Desperate Men

Desperation is one of the more discernible flavors in the sour mélange of material I’ve come up with for the Wyrdwold over the last year or two. I think that’s because, from a narrative standpoint, desperation is often the only motivation that makes sense out of the actions we choreograph for our little men.

Because what we fetishize with wargaming is pretty dark. Violence, murder. Desperation. We don’t always notice it because it is buried beneath layers of strategy, or fantasy, or artistic expression, or abstraction, all of which make this such a rewarding hobby…but we serve no one if we ignore the kernel from which it springs.

Paltry Grist

Which is why, I guess, when I found myself at Games Plus in front of the Wall o’ Reaper with some money burning a hole in my pocket, I was drawn to these sculpts. 

Even in the bare metal, they communicated to me such a sense of raw fear.

Titus Slake

I don’t know if I managed to bring it all through in the painting. Don’t really care to be honest. I found them uncomfortable to paint— though not because there was anything wrong with the sculpts.

Rather, I found myself contemplating what could be in front of them to inspire such fear, such desperate violence.

Let me know your thoughts.

Hund of the Morraine

(All Them Witches)

In the hither Northwest, where mountain hames perch 'midst the bluffs of the groaning vale, and the trails are marked by cairns of unknown heritage, there are some who insist that not all stones are as they seem.

These are regarded by their neighbors as—at best—eccentric. Ever are they moonlight-rambling up the trails and passes with leathern satchels of bizarre tools: tiny hammers, calipers, bits of colored chalk.

When happens a likely-looking boulder, these instruments they will use to tickle and to prod the belly of the stone. If one were to ask, for instance, 'Dear Rooblin, why is it that you so vex the stones?' He might reply: 'because this stone, THIS stone is just pretending.

'At it's heart is the wily soul of a primeval beast, forefathers of the hund, or the geit, or the ochse, that was deposited here when the world was but an icy thought in the mind of god...'

And here will they become pensive, perhaps winding and unwinding the handle of their tiny chisel in the tangles of their beard. 'I could show you...if I could but make the creature pay heed. Many is the time that I've seen a stone rouse into the form of a many-hornéd beast and slake itself at the lip of a black mountain tarn...' 

Glimmergulch

In radiance set the sun, pursued at a careful distance by the pinkish mist that obliterated cairn and chasm even in their moment of crepuscular glory. The only thing exempt from the forgetfulness of dusk was the hunched but significant figure of a man as he sat on the brow of a knoll above the fog, tending the nascent curl of a campfire, his back against the stump of a wasted tree.

To this prominent figure, as to a beacon, young Soupcrumb made his way along the sodden track. He was hungry and tired, and his feet were scraped and raw. There was black mud between his toes.

Soupcrumb crawled into the fire's gathering radiance without remark, but without bothering to hide either. For a while the huge man did not seem to notice his presence, but at last he broke the silence with a not unfriendly grunt: "And what finds you here, little waif? Fey thing, are you? Come out of the mist to play my eyes for fools? Some Spinney-scamp come to lead me into a depthy swale?” The question did not seem serious to Soupcrumb. It was as though the big man had been expecting him, and that his surprise was some ineffable kind of joke.

Soupcrumb was not scared, and the big man seemed to notice this. “My name is Glimmergulch, boy. Now tell me why you soil my fireside.”

At last Soupcrumb spoke: "No Spinney-scamp am I, though as much I may become. I was a Skeldkryk farmer's son. But I stole away. Raising cabbages is a shit life, and my Pa's a cruel arse. I set fire to his shed and then I ran."

There was a voluminous pouch by the Glimmergulch’s side, partially concealed in the many hides which he wore draped about him. Shifting the stave that protruded from its mouth, he produced a crust of dark bread and an ale skin, which he offered to Soupcrumb. The boy filled himself eagerly.

Glimmergulch scratched his copious whiskers as he watched the boy drink. "So you are here now, and hoping your Pa will forget about you. There are many such in these parts. Mark me boy!" Soupcrumb looked dizzily up from his meal, for the ale had been strong and it clouded his wits. As his eyes climbed, the giant shifted aside his great hide cloak to reveal a polished gut-plate of a somnolent emerald luster and the size of a well cover. A black spiral was cunningly inlaid into the lacquer, and it seemed to Soupcrumb that this spiral traversed an incomprehensible dimension. His jaw grew slack. He was aware--faintly--that the man was speaking.

"My name may be Glimmergulch, thing, but none call me that anymore. What they call me, when they remember to call me anything, is the Overlooked. I know what it's like to be well and truly forgotten. You see, even you've forgotten me.” The clod released a low chuckle. Soupcrumb’s head bobbed in hypnotized time with the motion of his diaphragm. “I saw you but yesterday morning. I saw your Da' take up the thresher. He saw me too, which is what stayed his ire. But he doesn’t remember me either. I handed you the torch that kindled your Da's shed, do you not remember you miserable child? Of course not. None remember me. But you remembered where I told you to find me, though you hardly knew it. And now you'll never have to see your mean old Da' again."

The unfortunate boy finally collapsed in a heap by the cold embers of the fire. The night had already passed away, not wishing to linger on such a scene. From Glimmergulch’s pouch came a tittering. He withdrew the wooden stave which was his cudgel and It winked and gibbered at him. " More fuel for the fire, eh Glim? A tasty morsel you've won tonight," it sang. " Do let me crack his eggbasket, do."

"Nay twig. This one's to be laid by, for I have on the morrow to bargain with Toads, and they like their currency fresh."

“Tender! Tender tender for the toads,” giggled his cudgel.

Glimmergulch swept the unconscious Soupcrumb into his sack with the crook of a massive elbow, and swung it over his shoulder as he began slowly to plod down the cold little hill. Around him the dawn gathered and the mist began to disperse, revealing the faint outlines of berms and barrows like the traces of a haunting memory.

Chronicles of Yore: Teachin' Song of Blades

The nice thing about Song of Blades and other games sharing the 'small game, simple rules' philosophy is that new players can pick them up rapidly, even over the course of their first game. So when I invited a friend over to game (sometime in August, I think) and he wound up bringing two of his friends, I knew there was only really one choice.

I grabbed my deck of character cards and had each player choose a couple hundred points-worth of regular characters as well as a personality, just based on which figures appealed to them. Meanwhile I rolled out my gaming mat and some walls, cairns, trees, and stone heads. Then followed a bloody four-player brawl in two parts:

Once every year and a day rises over the 'wold the vermilion moon like the eye of  a dissipated god. It is said to awaken a hunger in man and dwimmer-beast alike, so that they spend the night in bloody carousal. Few, it is said, wake to see the sanguine dawn, but those that do awake renewed, with the knowledge that they have survived to see another foul year.

Among hollow cairns in the northeast, a party of dwimmer-beasts emerge in search of sacrifice. They close on a band of baleful men, sure in the advantage of darkness and surprise. But the men have the insight of the blood moon's rising. They seek struggle. They welcome strife.

Meanwhile in the Southwest, Dire men ride besotted, seeking the glory and bliss of death under the red moon's spell. Fortunately, Bilebroke's hunchymen are about and willing to oblige.

The struggle is joyous and desperate. The stones watch and chuckle their approbation.

At last, and one by one, the dwimmer-beasts are hunted down, and sent squealing back to the pit, while the hunchymen withdraw in terror and ecstasy into the night.

Barely sated, the maddened riders continue their charge across the fells, and the hunting party is glad of the change in sport. The red moon begins to set in the west, and each breath before the carnage stretches interminably like the streaks of red moonlight through the shivering trees. Soon the morning will come, and a new year will bestow it's ghastly, mocking smile upon the 'wold. But for the rest of this glorious witching hour, we all are lost.

Happy new year.

Thjornig Marrow

When Thjornig Redmane touched his axe

A vision passed before his eyes.

He saw not how, nor when, nor why,

But he knew that he would die

Drowned in a black fen, left to lie

Until the worms crawled out his eyes...

When Thjornig Marrow rides to war,

There comes a sorrow to his eyes

to see his foes, to list' their cries,

For they know not that they will die

where in the mud they're left ot lie.

...Oh how they wish they wouldn't die.

Ullidge Brood

Their throats will crack, the crows will feast

in paean to our kindly beast.

We'll make them crawl, we'll make them sing

and praise the many-eyed, mumbling thing.

I hold it now, like Krell before.

I hold this flag till I am sore.

The staff is rough, it's splinters sting.

I hate the many-eyed mumbling thing.

Greer

Hiding in the dank and mold

or perched up in the mountain's fold...

I'll find those creatures folk call great

and gladly cut them down a bit. 

Ogres, Pit-toads, Bears, and Wurms,

Sung in songs that make me squirm...

I'll stalk those legends that men fear

and make them curse the name of Greer... 

Brinnae the Goad

Brinnae the Goad once looked at a toad

And asked "What did god purpose for this?"

She spat on the toad and then onward she rode

Without ever more giving a piss.

That rogueish goad, Brin, once drank wine from a skin

And said 'how brightly this shines in my head!'

She tasted again, watched the sky start to spin,

and drank 'till her poor brain was dead.

The Gribbly Wight

                                            You shall know of my disdain,
                                            The scorn of the unrighteous-slain,
                                            When under the White Finger'd moon we shall rise.
                                            How I yearn for that beautiful time...
                                            Hungry and lurking and foul with grime...

                                            Buried 'neath the wretched scree
                                            Of a filthy, barren barrow-lea.
                                            Only worms on which to dine,
                                            So let me nibble your sanity...
                                            Yes, let me pick upon your mind.

                                            Embalmed with mud. Reposed on slates.
                                            Left below the silt to wait
                                            For the white-finger'd man to call on us;
                                            To be numbered among his levy of hate;
                                            To accept his gift of hateful dust...

Brittleghast the Cut-Pate

                                                 Beware the cut-pate's jovial axe.
                                                 It furrows brows with hilarious tracks,
                                                 vexes crowns with giggling seams,
                                                 lights Brittleghast's eyes with a mawkish gleam.

                                                 While stricken, bleeding onlookers drool,
                                                 he juggles his axe like a glorious fool
                                                 And - rather than ruin this act with a grin - 
                                                 lets the arc of his axe tell the story for him.

                                                 Sweating with mirth and convulsed with delight,
                                                 To watch Brittleghast work is a wonderful fright.
                                                 He shows us the thrill of such exquisite dread;
                                                 He shows us the joke in a well-cloven head;

                                                 Shows us how masters work only in red
                                                 Long after more reasonable colors have fled;

                                                 Heaps jest upon jest with the sweep of his axe.
                                                 ... Oh God help us, he's at it again.