Italics and Romans

http://www.unz.com/article/what-race-were-the-greeks-and-romans/

https://www.theapricity.com/earlson/history/emperors.htm

Recently on Eurogenes Nordic Bronze Age post (about which I've probably got more to say later) the comments have migrated into a discussion on Italy, Italic and the Romans and Etruscans.  However, what people need to think about, especially in light of the two articles posted above is: who exactly are we sampling, and are they Romans?  For that matter, what is a Roman?  (The same could be done for "American", it should be noted.)  One could plausibly posit genetic continuity going back to the Cardial Ware archeological horizon of 6,000 BC with some steppe admixture, and depending on your samples, you'd probably find it.  But does that represent who the Romans specifically thought of as themselves, particularly the "founding" Romans of the patrician class?  What one has to remember is that anyone who fell under the authority in some fashion of the Roman Republic or Roman Empire wasn't necessarily a Roman, and even when they extended their citizenship to non-Romans of various stripes, citizenship does not make one ethnically a Roman.

People say that in the pre-modern age, people didn't see race the same way that we do, and while that's no doubt correct, they did see very intense tribalism in a way that we can barely understand ourselves today.  So, while the "white" Romans may not have seen themselves necessarily in common brotherhood with the Celts or Germans, because they were an alien people in terms of language, culture and belief, they also had a much more strict idea of what it meant to be a Roman than we really see today as well.  We can see just a bit of it, couched in some somewhat archaic, loaded anthropological terms from the first article I linked to above:

What became of the Nordic Greeks and Romans? Their numbers were reduced and thinned through war, imperialism, immigration, and slavery. Protracted internecine war was devastating. The Hellenes lost relatively few men in their two wars with the Persian Empire (490, 480-479 BC), but they were decimated by the ruinous series of inter-Hellenic wars that followed. The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) pitted Athens and her subject Ionian cities against the Spartan Dorian confederacy. That was followed by 35 years of intermittent warfare between Sparta and Thebes (396-362 BC), which pitted Nordics against Nordics. These wars so weakened the Greek republics that they fell under Macedonian rule about 20 years later (338 BC), bringing to an end the classical age of Greece. 

Money was, as always, a racial solvent. Theognis, a noble poet from the Dorian city of Megara wrote in the sixth century BC: “The noblest man will marry the lowest daughter of a base family, if only she brings in money. And a lady will share her bed with a foul rich man, preferring gold to pedigree. Money is all. Good breeds with bad and race is lost.” 

The Roman experience was similarly tragic. All of her later historians agreed that the terrible losses inflicted by Hannibal during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) were minor compared to the horrendous losses Rome inflicted on herself during the nearly 100 years of civil war that followed the murder of the reforming Tribune Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC. 

Immigration was the inevitable backwash of imperialism as slaves, adventurers, and traders swarmed into Rome. Over time, slaves were freed, foreigners gave birth to natives, non-Romans gained citizenship, and legal and social sanctions against intermarriage fell away. By the early empire, all that was left of the original Roman stock were a few patrician families. 

The historian Appian lamented that “the city masses are now thoroughly mixed with foreign blood, the freed slave has the same rights as a native-born citizen, and those who are still slaves look no different from their masters.” Scipio Aemilianus (185–129 BC), a statesman and general of the famed clan of the Aemilii, called these heterogeneous subjects “step-children of Rome.”

Because the historical record is quite clear, I'm naturally going to skeptical of DNA evidence that contradicts it, because in order to understand the historical record, we'd need massive archeo-genetic sampling that probably is simply impossible to get.  I think we should take the ancient historians at their word that they knew who their people were and who their people weren't, after all.

As an aside, there are very good cases to be made that Italic separated from the cluster of Germano-Italo-Celtic languages following their unity in the Unetice culture.  And the Unetice culture is a development of a portion of the Central European Bell Beaker culture, which in turn is a development of mostly the Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware horizon.  As a commentator joked at Eurogenes, "everybody is Polish, they just don't know it yet!" (The blog author is Polish, by the way.)  So yeah, the Roman people in a very strict sense that even the most "dat's raciss!" of Patrician families would recognize were probably from a Central European Corded Ware ancestry if you go back to the late Neolithic, with the admixture that the movement of the Bell Beakers entailed.  But the Greeks don't appear to have any Corded Ware ancestry, and Chang's 2015 linguistic phylogeny has the proto-Greeks and their paleo-Balkan "cousins" like most likely the Armenians, Phrygians, and possibly Thracians and Illyrians too break off from Indo-European at a pre-Corded Ware point in time, earlier in fact than any other group besides the Tocharian and Anatolian, c. 3,300 BC.  If that linguistic phylogeny is put next to archaeological horizons, the split happens at the very beginning of the Yamnaya horizon.  Now, obviously the Corded Ware is closely related to the Yamnaya horizon, but exactly the nature of their relationship is still a little bit unclear.  Were they a direct descendant admixted with some central and northern European local hunter-gatherer and farmer ancestry?  Were they close cousins from the Western Sredni Stog region that were displaced into the northern forest steppe by the spread of the Yamnaya-specific culture on the steppes?  Either way, the Greeks (and their related paleo-Balkan) cousins did not go through the crucible of the Corded Ware horizon; they were Yamnaya-specifically who migrated into the Balkans and their admixture would therefore by with Balkan farmer populations like Tripolye, Cernavoda, and other cultures of the late Balkan-Danubian complex.

Either way, this lack of connection to Corded Ware, yet a Corded Ware-like northern phenotype associated with the aristocratic families of the Greeks and patrician families of the Romans suggests that that's the ancestral phenotype for a good proportion of the Yamnaya too.

UPDATE: I'm fascinated by tantalizing hints that early Indo-Europeans (most likely of the Indic variety, so early Andronovo-type variants) were blowing and going in the Middle-East much more thoroughly than we've historically accepted as conclusive.  It is well established that the Mitanni kingdom had some kind of Aryan superstrate, but are the Levantine Maryannu groups merely displaced and politically disenfranchized Mitanni, or a further wave of Aryans?  What about the Kassites, who have some Aryan names among them?  Are they, like the Mitanni, an Aryan superstrate over a Hurro-Urartian linguistic entity?  Even the Hyksos seem to possibly have some Indo-European among them.  Although the Indo-Europeans in the Mideast don't seem to have established an ethno-linguistic entity that lasted (until the Persians, Medes and other Iranian peoples, at least—and this also excludes the Anatolian branch, which obviously lasted for a long time, although on the geographic periphery of the Middle East) they probably brought with them a lot of cultural change that lasted for a long time and is fundamental to the region as we understand it today.  The spread of similar groups of Andronovo-derived cultures as far into Inner Asia as what is today well into China in the form of the Wusun, Yuezhi, and Ordos cultures.

As with the Indian and Iranian groups that make up India and Iran today, these Andronovo-derived people would be hard to recognize today if any where still left, because they were a minor admixture component in a very populous indigenous population.  The same is probably true for Anatolia, Greece, Italy and the Iberian peninsula, if not much of "southern Europe" generally, but in those cases the cultural transmission was more complete and the native population was a more similar phenotype, so our relatedness is easier to spot.  But it (again) raises the tantalizing question of what would the world be like if related Indo-European cultures had spread as thoroughly in the "sun belt" of the Old World as they did in the "ice belt."

To read...

I often say that it is difficult for me to talk about social and political issues with people, mostly because most people are so ignorant.  They prattle off platitudes that are obviously nothing more than propaganda sound bytes and bear little relationship to reality, but because "everyone else" says them too, they are not capable (or willing) of feeling the cognitive dissonance and seeing that something is very wrong with The Narrative™.

Not only are people generally too under-educated (or perhaps maleducated) to have intelligent discussions with, and also not only are they too fraught with not bucking political correctness, but people are also unwilling to challenge things that threaten their sense of identity.  This is why it is almost impossible for me to have intelligent discussions with liberals, for instance: 1) they're usually not as smart and well-educated as they think that they are, but they have not clue or any sense of humility to suggest to themselves that they need to keep an open mind about things that they literally aren't aware of, 2) their argument usually boil down to the genetic fallacy, appeals to authority and finally simply name-calling, passive aggressive smoke-blowing, and emotional tantrums, because they don't know any other way of communicating about these issues, and 3) they get so histrionic because their very sense of identity is wrapped up in their political affiliation (something that is easy to see actually by their projection; they always assume that everyone who argues with them is a Team-R jersey-wearing NPC who reads from a simple script of "conservative" talking points.  Because that's what they do.)

And honestly, debating with "conservatives" isn't much better, most of the time.  I tend to agree with them on more issues, of course, but I make as little headway on the others, and for many of the same reasons.  So I've mostly, except for close friends and when my kids ask me questions (which they do kinda often) recuse myself from any political or social discussions these days, and if someone wants to engage me, I suggest that in order to have enough common context to have a meaningful discussion, they need to catch up on a relatively decent backlog of reading material.

In theory, of course, I could maybe try and teach them the material that's present in those sources myself, but other than the case with my kids, few are interested in having me do that anyway, nor am I particularly good at it.  Nor, for that matter, am I very inclined to do so, because it requires more patience and empathy for where their state of knowledge is than I tend to have.  Naturally, people don't go out and read for days or weeks just so that they can come back and have a discussion with me either, so it's more of a defensive blow-off than a serious suggestion that they go out and get up to speed to be able to talk to me.  But for the sake of argument with myself, as blog posts tend to be, what do I recommend that people need to read in order to talk to me about political and social issues?

Well, first off, a lot of my political and social thought is to a great degree a product of my religious background.  I make a lot of allusions, at least, to narratives, figures and doctrines in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, so both should be read (KJV, preferably, although I admit that that's as much an aesthetic thing as anything else.  My church does use the KJV, but it's a point of doctrine that all translations of the Bible are flawed.  I suppose if there were ever a case where something like the NIV or whatever seemed to be in opposition to an interpretation of the KJV, I'd favor the KJV, but I'd interpret the question with reference to other context as much as possible anyway. That would happen extremely rarely anyway.) I also refer to a lot of quotes from latter-day prophets and other leaders of the church, but it's harder to suggest a corpus of material to read there.  I'd refer you to the lessons of the Latter-day Conservative, since he's done a great job of collating relevant quotes as appropriate for the topics that he's specifically covering.  Start by reading the 12 lessons at that specific page listed, and then you can feel free to browse other stuff on the site while you're at it.  He's also got a big list of talks and articles organized by subject, so he's a good index source, albeit naturally secondary.  From the Book of Mormon, I most especially recommend (at least with regards to social and political questions) the last third of Alma through the end of the book, with an eye towards seeing political ramifications in the text.

To a great degree, my views on morality are very traditionally Christian in most regards, but the idea of agency vs. the Luciferian plan of top-down Central Planning you'll be moral whether you like it or not is a very specific LDS theological point.  (Although it has clear parallels for those who can recognize globalism as a continuation or regrown hydra head, if you will, of the heresy of Babel, which I've seen mostly outside of the Church rather than within it.)  Now, of course, there are many members of my Church who do not recognize the doctrine applied to political and social thought the way that I do.  That said, we've been warned over and over again of wolves in sheep's clothing and the separation of the wheat from the tares.  The only way that they can embrace social and political thought that is blatantly anti-Christian and anti-freedom is by cherry-picking stuff out of context in order to prop up their belief, so they are clearly wrong.  Some of them may be well-meaning but wrong, but I suspect that fewer of them are as well-meaning as they pretend to be in reality.  Entryism of SJWism is a problem for any traditional organization, including the Church, of course.

Moving beyond that influence, you can't get very far in understanding the context behind what I'm saying and what I believe without reading Reassessing the Presidency.  It's not necessarily the be-all end all, in spite of it's very long length, but rather an introduction to various topics, especially with regards to my views on Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson and most of the presidents since then, of course.  The very, very high level takeaway is that all of the "great" Presidents (as assessed by most historians and general public acclaim because those same historians have written the textbooks most of us grew up with) with the possible exception of Washington and Jefferson were tyrants abusing their power who fundamentally shifted the direction of the country away from freedom and more towards dependence on an increasingly powerful and dictatorial federal government.

The hardest lesson for conservatives to swallow is HBD, or human biodiversity (it causes liberals to screech and their heads to explode, needless to say).  This is actually the number one reason why I don't want to debate anything with anybody, because most people just cannot or will not allow themselves to think these ideas (even though everybody would have taken them for granted a generation or so ago, they are now so foreign as to cause apoplexy in today's broken generations.)  I've collected a fair number of sources to prove beyond any doubt that I'm right about what I believe about HBD, though, and that it's well-accepted and thoroughly proven scientific knowledge that I'm right.  For those few who are capable of swallowing this particular red-pill, here it is.  Even if you disagree with this stuff, if you haven't read some of this material, most especially the r/K-selection theory articles, the Hajnal line article, and Government Is Us.  After that, the Jayman articles are pretty good (the Clannishness and the American Nations ones) and while I don't necessarily recommend reading all of the articles in the Diversity + Proximity = War reference list, knowing that they're there is an important Awakening to our Awful Situation moment, because it directly contradicts that facile and obviously untrue Diversity Is Our Strength cult.

Finally, and this is another one that lots of people will struggle with, you'll need to read Ron Unz's series American Pravda.  I recommend reading them chronological order.  It's the equivalent of a decent sized book, but the material is top notch.  It's... extremely controversial, though.  Ron Unz, more than anyone else I've read, has opened my eyes to be open minded about what I used to just dismiss as whacko conspiracy theory stuff.  Many of those so-called whacko conspiracy theories are much more solid than we're led to believe.  Because this ties in nicely with my first point, and the fact that secret combinations were foretold thousands of years ago, that also helped break down some of my reluctance to take this seriously.  But Unz's research is pretty thorough and impressive, and I tend to believe that he's right about most of what he's written, at least in that particular series.

I also recommend the Z-man and Vox Day, although I don't consider them required reading and they are more of a slightly acquired taste.  The Z-man is a bit more light-weight; he doesn't necessarily say things that are new or ground-breaking, but what he does say is well-said and well-organized, and he's pretty good reading for those who still aren't super familiar or grounded in "Dissident Right" thought as he calls it.  Vox Day is the opposite; very on-point, but if you don't have sufficient context, you may not get what he's talking about, or you may think that he's way out in left field (or right field, really, although obviously that's not the expression.)  He's not, but his style is to not wait on those who can't follow him.  My 8th grade algebra teacher used to say flippantly that step-skippers were going to hell, but for most, reading Vox Day feels like reading math problems where he's simply not showing his work.  I'd maybe recommend starting with his older World Net Daily columns, and then coming back to his blog after you feel like your grounding in Dissident Right topics is sufficient that you can actually follow him.

Of course, the godfathers of dissident right political thought are John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer.  Both of them have such a large body of work that I'm not sure where to recommend that you start, though.  I actually became more familiar with them after reading people who followed in their wake, honestly, so clearly they're not essential since their pioneering stuff has permeated and in many ways been the foundation of what actually passes for Real Right wing thought.

Anyway, after all that, we can talk political and social topics and be sufficiently on the same page as to what the landscape looks like that we can actually have a shot at a decent discussion.

Pathfinder Society Scenarios Season #1 Part 2

Here's the next crop of scenarios, still in season #1 (although with numbering carrying forward from "Season #0.")

34. Encounter at the Drowning Stones: This one is one of the better scenarios in this entire run so far.  It posits that a Pathfinder agent is missing (a common theme) but in this case, he was a spy embedded within an Aspis Consortium expedition.  You head into the Fake African jungles to find an archaeological site that's supposed to have treasure and magic at it with the rival organization already having a head start (echoes of Raiders of the Lost Ark should be obvious) having to deal with probably hostile (unless you're really diplomatic) tribe of savages, lots of big dangerous wild animals, hostile weather, etc. only to find your rivals campsite and they've all drank the Kool-Aid and killed themselves.  The Pathfinder agent himself isn't there, though—further investigation shows that a demon has taken over the site for a long time and corrupted it; you'll end up fighting all kinds of Deep Ones (scum, but let's be honest about what they're supposed to be) and a succubus.  There's also a sunken temple/cave full of treasure (much of it cursed) and more Deep Ones, but it never rises to the level of a "dungeon" unless one tricky entrance and one chamber count.  Altogether, this is really one of my favorite of these scenarios.  It could be rather easily fleshed out into an entire module-sized adventure without too much trouble too.
35. Voice in the Void: This one is a small dungeon-crawl of sorts with a strong Lovecraftian theme; the PCs are called in to investigate a museum in Absalom (the same one way back in The Mists of Mwangi, actually) where the daughter of an influential family has been lost for a few days, and the watchmen who went looking for her also failed to return.  Lovecraftiana is interpreted here as some oozes (including a gibbering mouther; the "little shoggoth" of D&D) and a bunch of mold and fungus type stuff. The daughter is possessed by some kind of archaic sorcerer who's been preserved in a brain cylinder, and she can be rescued (or killed, I suppose) before some gate to Aucturn, the Yuggoth of Golarion is completely opened.  Although I like the Lovecraftian theme, it's reinterpreted in some rather traditional D&D elements, so it may not feel particularly Lovecraftian to many players, plus—at the end of the day, it's a little dungeon-crawl after all.
36. Echoes of the Everwar Part I: The Prisoner of Skull Hill: The Echoes of Everwar four part series has to do with an old Osirian sorcerer who's cursed with eternal life (but not eternal youth.)  He's anxious to remove the curse, and the exposure of his long-dead concubines with their magic rings might be the key.  One such is the subject of this adventure.  The backstory is again somewhat convoluted; there's an old Chelish fortress, keep and series of attached farms that hangs out in the Hold of Belkzen.  It was recently attacked by orcs and its inhabitants butchered, but somehow the orcs managed to break into the crypt below where the Osirian witch is buried.  This triggers a magical cataclysm where a rock falls from the sky, releases necromantic energy that turns the orcs into undead, and it also comes with the pod of some odd carnivorous plant that reproduces the way the Alien did before James Cameron created the Queen and the eggs.  However, all this backstory context is actually considerably more interesting than the actual adventure which is a strange site-based crawl of the ruined keep, including traps, undead orcs, and the weird plant.  None of it really seems to fit together or make much sense, and if it wasn't for the strange context of the metaplot, I'd say that this is such an odd melange of strange, disconnected cliches that it must have been hatched up when the writer was suffering from an extremely high fever and was actually delirious.  And actually; even with the backstory, that might well be the case.
37. The Beggar's Pearl: This is another odd one; a dungeon-crawl with a weird theme.  The PCs are tasked with taking a unique pearl and some notes and go find a dwarf, who was known to have them not long ago, and who was looking to reclaim the halls of his ancestors.  The PCs do find him after traveling in a mountain range for a little while, lost, bedraggled and under attack by mites and giant ants.  He's grateful, but clearly confused and has his recent memories somewhat scrambled.  He can lead the PCs to the halls of his ancestors, but they're covered in weird mold and fungus, and are infested by some dark fey creatures (mites, mostly) and derros which have been torturing and experimenting on various prisoners (including the dwarf, which is why his memory is somewhat confused.)  They fight all these, navigate a bunch of stupid traps, and find a party going on where completely high mites and derros are dancing for some kind of strange dark fey queen, whom they also kill.  The PCs have essentially freed the Halls for the dwarves to reclaim, but the dwarf who's inheritance it is is himself not in any position to do anything about it right away, and neither are any of the other prisoners that they rescue, but there are loads of hints about future favors and whatnot as well as fame and notoriety among the dwarves themselves for helping them reclaim one of the halls of a past master, and his lost techniques.
38. No Plunder, No Pay: One that does something quite a bit different; the PCs break a pirate captain out of a brig in the Sodden Lands, a place that's victimized by a magical, never-ending hurricane. (So the prison break is done in pouring rain.)  They then must commandeer a ship and sail out to the location where the pirate captain's ship sank... only to discover a ghostly version of his ship and crew plying the waters right there, in a storm, of course. (If there's time in the session, there's an optional encounter with a sea monster on the way; exactly what kind varies by level from Elasmosaurus to a young Sea Serpent.) Finally the PCs (presumably using magic; this scenario is relatively higher level) go underwater to the shipwreck, fight more undead and a giant octopus and recover the pirate's stolen cargo.

Take On Me and Dance Hall Days

For the heckuvit, here's two fairly well known 80s songs (one more than the other) that share a common trait; the version that's well-known is actually the re-recorded and re-released version; both were released in an earlier version that did not become well known and dropped after failing to make much of an impact in the charts.  Both were later re-recorded by the same band again and released again, and went on to become big hits.

In the case of "Take On Me" there's even an earlier music video which was replaced (along with the re-recorded version of the song) with the other one that's much more famous.





UPDATE:  This post would be better with the more famous versions for comparison, wouldn't it?

Pathfinder Society Season #1 Part 1

A summary, from the Pathfinder wiki (technically I combined and edited together the text from the wiki and the source link, from the link that the Pathfinder wiki links to; a post on the Paizo messageboards.)

The Pathfinder Society explores a variety of opportunities throughout the Inner Sea, making inroads with the Blakros Family. The information broker Grandmaster Torch aids the society in completing several missions...but always at a price. The Pathfinder Society completes a long battle with the cult of Groetus in Cassomir that turns out to be a cover for a more sinister foe. Amenopheus tries to learn about the Jeweled Sages by helping an ancient evil rogue in a ritual that the Society is able to stop by gathering several relics, bringing Amenopheus back to square 1 (he will not reveal his reasons for helping Zuberi until Season 5). The Pathfinder Society twice foils the cult of Zyphus in Taldor, making an enemy of the cult. Whispers of a "Shadow Lodge" of disaffected Pathfinders prove to be a reality, as the Pathfinders discover and thwart a cell in Kaer Maga. The Eyes of the Ten arc begins, leading the Pathfinders on an epic journey.

Let's get started with another one of these, shall we?  That summary gives away some minor spoilers for some of the adventures, but not for the greater meta-plot arc overall.  I said earlier that I really liked the Grandmaster Torch adventure, for what it was worth (although it was pretty railroady about letting Torch get the best of the Pathfinders, and most likely they won't even know about it.  That's the nature of the type of scenario, though, and the purpose for which they were written.  I'm also not thrilled by anything that has to do with Kaer Maga, and having them mentioned so prominently in the summary of the season isn't great, but realistically, it's probably just one scenario.  I certainly hope so.  I should also note that the numbering of the scenarios did not reset; the "first" scenario of this season is actually number 29.

29. The Devil We Know Part I: Shipyard Rats: This scenario starts off a small series of linked scenarios; something that they did at least a little bit of in every season afterwards (well, if the titles are any guide.  I haven't read them yet.)  A Pathfinder has been kidnapped; part of a wave of kidnappings going on in Taldor's capitol city, but this time, the local Pathfinder Lodge chief has a clue; an Aspis Consortium servant boy escaped (one of their agents was captured too; they want to work together.)  He'll lead you to one dockside tavern where you'll fight some guys and release some prisoners, but the one you're really looking for isn't here, so now you need to go to a ship where more prisoners are waiting.  But still not the one you're looking for (sigh.)  So you head off to yet another location to rescue more of them.  It's... an underground hide-out, of course.  With traps, and the "boss" with his hecuevas.  There's a bit of a cliff-hanger feel to it, though—captives reference derro coming and taking other prisoners, although they don't know anything else about that, and it's beyond the scope of this scenario.
30. The Devil We Know Part II: Cassomir's Locker: Actually, the derro were using the guys in the above scenario; they've got their own slaving operation going on independent of whatever those terrorists want.  The Pathfinders get wind of it, and go into "Cassomir Below"; a sewer system, mostly, to find out what's going on.  There's also a small neighborhood that's sunk and the street level was raised up above it (this is actually a real thing in some cities; I've been in one or two of these undercities in real life.)  Unfortunately, the entire adventure is really just a dungeon crawl, though, full of traps and only loosely sensibly appearing monsters.  Rats feature prominently, as there's some kind of artifact that turns rats into super-dire rats or some-such.  Once again, you're supposed to leave the PCs with the impression that while they've set back the menace, they haven't (yet) defeated it.  Later in the season, two more adventures that are part of this series will still appear.
31. Sniper in the Deep: After an extraordinarily flimsy set-up back in Absalom, the PCs are supposed to run what amounts to a small errand; find a Pathfinder who hasn't been checking in (but it's supposed that he's just asleep in a well-known inn) and get him on track to find the artifact he's been claiming he's "close" to finding.  Of course, he's not just asleep, and the thugs who murdered him attack the PCs when they show up asking around, although the clues and notes that point towards the artifact are conveniently left laying around in the room he was renting.  There's a side mission to recover the murdered Pathfinder's body, although I'm not sure that you need to do this (and of course, if you do, you have to fight giant crabs.)  The more interesting part of the adventure is the recovery of the artifact, which is underwater in a shipwreck in the harbor (the harbor of Absalom is very shallow, and they've deliberately created a blockade of sunken ships just below (and occasionally not entirely so) the surface.  Here, you'll find undead sailors, Deep Ones (or one of the standard D&D equivalents, I should point out), sharks, and the dead Pathfinder's apprentice, who had betrayed and murdered him, and serves as the "boss" of the adventure.
32. Drow of the Darklands Pyramid: Although technically related to the tomb-raiding going on in Fake Egypt in Golarion, in reality, this adventure starts at the entrance to a cave and the entire thing is an underground dungeon crawl.  As you can probably guess from the title, it involves drow making raids from the Underdark... er, sorry, the Darklands, and the drow in Golarion are demon-worshippers, so there's loads of standard demons to fight (quasits, babaus, vrocks, a hezrou, etc.)  The drow have their own archaeological expedition going on just underground, and it's linked to what the Pathfinder Society is doing, which explains the conflict. (Plus, they're drow.  Of course you have to fight them.)  There's a novelty trick; all of the PCs have (temporarily) the ability to fly in part of this, and they have to fight flying drow and driders.  If this all seems a little odd and superheroish to you, it does to me too.  I'm not a fan, I suppose, of novelty parlor tricks like that and find them kind of silly.  Once inside this cavern, you have to explore the underground pyramid (and dungeon crawl within a dungeon crawl! How novel! Sigh.)  Luckily, this is very scanty on traps; you mostly just fight lots of drow, some driders, and a handful of demons, recover some stolen artifacts, etc.  It's stand-alone, very cliched (except for the chintzy mechanical novelty to make the tactical combat feel different) and overall, a relatively weak effort in this series.  Unless you really like that kind of stuff, I suppose—but I don't think D&D of any variety (including Pathfinder) is interesting enough as a tactical game that tactical parlor tricks are interesting in their own right; and this adventure clearly is structured around the tactical novelty much more so than around anything else interesting.
33. Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible: Taking place in Jalmeray; a strange island kingdom that's half Achaemanid Persia and half mythical India, although as is often the case, it doesn't really matter where the scenario takes place, because none of that context and background color actually make any difference, nor do you really get to partake of any of it anyway.  That said, the plot here is kinda interesting; you're setting a trap for a bandit that's been robbing Pathfinder caravans.  This guy's a real piece of work; he murdered the former Venture-Captain of the Lodge here, he's got enslaved wizards disassembling magical items, and he's brought back into activity a cult of tiger monks that the local people hate because they're evil. In spite of that, we're supposed to believe that it's better to negotiate with this bastard and make him a Pathfinder agent rather than just shut his operation down the old-fashioned way by killing him.  The ruler of the island has also sent agents to deal with him, which may get in your way if you're not diplomatic.  There aren't really any monsters in this scenario; it does a good job of showing how plain old "bad guys" can still be interesting from a plot perspective.  Also, the scenario is unusual relative to those I've read so far anyway in that the faction missions are a bit more complicated and difficult than in other scenarios, although they tend to come down to some kind of social skill check to resolve rather than good roleplaying (gotta cater to your audience still, I suppose.)

The Haunted Forest

A large feature that in part will separate Timischburg from my more newly developing Hill Country area is the Haunted Forest.  Originally, this was a different concept—merely a dangerous forest crawling with thurses or beastmen, and I thought the idea of a Haunted Forest was a bit cliche, but gradually I came around to adopting it again anyway.  I haven't, however, given a whole lot of thought to exactly what haunts the Haunted Forest, or why it's called that.  Other than some vague notions of old ruins mouldering in the green, a very thick canopy that blocks sunlight and traps mist and fog and darkness under the branches, and probably some necromancers here and there, like lesser versions of The Necromancer at Dol Guldur.

PA may have said that the forest is in the heart and soul of the Northern European (he was specifically referring to the northern Slavs, but I can see his point for anyone from Germany, Scandinavia, or Great Britain too) but the reality is that forests were also frightening places; full of dangerous wild animals, bandits, and very difficult to navigate without getting lost.  There's a reason why Tolkien had no less than three dark forests in his stories (Mirkwood in The Hobbit, the Old Forest in Fellowship of the Ring and Fangorn Forest in The Two Towers)—it's an important part of our cultural heritage too, and Mirkwood was not actually an invention of Tolkien's (the word also appears in the Eddas, as Myrkviðr ("murky wood") and various other Norse sagas (referring to various places in each) in an Old English poem, and is probably the genesis of the name of the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest—now famous for it's ham and the site of the Teutoburg massacre of three roman legions.  And for that matter, even Tolkien's specific Anglicization of Mirkwood was done first, as in several other things, by William Morris.  Quoting Tolkien himself:

Mirkwood is not an invention of mine, but a very ancient name, weighted with legendary associations. It was probably the Primitive Germanic name for the great mountainous forest regions that anciently formed a barrier to the south of the lands of Germanic expansion. In some traditions it became used especially of the boundary between Goths and Huns. I speak now from memory: its ancientness seems indicated by its appearance in very early German (11th c.?) as mirkiwidu although the *merkw- stem 'dark' is not otherwise found in German at all (only in O[ld] E[nglish], O[ld] S[axon], and O[ld] N[orse]), and the stem *widu- > witu was in German (I think) limited to the sense of 'timber,' not very common, and did not survive into mod[ern] G[erman]. In O.E. mirce only survives in poetry, and in the sense 'dark', or rather 'gloomy', only in Beowulf [line] 1405 ofer myrcan mor: elsewhere only with the sense 'murky' > wicked, hellish. It was never, I think, a mere 'colour' word: 'black', and was from the beginning weighted with the sense of 'gloom'.

The various Mirkwood's seem to have been, in Germanic mythology, not merely a dark, gloomy forest, but also a boundary of sorts between one world and the next; in some cases in a prosaic sense, like the boundary between the realms of the Goths and Burgundians from the Huns and the separation, for that matter, of Asgard from Muspellheim.  More recently, of course, the great forests of North America were the frontier between the colonies and the wild country beyond, and folks like Daniel Boone and before that the fur traders romanticized the great American forests to a great degree.

So, forests are in the heart and soul of the Northern European, but also, we recognize that they are dark and frightening places.  I dunno.  I suppose that's why the Haunted Forest seems cliche.  But that said, it's not something that I have a problem with; cliches are cliche for a reason, and they're only boring if you make them so.  It's usually more in the execution than in anything else.  Unless you're really genius, innovation is over-rated, and is usually best done as a subtle nuance to something that's tried and true, quite often, rather than something completely unheard of.  Especially in the fantasy genre which is, at heart, a nostalgic, backwards looking celebration of the romanticized past, in many ways; a yearning for something that we once had but have lost.

So, all that said, and it's probably too much said, what haunts the Haunted Forest, then?  What is its secret (or maybe not so secret) history?

The territory of the Hill Country, up to at least the borders of what is today Timischburg, was probably first settled by early ancestors of the skraelings.  Some few still live deep in the Haunted Forest and other remote areas of the territory, but it is here that their touch is the least disturbed.  Cursed burial grounds, sacrificial altars, barrows and more leave their lingering taint on the ground, and there is a rumor that "sympathetic magic" ties the skraelings to the land in a way that it does not for other peoples; the land itself, and some kind of genius loci favors them and occasionally actively fights against more recent interlopers.  In addition to a kind of vaguely defined genius loci haunting the region and making modern peoples uncomfortable deep in the forest, lingering semi-sentient spirits either cursed Wendaks or those whom they summoned in ancient times still linger, worn down to being little more than vague emotional resonances of hate and defensiveness, but which can occasionally embody themselves in bodies of earth and wood and stone, animate ill will in the animals and trees and brambles, or even appear as wraiths or wights of some kind.  These skraeling spirits are not organized by anything other than a general animus towards anything in the forest that is not skraeling, and they are usually essentially mindless, possessing no thought, but only emotions such as hate and rage.

Evil empires of kemlings and jann washed over the territory in the past as well.  They built fortresses and waypoints and roads, some of which still linger in the forest, and the evil influence of their sorceries still taint the territory around them.  The kemlings were descendants (in distant generations) from daemonic ancestors, and they used their dark magic to "burn out" pockets of resistance against the skraelings.  While the genius loci of the forest has reencroached on this territory to some degree, but the curse of much of what they built still is there.

The modern population is not cursed or evil, of course, but their ability to have "settled" the forest is limited.  They have been more successful where they've cleared it, honestly, and turned it into farmland, and torn down the stones of whatever menhirs and henges or crumbling fortresses of the past might have been still there.  This has only happened to a small degree around the very fringe of the forest.

The latest to enter the forest, however, have been various dark sorcerers, witches and worse who, being driven out of civilized society, have sought refuge in the forest and established their own small, haunted demesnes deep in the forest.  Many of these are necromancers, or wizards who speak with other spirits besides the dead; strange fey spirits, or even daemons.

Therefore, the haunted forest has layers of hauntings, many of which are actually in open competition with each other.

In terms of the system, I would represent these layers in some different ways.

• Some of the fey spirits and the hostile genius loci is probably best represented by the haunts rules as well as stuff like dryads and maybe occasionally an elemental or something like that.
• There are some old skraeling undead; various ghosts and wights and maybe some uses of the mummy stats, although these are relatively rare.  Most actual undead stats would represent something brought (or raised) by more recently arrived necromancers.
• Daemons or other "otherworldly" creatures are more likely to be the remnants of the touch of Baal Hamazi and Kurushat (the kemling and jann empires, respectively.)  I would focus less on powerful Jewish or early Christian folklore daemonology that's in the list and more on Lovecraftian stuff, like byakhees, imps, deep ones in swampy or flooded lake areas, nightgaunts, spider-baboons, etc.
• The more recently arrived sorcerers and necromancers can be unique in their approach, but they will tend to have lower-powered undead; ghouls and ghoul-hounds, skeletons, wights, etc., as parts of their retinues.
• There are, of course, many animals who live in the Haunted Forest, but because of the fell taint that lingers over much of the forest, many of them are also strange and weirdly hostile to passers-by and travelers.  Use these in as creepy a fashion as you can, emphasizing their unusual and belligerent behavior.  This shouldn't be a case of touch and go thrilling combat, but more creepy foreshadowing and to create a feeling of doom and gloom.
• The most powerful creatures that you'd likely find in the Haunted Forest would be maybe the occasional lich or vampire, and deep in the woods, some things like Dark Young.

Friday Art Attack

I'm pretty sure I never got around to posting one of these last week, so I better not miss another one so soon already!

If you've gotta fight a demon like this with a shovel, you're probably in trouble already.

I could have sworn I'd posted this already, but it's still in my folder of images to be used.  I probably have more than one copy of it with different file names.  Although I really like WAR's style, I don't really like the Paizo iconic characters very much.  Sadly.

Another WAR piece, for Blizzard in this case.

Pretty girls are always getting in over their heads messing around with stuff that they shouldn't.  She shouldn't have summoned that big monster.

Some kind of winter witch.

Can vampires fly like Superman?  I dunno.

Robe and snake wearing hobgoblin or orc guy?  The outfit's a bit weird, I admit.

I'm not sure what this is.  It looks a little bit like a goblin from Paizo, except all Hulked out and albino.

Undead side banner.  Great image.

Regardless of whatever else you think of this image, you've gotta admit that that moon is freakin' awesome.

Really exaggerated and bizarre yetis.

A pretty classic rendition of a liche.  He even looks a little bit like the Witch-king from the movies.

Another image that'd be a lot better if it wasn't those bizarre Paizo iconics in it.

Speaking of, I think this is a Starfinder iconic.

I dunno.  Slightly erotic ancient Egypt weirdness.  What's not to like?

Nero and the martyrs.  I do love me some classic art too.  One of the things that the Romans in their decadence did was reenact the mythological death of Dirce with Christian women, according to a letter written by Clement to the Corinthians, which this painting recreates.

On the origin of Germanic

The Germanic languages are, naturally, the language of Germany and it's closest relatives (Low German, Dutch, Flemish, etc.) but also English, the Scandinavian languages, and the now extinct languages of the Eastern Germanic tribes like the Goths, Vandals, and the Burgundians, which featured so prominently in the Migration Period and the Fall of the Roman Empire.  In part, because of the spread of English as the globalist lingua franca, arguably Germanic is one of the most important language groups in the world today, and as a native English speaker and red-blooded American of traditional Anglo-Scottish Heritage American stock, English is my language and an important part of my cultural inheritance.  And since English is a subset of the Germanic group, I'm naturally curious about its origins and roots.

Although fallen out of favor due to political correctness for many decades, many linguistic, archaeological, anthropological and historical details that were commonly assumed prior to the World Wars have actually somewhat quietly crept back into the mainstream.  The notion that the Nazis loved of some kind of "purity" of the Germanic peoples is not one of them; in fact, the Germanic peoples are a fusion people, if you will; a combination of several populations, and their genetic history as well as some tantalizing details of their language and culture have always hinted at this.  Another early (albeit controversial) theory was the Germanic substrate hypothesis.  Much of the evidence for it specifically has started to slip away, and few now believe that Germanic formed as a creole language, but there's little doubt that a probable substrate influenced the language in some ways.  In fact, there were most likely two substrates in Germanic from pre-history, and others in the late para-history.  Let's see if we can sort them out by working backwards and forwards as necessary.

First off, it's obvious that the Germanic languages spread from an area that was previously more constrained.  The first recorded evidence of the Germanic peoples comes to us from the Romans during and in the aftermath of their conquest of Gaul.  Reports of the spread of Germanic peoples and the pressing of them on formerly Celticized lands reached the Romans, and it appears that the Germanic peoples spread initially from southern Scandinavia (including Denmark and southern Sweden and parts of what is now northern Germany had come in several waves; the map to the side shows this progression.  The red shows the original home of the Nordic Bronze Age, before 750 BC.  Orange is the probable position of Germanic speaking peoples by 500 BC (the date at which the Grimm's Law sound change is supposed to have happened, and whatever Germanic parent language varieties were spoken had fully evolved into proto- or Common Germanic).  By 250 BC, the yellow areas were Germanicized, and the green areas are at the meridian of time.  After that, the migrations are largely historical; the spread of the Goths, the Lombards and others into northern Italy, for instance, the decimation of the big eastern confederation by the Huns, the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons on the Saxon shores of Britannia, the rise of the Franks, etc.

Prior to this spread of Germanic into the orange, yellow and green areas noted above, earlier Indo-European languages were mostly spoken in those areas, but not Germanic.  It's not completely clear what they were, although many of the areas were clearly formerly Celtic, based on their earlier rapid spread across the north of of the continent.  Nordwestblock and Belgic, if that is really a separate language and not a variety of Celtic, would have been absorbed, and probable proto-Balto-Slavic of some kind further east as well.  In the even farther eastern portions, Germanic would have interacted in some way probably with Dacian, Scythian, and more.  But it's obvious that Germanic without an interaction of some kind over another language developed in the more constrained "red" area, which corresponds to the Nordic Scandinavian pre-Roman Iron Age and the Jastorf material cultures.  And those are clear developments archaeologically of the Nordic Bronze Age, which was even more constrained geographically, although not by much. (I should note that some scholars actually expand the radius of the Nordic Bronze Age to include some sites in what are today northern Germany, Pomerania and Estonia.  So the full extent of the area in which Germanic evolved is not for sure; but the more constrained picture is more secure.) So it's here that we should look for the genesis of the Germanic languages.

Let's stop working backwards, jump backwards a considerable amount, and then work forwards towards the formation of the Nordic Bronze Age.  A number of stone age material cultures cover this specific area that almost certainly predate the spread of Indo-European languages, as can be determined by their genetics (most notably the lack of R1 Y-DNA lineages and steppe admixture.)  The Maglemosian culture (9,000-6,000 BC) was a Mesolithic culture, derived ultimately from the Ahrensburgian and Swiderian cultures further south that seems to be the first to colonize Scandinavia following the de-glaciation of Europe.  At the time of the Maglemosian, Scandinavia was connected to Great Britain due to lower sea levels, and the Baltic Sea was a landlocked freshwater lake called Ancylus Lake.  This hunter-gatherer culture was nomadic, and lived near wetlands and shores, and seems to have eaten a fair amount of fish.  Some technological changes as well as a more land-locked hunting economy transitioned the Maglemosian to the Kongemose culture (6,000-5,200 BC).  These cultures were somewhat isolated, and seem to be particularly heavy in the I1 Y-DNA haplogroup, although some I2 is also found here (more commonly associated today with the Balkans).  They are part of the cline between Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG) and Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) known as Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers (SHG).  Although phenotype data is difficult to come by (and sometimes difficult to trust the results of anyway) it seems likely that pale skin, blondism and probably blue eyes were already present if not necessarily dominant in the area at this point.

Ertebølle followed Kongemose, (5,300-3,950 BC) and although not a Neolithic culture itself, it borders on the Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture, and obviously had some interactions with them.  This culture is during the Atlantic, or the warmest period of the modern age known so far (warmer than today, so suck it, Green Cult climate alarmists) which meant that the Ancylus Lake was gone, sea levels were higher than today, and climate temperate bands also went further north than they do today too.  Ertebølle is probably related to the neighboring Ellerbeck, maybe the Swifterbant, the Zedmar and Narva cultures, and possibly the Nøstvet and Lihult cultures as well, which almost makes a circum-Baltic (minus the far northern areas) horizon of these hunter-gatherers.  The physical type is beginning to change, although genetic evidence still isn't available (that I'm aware of) which suggests that possibly some admixture from Neolithic EEF farmers from the south was starting to take place.

But it wasn't until the Funnelbeaker (or Trichterbecherkultur, TRB) (4,300-2,800 BC)  that the Neolithic arrived in the area.  The TRB was bigger than the territory covered by the Ertebølle, even if we include the other cultures listed above as part of the same complex, and represents a demic shift and the arrival of relatively large numbers of EEF farmers, originally from Anatolia, who had been spreading up through the Balkans into the rest of Europe for some time, bringing with them the G2 Y-DNA haplogroup.  Although common in the Neolithic, today the signal of this haplogroup is relatively sparse, and most common in the Alps.  J2 also came with them, and it is also a weakly present haplogroup.  Curiously, although the economy obviously changed, the population didn't do so nearly as much and the hunter-gatherer DNA seems to have remained dominant in the Scandinavian region, at least, of this culture.  Part of the TRB seems to have become the Globular Amphora Culture (GAC) (3,400-2,800 BC) although mostly in the region south of our area of particular interest right now.  GAC seems to have been more thoroughly EEF in its ancestry (between 60-75%) and was curiously warlike and violent.  Mass graves, evidence of ritualistic cannibalism and headhunting, etc. are found among them, which was interesting, because they held at bay, for a time, the steppe expansions of the Corded Ware Horizon.

Evidence of climate deterioration as well as a possible black plague epidemic seems to have been the primary source of clearing the way for the Corded Ware Horizon to spread across northern Europe, however.  The GAC and the TRB disappeared, under a wave of Yamnaya genetics, although in the farthest north, and over time, it is evident that some of the TRB and GAC genetics was absorbed by the Corded Ware (often because they took TRB and GAC women).  In Scandinavia in particular, local Y-DNA lineages persisted even as the culture became the Corded Ware variants known as Single Grave (more southern) and Battle Axe (more northern) respectively, indicating that many menfolk were not killed off and in fact were absorbed into the new culture.  While the Corded Ware was a rich source of R1a Y-DNA lineages, in the area that became later the Germanic languages, both I1 and R1a remained important.  In fact, the I1 lineages seem to be more prevalent than the R1a, even though the material culture (and presumably the language) at this point are Corded Ware and Indo-European.  This wasn't necessarily as true across the entire Corded Ware horizon, where differing substrates (and differing levels of absorption of the substrate) created cultural and dialectical variation over time, which is why as Fatyanova-Balenova and Abashevo in the east eventually became Sintashta and Andronovo and Indo-Iranian, for example, whereas the Single Grave culture of southern Scandinavia, north Germany and the Rhenish area eventually became the Bell Beakers with their widespread colonization of much of Europe.

The Corded Ware is technically a Neolithic culture, but it quickly upgraded itself to Chalcolithic and then Early Bronze Age.  The Bell Beakers are a Bronze Age phenomena, and it's unclear exactly what they represent; it almost looks like they were a network of traders and/or bandits that wandered all over Europe, originating in the Rhenish Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware, and picking up a lot of genetic admixture as they wandered around (especially because they picked up a lot of women from the locals wherever they went.  Although we don't yet know the degree to which they replaced other cultures everywhere, in the British Isles, they seem to have replaced 90% of all of the genetics, male and female, that was there before, and in Iberia they seem to have replaced 100% of the male lineages and married themselves off (or taken captive as slaves/wives) local girls.  There's a lot of uncertainty about the Bell Beakers, who they were, and even what languages they may have spoken (although it was always assumed some kind of late western Proto-Indo-European or dividing Indo-European, some of them may have been Basque speakers, for instance.)  They also seem to have picked up a fair bit of Yamnaya derived DNA from the Pannonian and Balkan region.  By the time they settle down a bit and part of the central European Bell Beaker network becomes the Unetice culture (2,300-1,600 BC), they are rich in R1b Y-DNA markers, and are generally assumed to be speaking a dividing Indo-European dialect that would later emerge as Celtic, Italic and Germanic.  That said, Unetice bordered on but did not overlap with the Germanic homeland at this point, although Unetice material culture artifacts are widely scattered across much of Europe, including Scandinavia, and it's obvious that some contacts were maintained, probably of trade and/or raid.

The prevailing opinion is that as the Unetice culture started breaking up (leading to the Tumulus culture over much of the Central European heartland) what was leftover from the old Corded Ware Scandinavia and Unetice influence evolved into the Nordic Bronze Age (1,700-500 BC).  Of course, since the NBA was non-literate, we don't know that they were Germanic, but given that it later evolved into the Jastorf and Nordic Iron Age, which are known to be Germanic, without any evidence of migration or displacement into the area, most likely they were a very early phase of what we would consider Germanic at this point (although keep in mind that it's only at the end of the period that it can technically be called Germanic, because that's the timing of the Grimm's Law sound shift.)  Scandinavia was a late adopter of Bronze Age technology, and most of the bronze and gold and other metals was imported from Central Europe, implying some kind of contact there, although it was usually worked locally.  Their metallurgy industry is high quality, and wool and wooden objects, tumuli and rock carvings are common through this area (although don't confuse them with the Tumulus culture further south.)  The rock carvings often depict boats and ships, so some level of sea-faring, probably going back all the way to the Ertebølle if not older, remained a feature of the local cultures.

For much of the Nordic Bronze Age, the climate was milder than today, although in the last centuries of this period, it started cooling, which may have prompted the early migrations noted above.  There was a relatively high population density and even viticulture in Scandinavia during this phase.  The genetics show that rather than being "pure" the Germanic languages are a hybrid of ancient hunter-gatherer DNA, minor components of Neolithic farmer DNA (although much of that came with the Unetice and Bell Beaker complexes, who were themselves a pretty mixed bag genetically), layer of Corded Ware R1a and overtop all of that, a thick layer of Unetice-based R1b.  The mixture across Scandinavia today is about 40% I1, 40% R1b and 20% R1a, although the rest of the Germanic settlement area has picked up admixture from other groups over which it claimed territory (most often formerly Celtic or Romanized Celtic territory, including my own ancient homeland of England, for instance.)

On the origin of whiteness

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/7zi904/ancient_darkskinned_briton_cheddar_man_find_may/duohm8i/

The link above is the retraction and correction to the Cheddar Man hoax, copied and pasted on a reddit forum since the original is behind a paywall.  Given what it suggests, the question posed in the post title may well be impossible to determine.  First, let me back up... what do I mean by "whiteness?"

I'm mostly referring to the suite of characters in the "average" phenotype that is most common in Northern Europe.  Pale skin, light-colored eyes, and blond hair (by blond I mean "not black.")  Now, of course, plenty of white people don't have all of those characters.  My wife, for example, is about as white as you can get.  Her ancestry is English, Welsh and Danish.  She has very pale, freckly skin.  When younger, her hair was light, honey-colored blonde, but it is now a bit darker—although not black like an Indian or Hispanic or Asian or African descended person.  And she has brown eyes.

But, she comes from a population where those traits are not unusual—her father has pale blue eyes, and of her four siblings, three do as well, and two have retained blonde hair (naturally so, even) into adulthood.  Our family is the darkest in terms of hair color, eyes color and even to some degree skin color, even though we're absolutely white people, of the extended family.  Almost all of my nephews and nieces are blond(ish) with blue eyes and very pale skin.  So, I'm not suggesting that you need to look like a Nordic Aryan icon to be white, but I am suggesting that whiteness as a very broad phenotype includes those features in the population.  People from Pakistan and northern India may well have an Indo-European language, and R1a-Z93 Y-DNA haplogroup, but the Andronovo impact in their genetics is generally 25% or less; they are not white people.

Southern Europeans and MENAs are a bit trickier.  For purposes of this discussion, however, I'm excluding them, because they tend to be Mediterranean in physical features; darker skin, brown eyes and black hair being most common among them, and where it doesn't appear, it's usually rather easily traced to more recent admixture from farther north in Europe.

Now, I'm not making a value judgment about being white vs being Mediterranean or anything else other than the obvious that it's OK to be white.  Whiteness isn't the source of evil in the world; quite the opposite, in fact.  Whiteness is the foundation of the modern world, because everything "modern" is built on technological and social innovations that come from the white world.  Not only that, the Gospel was restored to a white nation which had been raised up and prepared to receive it and bring it to the rest of the world.  But that doesn't really mean a whole lot; we can hardly rest on the laurels of what someone else did, even if that someone else was part of the same genetic population that we're from, because everyone's responsible for their own salvation, both temporarily and spiritually.  It simply doesn't matter.  Except, of course, that it's interesting, and has been to people for a long time.

All that said, the link above should be a cautionary tale.  We simply don't know, even if we sometimes think we do, where these features came from, or when, or how.  On top of that, even if we could completely trust the results that we have, which we can't, we also have to be mindful of the fact that our samples are pretty scanty, and subject to a great deal of potential sampling bias.  It would be reckless in the extreme to suggest that all Western Hunter Gatherers (WHGs) were dark skinned and blue eyed because our untrustworthy data from Loschbour man suggests that he was, or that the Yamnaya were "somewhat" dark of hair, eye and skin, because the sampling of a handful of kurgan burials suggest as much for those individuals.  And yet, exactly those kinds of definitive declarations are common in the discussions for this particular question.

With those major caveats out of the way, what does the data tell us?  Unfortunately, it is often contradictory.  Here's some of the common declarations I've seen frequently:

• WHGs were dark-skinned with dark (although not necessarily black) hair and blue eyes, based on La Braña Man, Cheddar Man and Loschbour Man.
• That said, the population today with the highest amount of WHG DNA is on the Baltic Coast, which are among the whitest people on earth—its where the highest proportion of pale skin, blond hair and blue eyes occur.
• Early European Farmers (EEF) comes from a population where blue eyes may well have been found.  In Anatolia before they even spread into Europe, four out of 37 sampled individuals may have had blue eyes.
• That said, every population today with elevated EEF ancestry is Mediterranean in phenotype, and most likely they inherited that phenotype from their EEF ancestors.
• (That said, almost every European population has at least some level of EEF ancestry, and the EEF ancestry is probably itself "adulterated" with varying degrees of HG ancestry, varying quite a bit by locale.)
• The Globular Amphora Culture was once seen as the "whitest" prehistoric population and a likely source of "whiteness" in subsequent populations due to a few samples (5 of 6 were supposedly blond and blue-eyed.)
• However, the recently uncovered GAC mass grave in Zlota, Poland, has them as darker in all three features.  This has thrown a lot of the binary thinkers into a tizzy, because they aren't able to think with any nuance, and they weren't able to see the weakness of the data used to reach the conclusions that they had reached.  Given that GAC was about 60% EEF and 40% WHG (or maybe 70/30, depending on the report), that's not really surprising, though.
• The Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) were supposed to have pale skin, but darker hair and brown eyes. They represent a hunter gatherer cline with the WHG population, though, although isolation by distance applies to them.  Much of their ancestry was Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) and the ANE's were supposed to carry the alleles for all three aspects of "whiteness" without being white themselves (in fact, their closest phenotypical descendants would be American Indians and some of the Siberian peoples.)
• Caucasian Hunter Gatherers (CHG) were supposedly relatively dark, which is probably an OK conclusion given that the Caucasus region today is peopled by "darker white" people.
• A handful of Yamnaya studies suggest "darker white" for the Yamnaya people too—brown eyes, dark hair and darker skin than the pale-skinned northern Europeans.  That said, their immediate successors, the Corded Ware Culture, is supposed to be "quite pale" in spite of the fact that they were "overwhelmingly Yamnaya-like" at a genome level.
• The prevailing opinion seems to be that whiteness actually came from the WHG/EEF mixture, and the Indo-Europeans only picked it up by taking their women.  However, not only do the most recent genetic studies suggest that at least in some areas, the locals didn't contribute much DNA to the subsequent population (this is especially true in the actual Corded Ware territory) but as the most recent paper I mentioned above about the GAC shows, the assumption that they were the source of all that "whiteness" is probably flawed to begin with.

How is one to interpret that big mess of contradictory and confusing data?  My approach is more or less the following: parsimonious null hypothesis would suggest looking at modern populations, interpreting their "mix" of ancient populations, and working backwards from there.  This is especially important when the DNA for ancient populations' physical traits interpretation can't be trusted, as we've seen with the Cheddar Man situation and the probable sampling bias that we have with the data that we do have.  The best scenario is when ancient DNA markers and subsequent physical traits are aligned with each other.  When they are in conflict, the subsequent observed traits trump, I believe, the fundamentally untrustworthy DNA data.  I'm also not a fan of trying to invoke very rapid mutation or genetic drift as... well, not impossible, but hardly parsimonious.  I'm also not very fond of just-so stories about vitamin D and sunlight, for the simple reasons that 1) there are other populations that thrive just fine in polar regions without having become pale, and 2) it wouldn't have made any difference anyway unless they were running around naked so that their skin would be exposed to the sun, which doesn't make any sense in a polar or near-polar region.  Too much cold weather!

So, all that said, what do I think is the likely interpretation of various ancient populations?  What I think likely is that the WHG probably had pretty white skin and maybe a high preponderance of blue eyes.  The EHG probably had white skin and a preponderance of blond hair.  All three might have been traits common to both groups.  The EEF and CHG were probably somewhat Mediterranean in appearance.  Subsequent populations probably had similar traits, depending on their level of admixture.  So, I can accept that the Yamnaya probably weren't classically Nordic—they're classically a mix of EHG and CHG with some EEF (and slight WHG) admixture on the western fringe, although genes for light (especially reddish) hair and blue eyes and paler skin were probably not uncommon in the population.  The slight admixture of populations like Narva and GAC and TRB, which were mixed hunter gatherer with relatively slight EEF admixture (compared to cultures further south) probably boosted the signal so that the Corded Ware peoples came out Nordic.  Where later cultures derived from CWC imposed themselves on areas further south, like the BMAC territory and the Swat valley, and even southern Europe, the subsequent populations came out eventually considerably less Nordic.  But even where Yamnaya directly came into contact with EEF, as in the Balkans and later Greece, as well as Italy and Iberia, etc. the physical type was described (of at least the aristocratic upper class) as more closely related to Nordic phenotypes than Mediterranean phenotypes.  It seems, in fact, that red hair was surprisingly common, although it's been largely "bred out" except in places where it complemented the boosted signal from the natives (Scandinavia and the Baltic area) or the natives contributed relatively little to the genome (the British Isles.)  The Greeks and Romans have a shockingly high number of aristocratic personalities and families that are described as red, the Thracians were described as red-headed, the Chinese described many of their neighboring steppe barbarians like the Wusun as red-headed, etc.  And on and on.

(As an aside, I think it's unusual and maybe significant, that reddishness can be common among people that don't have red hair.  It's pretty common knowledge that beards are often much more red than hair.  Even my one blond and blue-eyed son has very red stubble when he hasn't shaved in a while.  I also think it's interesting that the three "white" traits do seem to bundle themselves together.  That same son of mine is the only one of my kids with blue eyes (out of four.) He's also the only one who retains blond hair into adolescence, and he also seems to have the palest skin of the family and has the hardest time tanning.  Now, granted, he's hardly a representative sample, but I think that that's not an unusual situation too that the three traits tend to boost each other's signal when combined, and that the alleles for each probably influence the alleles for the rest in some fashion.)

Now, all that said, I'm not dogmatic about that.  But I do think that it is a compelling null hypothesis, backed up by compelling (albeit often circumstantial) evidence.  To convince me that this picture is wrong?  I'd need to have better confidence in the DNA interpretation, which will probably come in time, and we'd need more samples.  Probably a lot more samples.  Our sampling is just a tiny sprinkling today.

Pathfinder Society Season #0 Conclusions

Well, I've now finished all of the scenarios in Pathfinder Society Season #0, the beta test of the Pathfinder Society, which was basically the Paizo equivalent to the RPGA and it's Living Campaign series.  I've read every adventure, and posted a brief summary of each—not like the summaries given in the wiki, but actual spoiler summaries with brief mini-reviews of some of them (mostly if they were significantly better or worse than the average.)  While these scenarios were obviously written for a Living Campaign, well, a scenario is a scenario, and a regular old-fashioned home game could certainly make use of them as well. I'm actually not 100% sure what I hoped to accomplish by reading all of these, but given that they're significantly shorter than an adventure path modules, or even most of the stand-alone modules; varying from 15-21 or so pages in length (at least four and half or so pages of which are not module content, including cover, inside cover, OGL, and a document at the end that spells out the treasures and XP, etc.)  Add a few maps, an illustration or two, and white space here and there, and these are all relatively short.  Not only that, some of the content is the faction specific stuff, which I read, but which really kind of happens "off-line" from the module per se, except in one notable exception.

I'm not going to run these.  I wouldn't turn them into fan fiction installments either.  To do either, they'd have to be significantly fleshed out with more detail and some bridging sections that are handwaved and rushed over in the modules themselves.  I might consider a much more loose adaptation of some of them into DH5 in such a way that it would qualify as one or the other of those, but I certainly have nothing more firm than extremely vague, "hey, that might be cool" plans in those regards.

In general, I find the following mostly consistent features: the modules are all really brief, but in many cases, the concept of the module is too big for the page count.  This leads to inadequate treatment of set-up, surprisingly brief treatment of the adventure itself, little NPC interaction or drama possibilities, little in the way of action/adventure possibilities—if there's more than three or four encounters max, that's a lot.  Not only that, you're rushed off into the adventure without any context or set-up, for the most part (and quite often, the context and set-up is the wrong kind of context and set-up; fan fiction that it's unlikely the PCs will ever find out unless you simply tell it to them).  Now, to be fair, I'm totally OK with starting an adventure (or story, even moreso) in media res, but this isn't supposed to be that, it just kinda feels like it defaults to that... kinda.  Every single time.  I also think that the brilliant idea of the faction goals is, more than half of the time, overly contrived, forced and silly rather than natural.  Too bad, because the idea is really good.

However, this very brevity makes the odd dungeon crawl actually acceptable, because it feels more natural than the completely bizarre and contrived "story of D&D", which is interesting.  A dungeon crawl with only half a dozen or so keyed locations actually feels like the kind of place that monsters or villains might actually hang out in, rather than some bizarre clearing the levels of fantasy Nakatomi Plaza, except it goes down underground instead of up into the sky.  I have mentioned plenty of times before how much I don't like dungeon crawls, right?  Well, I'll let it go (for now) without beating that particular dead horse any more than I already have.

So, I'm still wondering what exactly I'm going to do next.  Rather than decide, I'll probably just keep going with Season #1.  In the meantime, I can figure out what this stuff all means and what (if anything) I do with it.  If the answer is: "for now, nothing—just keep reading and summarizing them; that's sufficiently interesting in its own right," then so be it.  I would prefer to do a little bit of something more with them, though.  I just have no idea for sure what it would be.

Pathfinder Society Season #0 Part 4

The final portion of the Season #0 review.  I've got eight scenarios to review, and this post won't go up until they're all done!

Here's the summary of Season #0, from the Pathfinder Wiki:

In the summer of 4708 AR, the Pathfinder Society held its annual Grand Convocation at the Grand Lodge in Absalom, the City at the Center of the World. Hundreds of new agents had recently joined the Society, some graduating from the Grand Lodge's training program, others earning field commissions through their previous exploits. This influx of new (and untried) agents gave the Society's leadership, the anonymous Decemvirate, the opportunity to expand the Society's activities in an unprecedented manner. The Decemvirate expanded cautiously, not pushing the limits of these new agents too hard. 

From the Grand Lodge in Absalom, Pathfinders were sent all over the Inner Sea region. Some teams were sent to explore newly-discovered ruins or investigate strange items; others went in aid of members or allies of the Society. Through its actions, the Society gained several new allies, including Skelg the Ripper, an envoy from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, and Nigel Aldain, curator of the (now infamous) Blakros Museum in Absalom. Agents were sent to many of the nations in the Inner Sea, including Taldor, Andoran, Cheliax, and Qadira. Teams were dispatched to locations as far-flung at the lawless River Kingdoms, revolution-wracked Galt, and the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse. 

Throughout the year, various national governments saw the Pathfinder Society as a tool to further their own goals, and quietly began to support individual agents within the Society. These national factions garnered much support, and began to co-opt Society missions for their own ends. Pathfinders who once worked as a team instead carried hidden agendas from one of five national factions: the Eagle Knights of Andoran; the nobility of devil-worshiping Cheliax; the Sapphire Sage of Osirion; the merchants of Qadira; or the nobles of Taldor. While not leading to outright conflict between members, these factions often distracted Pathfinders from the Society's goals. 

By the end of the season, the Decemvirate had tested their crop of new agents, weeding out those unable to handle the duties of a Pathfinder. The Society's masked leaders had also noted the increase in nationalism among the Society's members. Rather than clamp down on the national influences, the Society embraced them, and Pathfinders began overtly assisting various nations as troubleshooters and investigators, alongside their normal duty of exploration. But there were some in the Society who saw this rise of nationalism as an ill omen, and yet others who saw it as an opportunity to strike.

Anyway, on to the scenarios...

21. The Eternal Obelisk—I will say one thing about the brevity of the Pathfinder Society scenarios; when they have to do dungeon crawls, it's nice that they are so brief.  This one has, what—six total areas, is all?  Anyway, a headstrong and idiotic teenaged girl runs off to try and prove her worth as a future Pathfinder by exploring a temple that promises eternal life.  She is instead killed and decapitated by the medusa that lives there, and her stone head is sent to her father: a powerful man, who blames the Pathfinder Society for putting such foolish notions in the head of his daughter.  There are mephits, some animated petrified horse statues, grimlocks, a xorn, and of course the medusa herself to face.  I have to admit, although I don't like dungeon crawls, the idea of facing a medusa in an underground lair, a la Clash of the Titans, is a pretty classic trope that I can kind of get behind.
22. Fingerprints of the Fiend—A fabulous lost city has been found!  The Aspis Consortium has already taken over and set up a dig site, giving this scenario some of the vibe of the middle act of Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Nazi dig site of Tanis.  But first, the PCs must climb the Cliffs of Insanity while being attacked by an erinyes.  Speaking of 80s adventure movie pop culture references, after fighting some of the camp, the PCs might well find themselves in a mine cart chase down to the city, like Indy and Short Run.  Almost a page's worth of text describes rules for adjudicating this possibility.  There's also morlocks (another reference, although The Time Machine probably can't really be called pop culture), a damaged golem, and the "boss" of the scenario, a cleric of Asmodeus and his Aspis Consortium bodyguards.  While the city is therefore open to exploration, the deus ex machina  notion of there being hundreds if not thousands of morlocks and possibly more golems just out of sight is supposed to encourage them to just pick up and leave at this point.
23. Tide of Morning—The PCs are to go to a forest in Andoran and deal with an unfriendly druid, asking for his lorestone McGuffin.  However, the druid has just been murdered, and the PCs must face a few waves of fey and gnome enemies, make their way before sunrise to a druid circle deeper in the forest, and stop a sunrise ritual to destroy the lorestone before the fey can do so.  Not one of the more memorable scenarios.
24. Decline of Glory—Taking place in a swampland in Taldor seems a far-cry from the Old West of Americana, but the plot of this little module is right out of the idea of cattle barons trying to force homesteaders off of their property through intimidation.  Add unfamiliar and inhospitable weather, an attack of ghouls, and fungus and plant-based enemies here and there complete the picture.  If you're successful, you've helped establish a new Pathfinder Lodge, although why they'd want one in this out of the way backwater (literally because it's in the middle of a swamp) is never really explained very well.  This scenario also has a number of notable typos; the first that I've paid attention to them, so either the earlier ones didn't have any, or at least they were inconspicuous and I didn't notice them.
25. Hands of the Muted God—A strange, but mostly benevolent cult of silence operates in Absalom, and the Pathfinder Society wants to find out if their silent object of worship actually managed to become a god or not (this is related to a key element of the Golarion setting.  See Starstone on the Pathfinder wiki for more information.)  They follow the cultists up a mountain trail in the wilderness on the island, and are ambushed by drow (making their first appearance in this series), a chimera, and finally fighting a drider demon cult priest.
26. Lost at Bitter End—Messing around with the ruins of ancient civilizations in Golarion seems to be a sure-fire way to unleash some kind of ancient catastrophe—which the PCs end up having to be the clean-up crew for.  A Pathfinder has been messing around with an anti-magic zone far to the south and accidentally gotten herself and an entire town sucked into a demiplane full of waiting undead soldiers and devils.  You have to travel there, find out what happened to her, disrupt the invasion plans, bring back the missing townspeople, etc.  You'll fight some juju zombies, hellcats, bone devils and weird necromantic clerics.  And, of course, the hapless Pathfinder who unleashed all this is hopelessly dead.  This seems to be a common theme of these scenarios, actually.
27. Our Lady of Silver—This one is different.  Not only does it include a fair bit of material related to the faction missions (stuff that otherwise happens completely "off screen") but it also is a slow starter, giving you plenty of time to role play the wedding of a young Pathfinder to the daughter of an important merchant prince.  The after wedding feast is disrupted and robbed, and clues point towards a jealous and angry spurned former suitor of the daughter.  The PCs fight a clan of dervishes and an erinyes before being arrested and discovering that they've been themselves framed for being in league with the thieves.  They're meant to clear their names, but have to rush off to confront imposters pretending to be them, as well as the sorcerer spurned suitor.
28. Lyrics of Extinction—This is not one of the better scenarios.  A lot of space is dedicated to backstory and fictional anthropological details, while the adventure itself is a perfunctory, "oh, yeah, here's some encounters for you to fight" without much context on why you would be doing so.  It feels like some fan fiction about the Battle of Jericho with the alignment reversed came first, and fitting it into a workable adventure came later.  Anyway, the PCs rush off into the "African" jungle to meet with a witch-doctor in his canoe (which seems like a scene from Disney's Jungle Cruise ride), looking for a "song" which causes city walls to fall.  They fight giant beetles and stuff like that before finding the cleric of Zon-Kuthon.  Along with all kinds of text about what natives believe about their desecrated temple (in spite of the fact that no natives are around to tell the PCs this information) you finally get the bad guy and all of his bad toys and wrap up this poorly conceived adventure.