Krynek, the Bloody Knell

Hide you well within the dale,

or in the muck below the swale,

or scale you down an empty well,

or tread the weald far off the trail.

Still will you hear the Bloody Knell;

Coming so near, the Bloody Knell.

Gorish the Gaveler

When passing in weald and wold, waste and wild, there is no better implement for maintaining order than a very large hammer.

Clodgy Fern

It is rumored that the Banditry of Hunchymen recruit their number from those of the Fulgent Desmesnes who are thrust into exhile upon the Wold for the cutting of too many purses...or throats... 

...the which hearsay only darkens the already rank reputation of Laird Bilebroke's Ready Men.

In truth, however, it is most often the mendicants and starvlings who take up the art of highwaymanship...

...for there is no greater motivation on the Wyrdwold than hunger tempered with fear.

Laird Bilebroke

Tireless over the Wold he will trudge,

Knee-deep in fest'ring, malodorous sludge;

Outwardly issues a dirge from his head

While inward he darkly delights in his grudge.

Thence to the Wyrdwold comes Bilebroke the Dread

Lord in Exile, breaker of heads;

Leader of Hunchymen, eater of lead;
Foe of the Magnifex, fled from her wrath;

Thinks only of murder to rule in her stead.

Thence to the Wyrdwold came Bilebroke the Dread.

The Fell Glendywr

Said Bilebroke, to his Cousin Snotspur, of the Fell Glendywr:

Thou dost belie him, Shmercy, thou dost belie him;
He never did encounter with Glendywr:
I tell thee,
He durst as well have met the devil alone
As Owyn Glendywr for an enemy.

Said the Fell Glendywr to Laird Bilebroke:

Cousin, of many men
I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave
To tell you once again that at my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.

These signs have mark'd me extraordinary;
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
And bring him out that is but woman's son
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art
And hold me pace in deep experiments.

I can call spirits from the vasty deep;

Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command

The devil.

Hope you enjoyed that little bit of fluff, words courtesy of Wyllyame Shakkspyre. One of my favorite plays, that (I got to play Bolingbroke in college). Hence the hommage.

You should also know that I've posted the .xcf template file for these character cards. If you'd like to make your own, just click the link to download. These are editable in GIMP which is also free and available to download. I don't know if other editing software can do the same thing. If you'd like another format, then leave a comment below and I'll see what I can do.

Don't feel like commenting yourself? Command the devil to do it for you.

Dwarves Don't Worship Beer

I get it. It's cute, they're funny little pseudo-vikings, waddling around being drunk and stubborn and murdering orcs. I get it.

I just happen to think it's kind of stupid.

I recently purchased the above Reaper Bones figure and in the package, as in the photo above, it was impossible to tell that emblazoned on his shield is a tiny little picture of a foaming beer stein.

Which is fine. This is extremely common across manufacturers, and would not have deterred me from buying the figure. But it did get me thinking. Why on earth (or one of its suitably elaborated, imaginary surrogates) would a dwarf decorate his shield with a mug of beer? Shields should be emblazoned with ferocious things, or heraldic things, or things that embody the spirit of the dwarf-at-war.

Which led me to conclude that the whole beer iconography with dwarves is just one of several conventions for (lazily) representing dwarf 'culture.' (Q: "What makes dwarves different, you know, as a race?" A: "They really, really like beer." Q: "But how do we clearly represent this rather obscure fact of their imaginary culture?" A: "I know! We'll put it on their shields!")

But that's another thing... really liking beer isn't a trait that sufficiently establishes a cultural identity. Particularly not when you are trying, as all fantasy settings these days seem inevitably to do, to make an imaginary race. Many cultures widely appreciate beer, but this does not define them. Culture is too abstract for that. So to say that an entire race can be defined by its love of beer is just silly.* 

It is NOT EVEN like saying all humans love drinking Soda, which definitely isn't true but might seem true to an outside observer, on a first glance, before they could get down to cases.

It IS like saying that all humans love drinking soda BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMANS. A-and that's where the whole idea starts to get really creepy. And so do all the others. Dwarves being slow, or stubborn, or bearing grudges...it all starts to sound uncomfortably like certain modes of racial stereotyping--which may be fine if you are trying to model that kind of thing in your game as an element of the story (this is big in RPG games, I'm told), but is less fine if you find that you are the one perpetrating stereotypes without thinking.

The kicker here is that dwarves are simply more compelling when they aren't conceived as a race anyway. Same with elves, and orcs, and whatever. Because what our monsters really represent (at least in my conception) is an utterly alien and incomprehensible force that nonetheless resides in the human psyche. Or rather, the very idea of monsters exists as an attempt to understand that force. The advantage to fantasy is that those monsters become literal in the game.

This makes sense to me. Because then the story of the game is not human vs. monster, or good vs. evil, but rather human vs. the most troubling aspects about himself. That story sounds more compelling.

So I sculpted right over that beer emblem. I decided that this guy has a magical shield which tells him secrets in blank pentameter. The sculpting was rough, but I wasn't in the mood for anything elaborate.

I also decided that there are no dwarves in the warbands I create, or on the Wyrdwold in general. Instead, there are Hunchymen.

Hunchymen was a term originally applied to those peasants who were forced to work in the drear and dangerous northern mining collonies of the Magnifex. The miners soon become stooped and mangled in the dwimmerdark--for they did not know what they were mining, and it was often deadly. When the peasants, after a few scant years of labor, could no longer work, they were forced out of the colonies to seek out vagrant and beggarly existences.

The term is now used by those in the grubby townships of the Wyrdwold to describe those who choose to dwell on the open land. These include, most commonly, veterans of the many wars of the Magnifex who, as meager compensation for their ruined lives, have been granted allotments of stony and twisted ground on which to stead; but also hermits and outcasts, roving banditry and peddlars, and less defineable, more troubling creatures which stir only at night. Hunchyman in this context is used to communicate that the individual is a stranger, is potentially dangerous, and is quite possibly mad.

Hunchyman is also used very loosely in the townships as a general derogatory term for the poor, the lowly, the dirty, or the openly lecherous. It's use in this context generally conotes that the hunchyperson is not wanted and not welcome.

To let me know what you think, go ahead and build yourself a shield and then paint upon it an emblem that you think best represents the gist of your thoughts. Or just put a comment in the comments box.

*Don't get me wrong, I love beer. But how do dwarves even grow grains up in the mountains? Environmentally, one would think that grapes would do better. It is at least conceivable that some dwarves prefer wine.

Bale Grimly and the Comely Visage

Servant of old to Laird Bilebroke in exile is Bale Grimly, and champion of his banditry of hunchymen. Few villains are there upon the Wyrdwold or the Further Wilds who can match his dark reputation.

For upon his arm he bears the Comely Visage, an uncanny object of unknown heritage before which he has cowed his enemies, man, beast, and all. For by some art unknown to this world, the eye of the shield has power over the unwary to captivate, to paralyze, to make vapid or violently bilious. 

Some say it was the gift of a fay lord for whose favor Bale Grimly committed acts unspeakable; others, that it was cut from the face of an ancient Toad-o-the-Pit who challenged Bale to a reckoning one dark-moon'd night; still others whisper that it fell from the sky, and that Bale Grimly sought it in the weald, and emerged naked bearing the Comely Visage aloft. 

Those who speak thus know nothing, for none living saw Bale Grimly first bring forth the Comely Visage, and Bale Grimly will not speak of it. Bale Grimly seldom speaks of anything. Except late at night, when he sits across from the strange face of his strange shield, and holds deep conference.

He fixes the red gaze of the visage and begins, with a low, chanting rasp, to intone words of dangerous little sense. The Comely Visage does not respond, but its eldritch eyes glimmer in the firelight.

Thus, where others who behold the gaze of the Comely Visage fall, instant and entire, under its glamour, Bale Grimly communes instead. On what, none can tell. Bale Grimly does not speak of his communion with the Comely Visage. Bale Grimly seldom speaks of anything. 

Now, constant readers, I hope I have sufficiently thrilled and beguiled you with the tale of Bale Grimly to ask you a favor. Last night, I figured out how to make GIFs. You can see my first (rudimentary) attempt below.

I don't know how I feel about it. I can't decide if I like it, or if it's annoying. So I ask: is this the kind of thing you would like to see on this blog? Do you think I should replace standard photos with GIFs (which you cannot enlarge), or should I use the two in tandem as above? Do you like it? Do you hate it?

Does it make you violently bilious?

Let me know your thoughts by staring into the eldritch eyes of the comments box below and telepathically communicating your message.