Bullet time

I hoped to have news today of Jamie's latest project, a book about the early years of Games Workshop, but it turns out I have no more info to impart than is already on the crowdfunding page, so instead I'm going to talk about a passage that caught my eye in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian:

"We rested our rifle barrels on the brimstone and we shot nine more on the lava where they ran. It was a stand, what it was. Wagers was laid. The last of them shot was a reckonable part of a mile from the muzzles of the guns and that on a dead run. It was sharp shootin all around and not a misfire in the batch with that queer powder."

These fellows are ordinary NPCs, which in GURPS terms might be 100-point characters. The highest that most of them would be in Guns skill is around 15-16, but we can assume the final shot that Tobin, the narrator, is talking about was made by the company's best sharpshooter. Let's say he has a skill of 22.

"A reckonable part of a mile" -- that's got be at least 1000 yards, which is -16 for range. And the last Indian shot was "on a dead run", and even though a component of that motion would be directly away from the shooter, it's got to be at least another -6.

So far our shooter needs 0 to hit. But he can aim for three rounds, which gives him the Accuracy bonus of the weapon (+3 for a Sharps .59 caplock) and another +2 for the extra rounds spent. Also he can brace the rifle for +1.

With an adjusted skill of 6 the shooter had a 9.3% chance of success (GURPS makes skill rolls on 3d6). I wouldn't take that shot myself. Ammo's too precious. But it was the last of their enemies and everyone's blood was up, so obviously our man decided to go for it.I bet the referee gave him a character point in Guns for that, too, which is pretty much useless at that level and in any case you learn more from failure than from success -- but hey, nobody turns down a CP, am I right?

But that's fiction, or it's gaming. How about real-life skills? I found this assessment of 1911 handguns. Now, those aren't rifles and they are from 60 years (a whole Tech Level) after the events of Blood Meridian, but still Mr Kolesar is getting a spread of 2 inches with his Colt at 50 yards. That would be good enough to ensure a face hit every time, which in GURPS terms is -5 and another -8 for range, so -13 overall. The Colt has Accuracy +2, so with three rounds to aim and holding it in both hands that reduces the penalty to -8. To hit pretty much every time means adjusted skill must be 17, so Mr Kolesar's actual Guns skill in GURPS terms must be at least 25. He's built on more than 100 points, I bet.

Incidentally, Tobin also says they didn't get a single misfire from a batch of black powder they just mixed up Captain Kirk style. They shot sixty-seven of their enemies and not every shooter can have been as good as that eagle-eyed guy who downed the last one, so let's say at least a hundred bullets were fired. This is the mid-nineteenth century and misfires occur on 16+ on 3d6 at Tech Level 5, so you'd expect four or five in every hundred shots. That must have been some magic formula.

Anyway, I recommend Blood Meridian. It's what you'd get if Michel Tournier and Lord Dunsany collaborated on a fabulist Western. And if that doesn't pique your interest, what would?

Practising my art upon the gnoles

I can't imagine what possessed me to perpetrate this act of creative vandalism. Converting Lord Dunsany's gnoles to Runequest stats -- by Mung and his Beast, the very idea! My only excuse then is that I was young (it was the early 1980s), I was editing the Rune Rites column in White Dwarf, and there was a constant demand for new material -- especially monsters because RQ's hit location rules makes it pretty hard to improvise them as you go. But even so, what a wretched crime against a great fantasy author. And I really have no excuse for publishing it now except as a warning to others... Do me a favour; please at least read the story (and preferably pay for it; it's still in copyright) before you spoil it with these stats.

GNOLES

ARMOUR: 2 point skin; sometimes also leather (2 pts.) on body & limbs  

SPELLS: Befuddle; Healing 2; Shimmer 2; Darkwall

SKILLS: Climbing 80%; Listen 80%; Camouflage 90%; Hide in Cover 80%; Move Quietly 90%; Tracking 100% (in forest); Spot Hidden 50%

Travellers who have journeyed through the very deepest and most gloomy forests sometimes claim to have caught a glimpse of large beings moving with uncanny speed and agility through the trees. These are the fabled gnoles.

The reclusive gnoles care nothing for other races and are content to ignore anyone who is not determined to bother them. However, their hidden dwellings are often sought by avaricious and overconfident adventurers who covet their great treasure. Those who survive the other dangers of the forest and succeed in reaching one of the gnole lairs rarely live to brag of it, for the gnoles have several unique abilities that aid them in disposing of intruders...

Gnoles cannot be surprised. They are so aware of the forest and all its signs that they get several hours' warning when anyone is approaching. Moreover, gnoles almost always surprise their opponents; at a distance of 25 metres a gnole is 90% likely to be undiscernable when stationary.

Gnoles cannot see anything further than 20 metres from them (although their hearing is very acute and so they will still be aware of beings beyond this range), but closer than this they have full 360° vision, even through solid objects. They also have Detect Enemies to a range of 20 metres; this ability operates continually at no POW cost.

A gnole lair will contain 4-24 gnoles, all in permanent Mindspeech with one another. In appearance, gnoles are a mottled brown-black. They are slightly larger and more heavily built than an average man, but stand somewhat shorter owing to their stooped posture. They have prehensile hands and feet which enable them to climb rapidly in spite of their bulk.

The road to heaven

I thought I'd posted up this puzzle ages ago, but a Google search shows no sign of it. As I've recently been discussing it online with Chris Garratty, I thought I'd throw it open to the vast Kree Intelligence that is gamebook fandom. You've played Sorcery, right? You must all have IQs as big as the Death Star. So here goes:

While walking upon a path through unmapped territories, you come across a group of three cowled figures standing where two roads meet. You are informed by one whose counsel you have no reason to doubt that these three are Mung, who keeps the secrets of the grave (for he is the god of death) by invariably lying, Sish, the Destroyer of Hours, who speeds the flight of time's arrow by always telling the truth, and Kib, the god of life, who created Man and consequently lies and tells the truth equally without conscience. Further, you are told that one of the two roads leads to Paradise while the other takes travellers to the lowest circle of Hell. Presupposing that you wish to take the road to Paradise, how can you, by asking one yes-or-no question of one of the three gods (who are, incidentally, indistinguishable), find whether to go left or right?

So, with two questions you might start with the old, "If I asked if the way to Paradise is left, would you say yes?" If you only have a liar and a truth-teller, if the answer is yes you should go left, and if it's no you go right. The snag is, that question sets up a logical impossibility for the god who randomly chooses to lie or tell the truth. Figure that he works out the lying or truthful response to the current question and then flips a mental coin to choose which to say. Your hypothetical question nested within the first is a separate question for which he hasn't yet flipped that coin.

However, if you did have two questions, there is a way to use the first question to weed out Kib. (This is from Ivan Morris, by the way, who originally devised the puzzle.) Say you pick one god (call him A) and you ask, "Is B more likely to tell the truth than C?" If you get a yes, C cannot be Kib. If you get a no, B cannot be Kib. You can then proceed to the question above.

But here's the snag. You don't have two questions, you just have one...

Urbane fantasy free on Kindle

A universe away from the Gothic tragedy of Frankenstein, never mind the swashbuckling epic adventure of Fabled Lands, there is the tradition of urbane (sic) fantasy pioneered by Saki and Lord Dunsany. Such stories usually belong to the category that SF academic Farah Mendlesohn calls liminal, in that the weird elements are presented as matter-of-factly as waking up to find deer crossing your back lawn. That wyvern perched on the chimney pot opposite may be no less alarming than a tiger on the loose from the zoo, but it's no more peculiar either. We all know how easy it can be to stray over into the Twilight Zone.

If urbane fantasy is your cup of Earl Grey (dash of lemon if you don't mind, old chap) you can pick up a free Kindle copy of A Minotaur at the Savoy (US edition here) until midnight on Friday. This little volume, as regular readers will know, is a tie-in with the world of the Mirabilis graphic novel, fleshing out the background by means of fifty tall tales woven around the postbag of the Royal Mythological Society. For example:

Dear Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut

Recently I was taken by a friend to a restaurant in Fitzrovia. As we were settling down over whisky and cigars after the meal, I glanced at the menu and noticed that the à la carte listed Dodo Véronique. Intrigued as I was, I had by this time already put away a dozen oysters, the onion soup, a smoked haddock dish, two helpings of beef wellington, a lemon soufflé, a plate of almond biscuits, a bottle or two of Chateau Yquem and three large brandies. Also, I’d had a bit of a gyppy tummy earlier in the week, so at that stage I really didn’t feel up to fitting anything else in. I now rather wish I had, as I went for a bit of a walk to see if I could find the place again and there’s no sign of the street. I remember it had a little blue sconce of flame over the door, and a sort of curtain of ivory beads to keep the fog out. My friend has gone on a trip to Venezuela so no use asking him.

Sincerely, Edward Plunkett, The Attican Club, Pall Mall

Dr Clattercut replies: O rara avis in terris!

Prof Bromfield: Latin? You’ll have lost most of our readers right there, old man.

Dr Clattercut: I merely remarked on the pang of missed opportunity. Who knows how long before Mr Plunkett will again find himself in a restaurant with dodo on the menu?

Prof Bromfield: I doubt if there’s honestly any cause for regret. From what I hear, dodo is a tough, gamey sort of fowl. No use cooking it like chicken. Dodo meat is more like what you’d get on a year-old pheasant: tough if served pink, and dry if overcooked. Much more sensible to put it in a curry or a spicy Mexican dish. A Véronique sauce would be all wrong. There’s your explanation, Mr Plunkett – you can’t find the restaurant because it’s gone out of business.

Dr Clattercut: Perhaps the words of another rare bird, the Swan of Avon, will offer some consolation: “Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.”

Friends of English (etc) magic

A whole other tradition of fantasy that's a hundred shires away from cursed swords and dank cobwebby tunnels and granite-toothed ogres is that particularly English kind of whimsical and often surreal collision between the magical and the commonplace. You can see it running through in a direct line of descent from Lord Dunsany to Harry Potter with a cadet branch extending off to The Goons and the Bonzo Dog Band.

(Er, did I say English? Dunsany was Anglo-Irish, Ms Rowling is Scottish, Spike Milligan was born in India and Viv Stanshall was heavily influenced by Dadaism, which is Swiss. So, let's call it "modern realism-grounded fantasy" and leave it at that.)

To my mind, fantasy is at its best when it encroaches onto our familiar world. Non-humans in taverns (whether from Middle-Earth or Aldebaran IV) are pure escapism, but magic that nudges in around the corners of everyday life has to reflect our real daily concerns. That's why, even in role-playing games with a high adventure setting, I like the conflicts and drama to arise out of believable human relationships and concerns. Sergio Leone showed that you can stage heroic, indeed mythic, adventure without having to save the damned world all the time. The greedy race for a box of old banknotes, the struggle to save one lost child, the always-doomed attempt to do the right thing - these are much more engaging than having to reunite the three lost pieces of the shield of Blah so that the evil lord Urg is sent back to the realm of So-what.

Hence the project that occupies my time these days is Mirabilis, a huge comic book epic that I'm weaving with Leo Hartas (pencils and inks), Nikos Koutsis (colors) and Martin McKenna (covers and concept art). A green comet appears in the sky, heralding a year when imagination and reality combine. The magic has come back into the world - and not only magic, but everything that traditionally belongs in fiction, legend and dreams. Mirabilis is my paean to fantasy, the type of fantasy that celebrates illogic and finds a tenuous, obscure circuit through the human unconscious to locate deeper truths than words and facts can ever hope to get at.

Richard Bruton, posting on the essential UK comics blog Forbidden Planet International, wrote:

"Mirabilis [has] a nice bit of mystery, dark fantasy and a very Bryan Talbot-esque art style. Hopefully we’ll be seeing this find its way into print at some point."

And indeed you will see it in print, in fact in two glorious large-format hardcover editions if you live in Britain or Ireland, as John Freeman reported in the other essential UK comics blog Down The Tubes just before Christmas.

Meanwhile you can get the Mirabilis graphic novel for iPad in App Store books, where it has risen this weekend to #7 in the "What's hot" chart. If you don't have an iPad, take a look at the little book-flippy widget thing at the bottom of this very page, and if you like the first episode and you live in the USA or Canada then you can buy the American trade paperbacks by clicking on the cover images in the sidebar or going to Barnes & Noble.

A forgotten year

We don't plan on running posts about Edwardian fantasy comic Mirabilis here, firstly because it's got its own website and blog, secondly because it is not one of the properties owned by the Fabled Lands Studio, and thirdly because at the time of writing the project is in darker limbo than the bilges of a Uttakin slave ship. You can get a little bit of the flavor of the thing from "A Wrong Turning", a ghostly strip that Martin McKenna and I originally intended to fit into the same world as the main comic but which is now officially a standalone story and absolutely positively nothing to do with Mirabilis. It's free. Click on the pic to your right, Dwight.

Anyway, you fantasy connoisseurs may appreciate the whimsical vignettes on offer at the Royal Mythological Society site which lies adjacent to Mirabilis itself. A green comet is causing the barriers between imagination and reality to blur, and month by month correspondents from around the world write in asking the professors' advice. For instance:

Dear perfessors

I hope that you may help me with my Trouble and do not object to a letter from one as does not know you. I have the agreeable position of regular employment at a public house by the Strand, name of The Three Gypsies. My duties there in the main being the stabling of horses, polishing brasses, & co. I also do in the taprooms and some private bedrooms that are kept for travellers, though not so frequent as in former times, now that the coach stand is not there no more. In the morning I rake out the fires and carry the ashes in a pail, which I have been in the habit of tipping down the drain that is in the street near the entrance to the yard.

Only the other morning I went out that way and saw what had the look of two sooty, or I should say ashen, footprints on the pavement outside. Scuffing at these with my foot had no effect to remove them, and thinking no more I went and poured the ashes down the drain as per usual. Then on the next day I found two bare feet standing there. Just the plain feet, you understand, and not with no body above them, the feet being grey and looking to my eye to be made of ashes. Subsequent to that, having visited the drain on my purpose some other times, the feet have now been joined by ankles and the lower part of the legs, that is the calf.

Mr Bardley, him being the landlord, says not to be tipping the ashes that way no more, but I have become quite driven with Curiosity to find out what will come. Today I tipped out another pail of ashes and in the morrow I’m in expectation of a pair of knees. Do you gents think this is advisable, or is Mr Bardley right?

Yours, Joe Gammock, Raven Row E1

Dr Clattercut replies: Mr Gammock, I have no direct experience of exactly such a phenomenon as you describe, but I implore you to consider all the ways that it could turn out if you continue as you have. One does not have to be an avid reader of the works of Mr Bram Stoker to foresee something rather chilling. There are many bad endings to the story and few good ones.

Prof Bromfield replies: Hmm. You do not say as much in your letter, but I surmise that the pedal extremities in question are feminine, and reasonably shapely. For once I have to agree with Clattercut. If this goes on, Mr Gammock, I feel it could be a case of curiosity killing the cat.

As you can see, despite the usual label applied to any fin-de-siècle fantasy, Mirabilis is not steampunk. This is 1901. Motor cars are the latest thing, not steam trains, and anyway it's more pukka than it is punk. It really belongs to the traditions of English fantasy exemplified by Lord Dunsany, Sidney Sime, A J Alan, John Collier and John Whitbourn - to name a distinguished few. If you like Mr Gammock's tale, there's more in that vein right here.