From the Workbench

Over the past three weekends I’ve been teaching Cat to paint miniatures, or, more accurately, to apply her not inconsiderable existing artistic talents to the specific medium of acrylic paint and tiny metal objects. In the process I’ve managed to get quite a bit done myself.

Heavy Lance, 4th Eridani Light Horse. Left to Right: Archer (unseen), Cyclops, Marauder (reseen), and Atlas. 

Medium Lance, 4th Eridani Light Horse. Left to right: Crusader (unseen), Dervish, Wolverine, Enforcer.

EAS Prospero and Thunderbolt escort wing. Sadly, while this was planned to be a three-ship Warlock squadron, Mongoose pulled the Babylon 5 line before I was able to acquire the other two I needed.

Girald Authar of Luskan, lovable Rogue. My PC in Dave’s Saturday Forgotten Realms game.

Cleric of Talona.

Pirate with gratuitious cleavage. This one’s a Dark Sword piece.

By comparison, this is Cat’s work at the two week mark:

Makes me feel like Salieri trying to give Mozart advice.

Friday Night Fury: We Play Fury of Dracula

Given the way the Alternate History post ended, it was a nice coincidence that Scott wanted to play Fury of Dracula at our usual Friday gathering. In concept, Fury of Dracula resembles Anno Dracula: the Hunters of Bram Stoker’s novel fail to kill the vampire. In this case though, Dracula’s victory is less complete: although able to kill Quincey Morris and escape, he is pursued throughout Europe by the Hunters who hope to bring him down before he can spawn six new Vampires and create a new Un-Dead aristocracy.

In practice, Fury of Dracula is sort of like a souped-up version of the classic Scotland Yard, except the map’s of Europe instead of London and Dracula is a harsher opponent than Mister X could ever dream of being. Not only does he have special abilities (like Wolf and Bat form) which make pinning him down successfully difficult, but Dracula leaves deadly traps for the Hunters in every city he visits, and also has the option of combating them directly. Thus, unlike Scotland Yard, there’s a risk to spreading out your hunters since Dracula can wait for night to fall and then pick them off one by one. On the bright side, all the Hunters have their own special abilities, and they can search for item and event cards in the various cities of Europe to help them bring down the vampire.

Friday’s group consisted of:

• Gary: Lord Godalming
• Scott: Dr. Seward
• redcoat668: Dr. Van Helsing
• Cat: Mina Harker 

Bob played a cunning but very punchy Dracula, who within the hour had dubbed his opponents Lord Goddamnit, Dr. Sewer, Dr. Van Jerkbag, and Mini Hooker, respectively.

We started off the game with Van Helsing in Milan, Godalming in Saragossa, Mina Harker in London, and Dr. Seward in Vienna, hoping to be able to pick up Dracula’s trail and then concentrate our forces. Unfortunately, some lucky event card draws for Dracula allowed him to evade the net, and by the time we picked up his trail in Hamburg he was across the continent in Lisbon.

Having uncovered Dracula there by using Mina Harker’s link with him via hypnosis, we quickly moved in to trap him. Holy forces aided the hunters (via event cards) by making Paris and Marseille sacred ground and thus off-limits to the vampire. Dracula attempted to kill Mina Harker in Madrid, but she managed to fight him off with a crucifix. Van Helsing then tried to finish the vampire, but Dracula destroyed the holy water he needed to do the job with another event card and escaped by sea.

The Hunters then split up again, with Godalming backtracking along Dracula’s trail to destroy any agents or vampire spawn he might have left behind, Seward and Mina moving steadily east to catch Dracula in any port he might use, and Van Helsing following by sea. In the end, Dracula evaded his pursuers by coming ashore again in Spain and moving in a rough circle before taking to sea again for Athens. 

Having deduced the vampire would come ashore somewhere off the Aegean, the Hunters rushed as quickly as they could for Greece (which is tough when you roll poorly for your train movement like Van Helsing). Picking Dracula’s trail up there, the party followed him north and Van Helsing and Godalming were each wounded by encounters with his legion of vampire spawn and dominated human agents. Godalming managed to kill one of Dracula’s spawn, and tracked the vampire to his fortress in Castle Dracula on the game’s final turn – only one more spawn and Dracula would cover Europe in endless night.

Bravely, Godalming entered the Castle and faced the vampire in his lair. Though it was an epic struggle, he was unable to finish Dracula off before the vampire was able to assume bat form and fly to safety in Budapest. Fortunately, Van Helsing had by this time eschewed explaining his vampire-killing equipment to suspicious train station customs agents, and had acquired a Fast Horse. He rushed to Budapest, and rammed a stake through Dracula’s black heart, ending the threat of the vampire forever.

Fury of Dracula is one of those games you either love or hate; Rich, for instance, won’t touch it. It can be very frustrating and lengthy if you have a skilled Dracula who’s good at bluffing and evasion, and when the vampire pulls out Wolf Form, Bat Form, or a card that allows him to move anywhere on the board and evades your clever trap it can make you want to throw things. 

Fury’s best selling point (for me, anyway) is that it draws on a lot of different skillsets. You need puzzle solving abilities to deduce where Dracula’s headed, strategic ability to get a hunter who can kill him in the right place in the right time, bluffing ability to maximize the card-driven combat system, and good luck for movement and combat dice rolls. It’s a good game to play with a mix of personalities, and in that way really evokes the feel of a group of Hunters pooling their unique talents to combat a foe who has all the advantages.

My only real complaint is that the sculpt of the vampire is less than inspiring. Not for nothing is Fury’s unofficial nickname The Adventures of Gay Dracula. 

redcoat668’s Alternate History Reading List

As those of you who have viewed my pretensions at writing battle reports and turn fluff for the Babylon 5 Campaign can probably infer, I’m a big fan of the military SF genre. As a history buff, I’m also a fan of the Alternate History genre and I thought I’d list a few of my favorites for any of you who want to explore it. They’re here in no particular order:

• Moore, Ward C, Bring the Jubilee. This is one of the first real “alternate history” short stories, and in my humble opinion, still one of the best. As befits the later focus of the genre’s popular works, it’s a Confederate-victory departure, but manages to do some good, sober world-building without trying to make a political statement. Indeed, it’s one of the most character-driven alternate histories I’ve ever read and the ending still leaves me wondering about certain characters’ motivations.
• Skimin, Robert, Gray Victory. Skimin uses JEB Stuart’s court-martial by a Confederacy recognized by a McClellan Presidency in 1864 as the scene and excuse for a thorough dissection of the historical Battle of Gettysburg. Best appreciated after some reading on the battle, but plenty of courtroom drama and skullduggery make it entertaining. Skimin uses John S. Mosby as his main character, and makes him thorougly likeable. He also ends the book with one of my favorite title-referencing closing lines ever.
• Williams, Walter Jon, Red Elvis. Not only is this a nice look at the political maelstrom of the 60’s, but it has a great twist ending where you discover the point of divergence isn’t quite what you thought it was.
• Sanders, William, The Wild Blue and the Gray. British intervention secures a Confederate victory, and in return a Confederate Expeditionary Force heads off to Europe to fight in the First World War. Sanders is very good at blindsiding you with guest appearances by historical figures whose significance is considerably lessened in this alternate world.
• Sanders, William, “The Undiscovered”. Shakespeare is forced by poverty to emigrate to the New World and lives as a captive amongst the Cherokee. A great clash between English and Native American dramatic and entertainment cultures. It would be an interesting reading assignment for a High School English class.
• Turtledove, Harry, “Departures”. I admit it, I preordered every volume of Turtledove’s TL-191 series, but I think he’s really at his best as a short story writer. A sensitive depiction of the Prophet Muhammad (PBOH) had he become a Christian monk.
• Dreyfuss, RIchard, and Harry Turtledove, The Two Georges. Anyone who’s been here more than once can easily guess that this one’s dear to my heart. Great Britain and the Colonies come to a settlement in 1776 and America remains part of the British Empire. Turtledove’s forte is action and worldbuilding rather than character development, but his books are always a fun and comfortable read and the depiction of British America in 1996 full of nice little tweaks (Nixon as a car salesman? Martin Luther King as colonial governor? The Iroquois Five Nations as a Raj-style independent state? Irish ghettoes?).
• Sobel, Robert, For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga. Similar premise, but elucidated by an economist rather than a dedicated fiction writer. It was consciously written in the same style as a college textbook. For me the conceit works, for others (my friend Adam, for instance) it makes it less interesting to read. Either way it’s a splendidly detailed setting which seems to anticipate the same sort of corporate state we’re moving towards in our own modern era, but through a much different path. It would make a great historical background for an alternate cyberpunk RPG setting.
• Budrys, Algis, “Never Meet Again”. A scientist in a world where the Nazis were victorious crosses dimensions in search of his dead wife. An eloquent statement that no change in history can decisively end human misery.
• Dick, Phillip K., The Man in the High Castle. This one’s deservedly a classic. Like most of Dick’s work, it’s really not about the world or the characters per se, but a serious exploration of the nature of the reality that they exist in. How does living in a branch from a main timeline work?
• Niven, Larry, “All the Myriad Ways”. A shorter, but just as darkly enjoyable examination of the implications of the existence of multiple timelines.
• de Camp, L. Sprague., “The Round-Eyed Barbarians”. Cheng Ho’s voyages continue and Chinese and Spanish explorers confront each other in America in the 1500s. This one helped me get interested in Chinese history. de Camp’s evocation of clashing Chinese and European cultural mores is very entertaining.
• Stirling, S.M., “The Charge of Lee’s Brigade”. Robert E. Lee leads a very different Charge of the Light Brigade in a unified British Empire.
• Stirling, S.M., The Peshawar Lancers. A meteoric impact reduces Europe and America to barbarism, but the British Raj continues in India. A nice homage to the the works of George MacDonald Fraser and similar authors, but manages to throw in all kinds of twists. Watch for the Flashman reference.
• Moorcock, Michael, Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan, and The Steel Tsar. Michael Moorcock defies genre categorization, but these three books have most of the ingredients of good alternate history. 19th Century British officer Oswald Bastable visits three alternate futures, and Moorcock eloquently comments on the demise of our own real-world British Empire.
• Flint, Eric, 1812: The Rivers of War. The War of 1812 gets nowhere near the amount of attention it should, despite the fact that it’s the closest the US has ever gotten to a decisive wartime drubbing and has plenty of fascinating characters to boot. I found Flint’s portrayal of Sam Houston a little over the top (I mean he was cool, but was he that cool?), but that was balanced out by his sensitive characterizations of British Generals Ross and Pakenham, both of whom are unjustly underrated both as generals and as people. The sequel, sadly, is not as good but I’m hoping the third book will make up for it.  

 With the notable exception of Moorcock (like I said, he defies genre labeling), I consciously left out alternate history books with overt science-fiction or fantasy trappings. Two of those I can recommend off the cuff are:

• Turtledove, Harry, The Guns of the South. This was the first alternate history book I read back in high school, and I’d still recommend it as a starting point. White supremacists from the future supply the Army of Northern Virginia with modern weaponry. The place of racism in American culture is a common theme in Turtledove’s work, and I think he handles it best here.
• Newman, Kim, Anno Dracula. Presumes that the events of Bram Stoker’s Dracula were historical fact and that Van Helsing and his crew failed to kill the master Vampire, who goes on to dominate Queen Victoria and create a new, Vampire-run British Empire. Lots of great guest appearances by and references to 19th Century literary figures (my favorite is Mycroft Holmes as chief of British Intelligence). I trot out references to this one every time we play Fantasy Flight’s Fury of Dracula boardgame. 

Most of these books and short stories are available from your local bookstore or Amazon in one form or another. Happy hunting and happy reading!

Patriot’s Day: Lest We Forget

Today’s post is in memory of:

Pvt. Thomas Smith, 4th (King’s Own) Regiment of Foot
Pvt. Patrick Gray, 4th (King’s Own) Regiment of Foot
Pvt. James Hall, 4th (King’s Own) Regiment of Foot

KIA at the Battle of Concord Bridge, April 19, 1775. They were the first British soldiers to die in combat during the American Revolution

Chorus:
Sheep’s head and vinegar,
Buttermilk and tansy,
Boston is a Yankee town,
Sing, “Hey, doodle dandy!”

First we’ll take a pinch of snuff
And then a drink of water,
And then we’ll say, “How do you do?”
And that’s a Yankee supper.

(Chorus)

Yankee Doodle came to town
For to buy a firelock.
We will tar and feather him,
And so we will John Hancock.

(Chorus)

As for their king, that John Hancock,
And Adams, if they’re taken,
Their heads for signs shall hang up high
Upon that hill called Beacon.

(Chorus)

Dolly Bushel let a fart,
Jenny Jones, she found it,
Ambrose carried it to the mill,
Where Doctor Warren ground it.

(Chorus)

Mistress Hancock dreamed a dream;
She dreamed she wanted something.
She dreamed she wanted a Yankee king
To crown him with a pumpkin.

(Chorus)

-Original British Lyrics to “Yankee Doodle”, as sung on the march to Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775.

…Poured here in vain;–that sturdy blood
Was meant to make the earth more green,
But in a higher, gentler mood
Than broke this April noon serene;
Two graves are here: to mark the place,
At head and foot, an unhewn stone,
O’er which the herald lichens trace
The blazon of Oblivion.

These men were brave enough, and true
To the hired soldier’s bull-dog creed;
What brought them here they never knew,
They fought as suits the English breed:
They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne:
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan.

-James Russell Lowell, “Lines”, 1846. The last four lines are graven on the stone marking the British graves near Concord Bridge.

A Tabletop Trip Into Phlan III: Attempt on Sokal Keep

This one’s a double-session update….still recovering from conference and flu.

After dealing with their intoxicated werewolf issues, Jerkxes (Bob), Beck (Cameron), Aeryn, Wolf (Scott), and Cleric of Tempus (CoT, Marc) rested for a while in the small plaza where CoT had paused to pray to his violent God and regain his spells. After dispensing the obligatory healing, he and the party moved on. They slew a hippogriff that had made its nest in a burned-out house, then discovered the remains of an orcish war-ceremony in an abandoned warehouse. Tracking the orcs, they arrived just in time to foil their attack and discovered its object: a small hospice run by three initiate priests of Sune, whose mission was to dispense their Goddess’ love in the form of healing and aid, and their single patient, Vola (played by our friend Dave), an amazonian half-orc barbarian of indeterminate origin and little regard for personal space. Vola and Jerxes quickly became…er…intimately acquainted (Sune’s a goddess of passion; the priests were not scandalized though I certainly was), while the rest of the party talked to the priests of Sune, learning to their horror that they had discovered the dying Raymo in the streets and healed him after which he departed for parts unknown. Low on spells and needing more equipment, the party decided to return to Phlan before taking on Raymo again. Vola, having finished with Jerkxes, then set her sights on Beck (to Beck’s horror) and accompanied the party back to civilization.

Having been alerted by the guards at the entrance to the Slums, the party stopped by the Town Council building where the Council rather unenthusiastically (with the exception of their patron Poryphrys Cadorna) offered them 2500 gold pieces to clear out Sokal Keep and make it safe for use as a harbor fortification again. Bishop Braccio of the Temple of Tyr, speaking for the Council, hinted that the place might be cursed, lent Wolf his holy symbol, and suggested the party might try to find some password to get around whatever magical defenses remained.

After accepting the mission and securing seedy but comfortable rooms at Nat Wyler’s Bell, most of the party went shopping while Aeryn and Vola accepted a dinner invitation from Poryphrys Cadorna (Cadorna’s got an eye for the ladies…even half-orc ladies…and Aeryn’s pretty easy on the eye too). We will draw a tasteful diplomatic veil over what happened next: suffice it to say that it involved broken crockery, misuse of a buffet table, and an extremely scandalized butler. After it was over, Aeryn slipped Vola the key to Beck’s room in order to get Cadorna alone for her own nefarious purposes.

Later that night, Wolf awoke to discover a dark figure climbing out the window of the Party’s room. He, Jerkxes, and CoT gave chase, but the stealthy figure eluded them. Returning to Nat Wyler’s Bell, they discovered that the magical sword they had looted from the dragon hatchling’s nest was missing.

In the morning, Aeryn did not return from the Cadorna townhouse, and Vola had essentially trapped Beck in his own room (their players couldn’t make the session). Jerkxes, CoT, and Wolf decided to get a jump on them, clear out the Keep themselves, and keep the cash. In light of subsequent events this wasn’t the smartest choice, but of the three of them only Jerxes had any real pretension at being the brains of the group.

The three secured a rowboat from the Council and rowed through the morning fog to the scrubby isle where Sokal Keep stood. After exploring the perimeter (and discovering a skeleton bearing a scrap of parchment with seemingly nonsensical words), the Party headed inside and were immediately beset by animated skeletons forever cursed to defend the Keep. Moving out of the Keep’s courtyard to avoid the undead patrols, they then had the unfortunate luck to run into a grey ooze which had made its home in the rafters of an old stable. The highly acidic ooze dissolved their weapons one by one, until Wolf and CoT were reduced to using rusty scimitars from the skeletons. Eventually, Jerkxes managed to dispatch the monster with his magic and the Party moved on, always alert for more skeletal guards.

Their next stop was the remains of the keep’s smithy, where damp and dark conditions had created the perfect lair for a pair of giant frogs. Caught off-guard by the humor value of vicious frogs, Wolf and CoT were astounded to discover that these frogs packed a powerful bite. After a single exchange of blows, both Fighter and Cleric ran, leaving Jerkxes alone hoping to finish the hopping menaces with magic missile. Sadly, after only a single volley, the frogs mobbed Jerkxes and tore him apart. Wolf and CoT returned to the smithy only to find their Sorcerer companion’s legs disappearing down a froggy gullet. Fortunately for the two remaining adventurers, Jerkxes’ magic missile had weakened the frogs to the point where they were easily dispatched.

Now alone, in a hostile keep, and in freezing early Spring weather, Wolf and CoT barricaded themselves in the now frogless smithy for the night, burning the old tables and benches for heat. Their plans to return to Phlan in the morning were frustrated by a blizzard, and the search for more fuel drove them to Sokal Keep’s kitchen, where a black pudding had taken up residence. After dealing with this threat, they returned to the smithy with more tables, huddled close to the fire for warmth, and roasted giant froglegs for food. On the bright side, Wolf did discover a warhammer behind the furniture which seemed to be radiating magic.

The snow had subsided by the next morning, and the two returned to their boat and paddled for Phlan as quickly as possible. The cold wind and mist of the lake chilled them to the bone (nobody had thought to purchase winter clothing for the trip to Sokal Keep), and Wolf nearly dropped dead from hypothermia in the streets of Phlan before the soaked, chilled, and disheartened pair reached the safety of the Temple of Tyr.

Quotes of the Evening:

“I just got bit in the nuts by a giant frog, and you’re asking me why I’m running?”

-CoT

“You know I just realized…I got killed by frogs. That is the lamest thing ever.”

-Bob, approximately one hour after the death of his character

A Break in the Feed

I’m off to a conference in Detroit, the Midwest’s own Mistake on the Lake, so the already irregular update schedule will be even more irregular for the next four days.

Transmissions from the field will resume upon my return, when I am replete with Cuban food on my employer’s dime.