist and told him, “you go in the boats, or you die quickly.”

These cultists were no fools – they knew that when caught, a cultist of Nurgle can choose only the manner, not the fact of their demise. This one quickly sprang to his own defense, and offered to tell the PCs all they needed to know.

The other one went in the boats.

The PCs then headed up the hill in the direction the cultists had come, soon finding themselves facing a small tower. The graverobber approached under stealth but was seen and attacked by a wizard in the tower. The elf and the wizard approached the tower disguised as cultists, and were hailed as friends with the warning “rush to the door, someone waits to ambush you.” This they did, but the wizard’s ice spell failed and their plans to invade the lower room quickly were ruined. Nonetheless, they soon bested the guards at the lower level of the tower. They then spent several minutes faffing around casting various spells while they tried to discern magically whether there was a trapdoor in through the roof; finally, learning there was, the elf and the initiate began climbing the outside of the tower. Once they were well on their way, the remaining residents of the higher regions of the tower charged down to attack the remnants of the party: Azahi the trollslayer, Captain Falconfox and the wizard found themselves fighting three plague-zombies, a shaman and a powerful wizard. This latter was the Plague Captain: a chap in a suit bearing a pipe, who surrounded himself in evil magics and attempted to cripple his enemies with disease and corruption.

After a brief and brutal battle our heroes won the day, and finally the disease cult were eliminated. Searching the tower, they found a map of a part of the catacombs beneath the town of Store, and a key – evidence, perhaps, that they could use to pursue the ultimate leader of this cult of horrors. It was clear that they had not captured the final leader of this branch of Nurgle’s cult, but they had saved Separation City from a host of terrors, and found clues as to the ultimate leadership of this cult.

Satisfied, they returned to Separation City. Would they pursue a crusade against the cult of Nurgle, or return to their onsen to enjoy a quiet life? Only time will tell …

 

The Elves of the Steamlands

Elves fishing in the lakes of the high mountains

The north of the Steamlands is covered by a sweeping arc of human influence, reaching from the Spear Capes on the west coast to the Palace Cape on the east, where the human presence begins to wane under the influence of the Machine Minds. South of this arc of influence and west of the Palace Cape is a huge swathe of untamed land, referred to generally as the World Forest. This forest sprawls over mountains and plains, hills and rivers, and constitutes fully half of the landmass of the Steamlands. In the north and west it is dry eucalypt forest, merging with pine on the higher slopes; to the far south it turns to temperate rainforest, also primarily eucalypt, and here the Beastmen roam in what is commonly called the Beastlands. In the deep centre of this huge forest complex are the kingdoms of the elves, an ancient and reclusive race with many secrets, their own pagan gods, and a strange and wild magic that is unfamiliar to the humans of the north. Most believe that the elves and beastmen lived in the Steamlands long before the coming of humans, but this history is not clear, because there are no early records of contact between humans and elves, and it may be that the elves arrived later than humans. Although their sailing technology is primitive, it is noteworthy that the elves of the western coast – perhaps the least understood of all the elves – are remarkably adept at sailing, and have a stock of legends of long journeys that, though little studied by humans, suggest knowledge of events and places that are unknown in the Steamlands but can be dated back thousands of years.

If it is true that the elves came from elsewhere, no one knows where that elsewhere might have been, why they came to the Steamlands, or the relationship between their strange nature gods and the civilized gods of humans. Though congress between the races has improved in recent years, little exchange of cultural knowledge occurs, and it appears that the elves like to keep their secrets fast hidden. Thus, to the majority of humans the elves remain a race of barbaric wild folk, little better than Beastmen. Though explorers and adventurers returning from the World Forest report magnificent and strange cities, and marvels of nature lore and magic, most folk dismiss these tales as fanciful rubbish, and imagine elves as loose bands of tribal savages.

The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Elves are divided loosely into three groups: high elves, who live in the mountains; wood elves, the majority, who populate the deep forests; and low elves, who live on the coast and are expert sailors. The three groups share a language, though they have many dialects, and trade and sometimes make war with each other. The high elves seem to live mostly in small agricultural communities, farming the valleys of the high mountains and fishing on the lakes. The wood elves live in wandering bands that travel around loosely defined territories, living off the land. Low elves have small coastal communities, but spend much of their time living on the open sea, often returning to land only after months at sea. However, both the low elves and the wood elves also maintain metropolises: the cities of the low elves form at sea for brief, defined periods, as the boats of many small communities come together for festivals of marriage, diplomacy and trade[1]. The wood elves maintain permanent cities in the deepest, oldest parts of the forest, carved out of the wilderness and growing as part of it. These cities are often nearly empty, and populated on a seasonal basis as the wandering bands return from their travels. Different bands seem to maintain different, regular patterns of migration and return, but the rules governing these nomadic cycles are unclear to outsiders – whether they are religious, seasonal, or cultural is impossible to say. Because elves live longer than humans, and do not construct their lives around standard seasonal patterns, they seem to maintain longer cycles in their lives – so every 10 or 30 years the cycles of a large number of bands will synchronize, and the cities will become festivals of glorious noise and colour.

At all times elven cities will be occupied by travelers, diplomats, the elderly and the very young, as well as members of other communities at rest or play. They are also home to non-elven forest residents: centaurs, fauns, and a range of fey folk can be found in most elven cities. They also maintain strange colleges of magic and religion, shrines, and their unique agricultural and biological institutes, which fashion new and weird crops and make mysterious creations out of the stuff of life. In the World Forest, what is natural and what is created can be impossible for outsiders to distinguish, and it is not known whether the forest shaped the elves, or the elves the forest.

Elves can be remarkably diverse in appearance, with skin ranging from deep black through the palest white tinted with pale blue, green or copper hues. Their hair is usually black or blond. Universally they are small and slight of build, with delicate bone structures and exaggerated facial features – large, non-human eyes, oversized but delicate ears, and remarkable cheekbones. Their eyes usually show very little white, and can appear strangely non-sentient with their unblinking gaze. Their voices are remarkably powerful, with a wide vocal range and strange ability to project sound beyond the limits of their frame. They also have remarkable hearing, but it is easily confused by the mess of sounds in a human city – they can only employ their senses well when they are in the wilderness. Elves live perhaps three or four times the length of time of humans, and it is not clear if they are mammals. Males and females are indistinguishable, and their is no extant record of childbirth. Some suggest they are a mature (or immature) form of fey life – just an ephemeral stage in the fairy cycle – while others have suggested that they can reproduce asexually or sexually. More extreme theories also exist – that the elves produce children collectively through their will, which is why they have to gather in cities periodically; or that they are a static race incapable of producing new members of their kind. There is no record of the existence of a half elf, and dark rumours amongst those close to the elves that miscegenation of this kind is seen as abominable. The elves are also deeply resistant to the human religions, maintaining their own strange pagan worship against all reasonable evidence that it is worthless under the gaze of Sigmar.

The elves of the Steamlands are a strange, magical race that cannot ever be fully understood or accepted by humans. Nonetheless, their adventurers and traders travel amongst the humans of the Steamlands, cause little harm and, though not widely trusted, are usually accepted with good grace. Though many humans think a time will come when there is a reckoning between the races, and many humans see elves as inferior and barbaric, they are tolerated or accepted in most places. Whether the suspicions of their darker purpose will be proven true is a matter that only time will tell; and the truth of their past and their strange, alien culture is something that can only be discovered by the hardiest and most persistent of adventurers …

—

fn1: somewhat like the annual democratic meeting of the old Icelanders.

 

Steampunk Warhammer 4: The Coming of the Plaguebearers

Farmers near Separation City, before the plague

When last we left our heroes, they had begun investigating the mysterious heresies being perpetrated by the Matriarch of Separation City. In this week’s session were the dwarven trollslayer, the human wizard, a human initiate in service to the war god Myrmidia, and the elven scout. Previously (though unreported here), the party had asked the healers they rescued to visit their onsen for a few days, to give healing to the guests there by way of repayment for having their lives saved. Let us assume that the coachman and roadwarden decided to accompany the healers back to the Onsen, and thus the party composition had changed.

The doctor’s hidden horrors

This session the group’s first task was to investigate the doctor. Given that the wizard, Sangar, was afflicted with a serious case of bog lice, and Aza’hi the dwarf had sustained a hideous injury that even the healers were unable to tend to, the natural way to investigate the doctor’s situation was simply to attend for a consultation. The PCs walked from Iron Ring to the settlement called Turtle River, a 30 minute stroll through rice paddies, orchards and the occasional stand of eucalypts, past the local temple of Sigmar. Passing the temple of Sigmar the PCs noticed it was strangely empty but for a small group of ragged-looking men and women who they subsequently discovered were refugees from farms to the west. They paid it little mind though, and marched straight into the doctor’s surgery for some medical care.

The doctor’s surgery consisted of a waiting room, a private office and the consulting room itself, and with the doctor currently seeing a patient only the receptionist was present. She bade them sit and then excused herself, explaining that she had to help the doctor with his tasks. While she was out of the room the wizard Sangar cast his newly learnt spell Whispering Wind, which he then sent wandering through the doctor’s private office looking for suspicious clues. He soon found that the doctor’s study contained a large table on which lay a partially dissected goblin corpse. The wind also warned him of a crate full of potions, and some kind of mysterious magical flask on a shelf. The group decided that while Aza’hi and the wizard were seeing the doctor, the elf Laren and the (as yet unnamed!) initiate would enter the study and investigate in more detail, guided by the remnants of the wizard’s whispering wind.

As soon as the two of them entered the study, they were struck by the horrors of the goblin’s corpse. In the gloomy half light of the office, with its partially severed head drawn back to stare blank-eyed at the door and its innards strung over a retort stand it was a truly hideous sight, even for those who knew what to expect. And the smell! So intense was the initiate’s shock at the sight of the corpse that he suffered immediate stress and began to shake. The elf, being typically unconcerned with the fate of lesser races, breezed on by and began investigating the corpse for clues. Between them they made short work of the room, and discovered:

• A crate of metal vials, with a note indicating they had been delivered from Store to the Bloody Shower tavern in Separation City. A second note indicated that they were a cure for the ghoulpox, but advised the doctor not to treat lady von Jungfreud’s husband, and suggested that the potion would combine with her grief at the loss of her husband to make her more susceptible to suggestion. The note also told the doctor to suggest to von Jungfreud that she send the priests of Sigmar out to investigate an area west of Separation City that was suffering from the plague, and told the doctor that a messenger would come soon to give him the instructions for the next stage of the plan. This messenger would come disguised as a troupe of wandering performers, and he was to visit the troupe at midday to meet his contact once it had arrived. The letter was simply signed “F”
• A single, strange flask, which contained a swirling green gas and was obviously dangerous. Subsequent investigation by the wizard revealed it would release a noxious cloud that could be used as a trap
• Laren identified that the doctor had been experimenting on using the goblin’s brains as a breeding ground for ghoulpox[1]. Because elves mummify their dead, and all elves are taught the process when they are at school, Laren was an expert at removing brains through noses, and was able to draw the entire goblin brain out through the nose to take away for a sample[2]
• A book entitled “The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Justified Experiment and Research Kommission” dated for a 10 year period ending about 10 years ago, that was so rich with evil magic that the initiatie of Myrmidia refused to touch it[3]

Having grabbed this stuff (except the book), elf and human ducked out the back entrance to the study, and everyone met up a little way down the road. From there they returned to Iron Ring, carrying the letter that proved the doctor had allowed von Jungfreud’s husband to die, and that he was in league with a mysterious man called “F.” Judging by the simple of the black crescent moon engraved on the bottom of the bottles, “F” was from the distant Shadowlands, which have a bad reputation for evil magic throughout the Steamlands.

The doctor’s secret schemes

Given this, the PCs decided to confront the lady von Jungfreud with their knowledge, and convince her to allow the healers to return. This didn’t work out for them, and she had them kicked out before they could convince her, and refused to believe any stories about the doctor. They did discover that she, too, was taking some kind of medicine that the doctor had given her – possibly a medicine that was causing her to be sick. Laren the elf sneaked back into her house after they had gone and stole a bottle of this medicine, but when Sangar the wizard investigated it he determined that it was actually a potion for curing disease[4]. He promptly drank it, to cure his bog lice, and incurred another, mildly painful symptom as a result. Sangar, always a puny half-man, was beginning to become increasingly debilitated under the weight of his disease symptoms.

The PCs were now confident that the doctor was running a very evil plan in the town, which involved driving out all the major religious organizations and then engaging in some kind of final act of heinous viciousness when his messenger in the travelling cavalcade arrived. They were further sure that he was acting in league with a dark power from the Shadowlands. The time had come to act. They took rooms in the Bloody Shower tavern and returned to the doctor’s surgery after it had closed for business. Their plan was to grab him, drag him down to the beach at turtle river, and torture him until he confessed to everything. This proved remarkably easy: he was alone in his office, had left the back door open, and had no defenses of any kind. They grabbed him in one round, knocked him out, dragged him to the beach, and with a completely minimal amount of slapping around he revealed everything.

The doctor, they discovered, had been a member of the Justified Experiment and Research Commission (JERK) in his university days. Mostly an avenue for young firebrand atheists in engineering and the physical sciences to rail against the power of the church, it was occasionally used as a vehicle for more sinister plots by evil tricksters. It was here that the doctor met a “famous phsyician” from the Shadowlands, who he now knows only as “F,” under whose thrall he slowly fell. All of his actions have been part of some plan of F’s, originally presented to the doctor as a plan to increase the influence of physicians in the Steamlands, but now apparently becoming something much more sinister. The first stage of F’s plan was the delivery of the ghoulpox treatments, and the revelation that the ghoulpox was ravaging the area to the west of town. As refugees came into the town they brought the pox with them, but this pox was immune to the efforts of the healers; at this point the doctor began treating them. He allowed von Jungfreud’s husband to die, and then suggested to her that she send the priest of Sigmar and all the dwarves in  the town out to “cleanse the blight.” They never returned, probably ambushed and slaughtered (the doctor doesn’t know). He then, again on F’s advice, convinced von Jungfreud to cast out the healers. Aware that witch hunters would be sent to Separation City if the healers reached Heavenbalm, and not blind to the risks as von Jungfreud was, the doctor undertook to have the healers murdered on the road, and gave the bandits two goblin bodies he had planned to dissect for use as false clues as to the perpetrators. He expects the messenger from F to come any day now, with the final part of F’s plan. Realizing that it will be very nasty, the doctor has begun to realize that he has been used by a dark power, and is in way too deep in a scheme of great evil. He wants to escape it, and was eager to help the PCs if they can find any way to keep him alive.

The PCs offered to help him escape town if he would convince von Jungfreud to recall the healers, and also help them deal with the messenger. He agreed, and they went straight to von Jungfreud’s house. Confronted by the doctor’s confession and still suggestible from his medicines, she agreed to help him flee and to recall the healers. Having achieved this goal, the PCs retired to sleep, and wait for the arrival of the cavalcade.

The circus comes to town

Sure enough, the cavalcade arrived the following morning, with three large caravans rolling out of the hills into the open scrub in front of the main gates to Iron Ring. Four performers capered beside the wagons, leaping and frolicking, while two of the wagons were driven by a large, powerful looking couple whose pale skin and red hair suggested they hailed from the Shadowlands. The four performers approached the gate and asked permission to troop through town that afternoon, advertising their performance. The gate guards agreed, and the cavalcade was set for 1pm. The PCs, meanwhile, decided that the doctor should not visit the camp at midday as ordered, but should speak to the members of the cavalcade and arrange for his contact to visit him in the healers’ hospice that evening – where the PCs could set an ambush.

As the cavalcade passed through the town, the initiate managed to a glimpse of the mark of Nurgle, a pustulent emblem that grows on the bodies of those devoted to the chaos god of disease and corruption, Nurgle. The cavalcade were servants of darkness, indeed, and had to be stopped! Once the cavalcade had trooped through town, while the doctor was talking to the members to arrange the new meeting point, one of them slipped away in the crowd and headed towards the hot spring at the centre of town, carrying what was clearly a bag of pus. Suspecting an intent to spread disease, the characters sent the elf to intervene: she used an act of skullduggery to bump the girl carrying the bag, and replace it with a bag of rotten mangoes in the confusion. This worked, and so they were able to stop the town being given a second disease epidemic. The mangoes were cast into the onsen, and when the elf dragged them out later they proved to be quite delicious from the parboiling they had received. In the evening they would ambush the contact and find out if that was the entirety of F’s plan – they suspected it wasn’t.

The plagubearers

In the evening they laid their trap. The doctor waited in the main room of the healers’ hospice, and the elf Laren hid in a storage closet close enough to hear all that was said. The remainder of the party waited outside, hidden in the darkness. Soon they saw who F had dispatched to meet the doctor:

• A tall, thin man wearing tattered, broken armour and rotten clothes, carrying a sword. He was obviously riddled with disease, but also obviously reeked of demonic magical power
• The two Shadowlanders, armed with hammer and sword
• A great, fat horrifically disfigured humanoid, perhaps 2.5 m in height, dressed in rags and hobbling along on one twisted and ruined leg. His belly was cut with deep slashes from which guts and pus oozed, and his body was covered in sores and pustules. His face was a mess of snot, blood and decay, and behind him trailed a miasma of stench. This was a class, old-fashioned plaguebearer of Nurgle, dragging himself through the night in all his inglorious horror
• Three cat-sized disease imps, misshapen devil figures commonly referred to as nurglings, that chuckled along behind their sorcerous master

This misshapen crew of festering evil slouched its way into the healers’ hospice, clearly relishing the chance to defile somewhere so pure and simple. Once they had all shuffled, chittered and oozed their way inside, the sorcerer spoke to the doctor. Outside, the party ghosted in towards the door, ready to spring a trap as lethal as they could think of.

In a voice that hissed and sighed with sickness and ruin, the thin man said to the doctor, “You were told to come at midday. You did not. This has inconvenienced us, and it angers me. But no matter, you have arranged to meet me exactly where I wanted you. Now we can enact the last stage of our plan – which begins with killing you.”

The next couple of seconds were filled with the doctor’s gasps, gurgles and final whispered pleadings as the plaguebearer smothered and destroyed him. Fortunately, none of the PCs were there to see it, and by the time they could burst into the room the doctor was already done for. Unfortunately, the dwarf had failed to move quietly enough, and the thin man was ready. He cast a spell as our heroes burst into the room, drawing about himself a swirling cloud of dark and diseased power as a cloak of protection.

Laren fired an arrow from the darkness that penetrated this cloak; the initiate succesfully hit with his mace, and Sangar conjured thorns all through the sorcerer’s body that harmed him viciously. Unfortunately, the sorcerer was protected by the mark of Nurgle, and though the elf could not be seen from her hiding place, nonetheless she was struck with a horrible disease. The dwarf slammed straight into the plaguebearer, dealing a vicious wound with his sword, though not so vicious that the plaguebearer was not able to strike back …

… and at this point the session ended for the night. In six weeks we will rejoin our heroes as they do battle against the servants of Nurgle. Will they come out of the battle alive and free of the pox? Fortunately, the healers will return in a day’s time … if anyone is left alive to benefit from their services …

—

fn1: she rolled a chaos star on a failed observation check.

fn2: originally I was going to have her just dig around in the skull, thus incurring a disease risk, but she proposed this part of the elf’s past, and for her creative interpretation of her character’s history I decided to let her escape the disease check

fn3: he also rolled a chaos star on a successful observation check specifically targeting the books.

fn4: two chaos stars on an unsuccessful magical sight check

 

Separation City

Separation City is a town in the north eastern bays of the Steamlands, that rose to prominence during the period of religious diversification that swept the whole northern half of the island early in its recorded history. As part of the changes that took place at that time, one sect of worshippers of Sigmar split from the main body of the faith, and through manipulation of political disputes were able to establish themselves in a position of relative power and security during the turbulent times of religious reformation. However, this sect proved to be on the wrong side of history, and the area they lay claim to spiritual guidance of has slowly declined in wealth and power as it fell behind the more religiously diverse northern and western regions. Separation city remains an important trade route with the Four Kingdoms, however, and also the last major town on the road heading into the deeper mountains of the steamlands – making it also potentially the last bulwark against beastmen emerging from the inmost parts of the island.

Separation City was originally a small fishing town, ruled by petty nobles who dabbled equally in trade and piracy. Like most of the human-inhabited parts of the Steamlands, its citizens were originally exclusively worshipers of the warrior god Sigmar, though they only had a poor and weak shrine, and paid lip-service to their faith. However, some hundreds of years ago new religions began to filter into the Steamlands – Verana worship entered through the elves, and Ulric gained popularity as traders from the Shadowlands began to gain a greater influence in distant Store and Twinluck. There was much debate within the church of Sigmar about whether to accept foreign religions or to attempt to quell them, and this debate slowly solidified into two forces: the larger, more prosperous Eight Banners Sect, which was linked with the Emperor of Infinite Ways in Twinluck, and the smaller but more ferocious Peaceful Mind sect. As more religions entered the Steamlands, debate intensified between these sects. There were rumours that one or both sects were using ancient assassin guilds to settle scores and resolve differences, and more than once the Emperor of Infinite Ways had to intervene to resolve petty land disputes over shrines or other possessions. The dispute came to a head, however, when Shallya’s envoys sailed into the chief port of the Spear Bays in a fleet of white ships, and with their healing powers eliminated in a week a stubborn and ferocious outbreak of ghoulpox that had threatened to destroy the kingdom. The Emperor of Infinite Ways saw an opportunity to profit, and granted the Shallya faith leave to preach and practice anywhere in the Steamlands. The men of the Peaceful Mind sect rebelled against his teachings, and demanded that he cast all other religions forth from the land. The Emperor, finding the voice of the Peaceful Mind unopposed after the sudden disappearance of the High Priest of the Eight Banners, agreed to their demands reluctantly, hoping to end further religious strife. Unfortunately, the Shallyans disapproved of the scenes of persecution that followed, and refused to offer further healing services until religious tolerance was extended to all. In the chaos of the following days a group of fanatics of the Peaceful Mind sect executed healers who were attending to an urgent ghoulpox outbreak in Store, and the resulting outburst of public anger forced the Emperor to have the fanatics executed. In protest, the men of the Peaceful Mind sect then announced their withdrawal from the Church of Sigmar, and marched enmasse from its central shrine at Heavenbalm toward the sea. They established a new church in Separation City, forced out the nascent churches of the new religions, and invited nobles who agreed with them to join them there. Though few did, a powerful noble family from Store saw an opportunity to escape troubles in their own city, and moved to Separation City. Thus ennobled, the priests of the Peaceful Mind sect set about establishing a new, purer religious presence in Separation City. The Emperor of Infinite Ways prepared for war, and the noble family of Separation City used their newfound position of importance to negotiate a deal that would favour their allies in Store: the Peaceful Mind sect would rejoin the church of Sigmar and accept religious tolerance if the Emperor would abdicate, free all the city states of the Steamlands to pursue their own path, and dissolve the Empire. In the interests of peace and harmony the Emperor so agreed, and the modern political landscape was formed. Of course, in the aftermath of the Emperor’s abdication, the first family to grab power in Store was a close ally of that family that had moved to Separation City, and many old scores were settled; but most agree the resolution of the conflict was for the best, since it allowed the healers freedom to settle in every major town in the Steamlands, as well as opening the path for other minor religions, and subsequently for the entrance of wizards from the North and West.

Others, of course, maintain that it was in this period of religious tolerance that Chaos was able to gain a foothold in the steamlands, and revile the Eight Banners Sect and the last Emperor of Infinite Ways as the initial agents of Chaos. Certainly, it is an unhappy coincidence that the healers of Shallya should have arrived at the Spear Capes just at the same time as the first ever outbreak of ghoulpox was observed, and that ghoulpox should have afflicted so many other communities in the years that followed. No evidence has been found of a guiding hand behind the spread of that vile disease, but the whispers cannot be stilled …

To this day, Separation City remains a haven of religious intolerance. It is the spiritual home of the minority Peaceful Mind sect, whose fanatics wander the land preaching the equivalence of Chaos and all the other non-Sigmar gods. Besides an unusually small Shallyan presence and a decrepit shrine to Verana, it has no significant outside religious presence, and though itinerant religious folk are tolerated, they are not welcome. This makes the land East of Separation City also spiritually poor, since Greathalf though larger is poorer and weaker, and holds no appeal for the major churches. Some in the centre of the Steamlands worry that this makes Separation City a hotbed of Chaos activity, especially since it is the closest major city to the Beastlands.

Separation City holds a trading outposts with the dwarves of the Four Kingdoms, and also has significant steam wealth – there are many hot springs and various steam-powered luxuries in the town, as well as a small industry based around the healing and recuperating powers of the spas – many nobles from the wilder west coast, and even from lands over the sea, come to Separation City to “take the airs.” Separation City also boasts eight huge pits of boiling water called the Eight Hells, each of which has been named after one of the eight flags of the Eight Banners sect, and which are rumoured to hold magical properties that can be harnessed by properly trained wizards. Wizards are not welcome in Separation City, however, and rarely given much chance to conduct research at the hells.

Separation City is divided into four main areas, each surrounded by its own low walls and separated by short stretches of hills and rice paddies. There is a port area at the beach, with some small hot spring hotels; inland to the northwest and built across a small plateau is Iron Ring, the centre of the town. To its west is the cemetery area, which also holds some open air hot springs and one of the Hells. Finally, northeast of the Iron Ring, and north of the port, is Turtle River, where the main church of Sigmar is built and many of the services supporting the priests can be found. Each area is linked to each other by roads, and a kind of steam-powered rail system links the port to the Iron Ring, so that goods and people can be dragged up from the bay. Between the cemetery area and the Iron Ring is a small dwarven outpost, neat and well-built and situated in its own walled area, from the middle of which rises a large docking spike for the dwarves’ famous airships. The dwarves are liked in the town and contribute to its well-built and well-maintained engineering, especially the defensive walls around the separate sections of the town. One of the Hells is also located just outside the dwarven outpost, and is rumoured to be the easiest hell to research.

West of the city, on the road that leads into the interior of the island, is a small mountain called Monkey Mountain, that is rumoured to be home to a race of intelligent monkeys. These monkeys do not usually bother the folk of the city, though they occasionally raid caravans passing on the west road, or on the coast road to Greathalf. These monkeys worship an ancient and twisted monkey god, and travellers passing the mountain typically leave offerings at one of its dilapidated shrine, as a form of tribute to guarantee safe passage. Though humans have little contact with these monkeys, no one has ever suspected that they might be related to the beastmen – they are not pernicious, merely mischievous and simple.

Prosperous, inward-looking, and peaceful, Separation City has been largely forgotten by the rest of the Steamlands, being remembered only when there is an upsurge of beastman violence, and the emissaries of the Separated head north and west to raise armies of vengeance. It is to Separation City that our adventuring group came to sign the deed to their hot spring hotel, and it is here that their adventures started …

 

 

The Machine Minds of the Palace Cape

On the eastern coast of the Steamlands is a long stretch of open coastline called the Palace Cape. Bordered on the south and west by the wilds of the Beastlands, the Palace Cape is a land of forested hills and open grassland, all sweeping down to a rugged and wild coastline famed for its beauty. The landscape is largely untouched by human settlement, but its emptiness is belied by the sense of order and regularity in the terrain. Though it appears unoccupied by humans, it is not virgin territory.

In fact, the Palace Cape is the home of a mysterious race of mechanical entities, generally referred to simply as the Machines. This race confounds efforts by its flesh-bodied neighbours to categorize it, because the Machines have a range of forms as diverse as the animal kingdom, and its members are as alien and inscrutable as the fish of the sea or the great diving lizards that bask on the rocks of its southern beaches. Though few Machines are ever seen by humans, they are reported to have been seen in forms as diverse and various as gleaming steal humanoids, fragile porcelain dolls, spider-like monstrosities, humming discs floating in the air, mysterious immobile constructions of crystal, and even a flittering cloud of mechanical insects. Some scholars dispute that the various entities of the Machine kingdom are even separate minds, claiming that they are all animated agents of a single mighty intellect referred to as the Slip Mind. Whatever the truth of it, the Machines of the Cape have little in common with the warm-blooded folk to their north and west.

Nonetheless, the Machines do maintain a society that in some ways resembles that of humans. They take shelter from the elements as do any living creatures, and it is from these majestic shelters that the land gains its name. The Machines – or perhaps some older race before them – have built mighty and fantastic towers that stand lonely and magnificent against the backdrop of the distant mountains, or emerge from the waves of the near shore like behemoths of rock and steel. The towers appear unoccupied, the land around them being untilled and devoid of farms or settlements – just a single spire of steel and glass emerging from the wilds of the surrounding land. But if an interested observer waits outside long enough, they might be lucky enough to see a procession of machine workers emerge from some secret door, marching off into the wilderness to attend to some task, or setting about pruning the trees and tending the lands immediately about the tower. Very occasionally one might see a human resident emerge, or stumble on a small hamlet whose residents have lived in the shadow of the tower for millenia. These residents will have little to tell the traveller about the Machines among whom they live, however, except that they are peaceful and trustworthy and the life is good.

Scholars from other realms have been unable to comprehend the truth of the Machines, and the Machines themselves defying all forms of investigation, the scholars of the living have been forced to come to wild and unsupported views about the provenance, views and lives of the Machines. However, some things are known fairly well, and all theories must account for the quirks of Machine life that have been observed. It is not known whether the Machines eat or sleep, but it is generally believed that they gain some form of power from the Palace Cape, for they cannot leave it. Indeed, were one to be foolish enough as to abduct a Machine and take it beyond the ill-mapped borders of its realm, it would fall quiescent and incapable of movement or thought. Some argue that the Machines’ power is a magical device buried in the centre of the Palace Cape; others, pointing to the Cape’s name, suggest that the power source lies in the Palaces themselves, and that were they to fall the Machines would be extinct. Yet others believe the land itself is the source of the Machines power. It has been noted that on the boundaries of the Palace Cape, there live a breed of feral and degenerate Machines, which the Machines themselves disown. These beast-machines prey on passing humans, or hide from them, acting for all the world like animals; but some of them have a rudimentary cunning, or form groups of bandits, who attack passing caravans. It has been noted that while the Machines of the Cape can repair themselves by some mysterious means, these beasts on the border cannot, and will usually be seen carrying damage, rust and decay that they seem unaware or uncaring of. Thus, many scholars have argued that the power source has some centre, and wanes as one moves away from the centre, leading to a decay in both physical and intellectual strength. Other, more practical minds care not about the nature of the Machine’s motile force, but note that the borders of the Palace Cape are dangerous, and those who go to trade with the Machines should go well armed. The Machines themselves show little care for these degenerate brethren, seeming to treat them as animal cousins, best avoided but to be dealt with if they cause trouble. Of course, for the Machines these brethren are no burden, since the Machine folk do not leave the Cape.

The Machines also seem to maintain a cohort of slave machines, which they control remotely through their strange magic and which behave as machines are traditionally understood to operate. Often these slaves are accompanied by a sentient Machine, which guides and manages them. This is also how the Machines fight, not engaging directly with their enemies but instead fighting through slave soldiers. Machine soldiers are rarely seen, because the Machines do not make war, but those who fight Beastmen, or who have patrolled the western reaches of the Cape, report fighting spiders of steel and glass, and floating wagons heavily armed with cannon. Sometimes individual Machines will fight alongside these beasts, seeking fame and fortune amongst their kind; but it is known that Machines can die, though they seem quite tough, and usually the Machines are happy to let their automatons wage war for them.

The Machines trade with all the kingdoms of the Steamlands and elsewhere, and welcome human guests, though sometimes in a cold and remote way that can be confused with rudeness. Some of their number seem to understand or even appreciate humans, and there are a few small human settlements in the Cape which often hold a kind of ambassadorial status. It is known that the Machines have a way to enable a select few of their number to travel outside the Cape, but they seem not to like to do this, and reserve this expediency only for the most dire of situations. They do maintain a Tower near their border with Greathalf, however, and here a few Machines and humans live alongside each other in a mixed town that is renowned for its wonders and mysteries, though dangerous to reach. Here humans can trade raw materials and art for fine steel, gems, and occasionally technological items of rare power. The Machines are strangely unable to create art, though they can appreciate it, and their fondness for certain kinds of human art leads them to trade. But in general the Machines have little need for congress with humans, and keep to themselves. This can make the leaders of other nations uncomfortable, and occasionally rumour and confusion have led these rulers to ill-fated missions against the Cape. The Machines seem not to hold grudges, though they remain an inscrutable and poorly understood people. They are yet another mystery of the Steamlands, a strange amalgam of magic and metal that remains beyond the understanding of mortals. Were a group of intrepid adventurers to uncover the secret of their origins and their power source, great wealth and power could come their way … along with great danger …

 

Parallels in Racial Theory Defensiveness?

This week Crooked Timber seems to be on a bit of a thanksgiving roll, and has various commentaries on the greats of the revolution and the civil war, mostly negative. In amongst them is a nasty little piece on Thomas Jefferson as prototypical fascist racial theorist, which is stirring some aggressive debate. As always there’s some really interesting material in the comments, and it appears that some genuine historians of that era are stalking the comment thread, dispensing their wisdom. At the same time, various defenders of Jefferson are rocking up and throwing stones, and I note that (rightly or wrongly) the response over there to the suggestion that one of the founding fathers was a racial essentialist is very similar to the response that I sometimes see here to my accusations that Tolkien’s work presents a model of inter-war or Nazi racist theory. We get quotes from his letters presented as proof against his public utterances; we get elision of the central question of the debate (did the man propound a racist theory?) with other, less relevant questions (was he a bad man?); we get accusations that it’s all just do-gooding liberal self-haters hating; we get told to leave off because he was just a product of his time[1]. Admittedly the debate as presented there is simultaneously murkier and clearer: Jefferson’s writings are political writings, and he held political influence, so any racial theorizing in his writings is rather more relevant to black people in America than anything in Tolkien’s; but at the same time Jefferson enacted good laws to free slaves, so we have to find a way to understand the laws in light of the speech, and this is not a problem that applies to Tolkien. But I sense that a certain proportion of the American populace, including academia, hold the founding fathers in a similar degree of reverence to that with which the nerd world holds Tolkien, and for those people the challenge of reconciling Jefferson’s private words with his public acts induces a level of distress that is interesting to observe, and I think similar to the distress some nerds feel when they realize that their central, canonical text is also a racist guidebook.

For my lights, I haven’t a clue about Jefferson and I don’t think the founding Fathers should be held in any esteem – we’re 300 years past their due date and the constitution they wrote is a flawed business, as is the Republic they founded. But the debate is interesting[2], and it seems that Jefferson’s defenders can’t cope with the central thrust of the post, which is that Jefferson believed it right to free slaves, but was preparing a quite unpleasant racial theory to justify nasty measures in the aftermath. There’s a lot of evidence presented in comments that having unpleasant views about black people is not inconsistent with being opposed to slavery, so for example Lincoln is quoted as having said:

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgement will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality… I agree with judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects – certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man. (emphasis in original)

I think that this kind of position – standing up to your fellow racial equals for the rights of people you think are inferior, in a situation that is rapidly heading towards war – is an enormously brave and noble undertaking, although the stupidity of the beliefs presented there should be self-evident in the modern age. But it shows that we can judge people of previous eras by our modern lights: Lincoln, though he thought black people inferior to whites, still understood the importance of compassion and basic dignity, and his actions and words show that it is possible to demand a certain basic universal compassion at all stages of history. And from what’s written in the main post, it’s not clear that Jefferson was on board with that compassion, and his defenders aren’t able to make a clear argument to state that he was[3]. This is rather disappointing for an academic blog, but not unexpected given the topic.

Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see that similar defensive strategies appear in both debates. I guess it’s a universal hallmark of the fanboy …

—

fn1: though Chris Y at comment 24 deals with that nicely:

Samuel Johnson also: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

fn2: There’s a cute side-note about Washington in the comments, that players of my Compromise and Conceit campaign will love: during the retreat from New York the British evacuated all their black allies, and Washington, charming soul that he was, made repeated demands of the British that they leave behind “American property” (i.e. several thousand human beings). That’s exactly what the Washington in my campaign would have done too, had he lived. Or perhaps in suing for peace he would have demanded the repatriation of his “property.”

fn3: Though neither his defenders nor the writer of the post seem to be interested in making an effort to reconcile the conflicting opinions Jefferson seemed to hold, which I would have thought was a key part of the task of defending or damning him.

 

Tolkien’s Arthurian Epic to be Released

The Guardian reports that JRR Tolkien’s apparently unfinished Arthurian epic, The Fall of Arthur, is to be released soon. The story is a poem in old-English alliterative style, with passages like these:

His bed was barren; there black phantoms

Of desire unsated and savage fury

In his brain brooded till bleak morning

I’m a fan of alliterative poetry and Tolkien was apparently a master of reading it in its original language, so I’m intrigued that he could have written a modern-day Arthurian poem based on this style. A lot of people can get this sort of thing wrong but when it’s done well it can be very evocative, and I see every possibility that Tolkien could pull it off. Of course, it’s not always the case that specialists in a field make good practitioners, as shown by the long-standing rule that one should never let a film studies student choose your Saturday night movie, but Tolkien is a published writer and some of his other more stylized writing, though hard going, is quite rewarding (see e.g. The Silmarillion). I don’t like every aspect of the passage I cited above, but it seems like a nice first pass, and I will certainly be checking out the full poem. It could be that while Tolkien can often be mediocre in his standard prose, he will be consistently good in this style, so it will be fun to give it a go – plus, it looks like a dark reinterpretation of the Arthurian legend, but will no doubt lack much of the rape!rape!grimdark! of more modern writers who attempt to “subvert” the classic fantasy style through dark reinterpretations. If it’s grimdark without the salacious shock value, I think it could be an excellent addition to the Arthurian canon…