The Festival of the Shining Sun

Tekumel, because of the wealth of detail defining its laws, customs, mores and social structures, is immeasurably richer and more real a setting than any other I’ve played in. New players, used to more of a medieval Europe theme park environment, sometimes balk at its exotic names and ways of thinking: ‘How will I get my head around it all?’ Well, children don’t come pre-loaded with any culture either, and somehow they manage. In Tekumel gaming it’s why we usually start with a “fresh off the boat” set-up or a session zero in a location far from the main centres of civilization. With the Tekumel Sourcebook, The Eye of Allseeing Wonder, and Tirikelu you have everything you need to get started. Add Deeds of the Ever-Glorious and The Book of Ebon Bindings for extra spice.

Over the years my gaming friends and I have led whole parallel lives in the world of Tekumel. You’ll find its influence throughout ‘80s and ‘90s British gamebooks because the campaign roster included Jamie Thomson, Paul Mason, Mark Smith and Oliver Johnson. The Legion of the Sword of Doom in The Way of the Tiger? Look no further than Gruganu, Black Sword of Doom, the cohort of the god Ksarul, coupled with such Tsolyani regiment names as the Legion of Potent Destiny, the Legion of the Portals of Death, the Legion of the Night of Shadows, the Legion of the Storm of Fire, and the Legion of the Lord of Red Devastation.

When you have such a deep background, you can dive into a game with no preparation. The referee has to do almost nothing, in fact, as the player-characters drive the whole show. Players asked to sit out in another room continue to converse in-character. Adventures arise out of the goals the PCs set for themselves. Here’s a case in point. The characters were heading along the Sakbe from Bey Sű to to Sokatis. I had sketched a few notions that I could use as cues to the players for them to spin up into an evening’s events. For example:

Which led to the session of which this is the write-up:

As you arrived, preparations were being made for the Festival of the Shining Sun, dedicated to Hnalla’s second aspect. Chusun [Oliver Johnson] insisted on staying two days for the festival.

You took lodgings at the House of the Champion’s Rest, owned by Turuku of Mimore, an expat Salarvyani who obtained Tsolyani citizenship and is something of a local hero, having won a number of spectacular bouts in the arena until he retired five years ago.

Chusun visited the temple of Hnalla and made a lavish donation – his Excellent Ruby Eye with some 25 charges! This at least secured an audience with the Governor. You also spoke to the local police chief, Ssai hiMabran, a retired captain of the Legion of Hnalla. Chusun also gained admittance to an inner sanctum of the temple, where he saw the sun’s image focused on a pool of water and, disturbing it not by his breath, perceived sunspots that darkened the blazing disk.

Meanwhile, Tsamurel [Jamie Thomson] convinced Turuku to come out of retirement for one bout in the town’s quite impressive Hirilakte. The terms of the contest were to second injury. Tsamurel, to cover his bets, pawned the party’s Eye of Healing for 2000 Kaitars.

The festival began with an early morning contest. Young men of the town gather before sunrise to dive, swim the surging river, climb one of the tall swaying junkel trees on the far bank, swim back, and present an unbroken junkel nut to the Princess of the Sunrise, who by tradition is the prettiest local maiden. On this occasion the lucky girl was Eleara hiJefash, the Governor’s daughter.

Jangaiva [Mark Smith] and Tsamurel took part and was neck and neck with couple of local lads. Then Chusun noticed that one young fellow, Hogesh hiVurar of the Wooded Slope Clan, seemed to be cheating. Hogesh returned with some leaves stuffed inside a sheet (most contestants carried a sheet, net or sack) and swam into reeds where he previously hid a junkel nut the night before. When the deception was revealed, things looked bad for Hogesh and the crowd booed him, but Tsamurel (who was the legitimate winner) took the lad under his wing – in fact, went so far as to appoint him his second in the Hirilakte bout, which was scheduled for that evening.

There was a procession around the town, with Tsamurel riding as “Prince of the Sunrise” beside Lady Eleara, while Chusun chose instead to shave all his body hair and walk naked, beating himself with a whip and frightening the crowd with his enormous member, which seemed to become erect as he intensified his self-flagellation*.

Towards sunset, Chusun mastered his own Pedhetl, achieving momentary enlightenment into the inner mysteries of Hnalla’s second aspect**. He sat in the still-empty stands of the arena, and as people entered they took him for a holy man and gave him money and food in return for blessings.

Tsamurel and Turuku arrived, garbed as the champions of sunrise and sunset respectively. Tsamurel gave Hogesh the opportunity to address the crowd as his herald. Hogesh did so, putting just as much effort into singing his own praises as into bigging up Tsamurel, yet giving a stirring speech regardless that mollified the still-angry crowd. Only Chusun was not ready to forgive the young man for his attempt to cheat at the junkel nut contest – a naked, bald, seven-foot giant rose in the stands crying “Fraud!” and “False wretch, be silent!”

The duel began. Twice Tsamurel splintered Turuku’s mace, but each time stood back and called for a replacement before continuing the fight. Then Turuku scored a slight injury on Tsamurel. The bout was due to continue until either had taken two blows. As they fought on, Tsamurel’s mace broke and now Turuku called for another, joking to the crowd that they would soon have used up all the maces and might need to ask for a loan. Now Tsamurel wounded Turuku. It was all down to who would be injured next – and then, acting at precisely the same instant, both chose to attack and both blows drew blood.

A draw? The crowd could not allow it. Hastily conferring, Tsamurel and Turuku agreed to fight on until the next blow should decide the fray. After a furious exchange of attacks, parries and (on Tsamurel’s part) acrobatic dodges, Turuku’s mace struck home and Tsamurel’s legs buckled under him. He was back on his feet in seconds, both men bowing to the crowd. But Tsamurel was now 2000 Kaitars the poorer, and despite his 500 Kaitar share of the gate takings, has no way of redeeming the Eye of Healing from the temple.

In the evening, you heard rumours of a couple of burglaries that had occurred while everyone in town was watching the arena bout. This followed on from a spate of similar crimes that used to happen regularly years before, and were attributed to wandering woodfolk or puppeteers, but which had petered out in more recent times.

The next day, Chusun quizzed the Governor about the Black Ssu. The Governor's homeland turns out to have been the isles of Tsolei, and he told how the Black Ssu would raid the island to steal children who they bring up among them as "Non-Men" - humans who have been raised to serve the Ssu. He also mentioned what he knows of Hrugga, which is that Hrugga failed to give a gift to the demon brother Nurgashte because he couldn't afford anything of appropriate value after giving the scabbard of his fabled weapon, Kakara, to Bassa, king of the Black Ssu.

Meanwhile, Tsamurel met with Captain Ssai, offering to keep an ear open for news of the burglaries. On returning, he got into an argument with Turuku (the argument was all on Tsamurel’s side) when Turuku offered a gift of 500 Kaitars so that Tsamurel could redeem the Eye of Healing. Tsamurel, resenting the implication that he needed charity, tried to force Turuku into a rematch, but Turuku insisted he was now retired for good.

(In fact, the offer of 500 Kaitars would not have been enough. Tsamurel pawned the Eye for 2000 Kaitars and must pay back 2100 to redeem it, but only has 500 Kaitars – even if he’d taken the gift, that still leaves him 1100 Kaitars short. So you have probably lost both that and the Excellent Ruby Eye.)

* Hey, all I can say is that’s how Oliver chose to portray his character.

** There was a bit more background info that I gave in case any of the players wanted to delve into the religious aspects of the festival:

‘Hnalla’s Second Aspect is Chirashin Tulengkoi (literally "the Shining Sun") who gives his devotees surcease from care and freedom from grief or fear. He accepts only offerings of diamonds and other clear crystals. His priests and priestesses go nude except for necklaces, anklets, and bracelets made of ropes of crystals "hung about their persons, making each movement glitter and flash".

‘The most famous shrine of Hnalla's Second Aspect is in Jakalla. There, on his festival days, 9th Firasul and 4th Trantor, thousands of those whose lives have become sorrowful (the bereaved, crippled, those who have been shamed or paupered, etc) march in procession to his shrine. Miracles occur, souls are healed, and grieving hearts are filled again with joy on these days. [In the campaign it's currently around 22nd Drenggar, ie some 18 days to the 9th Firasul festival day.]

‘The "commonly known" or "outer" mystery of the Shining Sun's devotees, revealed to all lay followers such as yourself, is that the colours of the rainbow that a diamond makes from the pure white light of his disk are analogous to the things that make up all the rest of the universe. Each separate thing appears as having a single nature, but when all things are perceived at once, in their totality they are the light of the Shining Sun.

‘A deeper mystery is described by the priests as like gazing into a source of intense light. At first the light is dazzling, but gradually the eyes adjust and it is possible to make out some detail within the light source. In the same way, they say that those who receive initiation into the mystery cult of the Shining Sun can be taught to endure the light and will eventually have revealed to them the greatest mystery of all, which is to glimpse what is revealed within the source. Your own High Prelate of Hnalla in Bey Su, Chankosu hiMareda, is a special adherent of the Second Aspect and is rumoured to be an initiate to whom the mystery has been revealed.’

What ho, chapbooks

You may have noticed that Fabled Lands Publishing has been releasing a few chapbooks lately. First we had Headcases, a compendium of bodiless horrors to chill the blood of the staunchest adventurer. Then Dealing With Demons, the fondly remembered series from White Dwarf back in the 1980s. 

And now there's The Only Way Is Narnia, a parody one-shot that we ran on the blog a while back -- but that version was only for GURPS 4e, while the new edition also has stats for D&D 5e, Basic Role-Playing, and Powered by the Apocalypse.

If Not-Narnia doesn't tempt you, what about a sci-fi/Arthurian mash-up with a feminist flavour? That's The Girl King, also based on an old blog post but now with Dragon Warriors stats and some luscious Aubrey Beardsley illos. You might like to dip into an infiltration-&-heist adventure from the Vulcanverse books: The City of Bones. Then there's The God in the Bowl, a locked room murder mystery with inter-party tension, inspired by the Robert E. Howard short story. Monster Hunt is a rumbustious old-school creature fest. The Fall of the House of Missal is one of the scenarios that Oliver Johnson and I wrote for Games Workshop's never-published Questworld book more than forty years ago; the adventure appeared on the blog ten years back as "Sweet is Revenge" but we've now converted it from RuneQuest to Dragon Warriors. Or we've got Kwaidan, a spook-infested Bushido adventure from White Dwarf #47 but now with Dragon Warriors rules.

This is the perfect time to try the chapbooks because tomorrow (May 1st), for one day only, they're completely free. Get them here.

Also tiptoeing out to the bookshelves without any fanfare have been some colour hardback editions of selected gamebooks. So far we've got The Temple of Flame, Once Upon A Time In Arabia, and Down Among The Dead Men.

Just one more thing, as Columbo used to say -- Dagon Warriors (sic) is now available on Kindle. At 80 pages it's a bit big to call a chapbook, so let's say it's a mini-RPG. This is a completely self-contained reworking of the blog post and scenario that you may have seen here, but now with all the rules needed for running Cthulhu-style investigative adventures in the 1920s and 1930s.

Are there any other gamebooks for which you'd like to see a collector's edition? Or other scenarios or topics that would make a good chapbook? Let us know in the comments.

Punch drunk

"Fifteen years since I had to take out a Green Beret..." Oh, just fuck right off, Frank Miller. Why stop there? How about: "It's been fifteen years since I had to take out a Terminator" or "It's been fifteen years since I had to take out a Chitauri attack fleet"?

In Batman: Year One we've been wondering up till that point how little Jim Gordon is going to deal with Flass and the other corrupt cops in the Gotham police department. He'll have to be wily and determined. Seek out some allies with mutual interests. Get leverage over his enemies, maybe dig the dirt on them. Dissemble so that they don't suspect what he's up to. Judge who he can trust and who he can get on his side.

But no, none of that happens, because it would call for some very smart plotting. Instead let's have him be the very pinnacle of ex-special forces. Then he can just beat up Flass and that'll solve everything.

Same for Alfred the butler, who used to be an interesting contrast with his employer, like C-3PO and Luke, but has morphed into the young Bruce Wayne's sensei. Nowadays Galadriel has to be Hit Girl and Dalby in The Ipcress File is a Bond-level killer. Talking of Bond, M now has to have a background in the SAS (probably he joined the regiment at the same time as Alfred Pennyworth). Even Wednesday Addams, who should be so terrifyingly cool that she never needs to resort to combat, now has to be a martial arts whizz.

Making every supporting character ex-SAS or a SEAL is the same mentality that bungs all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters into one universe and expects a round of applause. It's the colour-by-numbers approach to imagination. When writers can’t think of clever ways for their heroes to deal with the problems they’ve given them, they use the cop-out that they are super-tough brawlers – as if that ever really solved anything. 

As an antidote to all this, look instead at Lizzie Bennet tackling Catherine de Bourgh with just a keen mind and moral courage. Or reflect on why Odysseus is a more interesting adventure hero because he overcomes problems with his wits rather than brute strength. That's why I liked The Penguin TV show. Oz Cobb is tough, but not Steve Rogers tough. He's only one man in a ruthless criminal world where there are plenty of stronger and faster adversaries. Outnumbered and despised, an outsider among Gotham's established crime families, faced with an ever-changing crisis where plans are constantly going awry, he has to be cunning and think on his feet.

It's a storytelling lesson I learned at the age of seven watching Goldfinger. Back in those early days 007 wasn't harder than a UFC champion. He was just ultra-resourceful. And when he takes out Oddjob, that was the moment that shows what it takes to tell a good story.

The glories of Orb

You may not have noticed, but the Way of the Tiger gamebooks recently got a mini-makeover. All six of the original books are now available in ebook format as well as in paperback, and there's a new series page on Amazon.

What's unique about the Way of the Tiger books is the range of gameplay styles covered. In the early books you're a stealthy assassin. Then you have to conquer a kingdom -- but not just that, in the next book you have govern it. Enemy city-states move against you, making the next book a complete wargame, firstly of strategic choices as you manoeuvre to bring your adversaries to battle, then a contest of nerve and tactics as you try to break them once and for all. The last of the original series circled back to solo adventuring, but this time in the form of classic dungeon delving.

The dungeoneering made sense because the glittering centrepiece of the series is the world of Orb, Mark Smith's setting for the D&D campaign he ran for his friends at school. There were no ninja in Orb in those days, just classic sword-&-sorcery tropes. Many of the NPCs who pop up in the books were player-characters in Mark's campaign, which was still getting talked about (and occasionally run) when I met him at college the following year. I remember holding the Book of the Gods of Orb, a school exercise book in which he'd detailed all the temples and cults of Orb. There were other books too, and more material got added as the campaign progressed over the years. We played long-term in those days, not just a dozen sessions and on to the next thing. Orb was a genuine epic loved by everyone who was privileged enough to play in it.

The good news is that you can get a taste of that brilliance by playing the gamebooks that Jamie Thomson wrote with Mark in the 1980s. And if the downbeat ending of Book 6 bothers you, there's a very good sequel by David Walters (Redeemer) that lets you get Avenger out of that web.

Fellow travellers in the Vulcanverse

As you explore the Vulcanverse you can acquire various companions to accompany you on your quests. The companion you travel with can make a big difference to events at a location. They not only give advice or help, they sometimes become part of the story themselves. You can only have one companion at a time, so it’s a decision that can fundamentally change what you experience in the game.

I’m thinking of producing a series of Vulcanverse guides for the players who are put off by the thought of exploring without some hints. The Companions Guide would be the first, featuring overviews like this.

Loutro

You first meet Loutro at a dilapidated lakeside shrine to Aphrodite in the south-east of the land of Notus. Though Loutro respects the goddess of love, he reveals himself to be the last initiate of Tethys, the almost-forgotten goddess of rivers.

Loutro is one of your most loyal companions, becoming a reliable and steadfast friend and maybe even more than that. But despite your relationship he never loses sight of his main goal, which is to pass on his religious training to you. If you walk with him along the course of the Great River, which is now just a dried-up gully across the desert, he instructs you in stages until finally you earn the title Initiate of the Tethysian Mysteries.

Devoted as he is to you, Loutro isn’t going to hang around once his goal has been achieved, so if you want to experience some of the other regions of the Vulcanverse in his company you need to resist his urging to undertake that pilgrimage along the river bed. Once he leaves you he’ll never be available as a companion again, though you might well meet him in the course of later adventures. In fact, it’s during one of those later encounters that he gives you the means to acquire another of your companions.

Once you know the secrets of the river goddess’s cult as an Initiate of the Tethysian Mysteries, you can perform a ritual that will radically and permanently change the landscape of Notus and have ongoing effects throughout the whole Vulcanverse. The ritual is one of the three labours of Notus that must be completed to open up the main storyline in book 5, so you’ll want to get to it eventually, but again there’s no need to rush things. Some locations will no longer be accessible after the ritual and others will open up. You might want to explore Notus for a while longer first – in particular the mines just north of the Iskandrian delta.

When you do get around to the ritual, you're going to need three sacred items: a conch horn, a green pearl, and a baby's rattle. As for where you can find those, that's a subject for another guide.

The cure for our ills?

Regular readers will already know I'm an evangelist for AI. And, yes, I'm aware there are risks, as with any new technology, but we are going to keep rubbing lamps and letting genies out. We just have to be careful how we deal with them. When he was setting up DeepMind, Sir Demis Hassabis was fond of propounding the vision: "Solve intelligence. Use intelligence to solve everything else." By everything he meant curing disease, solving the problem of controlled fusion, and all the other things that could make life on Earth a utopia.

Perhaps you are cynical about experts and/or multi-millionaires, but don't make the mistake of dismissing every member of a group on account of some bad apples. I know Demis personally (I used to work for him) and I assure you that he is motivated by a genuine vision of a better future. His delight in the workings of the universe, his ever-youthful curiosity, his humour, his intelligence, and his focus are the qualities that I think show human beings at their very best. For such men and women, the human adventure is just beginning.

I mention all this because there is a biography of Demis Hassabis just out. That's The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby. Hassabis is likely to be admired by future generations as a pioneer of a new era -- long after the likes of Musk and Trump are forgotten -- and, though I think the key to AGI might lie more in the work of Yann LeCun, and though I believe we should celebrate discoveries, not discoverers, anyone who is interested in the lives of those who shape history should take a look.

There is a depressing note. (It's the 2020s, so how could there not be?) Recently Demis seems to be cooling on the grand vision. “I’ve satiated that scientific desire for the moment…I’ve always been fine either way,” he says, justifying the shift in emphasis from AGI research to the LLMs that are where the money is now. It figures that Google isn't interested in idealistic research; it just wants commercial product. If it were me, I'd walk away. Demis is probably reasoning that maybe he can do more good with 1% of Google's focus than with 100% of the resources of an obscure research lab. Such compromises with the inevitable never work out. You never even get that 1%. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

AGI, superintelligence, and the keys to a utopian future are all achievable in theory. Of that I'm almost certain. But whether the societies and institutions humans have created will ever allow us to reach that goal remains an open question. The fault is not in our science but in ourselves.

Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

After the unveiling of the Dagon Warriors rules and the recent investigative scenario*, Teófilo Hurtado asked me how we would represent characters like Arthur Jermyn. The staple protagonist of a Lovecraftian story is not, after all, a two-fisted bruiser or a swami with mind control, simply a fellow of ordinary prowess and sometimes with an academic bent. OK, then...

The Scholar

Scholars are learned investigators and antiquarians who delve into forbidden knowledge and ancient mysteries. Unlike other professions that rely on physical prowess or psychic powers, Scholars use their extensive education and research skills to overcome supernatural threats. Their deep study of esoteric lore has granted them unusual resistance to mental intrusion, but at the cost of combat effectiveness.

Minimum Requirements: Intelligence 12+, Psychic Talent 9+

Starting Stats:

• Health Points: 1d6+4
• Attack 11, Defense 5
• Psychic Attack 0, Psychic Defense 6 (enhanced mental resistance)
• Evasion 3
• Stealth 13, Perception 7

Progression:

• Attack/Defense: +1 at 4th rank, then +1 at 7th, 10th, etc.
• Health Points: +1 at 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc.
• Psychic Defense: +1 each rank, with additional +1 at 4^th, 7th and 10th ranks
• Evasion: +1 at 5th, then +1 at 9th rank
• Stealth: +1 at 4th, then +1 at 7th, then +1 at 10^th
• Perception: +1 per rank

Special Abilities

1st Rank Abilities:

• Linguistic Analysis: Can attempt to decipher unknown languages, codes, and ancient inscriptions. At 1^st to 3^rd rank the Scholar will always be able to translate at least one important phrase. At higher ranks they can additionally interpret a percentage of the text equal to 1d10x their rank, though this usually takes a few hours.
• Historical Research: Exceptional knowledge of historical events, antiquities, and academic sources
• Psychic Resilience: Starting Psychic Defense of 6 instead of the normal 5

Higher Rank Abilities:

4th Rank: Academic Network - Can locate rare books, expert consultants, and obscure information through academic contacts.

6th Rank: Rapid Analysis - Can quickly assess supernatural threats and identify weaknesses through cross-referencing folklore and historical accounts.

8th Rank: Theoretical Construction - Can design and (given sufficient time and resources) build devices based on historical accounts and mythological descriptions. Examples include Eilmer's wings, Greek fire, siege engines from ancient texts, or protective talismans based on folklore.

10th Rank: Masterwork Construction - Can create sophisticated devices combining multiple historical techniques, such as mechanical calculators (such as the Antikythera mechanism), advanced Babylonian optics, or complex timing mechanisms using ancient mathematics and astronomy. (Cf gadgeteers in GURPS 4e.)

Scholar Skills

Scholars gain expertise in the following areas as they advance, beginning at journeyman level and becoming fully proficient by 5th rank:

• Languages: All known ancient and modern languages (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, etc.)
• Archaeology: Understanding of ancient civilizations and their technologies
• Occult Theory: Academic knowledge of supposedly supernatural phenomena (without the ability to practice it)
• Research: Exceptional ability to find information in libraries, archives, and academic institutions

Combat Limitations

Scholars’ strength lies in preparation, research, and the construction of useful devices rather than direct confrontation.

What's Real and Make-believe?

The premise of the game is that extraterrestrial civilizations and other-dimensional entities first visited the Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. Some of these creatures were worshipped as gods by primitive man. Over the millennia, the few definite facts have been distorted, misreported and added to until the field of “mythos lore” today bears little resemblance to reality. Those who imagine themselves to be perpetuating the ancient worship are like modern druids fancying they are continuing traditions from before the Roman conquest by mustering at the far more ancient site of Stonehenge. The prayers that cultists offer to Cthulhu are unheard, if indeed Cthulhu even exists as a single being, and would not be answered in any case.

That doesn’t mean that study of the Cthulhu mythos is not worthwhile. Consider Bible studies. Knowledge of the Old Testament will not tell you anything about the history of the universe, or even just the solar system, or provide useful insight into medicine, hygiene, nutrition or ethics, but nevertheless it is a valid academic subject. Similarly, Cthulhu mythos lore is largely a study of the many fabrications made over the centuries, the truth often being unknowable, but it is valuable for the Scholar to know about those beliefs because the actions of cultists who venerate Cthulhu and other such beings are predicated on such beliefs being true.

Design Notes

The Scholar's enhanced Psychic Defense progression provides significant protection against the mental attacks common in Cthulhu Mythos scenarios. Their construction abilities offer unique problem-solving options that complement rather than replace the combat abilities of other professions. At higher ranks, a Scholar might construct a collapsible glider, a defensive smoke bomb, or even a primitive spacesuit—all potentially invaluable tools for 1920s investigators facing supernatural threats.

Stats for an Average Scholar

*For traditionalists, here is a downloadable version of the "Abnormal Growths" scenario with Call of Cthulhu stats.