Paradoxes of Defence

 A friend sent me this link to a 1599 fencing manual, by George Silver in which the writer SHITS all over the ITALIAN rapier. Because RAPIERS SUCK!

As well as going in very deep on some quite complex time-and-motion studies through entirely verbal means, and talking a lot about the complex interplay of different weapons and methods, it also contains this interesting part about the change in culture brought about by the Rapier;

"That the reasons used by the Italian fencers in commending the use of the rapier and poniard, because it makes peace, makes against themselves.

It has been commonly held, that since the Italians have taught the rapier fight, by reason of the dangerous use thereof, it has bred great civility among our English nation, they will not now give the lie, nor with such foul speeches abuse themselves, therefore there are fewer frays in these times than were wont to be. 

It cannot be denied but this is true, that we are more circumspect of our words, and more fearful to fight than heretofore we have been. 

But whereof comes it? 

Is it from this, that the rapier makes peace in our minds; or from hence, that it is not so sufficient defence for our bodies in our fight? 

He that will fight when he is armed, will not fight when he is naked: is it therefore good to go naked to keep peace? he that would fight with his sword and buckler, or sword and dagger, being weapons of true defence, will not fight with his rapier and poniard, wherein no true defence or fight is perfect: are these insufficient weapons therefore the better, because not being sufficient to defend us in fight, they force us into peace? 

What else is it, but to say, it is good for subjects to be poor, that they not go to law: or to lack munition, that they may not fight, nor go to the wars: and to conclude, what more follows through the imperfect works of the Italian peacemakers? 

They have made many a strong in his fight weak, many a valiant man fearful, many a worthy man trusting to their imperfect fight, has been slain, and many of our desperate boys and young youths, to become in that rapier fight, as good men as England yielded, and the tallest men of this land, in that fight as very boys as they and no better. 

This good have the Italian teachers of Offense done us, they have transformed our boys into men, and our men into boys, our strong men into weakness, our valiant men doubtful, and many worthy men resolving themselves upon their false resolutions, have most willfully in the field, with their rapiers ended their lives. 

And lastly, have left to remain among us after their deaths, these inconveniences behind them, false fencing books, imperfect weapons, false fights, and evil customs, whereby for lack of use and practice in perfect weapons and true fight, we are disabled for the service of our prince, defence of our country, and safety of our lives in private fight."

What has been disrupted here? for, violence is a social relationship, a social activity as much as love and marriage.

Silver talks in the book about the 'true fight' and whatever that is, is very hard to define, especially through the veil of time and the thorns of specialist lore. Let me see if I can glean some basic points;

- Fighters should be able to take their fighting knowledge to the battlefield.

- Fighters should be able to take on unskilled, but athletic men, and unskilled but brave and/or drunk men as well as to take on other skilled and educated fighters.

- Fighters should be taught grappling and " striking with the foot or knee in the cods".

- There is a lot here about 'the Times' and 'the Governors' that I don't really understand but I think generally he is in favour of fighters dancing around less and prioritising hand movements over foot movements I think.

- People should bear weapons of the right size, to take advantage of their bodies movements (I think) and not over-sword by getting into too-long weapons


Someone better read in the social milieux of the time (1599) might be able to tell us something about what is driving these changes. To me it looks like people are taking up fencing at least in part precisely because it is more ritualised, further from the battlefield, less 'common', has less grappling and cod-kicking and ends with less bits chopped off (though still many deaths). At least you die pretty.

The argument about lethality and skill though, that is truly fascinating, it highlights to me something about fundamentally different attitudes to risk, skill, danger and lethality.

The rapier seems to have introduced something like nuclear mutually assured destruction. It is very lethal, often even in unskilled hands, and Silver thinks its more likely to lead to the deaths of both parties.

The fighting he prefers is something else; more skill-based, with different weapons (he favours the short sword) which can also be used on the battlefield, more likely to lead to clear defeat for one party, but, if I am reading this right, easier to control? Easier for the more skilled party to manage and limit the sanguinary nature of the violence?

"..are these insufficient weapons therefore the better, because not being sufficient to defend us in fight, they force us into peace?"

Silver mislikes this because - perhaps safety won through mutual powerlessness before violence, safety won through mutual danger and the equalising, or neutralising of hard-won skills, is not true safety?

Or that it is a poor safety because it is the safety of weak men, bought through fear and maintained through mutual fear and therefore fragile, or corrupt in some way?

Hobbes (who I am also crawling through at the moment) would love this. He might say that men varying in strength but no man being so strong that the weakest might not kill him, it is through mutual fear that men submit to greater authority. and that the rapier has returned these men closer to the state of nature.

It truly is a "paradox of defence".

Warmth as an Invisible Skill

Two Youtube videos I saw recently lead me to consider the paradox of invisible skill;


This one by ComicTropes

about Bernard Krigstein and his much-analysed story 'The Master Race'


And this one

by Leela Norms about two different film versions of the Jane Austin story 'Emma', one from the 90's and one from just before CORONADOOM.




CITIZEN KANE AND MODERNISM

The ComicTropes video says this Master Race comic has been called 'The Citizen Kane' of comics.

And I thought that was true in more ways than one.

I remember that old screenwriter guy, Robert McKee absolutely hated Citizen Kane. Said its symbology and expressionist elements were crushingly obvious, as in blatant and overwrought. The film makes it agonisingly clear that here there is something SYMBOLIC happening and exactly what that SYMBOL means. He thought that was absolutely not what a story on film should be like or about and that the film had been massively over-praised because of this.

Curious thing; formalism, modernism and a slight dislocation, all shift the perceived media a little more into being 'text'. Not just that they use complex methodology; shifts in perspective, unusual forms and processes, to tell their stories, but that the fact that there are multiple kinds of these forms layered into each other, and happening in sequence, means that the story is calling attention to itself *as a constructed thing*. It is making it obvious and clear that it is being clever, and almost showing you how it is being clever.

This seems to work across THE MASTER RACE, Watchmen, Sin City and Citizen Kane.

(The new 'Emma' doesn't quite match that as it doesn't use the same modernist techniques in the same very obvious way - but it does share the fact that it is a bit more emotionally distant and chilly and more obviously constructed than the 90's Emma.)

These works are almost pre-cognated.

(To re-cognate, or 'recognise' is literally to run something through your mind again, but in a different way, or subject to a different process - first you sense, then you recognise).

But the fact that the modernism of these works makes them easy to analysis, easy to discuss, easy to *see how they work* - perhaps gives them more weight in the world of criticism relative to other things than perhaps they deserve.

(I like all of these things btw)

Other stuff that makes them almost guided missiles aimed at the heads and hearts of the critical classes; all 'dark' with heavy sombre emotions, all very 'male'. The Master Race is a Jewish creator writing about the Holocaust and being analysed by another Jewish Creator (Art Spiegleman) who also did a book about the Holocaust.

If its about the Holocaust it has to be art, its certainly not allowed to be anything else.






WARMTH AS A HARD TO ANALYSE 

Warmth, by contrast, is not easy to analyse. Or discuss.

Think about something that made you feel really warm and then think about what you would say about it.

The only things that come to mind for me are connections of real-world memories - things in my life that feeling or moment reminds me of or connects me to. Emotion, as it so often does, acting as a global phenomena inside the mind, connecting many small things across many levels, often in a slightly oblique way.

But these networks of vague memory are, well, vague - soft, delicate, almost formless. Difficult to interrogate. How would you discuss them? and how would you analyse them with others? It would be like discussing a dream you had - you would feel foolish.

One thing I like about Mark Kermode as a film critic is that he will often say if and when he cried during a film he liked - and even say that while he felt the emotion he can't give a precise description of exactly why that part of the story affected him that much - he knows the general reasons, but not the specific engineering of the emotion. And he will do this for relatively 'gauche' or emotional films.

Perhaps because feeling links you with your body and your sense memories, it robs you of analysis, robs you of the human ability to voyage in time within your own mind and to regard yourself. Instead making you intensely *present*.

while modernism and coldness, give you more of those abilities, and provokes them, while robbing you of your body and of the present moment.

Warmth too, is constructed. House on the Prairie is as constructed as 'Watchman' - its just that one is reminding you of it all the time, and providing the means to analyse it within its own substance, while the other _doesn't want you to analyse it_. Warmth doesn't even want you to think about the fact that a story is being told, in fact it aims to seduce you away from exactly such thinking.

It is an invisible skill, as compared to a visible skill.




UNNAMED THIRD SECTION

I actually don't have a strong sense memory of the 90's 'Emma',

what I'm using to fill in that sense are recent re-watchings of the 90's 'Maverick' and 'Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves'.

Both gauche films in many ways - easy to laugh at, Prince of Thieves especially has lots of lumpy bits  that do not sing of art in the modernist or fine art sense.

and yet

both very warm films

Both family films - about families, friendships, social bonds, warmth, humour. Families are challenged and reconstructed in both films and at the end brought together.

And its strange how when you say 'Family Film' you maybe downgrade it in your personal hierarchy of importance and status - there may be no fundamentally logical reason for it.

This isn't a Tumblr post - I'm not about to lead you in revolution against your own personal status and quality hierarchies because they come from a CORRUPT culture. Humans need hierarchies to think in any kind of systematic way, and we adore them in social functioning, preferably lots and lots of mutually interacting and clashing hierarchies please.

If you destroyed all your cultural programming you would probably be a useless mental case, incapable of crating or understanding anything.

However, though we need them, it is better if we also understand that all those hierarchies are provisional - tools rather than absolute laws. If we understand that we need them then we need them less.

I thought at the time that Prince of Thieves was a film with strong bones, and if you were making a film, or anything, and if you HAD to choose; gauche and low-status, but with "strong bones" and the audience came out crying, OR brilliant and cutting edge, acclaimed, but cold and the audience maybe nodded slightly at one point.

What would you choose?

I think in the future, saying "This was gauche but it moved me" is something I will try to do less. Instead say "This was gauche AND it moved me".

CAN MAN BECOME SPAM?

Can we do something interesting with the Vampire Marketing Spam?

Or just the general torrent of Spam as the dying Byzantine Empire of google retreats from the Blogger Provinces, abandoning us to the roving bot-tribes of the digital plains?

I feel like learning to act more and more like spam or chatbots will be more and more useful in the coming word. As the shitty low-level marketting A.I.s take over more and more of reality, not only will we encounter more of them than real people, but generations as yet unborn will have their thoughts and attitudes shaped by them, simulating them through natural adaptation.

Plus when robots rule the world, Spam-Camo will be the only save way to traverse online spaces. We will have to sneak past the Panopticon in Spam-Skins and communicate to each other as if we were misfiring chatbots, signalling out humanity through subtle interpretations and apparent cognitive-misfire metaphors.

I did try leaving a comment on Arnolds blog as faux Vampire Spam, but it got deleted. I will never know if that was because he mistook it for actual spam, which makes it a kind of victory, or whether he just found it irritating. But this is the kind of fundamental uncertainty you have to learn to live with when you Become Spam.

It is time for us to put on the Clothes of the Night which will inevitably consume us.

My first challenge to you all is for you to respond to this post ONLY in the form of pseudo-spam comments. Points will be awarded for Absurdity, Beauty and Spamishness. (Of course the Most Spamish Comments may not be correctly identified as the work of human beings, but of course, that is the nature of those Secret and Uncertain Victories).

My second challenge is, the next time you see a blog post you like, and you feel like you should say something positive but have nothing detailed to say, and since the Plus-1 button has been taken from us, COMMENT AS SPAM.

PRETEND TO BE SPAM my children! Offer Vampire Cures and SEO Optimisation and Youtube Sporting Channels. And hide links to other posts in yours. Use link shorteners and other methods.

With this we will create THE INFINITE LABYRINTH OF SPAM - a secret layer of Adventure to the OSR Blogosphere. The next time you come to delete interminable Spam comments, you will have to think, to analyse; "Is this truly Spam?"

And if you click on a link you may get a surprise gift - a special Blog Post, on which you can leave another pseudo-spam comment, leading to yet another post.

Yet you may also get actual, real spam, like porn sites or Singaporean Rhino Horn. This adds the necessary thrill of danger and risk which will gamify my infinite labyrinth into a True Dungeon.

The Great Game. Us against the Robots. Us against each other. And all for the sweet sweet treasure of internet culture - THE GOLDEN CLICKS.

LET US BECOME AS THE SPAM MY CHILDREN - LET US BECOME THE ANNIHILATOR AND LIVE FOREVER

What if it was all a dream?

Suppose the following;

The cosmos is the dream of a particular, single meta-being. This being is unconscious now, we don't know how long it’s been asleep and we don't know when it will wake up but we know, absolutely, that it *will* wake up.

All this is known without question, it's provable in some simple and obvious way.

How would this affect human culture?

In Lovecraft this is a nightmare scenario, but in real life probably people would just adapt to it. It’s a rather rough religion but its noticeably more hopeful than pure materialism (unless you are Sam Harris and the illusion of transcendence is the REAL monster).

If you knew that you were a fragment of another beings sleeping imagination, would it change, in any material sense, anything you do or anything about the way you act?

DEATH

There would, I think, be three kinds of death.

The first would be the mild death, this would be like a character being cancelled from a TV series or serial comic, only to come back in another form or in another continuity.

Because everything is the giants dream, no-one and nothing is ever truly completely lost, they could, in theory, just be brought back into reality and all our thoughts and memories would accept this as normal like people in dreams don't react to any strangeness in the dream.

So one attitude to death is that the person isn't really dead or fully gone, because nothing ever is, and you, or someone exactly like you, may interact with them in some future continuity or reality. They are 'dead for now', or 'dead in this continuity'.

The second death would be the 'fully forgotten' death. In this case, the giant has completely lost interest in that person and is no longer going to re-create or renew them. They are like an unpopular character, or a character on an old 1950's TV series where the original tapes have been lost, and no-one recorded them, but a few people sort-of remember them. In this case the dream goes on but they are utterly void.

An interesting thing is that people in the dream wouldn't know if any particular death they witnessed was a type one or a type two death. So a prayer would be for the life of a particular loved one to be so interesting or relevant to the giants dream that they are certain to be brought back at some point, in some reality, in some way. And the aim of a life might be to be worth remembering (for a Giant meta-being, whatever that means).

And then the final death would be 'The Giant Wakes Up', a kind of apocalypse for this reality in which everything goes.

WAKING UP

When the Giant wakes up will its dreams then become thoughts or will they be wiped out and forgotten like most of our dreams?

Would it be so bad to be a forgotten dream? It could be like being transformed into a being of mighty extra-reality purpose. Dreams are a bit idle and purposeless but perhaps, when we wake up and the substance of dreams transforms and becomes thoughts, they become filled with energy and direction? In this version of the apocalypse, everyone and everything gets broken down and re-energised, but now full of illumination, drive, direction and unquestioning purpose, everything would become what it was meant to be and maybe that would feel pretty good? If so it’s good for the giant to wake up.

Or, maybe we are transformed like a caterpillar, mulched up into goo & genetically re-combined and the new thing made of our substance isn't really us in any meaningful way so we pretty much die like idle forgotten thoughts. In this case the great waking-up is pretty bad (though still divinely mandated so just shut up and deal with it "materialists").

WHAT KIND OF DREAM IS IT?

In this reality the status and nature of dreams is a vital subject. Do dreams affect us once we wake? If we remember them do we learn anything? Do they affect us even if we don't remember them?

Some think the dream is a prophetic one, and an important prophecy as well, so that everything we do has, not only serious purpose in the outer world but also a kind of transcendent purpose, even in that reality, that we are engaged in seeing into the future of a reality beyond our own.

Others think it’s important for us to generate some vital new idea, like a generative dream that a scientist or artist might have, and argue that this must be the reason as why else have a dream of such complexity? The Giant must be dreaming of something consequential, dangerous and important. If we can somehow embody or represent that idea, we can maybe make a thought that will save another world.

Some people think we should work to make sure the Dreamer has a pleasant dream as this makes them less likely to wake up, thereby extending out existence, and if they do wake up they will have pleasant memories and will be in a better mood when they go about their 'day' whatever that is, so our lives will have some positive effect on 'the real'. Some want the giant to have a pleasant dream because, why wouldn’t you? If you can’t do anything else you may as well make things more bearable for your meta-creator.

(A minority points out that we have no idea how long the 'sleep' has gone on since all our thoughts, memories and records could have been created a moment ago and we wouldn't realise, and could be re-created on a moment-by moment basis and we wouldn't know that either, so any conception of the 'length' of the dream is meaningless.)

Others think fuck no, make it a Nightmare. It’s hard to wake up from a nightmare, you always remember a really nasty one. If we are going to have an effect on the real, it may as well be a strong one, plus fuck the real if they made us like this, but also (calm voice) could a 'bad' effect also be a 'good' effect, like a moral lesson? like a Scrooge situation where whatever it is wakes up and realises they should be less of a dick.


The Mundanes say all of these suppositions are stupid and that this is a commonplace dream of a hyper-being, they use statistics to confirm this.

And of course it’s always possible that someone, somewhere, is the point of view of the Dreamer. Some say that’s stupid as why would an omni-intelligence incarnate as a micro being in a dream of such scale. The dreamer must be aware of all things that are happening everywhere as the dream is built around them. Others say, no, it could happen, you could dream you were an ant in a hive and dream the whole hive at the same time. Also who the fuck are we to say what may or may not be possible for a hyperbeing capable of imagining the whole cosmos simultaneously (presuming they are actually doing that and not just imagining a small section of it and 'painting the backgrounds'.)

WHATS OUT THERE?

Thinkers try to understand the nature of the outer-world by examining the nature of this one
just as our dreams mimic and transform the 'real world' is this reality a surreal version of another? By examining the dream, could you work to understand the Real?

Our dreams have weird physical laws and strange, unpredictable events, so if our 'reality' is proportionately more 'dreamlike' than the Real, but looks the same, does that mean the Real is a place of ultimate Iron-hard mundanity from our point of view, and all this "physics" shit is actually pretty whacky compared to the real entropically-locked Cosmos?

And if the Real is really more real in exactly that way, then does that mean that Cosmos is dying faster than our own? And if it is like ours, and dying, then is this the death-dream of a Final HyperBeing? and the reason we haven't woken up is that the giant is having a heart attack or orbiting a black hole or something and that there will be no waking up except into ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION?

Scrap and Patrick Podcast

This is an experimental podcast in which Scrap and I talk for an hour.

There is a blip in the middle. There is no editing of any kind. There will be no show notes.

Click on the image to go to, or get, the mp3.

Murder, Murder, Dinnerparty.

(This is one of the ones that isn't really about anything, but that didn't stop me from writing it apparently.)
(Oh and its not about D&D either.)

Breakfast Island

Heeeey, I'm still unemployed and I got depression

sooo

Here's a mini module based on an off-hand comment made in a game two days ago.

Turns out cereal mascots map almost perfectly onto D&D monsters, this is built of of those, placed in one of the Isles of California. I used the Monstrous Manual dice rolls wherever I could, threw in some extra stuff, added some of Dyson's maps.

It pretty much turned into an exercise in minimalism, trying to cram as much useful info into as small a space as possible. The stuff in there is what I would need to run a game so it has some standard D&D info most of you probably wouldn't need. I used an a5 page size, big 12 point Georgia font for readability. It's meant to work good on a reader like a kindle, or an Ipad. Two page view should work best.

I'm telling myself this in an exercise in information design for Veins of The Earth, rather than just low-level aspergers and avoiding useful work. I haven't put in an index or bookmarks yet, I intend to.

The NPC name generator is now a link on the right.

If you use it, let me know how it reads and if it works ok.

Plan For The Film Of An Alien Siege

Part 1 - Sieges

A siege is pretty much the most boring thing that can happen in war ever. Its organised waiting. There are loads of films about sieges. Even films that aren’t set in wars are about sieges (Night of the Living Dead, Assault on Precinct 13). Of all these films, I can’t remember one where the point of view of the viewer was with the attacking forces. We are always inside. The good guys always defend.

Because they have better camera angles. The view from an arrow slit is also pretty good for a camera.

Bullshit, except not really. Of all the places I can imagine, the besieged fortification has the most perfect unity between its geography, (the physical positioning of people within and around it,) and its narrative.

Imagine a film about a siege and start thinking about the kinds of information you could remove and still have the film make some kind of sense as a comprehensible story.

Music, easy. Sound? Ok, no more voices, and no subtitles either. Those are the easy ones.

Colour? Gone. Black and white only.

Faces? Gone. Pixelate them.

Identifying marks. Body shapes. Gender. Clothes. Uniforms. Gone. Only grey shapes remain.

Era? Ok, take away the background of any distance shots, grey that out. Black out anything non-human that isn’t also built environment. No more nature. Now take away the detail of the environment. No more stone, no more sandbags. Only mass. Mass and grey moving shapes.

But some grey shapes are still outside and some are still inside. And the ones out are trying to get in.

Movement. Cut to one frame per second instead of 24.

Time? Ok, this one probably wouldn’t work.  You do need time to tell a story.

You couldn’t tell shit about this story, but if someone asks you what’s going on, but you could probably say “It’s about one group of people-things trying to get into a thing and another group of people –things want to keep them out.”

Everything flows out from peoples relations in space.

Part 2 – Inside and Outside

So I started trying to count the ways the space shapes the story. This is what I came up with.

	Defenders	Attackers
1	Look out. They see a Landscape, their opponent is a shifting mass on a single plain.	Look in. They focus on a single object (the fort) which is vertically orientated.
2	As the narrative goes on they lose this landscape view. They focus on the inside of a familiar structure which becomes alien and threatening. They focus on a concentrated projected stream of force.	As the narrative goes on, they focus not just upon the central mass, but upon one point of that mass. (The gate, the breach)
3	They try to retain and increase physical mass in the most literal sense. Building, piling, arranging, amassing.	They try to destroy mass, to abrade it to nothingness, to create pure space.
4	They seek stasis.	They seek movement and change.
5	Are unobserved, socially opaque (attackers cannot see who they talk to, when or why), but are in physical danger. (Rocks, arrows, bombs.)	Are observed, (can be seen walking around)  socially exposed but more likely to be physically safe.
6	Are in close physical communication with each other. (Can see, touch, grab and shout at each other.)	Must move to reach, touch, grab or shout to each other. More physically separate.
7	Are likely to act across class, race and gender lines. More and more likely as the story goes on. (“Not bad … for an elf”)	Likely to reflect social hierarchy. Act as miniature of origin society with power relationships intact.
8	Likely to expose positive personal characteristics hidden by social characteristics.	Personal power directly represented and usually accurate. Exactly as dangerous as they look.
9	A group of individuals with names.	A mass. “You there!”
10	If they change morally, tend to become morally stronger (UNLESS IT’S A HORROR FILM)	If they change morally, tend to become weaker.

So this is quite nice. It turns out all those siege films are really about a group of disparate people forced into circumstances where hierarchy, class, race and gender lines will fall away and they can act together as one, (without losing their individuality) in an overriding moral cause.

This is basically the tribal story of the West. It is our Ur-tale, or one of them. (Along with the love story and the story of the guy that kills a lot of guys.) A group of very different people have to face a challenge, doing so they learn to understand and value each other and work together as a team, but without being subsumed as people. If we had shaman, this is the story they would tell.

This might be the story of a bunch of cultures, I don’t really know. To me it feel arch-western and specifically post WWII.

If this was a culture-studies class then we could stop there and consider ourselves very clever. Of course we have something much more important to do. We must plan a model fort for an alien siege.

Part Three – Aliens

Let’s scramble the info we have so far and re-arrange it to create the sides in an alien siege.

Attackers

Look out. They see a Landscape, their opponent is a shifting mass on a single plain.

As the narrative goes on, they focus not just upon the central mass, but upon one point of that mass. (The gate, the breach)

They try to retain and increase physical mass in the most literal sense. Building, piling, arranging, amassing.

They seek movement and change.

Are unobserved, socially opaque (attackers cannot see who they talk to, when or why), but are in physical danger. (Rocks, arrows, bombs.)

Must move to reach, touch, grab or shout to each other. More physically separate.

Personal power directly represented and usually accurate. Exactly as dangerous as they look.

A group of individuals with names.

Are likely to act across class, race and gender lines. More and more likely as the story goes on.

(“Not bad … for an elf”)

If they change morally, tend to become weaker.

Is there any shape that can make sense of this?

Aliens attacking outwards, into a shifting mass, building and arranging, trying to change things.

Doing this while in danger. Unseen, distant from each other. Look dangerous and are dangerous. Named individuals.

They work across class lines but may become weaker.

Philosopher-Wasps? Breaking into.. something? Powerful, dangerous, intelligent builders. Maybe they build with the bodies of their enemies? Maybe they build very quickly and well on their own according to their own plans, each different, hyper-adaptive artist-wasps? As time goes on their invasion slackens, becomes more difficult, they speak across art-clade boundaries, but this makes them too similar, easy to kill. Art-wasps building hyper-individual puzzle-box invasion saps, invading.. who?

Defenders

Look in. They focus on a single object (the fort) which is vertically orientated.

As the narrative goes on they lose this landscape view. They focus on the inside of a familiar structure which becomes alien and threatening. They focus on a concentrated projected stream of force.

They try to destroy mass, to abrade it to nothingness, to create pure space.

They seek stasis.

Are observed, (can be seen walking around)  socially exposed but more likely to be physically safe.

Are in close physical communication with each other. (Can see, touch, grab and shout at each other.)

Likely to reflect social hierarchy. Act as miniature of origin society with power relationships intact.

Likely to expose positive personal characteristics hidden by social characteristics.

A mass. “You there!”

If they change morally, tend to become morally stronger (UNLESS IT’S A HORROR FILM)

So these are some kind of hive-beings. They live in a place, (a plane?) where some new physical thing has arrived. The saps of the art-wasps expand out of it as physical masses, which they must destroy in order to keep things the way they have always been. But they may be losing and their familiar place? has become strange and threatening. They can be seen easily from the saps but are hard to harm. They are packed in closely to each other. They are hierarchal and this won’t change during the film but they will reveal positive personal characteristics during it.

My first thought is that the hive beings represent some kind of living anti-space and the art-wasps are colonising it, reducing it to matter with their novel fractal constructions, killing the hive-beings and using their solidified corpses to build more.

The hive-beings can destroy matter but the more original and unexpected it is the more likely they are to die trying to destroy it and end up being reduced to mere matter themselves. The Art-Wasps are burrowing into them, staring out through portholes in their invasion-structures, looking at the hordes of pale massless things, innovating and dreaming of destruction, but slowly running out of ideas while the peaceful hive-things slowly try to adapt their conservative hierarchal society to prevail. The Hyper-Wasps are close to reaching the core of the ghost-hive.

So if there’s a film it’s about these hive-ghosts fighting to protect, maybe Nirvana? from the hideous hyper-individual invaders. Or maybe it’s a tragedy about a brave group of wild alpha-wasp adventurers who had the nerve to challenge the rulers of the limbo-space and change things for everyone, maybe that’s what wasp parents tell their children before they sleep. Maybe wasps cry when the credits roll.

“That’s why you have to have your own idea’s, dream your own dreams. Never be too much like anyone else.”

Part Four - Toys

How do we represent this as a sculpture in three-dimensional space? How do we turn it into a game?

The wasps are represented by shining metallic 3d puzzle pieces. Each is a different shape. All of the shapes are sharp-angled and violent looking. They can be linked together but only novel connections can be made.

The hive beings are hollow paper constructions, they can block off parts of the board. Like in ‘Go’, except you are playing against the space itself.

Wasp-player can turn Hive-players pieces to more Wasp pieces if they touch. But, if Wasp player repeats any connections without realising it, Hive player can remove Wasp pieces from the board.

Hive player has a core, or maybe just a volume. If Wasp player can encompass (like ‘Go’) or cross it somehow, then they win. If they run out of pieces , or fall into stasis, they lose.

It’s not quite 40k, but you get the idea. The elements have numbers so you can scramble your own. Find out the story-logic of the two sides. Then create alien races that make sense of that logic, direct the film in your head. Then create and sculpture or game-piece based on the logic of the alien siege. Totally different alien forts for each try.

The Sorrows of The Thane of Coates

Roll 6d6

OR, click here for an Automatic Sorrow.

1.       I remember once,

1. My father standing watch, dawn-light cradling his burnished mail, the fingers of night slipping through his cloak.

2.  My mother sounding words of ancient tales, cutting letters in the earth before my eyes, holding back the secret ending till I learnt the shapes.

3. My brother harrying me late into a winter night with carved opponents on a board of games.

4. My kin, close, each name a common breath, each action tied as one.

5. The feuding of my people and the hunt, first strike, (it was not mine for never was I bladed, of tongue or of deed,) but first blood and last, often enough I made.

6. The faces of my people and few else, a world walled with features known, without a foreign touch for good or ill.

2.       But then

1. Our land woven in blood, hip deep, trapped as we were between opposing kings, vile and honourless each.

2. Those lords of all who made of the earth a trying-ground for pain, knew fear, as works they made against the distant weak were turned upon the makers to inflame; war against life and time, without reason or limiting clime.

3. The gripping of the harrow-man, starvation. Wasted figures turned forth from every home. The steading emptied, corpses walking, dead feasting on the dead.

4. Those opposing war (it was not ours) made of us a sacrificial claim. Breaking their opponents by marching through our lands, a swathe or burning homes cut to the sea.

5. It was in those times that man was a wolf to man and kings hawks to their preyed-upon thanes. A war of all, against all, and only those without hope to prevail.

6. Fire came then, on midnight wings that folded in the dark above a thousand homes. Then ruin, blasted ash and greyness, burnt fingers crawling forth from hidden coves.

3.       It was no chance that brought this thing to be.

1. I have found it scribed on hidden scrolls, dated, notarised and confirmed, each name attended and each deed planned out.

2. See now, the wounds within our people itch and shiver still, many current shames and secret debts date from this time and it is not forgotten.

3. Harms done from on high, with seals and heralds making formal note, often are not spoke of. Hurts done by the strong are left ignored, for fear of future wrong to come perhaps?

4. Though this was done uncounted winter suns beyond the memory of any here, its legacy lives on in thought and deed, only look upon the sorrows of my people to behold.

5. Much gold is found in fire, and harm upon those without strength to fight, and gold is as immortal as the soul, yet ascends clearly and cleanly where a murdering soul would fail, gaze upon the traces of the gold to find the crime.

6. Laws are but the speech of kings, are harms done by a legal hand without accusing stain? Are deaths from an accusing judge not worthy of revenge?

4.       Now I ask of you

1. Report this crime, publically with evidence grave. And this report must go in full, to those descended of the accused.

2. Seek out hidden relics of this truth. Turn over stones, confirm with once-hidden testament and evidence the truth of this forgotten horror, amend the record once and for all.

3. Go now to the city of these monsters, in a fane, sacred to them, they keep a dark memento of their acts. A trophy, sacred to them yet held lightly. Take it from them secretly and bring it here to me.

4. Find the current ruler of those named, or the assembly from whence they take their word. State before them the unvarnished truth of what was done. Persuade them utterly, even if it be against the memory of their kin.

5. There is one known to me, a truth-speaker, who has suffered much under the blows and wounds of those without honour and faith. Go now and defend them in that land. Whatever the cost to yourself.

6. Hold this truth outright, freely in the sight of men. Hold to it, no matter the opposition or the pain. Whatever forces are brought against you, do not quail, but state publicly and without shame the truth.

5.       I tell myself

1. If wrongs are made to serve, and hate must be constructed by decided-act, may not these same wrongs be demolished as were made, by men and time?

2. Nothing has been done to me and mine or suffered here that those who wrought it failed to feel themselves. Harms have passed like arrow-shafts in air, landing whence they may, none have dosged the barb entire.

3. Even have I seen joys and sorrows piled upon themselves and intermixed like birds escaped in flight. Is my certainty exact? Or product of my lagging in the flock?

4. Many makings and unweavings have passed in the years since my youth. The Norns run wild with their thread and it seem the whole earth changed. To the good? Perhaps.

5. My own seed grow, uncomprehending of the crimes that shaped their birth, is this not hope? My sons seek out no grave-site on my word and the gallows arms wave weakly, catching air.

6. Over the uncounted passage of years, can vileness and deception out-last truth? Or must the harder stone remain, skinned of unreason by water of years and the cutting ice of time?

6.       Oh, but I am a fool

1. When will the sun rise on a kingless day? When will power not serve itself? When will crowns not bend together in secretive council, excusing indignities done to those below? That day is endless night, It will not come!

2. Man is a beast, his words are exhalations from a swelling corpse, his promises are paper in a fire, his thoughts are ants upon a rotting page. His laws are lies. Ever was it thus and so shall be.

3. The young plough only a fools acre of thought, knowing nothing of the past and caring less. All that we are shall pass unseen into the dirt, a worm divided by the plough, lost even to itself!

4. Harm circles like the racing wheel of a mill, levering upon itself. It feeds like fire that needs no fuel, supplying all it needs from what it takes. There is no end to harm or hurt.

5. What judge has ever come without a sword? What justice has been taken in this world without the threat of life behind the words? It is a gift ungiven, only theft and murder see it done, and they are crimes themselves that must be judged again.

6. Will the hearth-lords burn the thatch of homes? Will the ring-giver cut fingers from his hand? Will bards fall silent at will? The maiden mask herself or scorch her hair? Those who know sweetness in this life never give it up, regardless of its provenance or painful distant birth.