Counter-colonial Creature Compendium:* the invisible rail is like something out of Edward Gorey.
German ornithologist Gerd Heinrich, who prepared for his Halmahera trip by rolling in stinging nettles, wrote of the [rail’s] sago swamp habitat in the 1930s: “I am solidly confident no European has ever seen this rail alive, for that requires such a degree of toughening and such demands on oneself as I cannot so easily attribute to others. [The rail] is shielded by the awful thorns of the sago swamps… In this thorn wilderness, I walked barefoot and half-naked for weeks.”
especially for Paolo Greco Adam Thornton Jeremy Duncan Patrick Stuart William Broom et al but also for everyone interested in #countercolonialheistcrawl
here is something crawling toward a set of rules.
I don’t know of a better way to share these rules and start a discussion about them than this. Please look ’em over and provide critical feedback.I don’t want to make a game nobody wants to play.
This here might be incoherent, please ask for clarification. It all makes sense in my head, but maybe it won’t when I say it.
If you wanna play it, please help make it playable!
So Chris Kutalik wants Calvinoesque Invisible Cities maps, and I have a back-back-burner project to do a nice bird’s-eye view of an early modern lightly extravagantly fictionalized Amsterdam, and I’m still thinking about a bigger cities-of-canals project linked to #countercolonialheistcrawl
…and I don’t have time for any of that but I’ve made one resolution today: I am damn well buying a replacement copy of Nancy Chandler’s Map of Bangkok because I do not want to be incapable of explaining any more when someone asks what I mean when I say “how about a Nancy Chandler type map of this?”
…once again, intersection of tourism, gaming and scopic turns of the imagination.
This is so bizarre I don’t even know what to say about it. It’s from the opening ceremony to the new Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland, now the longest and deepest rail tunnel in the world. And if the pictures and videos at this link are any indication, it was inaugurated with a dance commemoration of the 17-year battle between civil engineers and the ancient spirits of the mountain.
Not that I don’t think this is appropriate. Engineering basically requires ritual magic in order to function, and public dance ceremonies have a time-honored history. But if you want to see what this ends up looking like, and the pictures below don’t scare you away first, I suggest watching the (silent) video of the dance sped up 2x.
(Spoilers: despite what it looks like is going to happen throughout much of it, they didn’t perform any human sacrifices during the ceremony.)
Silbo Gomero, ‘Gomeran whistle’), also known as el silbo (‘the whistle’), is a whistled register of Spanish used by inhabitants of La Gomera in the Canary Islands to communicate across the deep ravines and narrow valleys that radiate through the island. It enables messages to be exchanged over a distance of up to 5 kilometres
A #countercolonialheistcrawl bestiary (European players only).
…the thing that gets me about this is that it was 1671. It’s a stretch to call these lands unknown by that date – at least, Spanish and Portuguese explorers had been working on knowing them for a good long while, and the Dutch and English had already fought two wars over who should get to wrest them away from the Iberians (and natives and whatnot, obviously).
Guys, you’re on a true run, this can happen at any time. And yes, the run is the most calming of all attitudes to the wind, just pushing along happily, no leaning over, no choppy bow waves, but here’s the thing you have to watch out for. Don’t be, like, standing in the path of the boom looking away from it wondering if you can get that jenny to gull wing a bit better because for once you’re on a true run.
How did I not know that Paul Gorman had automated Traveller chargen?
Hint: also doubles as a tragic history generator for any sort of colonial era game where people go looking for their fathers, lost at sea.
For instance:
Army General Mohamed Hong
AA5738 Age 38
Commissioned during first term of service.
Promoted to Captain.
Voluntarily reenlisted for second term.
Promoted to Major.
Voluntarily reenlisted for third term.
Promoted to Lt Colonel.
Voluntarily reenlisted for fourth term.
Promoted to Colonel.
Voluntarily reenlisted for fifth term.
Promoted to General.
Death in service.
For my purposes this really needs some extra Chris Kutalik type tables listing spouse, children (recognised and illegitimate), entanglements with sorcerers and amputations.
#countercolonialheistcrawl
Originally shared by Stan Shinn
My new Traveller character created with Paul Gorman ‘s online Character Generator. Died in service.
a.I also add a little water for flow/coverage, and because only a savage would use paint straight from the tube.
b. Detergent makes the paint scratchable.
c.Options: paintbrush or (as here) a cosmetic sponge, which provides an even coverage, speed and stippling (more later). The stick is a bamboo cane from the garden, not a paintbrush as might be assumed; used for mixing and scratching off paint.
2. Area to be explored is coated. This is one layer, relatively thin.
a. Black paint gives the best coverage (densest pigment), while other colours may need several coats. Red, for example, looks great but light “shines through” a single layer. Yellow has the same problem.
b.Drying time 10-15 mins in Australian autumn, 10 degrees C, light breeze, morning sun.
3. Tidy up. Stick (or coin for traditionalists) used to scratch areas intended as visible to players. In this case, Imperial worlds are known, with jump tapes (a once-only expense for a minimum-risk jump) or jump calculations (free but time-consuming, must be performed for each jump, with greater risk of mishap) required for a jump.
Finally, you’re good to go.
Experimenting a little, I found that stippling (sponge or brush in dabbing motion) gives a disruptive effect, dries faster and conceals features like writing without requiring perfect coverage.
Not my original idea, I add; we stand upon the shoulders of giants.
Curious Creatures in Zoology, by John Ashton, is as charming a write-up as you could ever hope to find of the usual dog-headed men and werewolves and so on from 1890, collated from eariler sources.
“The Mimicke or Getulian Dogge,” is, I take it, meant for a poodle. It was “apt to imitate al things it seeth, for which cause some have thought that it was conceived by an Ape, for in wit and disposition it resembleth an Ape, but in face, sharpe and blacke like an Hedgehog, having a short recurved body, very long legs, shaggy haire, and a short taile: this is called of some Canis Lucernarius. These being brought up with apes in their youth, learne very admirable and strange feats, whereof there were great plenty in Egypt in the time of king Ptolemy, which were taught to leap, play, and dance, at the hearing of musicke, and in many poore men’s houses they served insteed of servaunts for divers uses.
Chris Kutalik – an ancient source for the Dog-men of the Space Cantons? There’s also an extensive chapter on bears.
Improbably badly written article contains gaming magic.
I’m not sure what a rare Native American tribe might be, but apparently its members can summon local whales, dolphins, sharks, seals and other marine species, talk to them, and receive information about Tsunami threats scheduled for 2017.
#countercolonialheistcrawl
#suppressedtransmission
Originally shared by Hans Youngmann
#thingsthatmakeyougohmmm Especially if you live in Western Washington…
More from catfishdeluxe.com (purveyors of the delightful but orphaned Sidera title sequence).
Sometimes my games go through weird tonal shifts that take me by surprise. If #countercolonialheistcrawl skids off in any of these directions I won’t complain, even though it’s not where I’m headed.
Portuguese fusta, described by van Linschoten, 1585
Portuguese necromancers have made an Indian acrobat troupe into “grey powder men,” forced by Papist Magicks to row until their muscles tear from their bones. The demon that now “owns their heads” is a jocular fellow with a fondness for parasols.
The spike on the front of the ship is for catching whales and possibly sea turtles.
Some #countercolonialheistcrawl mission objectives. It is most important to take down the colonists’ fort before it gets to the point of being filled in with Vaubanized pink (which makes them all but impregnable to cannon-fire and pokemon breath weapons).
Also included in this package: what the colonists will do to your land if you do not evict them (classify and divide it with legal documents and property rights: for more on the deleterious effects on pokemon see Pom Poko). And another marginal figure of an armoured woman, surrounded by Chinese tea and images of good Malay prahus as well as their own disgusting floating castles. We have yet to see any of these armoured women outside drawn representations: we suspect they are the red-hairs’ pokemon.
The Versatile Theater was created in the form of an amphitheater, and was composed of two parts: an outer part, in the form of a semi-circular wall resembling the coliseum; and an inner part, in the form of a circular-pyramidal stage hosting numerous personifications of virtues and vices. This inner stage was versatile, and had two facets: one representing war and the other peace… Bochius arranged this stage, starting with war – the origin of all evil and disaster – and then all of war’s vices, in descending order, from the most generic to the most particular and personal. The more generic Terror, for example, is positioned on the second step, while the lesser – more private notion of fear – Timor is seated on the bottom step.
wondering if Zak Smith was thinking about something like this when he wrote up the Traveling Lizardman Opera.
holy cow – 350+ accounts of travels in Southeast Asia digitized and online. Including, for instance, Thomas Forrest’s Voyage to New Guinea, and the Moluccas… in the Tartar galley, belonging to the Honourable East India company, during the years 1774-76
and Joris van Spilbergen’s Voyages of 1614-17 and La Loubere’s acount of Siam (the last 2 pictured below)
And while I’m on this kick, here’s a displaced Illyrian adventurer for Jeremy Duncan’s rogue’s gallery: Constantine Phaulkon, the Siamese king’s Greek advisor, described by the Abbé de Choisy in the 1680s:
“He was one of those in the world who have the most wit, liberality, magnificence, intrepidity, and was full of great projects, but perhaps he only wanted to have French troops in order to try and make himself king after the death of his master, which he saw as imminent. He was proud, cruel, pitiless, and with inordinate ambition. He supported the Christian religion because it could support him; but I would never have trusted him in things in which his own advancement was not involved”
Abbé de Choisy, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV
I bet you’re like “why should I click the UNFRIENDLIEST LINK EVER in some language I don’t even speak?”
Because it has a whole raft of zoomable, scalable 17th century maps including Leiden here, ready for your murderhoboes to explore. You could procedurally generate your cities or spend hours sketching them, or you could just use these.
So this is where Tartary and CCH cross over. China is building islands to extend its sovereign territory into the South China Sea, in order to control all shipping around East Asia, create a zone of exclusive military control, and assert the old Imperial claim that all trade is mere tribute to the celestial throne.
The sea has long been a legal black hole. The UN’s UNCLOS convention is supposed to close it up equitably and responsibly, but its implications are huge and war-fostering – notably the extension of countries’ defensible mineral and resources rights to 300 miles off any bit of shoreline they claim, so a handkerchief-sized island defines a circle of territory 600 miles across.
The balance of power shifted a while ago. This is the slide accelerating. Welcome to your new world order. Oh, and ASEAN? #rollforinitiative .
employees of the two most active chartered trading companies on the West African coast… went so far as to try and bind African traders via fetish-oaths to trade only with their respective employers
Relations… had been strained in recent days… because one of [the company men] had successfully seduced the Akwamu king’s wife while she was held in pawn at the fort.
Matthew David Mitchell (2012). “The Fetish and Intercultural Commerce in Seventeenth century West Africa.” Itinerario, 36, pp 7-21 available for free download.
Tattered Remains of Tartary 