I tracked down more of that analysis of the weird 'River Of Shadows' game made by my alternate self from a parallel world. yet again, it fails provide any meaningful answers and just creates more questions. I feel bad about Jervis, at least he is alive here. But I hear Richard Burton and Peter Cushing are still big over there, so whatevs I suppose.
"The
Milus/Coppla 40k script.
The
artistic influence of John
Blanche on the 1st edition is obvious and has formed
part of the 'ROS' style ever since.
It is not known by many that
Blanche's services would have been unaffordable without the
disastrous implosion of the Milus/Coppla/Chambers '40K' film
production.
After
the astonishing worldwide success of Flash Gordon, producer Dino DeLaurentiis, seeking an original property to exploit, met with Andy
Chambers, a prime mover in the Games Workshop company. Games Workshop
had secured the lions share of the work of John Blanche and Blanches
twisted dreamscapes played a major part in persuading De Lauentiis to
make Chambers '40K' screenplay his next project.
Rumoured
to be set in a dystopian future, Chambers screenplay, Blanche's
artwork and De Laurentiis's capital, secured the attentions of John
Milus and Francis Ford Coppla as screenwriter and director
respectively.
The
swift ejection of Chambers, the disastrous production, the accidental
partial lobotomisation of Max Von Sydow during and accident with a
misfiring 'Bolter' prop, the millions lost and the suicide of Jervis
Johnson have all become the stuff of Hollywood legend.
It
is unlikely that Stuart was able to view any of the remaining rushes. However he
may have seen Terry Gilliams controversial 'making of' documentary
'Tears of The Emporer' in the brief week of its release before being
permanently withdrawn from theatres under the threat of legal action
from Von Sydow's estate.
Nevertheless,
it was in the wake of this disaster that Blanche did some of his
most notable work for 'River Of Shadows', earning himself a narrow,
but deeply regarded reputation in the field of RPG's.
The
'Games Workshop' company folded in a debt helix and has never been
heard from since.
'I
knock at the stones front door.
“It's
only me, let me come in.
I
don't seek refuge for eternity.
I'm
not unhappy.
I'm
not homeless.
My
world is worth returning to.
I'll
enter and exit empty-handed.
And
my proof I was there
will
be only words
which
no one will believe.”'
The
linkages should be are obvious and direct to any reader. Despite
several examples of obvious and uncredited theft on Stuarts part,
Symborska has refused to take any legal action, though no reason has
been given for this. She has denied any allegations of a relationship between the two.
There
is, in the game, an alignment system, running roughly parallel to
Dungeons and Dragons, which, in the 1st edition features
only two choices. Most observers have assumed that the un-named
alignments are simply Law and Chaos, taken, as with D&D, from the
works of Michael Moorecock. However, I have traced the original
typewritten alignment descriptions to these two passages in the
Muqaddimah, a 15th century Arabic text by Ibn Khaldun.
The
first paragraph describes alignment A, the second alignment B.
“Human
souls are of three kinds. One is by nature too weak to arrive at
spiritual perception. Therefore it is satisfied to move downward
towards the perception of the senses and imagination and the
formation of ideas with the help of the power of memory and the
estimative power, according to limited rules and special order. In
this manner, people acquire perceptive and apperceptive knowledge,
which is the product of thinking in the body. All this is (the result
of the power of) imagination and is limited in extent, since from the
way it starts it can reach the primary (intelligibilia)
but cannot go beyond them. Also, if they are corrupt, everything
beyond them is also corrupt. This, as a rule, is the extent of human
corporeal perception. It is the goal of the perception of scholars.
It is in it that scholars are firmly grounded.
A
(second) kind (of soul), through thinking, moves in the direction of
spiritual intellection and (a type of) perception that does not need
the organs of the body, because of its innate preparedness for
it. The perceptions of this kind of soul extend beyond the primary
(intelligibilia) to which
primary human perception is restricted, and cover the ground of
inward observations, which are all intuitive. They are unlimited as
to their beginning and their end. They are the perceptions of saints,
of men of mystical learning and divine knowledge. The blessed obtain
them after death, in Purgatory.”
It
should be noted that Stuart did not choose to include the third
paragraph, describing prophetic souls, until the controversial 3rd
edition."
