Showing posts with label The Usual Caveats About Copyright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Usual Caveats About Copyright. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 April 2017

The Great Fold

I keep thinking that I can't explain this without an image but I don't have the skill to make the image

I stole this one from 'Le Topologicon' a nice comic about multidimensional spaces that I did not understand, even in translation, but if you are better than me at mathematics (and who is not?) then maybe you will understand it.



You are OK downloading it as the guy who made it made it specifically to communicate, here is the English version..

So, two worlds, folded at right angles, cross each other here and you can move between them.

It's really more like four worlds.

This could be like a Boys shape, but taken literally, and yes I am aware that a Boys surface is a three dimensional impression of a multidimensional idea and that it wouldn't really work like this because the two 'surfaces' wouldn't seem to interact if you were walking along them.

But if we imagine one world extending in a vertical sweep high into the sky, and if it is a Boys surface, then on the other side is ANOTHER world, and below this world, but inaccessible, is another world, except they all interconnect in reality but here you can access them all together.

From world One you can see world Two rising up like a translucent wall covered with mountains and rivers. If you go to the point where the worlds cross you can push through if you focus. It’s like walking through soft cotton, and it goes on for a while, creating opalescent half-lit lands, a double right-angled wilderness.

You cant just dig down into the world underneath your own (you would find dirt), but you can go to the big world rising up out of the ground in front of you, close your eyes, reach out your foot and climb up onto this new world.

As you look back your old world has become the one rising up out of the ground and you can push through it whilst walking along this one and then you can reach the world opposite to your usual one. Your own antiverse that would usually be separated by the slenderest but most absolute of cosmic surfaces.

If we imagine the cultural, economic and ecological consequences of four worlds meeting together in a huge line there would be some intense effects. In fact, on each world, it's likely that the lines of intersection would be the dominant cultural and economic powers in opposition to the more distant uniplanar lands.

What would be the effects of the sun shining through another world? Would there be world-shadows? Would the sun of another world reflect on its oceans and thereby shine on you? What about where rivers or oceans cross currents and weather patterns? Even four-world whirlpools created by tidal complexes across four dimensions.

Politically, maybe the alter-worlds don't get on, maybe they are opposed to each other in some fundamental way, with each someone reflecting the negative of the other

Plane 1 world Alph and world Sheol.

Plane 2 world Ko Kai and world Ho Nok-Huk.

So from Alph you can access Ko Kai or walk through Ko Kai and access Ho Nok-Uk on the other side.

Same thing from Sheol.

But you can't get straight from Aleph to Sheol, you have to go through other worlds to do that.


What are the worlds like?

Alph - Bright. Apollonian, Nintendoy, ever-young, Rey-esque (Madrinian), drama can happen but silly things also. Reasonable and non-psychotic power structures. Could even veer over into Adventure Time territory. If there was an apocalypse in its past it was more of a paradigm shift like in Rachel Pollacks Unquenchable Fire or in the end of Promethia.  Ruled by Good King Mario from the City of Angles, "Los Angles" and his Hermes/Mercury/Flash herald Lord Sonic. Bad guys rise up but are always taken down by the good guys. Problems solvable through combat and empathy. XP for making friends and healing the Kings wounded heart, or making the city gardens bloom so a hopeful theme strikes up in the background.

It;s from Breath of the Wild.


Sheol - Dark. Has deep time, a lot of time has happened in Sheol. Aesthetics of Ruin, Piranesi, Gothic, cathedrals up the whazoo. The dead walk. Wh40K. Old, mad power structures. Lots more people. Storm-wracked seas that represent and feed off the tortured unconscious of the population. Cities are teeming locked-in arcologies. Environment is ruins on top of ruins built over a strata of more ruins. Wrecked post-apocalyptic environments. Drained seas. Pre-unification Terra from 40k. Horrible abusive psychic warlords vs horrible but more organised Inquisition-backed megachurch. We have to be horrible to beat the horrible. Crush or kill problems at terrible loss. XP for survival and holding back chaos.

Blanche.


Ko Kai - Bright. Artistic influence is Mogul miniatures, civilised, refined, watery, lots of archipelagos, Indonesian influence. Has the theme song of 'Mysterious Cities of Gold' as an emotional tone. Armadas of bright-sailed ships who don't even genocide people when they arrive (much). A world in a state of discovery and re connection. Ruins exist but courage and effort can make them live again and reignite dying cultures. As if the whole of the world was the Indian Ocean and South China Seas plus Indonesia. Resolve problems like detectives or defeat them like rational knights by discovering their secret flaw. XP for returning ambassadors of new culture to the Sultans court, for opening trade routes, discovering new lands, translating ancient texts and increasing the culture of the home society or rescuing ancient knowledge from destruction of time.

Click to see the big version. It's worth it.

 Click to see the big version.
Click to see the big version.


Ho Nok-Huk - Dark. Artistic influence is Aztec or mesoamerican scary sculptures. All the Princes of Elemental Evil vs all the Kaiju-Sized Cthulhu Mythos creatures vs Godzilla and all the Godzilla creatures vs Demogorgon and Orcus and Yeenoghu vs some of the creepier Aztec Gods. Even the "small" creatures are fucking Dinosaurs and Pleistocene Mega-fauna. The closest you can get to a good guy is King Kong or Smaug. People are ants in a world of monsters and titans except the Titans got fucked in the eyehole by Chthulu. Problem solving means avoiding getting skullfucked and brainraped by something bigger than you until something bigger than the thing trying to kill you, kills it. Like living on Monster Island forever, everywhere. XP for staying alive & not eating most of your friends.


Felipe Escobar Bravo
Coatlicue


What are the folds like?

Alph folds into Ko Kai - ports of adventure and alliance. Could be dual-plane kingdoms run from corner-cities occupying both realities. Rationalism and fineness of Ko Kai meets enthusiasm and optimism of Alph. A great place to be really.

By Dan (http://dandibuja.blogspot.co.uk/) see comments
Alph meets Ho Nok-Huk - Refugee-cities of people trying to escape Ho Nok-Huk. Berlin-wall or North Korean DMZ situations. Wall gets smashed sometimes by rampaging Kaiju and teams of anime-bitches need to climb up in Godzillas earhole to blow up his brain. Much easier to get into No Nok-Huk from Alph than visa versa. Giant Attack on Titan fortifications and some surprisingly dark Nintendo-people having to make terrible choices. This is probably the most terrible place in Alph and the nicest place in No Nok-Huk. Alphic cultures mysteriously drawn towards the fold despite hating it as gives them access to an absolute horror and consuming otherness not often available in Alph.

By Dan (http://dandibuja.blogspot.co.uk/) see comments

Sheol meets Ho Nok-Huk - Sheol sending in crusades and legions of doom-knights to be stepped on by kaiju and trying to force its insane byzantine religions into Ho Nok-Huk where they are consumed by literal chaos. Lots of creepy alliances and backstabbing plus insane Inquisitors thinking they can ‘tame’ Godzilla. Cities built on Kaiju corpses and bones stopped when they tried to cross the planes. Sheol probably think they are 'colonising' Ho Nok-Huk but in reality they have no fucking idea what they are doing.

By Dan (http://dandibuja.blogspot.co.uk/) see comments

Ko Kai meets Sheol - Rules decided by insane Talmudic bureaucracy who choose who can and can't cross and what the relations between the societies should be. Linkage corrupts the rational religions of Ko Kai towards tyrrany and fear and perverts the decadent churches of Sheol towards humancentric liberalism. Highly civilised with lots of stratification Court of Versailles stuff going on. Wigs. Plots. Quite a drugs trade.


Dan did another image a year later!


Thursday, 28 July 2016

NOTED AUTHOR CAPHTOR CLOWE COWERS IN CLASPED CARYATID, CLAIMS CONSPIRACY OF FLOATING PIGS

Welcome Elect! the Golden Teat, Vornheims only true marker of the avant-garde, the final broadside firing, the journal of thought for those who truly THINK, returns!

Though haunted by FIRE, that bright shadow to life itself, we speak once more to shame our slavish imitators, rebuke our foes and kindle again the canker'd spark of DARING in those few within this warren of frozen mediocrity who retain and renew the capacity for original conception!

Rumours of this journals DEATH & DESTRUCTION at the hands of a church-mandated RESURRECTIONIST MOB, riled by porcine fabulists, gifted with the means of conflagration by the ARCH-CONSERVATIVES of the NOBLE CLASS and directed by well-placed DOUBLE AGENTS to assault our megre premises by catapulting small burning wolves lobotomised with golden pins through our windows until the ferocity of the burgeoning fire, the occlusive properties of smoke and the unmixed tragedy of the wolves sad consumption combined to DESTROY our press and CAST OUT our staff into the city street where they were radished and pilloried (MARTYRS), thereby depriving this decrepit manhive of its only true ORGAN OF PRINT dedicated to the preservation and sustainment of True Art, has FAILED.

The Golden Teat PRINTS ONCE MORE. We extend our apologies to our phandom within the body of the CHURCH, to our dedicated readers in the SALONS OF THE RICH and most of all to the Editors and Staff of that BASTION OF CONSERVATISM  the journal of the HONEY'D OAT and to its owner and editor, Voltoom Von Markenstark. Since you, SIR, were previously able to report on our papers ATTEMPTED destruction some hours BEFORE it took place, we do hope your PROGNOSTICATIVE CAPACITIES remain, and have warned you in advance the remarkable, the unspeakable, the unprecedented contents of our freshly disinterred and RESURRECTED journal. If so, then surely you are the ONLY ONE WHO LIVES to guess at what follows upon these words....

That is, the GOLDEN TEAT is proud and snide to report an interview, the first and ONLY  of its kind, with the overwhelmingly famous and shockingly reclusive author CAPHTOR CLOWE!!!!

This passenger of un-mixed fame, perhaps the most well-known writer of cube-entire, called by some 'The Gorgoliths True Bard' whose works have been translated into every language known and some un-known, invited in this organs factotum, Bathsheeba Vile, requesting that she pass through numerous unmarked portals and approach him only by a strange and vacant path. Vile (and scribe) met with the writer in conditions of ceramic secrecy and intense luxury.

Unlike the commandants of some OAT'er journals, the editors of the TEAT will spare no verbs in bringing you to the POINT. The interview begins upon this dash-

Clowe

VILE: Caphtor Clowe...

CLOWE: Please Bathsheeba, call me Caphtor.

VILE: It would be a pleasure Caphtor.

CLOWE: And make no signs. I am aware of all codes that pass and I have penetrated the mind of your scrivener.

VILE: Have you.

CLOWE: I become instantly aware of all thoughts within a five-metre distance of my naked skin, as, I am sure, do you.

VILE: I was not aware of it.

CLOWE: We are both Artists Bathsheeba, and we both know that True Art is THOUGHT and the substance of thought is ART. But if this masque pleases you, and I see that your scrivener still writes, then please proceed with your 'questions' and I will 'answer'.

VILE: Thank you. Mr Clowe..

CLOWE: Caphtor, please.

VILE: Caphtor, you have written two books over a space of five-hundred years.

CLOWE: I have.

VILE: Your first book 'Through the Eyes of the Gorgon' was published in the year (adjusted) 1532 and instantly banned. It claimed to be a 'tell-all' biography of an immortal being, one partly responsible for the creation of this world and mentioned in the scriptures of Vorn.

CLOWE: It was. It was, and it remains, an unappreciated and misunderstood work.

VILE: The few surviving reviews suggest that  it did not meet a favourable reception at the time...

CLOWE: CRITICS!! CRITICS!! CRITICS!!  THEY ARE CANNIBALS!! ALL OF THEM!! ALL OF THEM!!! I HAVE SEEN IT WITH MY STONE EYES!!!!!

(At this stage Clowe became violently agitated and moved rapidly about the room for several minutes. He then left the room and could be heard loudly requesting his 'substance' from an unseen member of his extensive staff. About a quarter of an hour later he returned, apparently weeping, though smiling and breathing deeply, and continued his response as if no interruption had occurred.)

CLOWE: 'Gorgon' was a misunderstood book. Most (all) of the qualities mocked by critics at the time were simply avant-garde or unpredictable stylistic choices necessitated by the remarkable nature of the subject.

VILE: The Honey'd Oat called it "Cheap, rubbishy, researched by dogs chewing dictionaries, unfit even for a turgid voyage, composed of error and transmitted by a borderline-retarded mind."

CLOWE: They failed to even notice, let alone un-pack and cognate, its multiple overlapping ironies. OF COURSE the biography of an immortal near-divine being would be written in the style of a poorly-researched potboiler, the style is both representative of the mortal minds collapse into apparent cliche when confronted with events of titanic significance over a period of incomprehensible time, and ALSO an investigation into and commentary UPON that self-same collapse.

VILE: And what they called "significant errors and inaccuracies in the text, not only in reference to recorded history, but even to its own narrative"?

CLOWE: A deliberate and entirely necessary aesthetic choice. The 'gaps' and 'inaccuracies' referred to are carefully chosen and precisely arranged lacunae in the syntax of rational thought designed to both provoke and NECESSITATE a free-floating relationship to the text and the near-shamanic leaps of intuition and interpretation which are the ONLY way in which the true narrative, not only of the book, but of HISTORY ITSELF can be comprehended! OF COURSE  it would seem to an unengaged and mediocre reader that I had written the book in under a week while drunk, OF COURSE it would seem to  DULL MIND that I had dropped the pages on the way to the publisher and had not bothered to put them back in the right order, OF COURSE it would look  to the LARGE CHESS SUBNORMALS AT THE HONEY'D FUCKING OAT that I had barely researched the thing and had simply made up details when required! Every single element was a deliberate aesthetic choice!

VILE: Your total disappearance shortly after publication seems to have caused almost no investigation or surprise.

CLOWE: They thought I jumped off a bridge. SHE saw to that.

VILE: And in your absence you were tried for both blasphemy and libel by the church. How did that feel?

CLOWE: I only discovered it recently. Luckily, since both trials proceeded in parallel, and since the evidence and arguments required for each conflicted at a basic level, to be found guilty of one would mean I was innocent of the other.

VILE: You mean you could not be guilty of both blasphemy AND libel?

CLOWE: Quite so, it was one or the other. If what I said was true, it might be blasphemous, but could not be libel, if it was not true, then it was libel, but, being legally classified as such, I could not be found fully guilty of blasphemy.

VILE: Both trials collapsed after only fifty years...

CLOWE: Of little use to me! Imprisoned as I was within a petrified cell!

VILE: And yet you were also charged (twice) with contempt of court for failing to present yourself at your own trials.

CLOWE: Yes, that charge still stands, making me persona non-grata within Vornheim itself and requiring my exile here in Osc Lithicum.

VILE: Are we not in Osc Leth?

CLOWE: Since no-one has ever been able to fully define the difference between the two cities, it makes little difference.

VILE: Your subsequent re-appearance though, almost five hundred years later, early in the year of Our Vorn (adjusted) 2013, and the publication of your sequel to 'Gorgon', 'The Maze of the Medusa', telling the story of your captivity, 'rescue' and of the death of the Medusa at the hands of a group of wandering and contemptible rogues, was perhaps the most staggering event in the history of publishing, seismology and the church of Vorn.

CLOWE: I have seen my future born, and it is hell.

VILE: Would you care to un-pack that for our audience?

CLOWE: Bathsheeba I will. Our culture, and the Gorgolith itself, exists currently in a state of mortal and extreme danger, totally unsuspected by the majority of its population. Both it, and I, have enemies of overwhelming and terrifying power.

VILE: Is this the reason for your hiring of an army of highly-experienced mercenaries and your fortification of this gigantic woman-shaped tower into a kind of high-security pleasuredome?

CLOWE: No. That relates to a legal matter and to the protection of my substance. My true enemies cannot be dissuaded by mere force. No lock or bar may stand against them, only the power of my ever-reaching and all-penetrating mind preserves even this thin sliver of reality from their relentless assaults upon both it and me.

VILE: Caphtor what are those enemies?

CLOWE: Their form is twofold. First as a race of invisible intelligent floating psychic pigs, and second as the poor enforcement of international copyright.

VILE: Mmm, I know the question of copyright has become something of a 'hot iron' issue in Vornheim recently....

CLOWE: Bathsheeba it is UNQUESTIONABLY TRUE  that AT THIS MOMENT, individuals ranging from the Hexenbracken to Vovoidia to distant Yoon Suin are experiencing and indulging in PIRATED  and POORLY TRANSLATED copies of my work for which NO REMUNERATION has reached either my publishers or myself and that an army of invisible mind-controlling pigs whose slavering mouths vomit pearls of pure psychic lightning are the unseen, and real, masters of this reality.

(The pigs fly oriented in a vertical manner, standing as crucified men, not in a lateral or animalistic way.)

VILE: Some more radical authors have argued that copyright ultimately benefits, not the author,  or the culture at large, but the vast power of the publishing houses who control the major presses, most of whom have close relationships with both the church and state.

CLOWE: They are either helpless victims of the psychic pigs or THEIR WILLING CONSPIRATORS. THERE IS NO DOUBT that the failure to enforce copyright over international boundaries is coarsening our culture, ROBBING authors and WEAKENING THE MINDS of the public, making them ever-easier prey to the tyranny if the invisible psychic pigs. It is for this reason that I am offering a SIGNIFICANT BOUNTY for the suppression and arrest of anyone pirating my work, even so far as Yoon Suin itself and for the destruction and annihilation of the levitating mesmerist pigs that haunt and destroy us even while we sleep.

VILE: Caphtor, may I speak frankly?

CLOWE: Bathsheeba I feel and know that we are and should be friends and between friends frankness and direct honesty is river and connection of SOUL that kindles and engenders the sweetness of mutual knowledge which is the primary course of life and the sweet release of comradeship. Please do speak with total frankness.

VILE: Skeleton armies, goblin armies, rings of demonic wolves, the discovery and dissemblement of sleeping gods, mechanical eyeborgs and sexual harassment by cockroach men, a lot of people would say that the last few years have been bad enough. 'Why pigs?' they might say. 'Aren't demons bad enough? At least we know they are real. After all, it's 2016'

CLOWE: Bathsheeba you're quite right, it is twenty sixteen, the darkest and most contemptible of years, and that's exactly why we need to take action now. I'd like to answer each of your points in turn.

VILE: Mm hmm.

CLOWE: Let me first say that I have been, and am, a deep, deep supporter of the rights of women.

VILE: It's so good to hear you say that.

CLOWE: Despite being directly involved in the murder of the Medusa, I consider myself a feminist.

VILE: I know that will mean a lot to our readers.

CLOWE: And let me state quite clearly on behalf of everyone in this ceramic pleasure dome, not just myself and the guards, but all of the staff as well, that we all take a firm stand against  sexual harassment, especially by filthy subhuman insect men who, lets be clear, may technically have a right to exist, but probably shouldn't exercise that right.

VILE: Just becasue you can breathe doesn't mean you should breathe.

CLOWE: And secondly, let me say this. I am weak, I am afraid, I am verifiably mentally ill, but do not silence me.

VILE: You have a right to speak.

CLOWE: I have that right. As much as any man. My hands are shaking.

VILE: Don't give up Caphtor.

CLOWE: I do feel as if I am about to vomit.

VILE: You are so brave for doing this.

CLOWE: I may require my substance.

(Clowe then left the room for approximately twenty minutes and reappeared weeping, smiling and with slight purple stains on his fingertips. Again he took up the conversation with no apparent awareness that he has been gone.)

CLOWE: Bathsheeba I'm going to take on these invisible pigs.

VILE: Thank you.

CLOWE: It may kill me. It may kill others. I have an army of well-paid magical assassins and roughly a metric tonne of my substance and I'm going to take on this intangible civilisation of invisible psychic pigs, I'm going to take on anyone influenced by those pigs, I'm gong to free humanity and I'm going to make damn sure that copyright is respected across international boundaries and no degree of unseen psychic force is going to stop me.

VILE: Caphtor I want you to know that both I and the Golden Teat stand with you in your war against these invisible pigs.

CLOWE: Thank you Bathsheeba. Although I'm fully aware that this could be an elaborate double-bluff by the pigs invisibly controlling your mind, I want you to know how much I appreciate what is probably your genuine and free-willed support.

VILE: Thank you.

CLOWE: And I want you to know that this makes you significantly less likely to be destroyed by my army of magical assassins.

VILE: But Caphtor..

CLOWE: Yes Bathsheeba?

VILE: I'm not here to form some kind of unquestioning assumptive choir for your point of view.

CLOWE: Of course not.

VILE: I am a journalist.

CLOWE: You are, and it's highly likely that you are not currently under the direct control of invisible pigs.

VILE: I feel I should present a few counter-arguments.

CLOWE: I feel ready to answer any and all of your arguments.

VILE: Caphtor, a lot of people are going to say - how do we know these pigs are real? They're invisible, they're intangible, they fly and they control minds..

CLOWE: They're going to say "Where's the evidence?"

VILE: Yes.

CLOWE: Bathsheeba I think if you look at the people making this argument..

VILE: Yes.

CLOWE: If you look very closely at them. If you think about the kind of person they are, I think your'e going to start noticing a lot of connections between them, a lot of similarities.

VILE: And what are those?

CLOWE: That they're all being controlled by invisible intelligent psychic pigs.

VILE: Caphtor I'd like to talk to you about fame.

CLOWE: I appreciate that Bathsheeba, fame if a powerful and terrifying force that imbues us with a mighty yet dissociative influence while slowly stripping away the armature of our moral self, not unlike the projective capacity of a mentally empowered sow.

VILE: Caphtor, do you feel that fame has changed you?

CLOWE: No. I remain centered in myself. Neither the five hundred years spend petrified in a bath of acid, my direct witnessing of the collapse of an interdimensional otherspace and the escape of multiple demonic horrors, my long and depressing sojourn on a tropical island that was not fond of artists, my staggering fame and wealth or the multiple legal actions and death threats against me have altered my core personality. I have always maintained my essential desire for a simple, clean, secure life in a ceramic fortress shaped like a gigantic woman and for the absolute power of life and death over everyone around me.

VILE: Death threats?

CLOWE: Bathsheeba I'm not here to play the victim card. Yes a number of amoral, deluded and violent people carry a direct and immediate hatred of me, yes the church wishes to imprison me and yes I am locked in psychic warfare with a race of flying invisible pigs, but harassment is simply something artists have to deal with in our modern world, whether its scheming newsboys flinging dead birds, fishwives interrupting you or monks stealing your letters, my policy has never changed; turn the other cheek and quietly order your army of magical assassins to kill them all.

VILE: Caphtor, some people might say that one man commanding an army of magical assassins is too much, it's one thing for educated people, for artists and writers and critics, we understand. But the ordinary peasant, the man in the field vacantly tilling his frozen earth, he's going to think "Hey, does that guy really need a private army of magical assassins? And what does it mean for me that he has one?

CLOWE: Bathsheeba, I understand and I want you to know that I am that man. I wasn't always the insanely wealthy genius you see before you now. I too have suffered I too know what it is to feel small.

Let me address the reader directly for a moment. Please understand, the only thing you have to fear from the professional killers under my command is freedom from the much more terrible threat of invisible flying pigs and non-payment of reasonable royalties.

VILE: Caphtor, thank you so much for this interview.

CLOWE: Bathsheeba it was absolutely my pleasure.


Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Svirfneblin



Svirfneblin

At the edge of the comprehensible world, where darkness sculpts itself an active form, where death is the constant and life the except, what kind of good can exist?

In the delicate curves of their hidden cities the Svirfneblin feel a purpose that strikes like lightning in the tempest of their daily lives. The flame to live is quickened in them and they feed it on the pure rhythms of light and space and nothing else.

They are a people without shouts, without tears, without hopes, without regrets, They value only four things.



LIFE

Svirfneblin prize any living thing above any non-living thing in any circumstances. To them, life is the justification for the world and its true continuity. The spine of reality. All is a fiction. Only life and its laws are authentic. Kings and wealth both fade and die, but life is strong and grows and time goes on in its real continuity. Life is what is real.  Life knows neither good nor bad nor justice as a measure of morals. It simply is and it must be preserved.



ACTION

Svirfneblin culture is built around doing. Speech, description, planning, these are tertiary concerns. The word is just the bodyguard to the deed. Svirfneblin are unimpressed with oratory and difficult to persuade. Even rational description and analysis are sometimes not as effective as might be wished. Deed is the highest and surest of all truths.



LIGHT

Svirfneblin see the Veins as pure space and light, only highlighted by mass. They consider themselves lucky to live here. From their perspective no-one from the surface could understand what space and light truly are. They drown in both. They use space to 'keep things in', they use light to 'see' other things. Space is not a piece of luggage. Light is not an errand boy. Light is, space is. They have their own quality.

Svirfneblin value gems but only for the light within the gem, not the gem itself. Gems are a construction of space and light, not mass. To them, the light is active, alive, it races faster than a waterfall, soundless and eternal.

Their cave-cities are all beautifully carved in unpredictable, yet harmonious curves. Being there fills the observer with a sensation of lightness, despite the difference of scale for larger beings.

To Svirfneblin the body is superficial, accidental. Tone, brightness, occluding or refracting, that is all. The eyes matter to them, not the face. Though they do value worked beauty, they think beauty has all the properties of a real force like gravity or heat, and they treat it as such.


THE DAY

Svirfneblin are present-minded to an astonishing extent. They are intelligent and capable of both planning for the future and interrogating the past, but they do not value these processes for themselves. They are things to be got out of the way. They stand between the Svirfneblin and direct experience of the present moment.

To Svirfneblin the past is dead. It is carrion, the future is nothing. Can you eat it? What is its taste? It is impossible to speak of the future without lying, so as little as possible should be said of it. Today is the deed. They take the present day.

Saturday, 26 April 2014

Who Made This?

Or, perhaps a better question, how was it made?

Ancient Treeman Front

side

Reverse

side

AND THIS GUY HAS SKULLS

This magnificent individual on Warseer has tried to compile a list of the sculptors for GW. I regard this as an excellent thing as I believe every sculpt should come with a list of everyone whose hands touched it. As well as, for my personal use and interest, an exact breakdown of the design process with minutes of all the meetings and an exacting description of the indistrrial processes used in its construction.




From the Warseer list I can see that that Dryads, which seem to prefigure many fo the design elements, were done by Aly Morrison and Brian Nelson.

I have never seen anything quite like it, especially, I have never seen plastics forced to do the things they do here. Have any of my readers?

Also, where do you begin learning about plastic injection technology?

Saturday, 12 April 2014

egwugwu



An iron gong sounded, setting up a wave of expectation in the crowd. Everyone looked in the direction of the egwugwu house. Gome, gome, geom, gome went the gong, and a powerful flute blew a high-pitched blast. Then came the voices of the egwugwu, guttural and awesome. The wave struck the women and children and there was a backward stampede. But it was momentary. They were already far enough where they stood and there was room for running away if any of the egwugwu should go towards them.

The drum sounded again and the flute blew. The egwugwu house was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Aru oyim de de de de dei! filled the air as the spirits of the ancestors, just emerged from the earth, greeted themselves in their esoteric language. The egwugwu house into which they emerged faced the forest, away from the crowd, who only saw its back with the many-coloured patterns and drawings done by specially chosen women at regular intervals. These women never saw the inside of the hut. No woman ever did. They scrubbed and painted the outside walls under the supervision of men. If they imagined what was inside, they kept their imagination to themselves. No woman ever asked questions about the most powerful and the most secret cult in the clan.

Aru oyim de de de dei! flew around the dark, closed hut like tongues of fire. The ancestral spirits of the clan were abroad. The metal gong beat continuously now and the flute, shrill and powerful, floated on the chaos.

And then the egwugwu appeared. The women and children sent up a great shout and took to their heels. It was instinctive. A women fled as soon as an egwugwu came in sight. And when, as on that day, nine of the greatest masked spirits in the clan came out together it was a terrifying spectacle. Even Mgbafo took to her heels and had to be restrained by her brothers.

Each of the nine egwugwu represented a village of the clan. Their leader was called Evil Forest. Smoke poured out of his head.

The nine villages of Umuofia had grown out of the nine sons of the first father of the clan. Evil Forest represented the village of Umeru, or the children of Eru, who was the eldest of the nine sons.

Umufia kwenu!’ shouted the leader egwugwu, pushing the air with his raffia arms. The elders of the clan replied, ‘Yao!’

‘Umofia kwenu!’

‘Yaa!’

‘Umofia kwenu!’

‘Yaa!’

Evil Forest then thrust the pointed end of his rattling staff into the earth. And it began to shake and rattle, like something agitating with metallic life. He took the first of the empty stools and the eight other egwugwu began to sit in order of seniority after him.

Okonkwo’s wives,  and perhaps other women as well, might have notices that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo. And they might also have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu. But if they thought these things they kept them within themselves. The egwugwu with the springy walk was one of the dead fathers of the clan. He looked terrible with the smoked raffia body, a huge wooden face painted white except for the round hollow eyes and the charred teeth that were as big as a mans fingers. On his head were two powerful horns.

When all the egwugwu had sat down and the sound of the many tiny bells and rattles on their bodies had subsided, Evil Forest addressed the two groups of people facing them.

‘Uzowulu’s body, I salute you,’ he said. Spirits always addressed humans as ‘bodies’. Uzowulu bent down and touched the earth with his right hand as a sign of submission.

‘Our father, my hand has touched the ground,’ he said.

‘Uzowulu’s body do you know me?’ asked the spirit.

‘How can I know you, father? You are beyond our knowledge.’

Evil Forest then turned to the other group and addressed the eldest of the three brothers.

‘The body of Odukwe, I greet you,’ he said, and Odukwe bent down and touched the earth. The hearing then began.





From Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe