On adapting Nighthaunts to your FRPG

In the past, I've talked a bit about how to deal with Undead in DH5, specifically the Undead of Warhammer, which tend to be pretty classic, but very oversplit.  (Not that D&D doesn't of course have exactly that same problem, because it absolutely and completely does.)  But in spite of that oversplitting, there's a lot of potential value to be extracted from the material that they have, and hey, if you like having miniatures, they also tend to have pretty darn good ones.  Here's my review from this same season four years ago; back when the Tomb Kings army was still around and you could get miniatures like Necrosphinxes and Sepulchral Stalkers and whatnot.  I also decided that my way of dealing with the oversplitting was basically to create more generic rules that can be tweaked as needed, by dividing the undead up into somewhat broadish categories, to see where it makes sense to create unique monster stats.  Here's what I've done in that regard previously (the updated version.)  Let me quote myself, at least briefly:

1) Corporeal Sentient: Undead who have physical bodies, and some degree of free will and sentience as we understand it.  At the top of the heap here would be vampires and liches and maybe powerful wights and mummies  Other concepts could be incorporated here too, but they are really variations on one of those existing themes, with the possible exception of something like Frankenstein's monster. 

2) Incorporeal Sentient: Intelligent and free-willed, yet ethereal or incorporeal ghosts.  The real iconic example from fantasy fiction is the Ringwraiths.  I'm not 100% sure I want to keep the rules I have for them in Dark•Heritage 2 and Fantasy Hack because they may be too punitive to the players.  Then again, maybe not.  The rules I have are heavily based on the early episodes of the Supernatural TV show, but other iterations make sense too. 

3) Corporeal Mindless: There's a vast throng of more or less mindless creatures like skeletons, zombies, and whatnot. They are basically automatons; golems who use a human corpse instead of a constructed statue or whatnot as the corporeal element. Some creatures, like wights or even mummies, have trended more into this territory, depending on the particular interpretation. 

4) Incorporeal Mindless: There are fewer examples of this, but the ghosts of the Dresden books qualify; basically just echoes of a brief moment in time of someone that remains causing havoc, but which can only react to things in certain rather pre-scripted ways, and which don't do much else.  Haunts from my rules (adapted from Pathfinder) qualify. 

5) Undead Monsters: These guys are not specifically based on human corpses or spirits, as the other four so far discussed are, but are instead strange monsters made like the undead.  Stuff like the dracolich or zombie dragon (or fell ghast from my rules) is the perfect example.  When Harry Dresden brought "Sue" the T. rex skeleton back to unlife, cloaking it in ethereal ectoplasm and riding it into battle against the necromancers, that would qualify too. 

6) Associated Hangers-On: Sometimes ghouls, wolves, bats, and other vermin get lumped in here; they're not Undead themselves per se, but they are associated with them.  I'm going to go a slightly different direction with ghouls, which will reflect more the Flesh-Eating Courts manner of approaching them; i.e., they're just vampires who are more savage and ugly than those who've clawed their way past the madness of their condition to manage to imitate civilized behavior (at least sometimes)

The issue, of course, is that I don't really want stat proliferation.  It's something to avoid for its own sake.  But, at the same time, looking in particular at lists like we have in the Nighthaunts army book, even though they are "troop types" rather than individual monsters, each type has its own unique ghost story associated with them, and bringing that to your FRPG makes them more interesting.  I'll go through them shortly, but in the meantime, what's a good model to suggest these unique kinds of details, and how do you use them?

I actually think a good model is that show Supernatural (I hear that they just recently removed most of the seasons from Netflix.  I wonder sometimes why I still have a Netflix account at all; it's been months since I tried to watch anything on it.  Sigh.)  Anyway, the first season is the best one, and if you watch it, you'll notice that there are a bunch of episodes where they have to deal with a ghost of some kind or other; classic episodes like the pilot, "Woman in White", episode 3 "Dead in the Water", 5 "Bloody Mary", 7 "Hook Man" and many, many others show that the key to making a monster encounter interesting is not necessarily having interesting stats; it's about having enough backstory and things that need to be done to defeat it, that doing so is the focus of an entire module's worth of gaming (or TV show episode's worth of watching.)  Given that I prefer to run my games in a manner that is consistent with Chris Perkins' DM Experience column, that's a good model for me.  (As an aside, that was a great column.  It didn't fundamentally change the way I ran, so much as it put into words and spelled out in detail how to do something purposefully that I tended to do more intuitively, and because it did so, it made it easier to do it a little better than I was, because it was more deliberate.  But when I read it, it wasn't revolutionary to me; it was more like recognizing a reflection of yourself that you haven't seen in a long time, or something.  Not that I'm trying to compare the quality of the experience of playing with me to that of playing with Chris Perkins, but rather that his style of how to run and structure a long-running game was aligned with my preferences too.  Anyway, those columns are now hard to find, if you haven't already archived them somewhere, but good luck; they're probably out there on archive.is or something somewhere.  Also, here's my summary of the column, I, II and III.)

Anyway, (sorry, off-topic tangent alert.  Too late; I already did it!) I'm not suggesting that Supernatural is a great show.  I got lost in the weeds somewhere in season 4 or 5 and the only episode I've seen since is the one where they became Scooby-doo cartoons for the majority of the episode, because my wife saw it advertised and DVRed it for us to watch together, knowing that I'd get a kick out of it.  But the first two seasons really show exactly how I think monsters should be treated in your FRPG; they shouldn't be disposable, they shouldn't be part of your typical fantasy morning commute; in order to be truly monstrous and horrifying, as monsters should be, they need to take up the entirety of a module's worth of adventure.  There should be foreshadowing before you actually encounter it, and side effects of its presence that the PCs should have to deal with.  It shouldn't be the kind of thing that the PCs just fight and then it's dead and that's that; they should have a few encounters that show them that they are potentially outmatched unless they do some research or tactical something or other to figure out how to put themselves in a better position to deal with the monster rather that just shout huzzah and charge into combat.  Actually defeating it should involve some effort into even finding it, and that should involve discovering some of the story of how it came to be what it is (or at least where it is) before they kill it.

And then, it's entirely possible that the combat encounter be well done, but not necessarily super innovative (or rather, the stats of the monster don't need to be innovative.  Making the encounter itself innovative is a great idea; and check out the DM Experience column "Riot Act" for some great advice on how to do that.)  Think about how in those Supernatural ghost stories, pretty much every ghost is handled the same way once you get down to it; find the remains, salt and burn them, and then maybe find out that it's not quite so simple, because there's something else that was missed that needs to be destroyed too, often involving some kind of justice or resolution to whatever caused the ghost to be a ghost after all.  Because that's the core of many ghost stories, and certainly it's the core of every ghostly troop type in Nighthaunts; some kind of irony or great injustice that binds these spirits into a haunting.

For the most part, if you use the rules for ghosts that already exist, coupled with some haunts rules (speaking of Fantasy Hack or DH5.  Of course, you can apply this same concept to most other games; D&D, Pathfinder, etc.) you probably don't need to actually do anything differently in terms of game development; rather focus your effort on a bit of planning to make sure you've got a memorable monster for the PCs to face, and a memorable journey to figure out how to defeat it.

Anyway, let's look at the specifics and you'll see what I mean.  This stuff is just begging to be adapted to an RPG.  Honestly, it fits an RPG paradigm a lot better than a fantasy wargame with armies paragidm, but it is what it is.  I'll only quote one to show you what it's like, and if that doesn't immediately make you think of turning to your ghost stats and tweaking them to match this specific ghost story, then you probably shouldn't be GMing.  After the first one, I'll just summarize much more briefly the other characters and troop types.

LADY OLYNDER, MORTARCH OF GRIEF

The Mortarchs are Nagash’s top lieutenants – powerful undead leaders that have been granted a sliver of the Great Necromancer’s power. Each of the existing Mortarchs, of which there were three, was chosen for their unique skills. Should Nagash need corruption he would turn to Neferata, Mortarch of Blood. If he needed to make a gory example of the foe, then he would call upon Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night. For the most secretive missions and empire-building, he favoured Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament. All commanded their own undead legions and all wished to wield still more power. Yet Nagash desired a new element, and also loyalty, for of the Mortarchs only Arkhan the Black was truly content to serve.

The tale of how Nagash scoured the underworlds for a new subordinate is a long one, for there are untold dominions of the dead. From Stygxx, the Land of Forgotten Gods, to the hidden cold-fire plains of Helstrom; from the relic-filled lands of Carstinia to Hallost, Land of Dead Heroes, no afterlife was left unsearched. Nagash fixed his baleful gaze upon many souls – champions of unconquerable tribes, tyrant-kings of long-forsaken empires, matriarchs of bloodthirsty sisterhoods. Yet Nagash sought some quality they did not possess.

It was not clever manipulation, base cunning, or well-planned military strategy that earned the armies of the dead so many triumphs during the necroquake – it was shock and terror. The most overwhelming victories had been won through the suddenness of their assaults and the wave of fear that spread before the invasions and hung heavily over all lands through which the spectral hosts passed. Nagash was impressed with the psychological effect of the Nighthaunt armies upont the fragile and superstitious minds of mortals.

In truth, Nagash had forgotten the notion of fear, for it had been ages since he had felt its tremble. Despite his supreme intellect, the Great Necromancer, in his long plans, had allowed his logical mind to strategise without factoring in the emotions of mortals. It was a rare mistake, and one he vowed not to repeat.

In all his travels across the underworlds, Nagash found none like the Veiled Lady. Here was a spectre he had punished many centuries ago with a unique curse. In life she had been Lady Olynder, a beauty famed throughout the empire of Dolorum – the largest of civilisations from the lands known since the Age of Chaos as the Screaming Wastes. She had schemed, plotted and used charm to climb socially, leaving behind a trail of ruined suitors and deaths under mysterious circumstances. So great was her appeal that she wound her way upwards, winning the hearts of nobles and then, eventually, the Dolorum prince himself. Her betrothal to the future king ended on the very night when the prince and his father, the high king, disappeared. In their absence, she became the ruler of Dolorum.

Vowing to mourn her missing prince and king, the young queen took to wearing a veil. Her people called her the Mourning Bride or the Unrequited Queen, and her public display of grief won over even the coldest of hearts. Yet it was all a lie – her shows of remorse were false, her sorrows no more than a ruse. Hidden behind her veil and deceitful sobs, she could not help but smile at her own cleverness.

Elsewhere in the realms the travails of the Age of Chaos had begun turning civilisations into ruin, although Dolorum had thus far been spared. That came to an end when the plague arrived. Soon the queen’s sorrows were for her realm, but again, all her tears were false. She was safe in her palace, and her life a dream, even as all those around her died in the agonised throes of a weeping pox. Through it all Nagash had watched the empire of Dolorum, for its people had always honoured him. Their dedications had ended with the crowning of the new queen.

Even when her lands, cities and throne room were all but empty of life, Lady Olynder felt no real grief, and she attempted to parley with the agents of Nurgle. It was then that Nagash claimed her soul as his own. So did Olynder become the Veiled Lady, a spectre burdened to feel all the miseries of the Mortal Realms and forced to haunt the ruins of Dolorum. After the passing of many centuries, during which Nagash gave not a single thought to her fate, the god was surprised at what he found when he discovered her once more.

The Veiled Lady had again risen to rule over old Dolorum, although it had become a land swarming with wraiths and spectres. During the upheavals of the necroquake, Olynder subjugated the phantasmal denizens that arose there, drawing them closer with her spreading aura of grief. So haunted were the lands that any living being that dared enter them experienced true terror. Yet rule of one underworld could not satisfy her ambition, and the Veiled Lady longed to bring more nations – living and dead alike – beneath her dominion.

Here, at last, was the leader that Nagash was looking for, and so in dark ritual the Great Necromancer granted Lady Olynder a sliver of his own divinity. He knighted her the Mortarch of Grief, and tasked his new lieutenant first with uniting the Nighthaunts, and then leading them as the vanguard of his new crusade.

She is the Mourning Bride, the Unrequited Queen, the Veiled Lady and the Mortarch of Grief. She is despair made manifest, gloom given form. She is Lady Olynder, and in her are bound all the sorrows and anguishes of the realms. 

Each of Nagash’s Mortarchs has been anointed with a portion of the Great Necromancer’s vast power. To Lady Olynder, who feigned sorrow in life, he gifted a mantle of misery – she now felt all the woes of the Mortal Realms, becoming a weaponisation of grief itself. Her power transcends the melancholic, for she exudes mind-crippling waves of purest desolation. Mortals in her presence are overwhelmed by a gloom so heavy that only the strongest willed can remain upright. Most fall to their knees, mentally battered by their own utter hopelessness. It is a sorrow and regret potent enough to cause a mother to forsake her child, a warrior to lay down his sword and accept the inevitable, to stop a beating heart. 

Lady Olynder hovers above the ground, attended by her bridesmaids, a pair of banshee handmaidens. As she advances, the thorny vines of grave-roses instantaneously sprout before her, their flowers rapidly blooming and dying in order to lay a path of fallen petals beneath her floating form. In her hands the Veiled Lady wields the Staff of Midnight, an ornate stave topped with a polished gemstone of vitrified grave-sand. The lightest touch of this staff is enough to wither a mighty oak, or kill a grown man outright. Yet it is not Lady Olynder’s deadliest weapon. 

In addition to being surrounded by an aura of absolute misery, Lady Olynder is also a powerful sorceress. With her incantations, she can direct a pall of despair to weigh upon her foes, slowing them like some unholy lodestone. Those afflicted suffer a mental burden so dire it causes even the bravest to tremble, their martial prowess lessened by leaden limbs and despondency beyond any hope of redemption. 

In the midst of this bleak atmosphere she has created, Olynder presses forward, her banshee bridesmaids shrieking a wail of the damned while slashing with spectral talons at foes who draw close. One bridesmaid bears an ensorcelled grave-sand hourglass – a gift from Nagash – that can be smashed asunder with lethal effect. Yet Lady Olynder has another, even deadlier weapon. From behind her thin shroud, the sunken eyes of the Mortarch of Grief fixate upon a foe. Deliberately she pivots to face them, before slowly and solemnly lifting her veil. What horrors they see are unknown, for none have yet lived to tell the tale. So does Lady Olynder conquer, leading the fore of Nagash’s invasion in order to bring a new age of eternal death over the Mortal Realms.

Anyway, other than Lady Olynder, we also have Kurdoss Valentian; a scheming climber who is cursed to always be the consort, never the ruler; Reikenor the Grimhailer, a sorcerer-king who sought to thwart death but now is cursed to be a reaper (ironic, given that that's Nagash's own backstory); the knights of shrouds who were generals and commanders who betrayed their own people to Nagash's undead hordes in ages past; Spirit Tormentors and Chaingheists that are eternally imprisoned souls, casting others into prison even as they long to be free; and more.

There's a lot of great material to be used here; some of it is oddly nihilistic, but even so, it's adaptable to a more psychologically healthy gamer.  I highly recommend browsing the army book (or battle tome, or whatever they're calling it these days) or even just looking over the miniatures and their descriptions on the website and making your ghosts just a bit more interesting.

Also note that my earlier Friday Art Attack post had images of Lady Olynder and Reikenor the Grimhailer, as well as a knight of shrouds and some chaingheist miniatures.

Friday Art Attack

Since Halloween is nearly upon us, here's a bunch of art that heavily features undead.  It actually heavily features Warhammer undead illustrations, especially, the wonderful new (well, newish) Nighthaunts stuff. I may yet talk about the Nighthaunts and how they can be used in a game of DH5, or any other FRPG, for that matter.  I think ghosts (and I mean this is the broader sense that includes any ghost-like creature) are woefully under-used in FRPGs.  Part of that may be that they are somewhat one-dimensional mechanically, and in D&D, you can't really fight them very well, so you just have the cleric turn them. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-i-i-i-i-n-g.  This is a real shame, though.  If you think of the Lord of the Rings as one of the most seminal works of fantasy ever published, you'll remember, of course, that the entirety of Book I, so 1/6 of the entire work, has the hobbits being pursued by the Ringwraiths, which are nothing more than a very particular set of ghosts.  They also turn up later in the work, of course, but the point I'm making is that ghost stories are an important part of fantasy, but a perhaps less important part of FRPGs.  I'll noodle around ways in which I think maybe that can be changed, especially for this time of year, when such thoughts naturally come to mind.  But first, here's the art:

This is one of the character-types from the Nighthaunt army; a kind of mounted grim reaper with corpse candles on a rotted, ghostly horse with bat wings.

One must always keep in mind that it's our heritage of love the expansive forests of northern Europe and North America, but forests were also traditionally a place of fear; one could easily get lost, and they were full of potentially dangerous wild animals and bandits and worse.  There's a reason why in mythology and folklore crossing through a forest was often the place where the characters went to find danger.

This is a very interesting take on the lich archetype; a skeletal sorcerer surrounded by undead that... have halos around their heads?  I dunno.  Nice artwork, even if' it's strange.

A balrog, or some FRPGs equivalent, perhaps.  While it's one of Tolkien's most oft-imitated creations, it really was kind of woefully under-used.

The queen of the dead in the new Nighthaunts army.

A more subtle interpretation of a ghost story.  I like it.

A... not very subtle take on the undead.  Ah, well.  Sometimes subtlety is over-rated.

Another one of the Warhammer ghosts.

Do I really need to say what everything is?  Something like this stands on its own merits, I think.

Speaking of not subtle, here's one of the Warhammer vampires; a Blood Dragon, I think, which are the martial vampires, and who they always clad in this weird striated red armor.

Every once in a while, it's nice to remember that classic art really blows away most of what our modern in-your-face commercialized art is able to produce.  We truly are a fallen society, unable to even successfully mimic the masters of the past very well, much less create new material to the same level.

Not that I don't think we have painters who are technically capable of producing stuff like this. I just don't think that they would.

I don't often post miniatures, but here's a few nice ones from the undead themed armies.  The first one is a whole unit of ghosts, which is an artifact, of course, of how Warhammer works, but the miniatures themselves are quite nice (and creating a ghost miniature that actually looks like a classic ghost is really quite an accomplishment, if you think about it.)  The next one, with a weird vampire queen lady who looks like a parody of some kind is weird, but the ghosts are great, and a giant cauldron of blood is, of course, always pretty cool.  The last miniature is a terrorgheist, whatever exactly that means, but it was more or less the inspiration for my fell ghast stats.  A big undead dragon-ish thing; there's only so many ways to slice that kind of thing.

Latest on Proto-Indo-European discussions

In looking at the archaeological history of prehistoric Europe, it's interesting to see material cultures grow from small origins to spread over other cultures.  This is true even when the cultures that are losing out are obviously closely related to the cultures that are winning; i.e., the new spread may even happen from within a localized variant of the broader culture.   There have been some marked instances of a radically new population coming into an area; the Corded Ware's first spread seems to correspond to a mass migration/invasion, for example, but within the Corded Ware horizon, the Bell Beakers seem to have come from within a variant of the Corded Ware, and later spread not only over former other Corded Ware variants, but also to new areas that were not related to the Corded Ware at all.

In the earliest historical record, we get evidence of this as well.  It seems clear that on the very eve of records being kept by the Greeks and Romans that would give us the detail we'd like to see on this particular question, the Celts had expanded explosively across much of Central, Western, and even much of Eastern Europe from a more localized center of development within the Hallstatt material culture somewhere.  Reading Caesar, Ptolemy and others, one comes to the conclusion, as said on Infogalactic, that the Volcae, for instance, were "[d]riven by highly mobile groups operating outside the tribal system and comprising diverse elements, the Volcae were one of the new ethnic entities formed during the Celtic military expansion at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. Collecting in the famous excursion into the Balkans, ostensibly, from the Hellene point of view, to raid Delphi, a branch of the Volcae split from the main group on the way into the Balkans and joined two other tribes, the Tolistobogii and the Trocmi, to settle in central Asia Minor and establish a new Gaulish identity as the Galatians."  The history of the jostling and replacement of various ethno-linguistic identities (even if the genetics didn't necessarily see turnover; although often they did) across Europe continues apace; the Roman expansion over various Celtic territories, only to in turn have Dacians, Germanic peoples, and Slavic peoples spread over the same areas to gradually form the modern face of Europe as we know it  The example above is telling; it was outside of the formal tribal system, probably gobbled up numerous people from other Celtic identities as well as non-Celtic identities as well.  The archaeology is interesting; Hallstatt is usually pointed at as a Celtic archaeological identity, but Hallstatt was an interesting elite dominance kind of culture that was broad and seemed to be heavily focused on luxury Mediterranean goods too.  The Illyrians may well be associated with the Hallstatt culture in the east, so Hallstatt = Celtic is probably too simplistic.  Archaeologists who look at the broad cultural similarities between Hallstatt and the previous Urnfield culture seem confident in assigning a proto or archaic Celtic identity to the Urnfield culture too, but given the broad cultural Urnfield system, and its many regional cultures which can just as confidently be assigned to other linguistic identies (Lusatian to Balto-Slavic, for example, Golasecca as early Italic, etc.)  The situation is probably way too fluid to confidently assign proto linguistic identities to very many archaeological cultures from before the historical period; it's only after the historical period that we can have much hope of doing that, and even then for only limited areas; i.e, La Tene as Iron Age Gauls/Celts is pretty secure, but as mentioned above, even the preceding Hallstatt culture is not quite as simple as one would hope, and more than one ethno-linguistic identity known to the Greeks and Romans may have had its genesis within that sphere.

For that reason, as we go back further in time, we have to be a bit more handwavy and less insistent that sharp lines and one to one correspondences between archaeological, genetic and linguistic groupings can be observed.  If one looks at, for example, the Bell Beaker culture of 2,800-1,800 BC; several material cultures previous to the Urnfield, not only can we never hope to assign a very specific ethnolinguistic identity to them within the Indo-European sphere (there are even some calls that associating them with Indo-Europeans is iffy, although I don't believe that at all) one must keep in mind that the Beaker phenomena clearly represents a rather cosmopolitan group of people who moved around throughout much of Europe; British Beaker burials show signs of having originated in various locations including what is today France, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, and goods people seem to have been very mobile and transient.  In fact, many people believe that the entire Beaker phenomena was an elite subset that had access, for whatever reason, to trade networks throughout Europe.  One must also keep in mind that post-Corded Ware Europe still shows lots of signs of there having been contacts and interaction between post Corded ware material cultures; Sintashta to Nordic Bronze Age, otherwise separated by vast gulfs of space, apparently were either recently split from each other, or remained in contact with each other, given the high degree of specific cultural details that they shared.

In any case, the point is that much of Bronze Age Europe must remain historically somewhat anonymous unless we discover that someone we don't know about was keeping records somewhere that will eventually turn up, but we should be very wary of thinking that the steppe population that invaded, conquered and colonized Central, Northern and Western Europe was already dividing into groups that we'd recognize today; they must remain a still somewhat amorphous and fluid mass of just being "steppe peoples", and finer degrees of ethnic and linguistic identities probably rose and fell many times across the Bronze Age to be assimilated into subsequent waves.  The more interesting question is where did all of these steppe peoples come from?  I mean, the steppes, obviously, but more specifically, how did they get into the rest of Europe?

For quite some time, going back to Marija Gimbutas at least, although she was largely refining the ideas of predecessors like Childe and others, the "final" stage of unified proto-Indo-European has been considered to be the Yamnaya culture of the Pontic-Caspian Sea area, which spread a very unified material culture originating far to the eastern portion of the steppes in the Repin culture and introducing a leveling effect over previously broadly similar and connected, yet also obviously distinct steppe cultures that ranged from the eastern end of the Carpathian Basin to the Samara river bend and possibly a bit beyond.  The Afanasievo culture farther east was found to be genetically identical to the Yamnaya and was therefore seen as a likely vector for the spread of the earlier separating Tocharian languages, and the Usatovo culture, earlier than Yamnaya, but obviously coming out of the same broad origins as Yamnaya itself, (like Sredni Stog) was seen as the antecessor of the Anatolian language family; separating so early that it predates the unity achieved under Yamnaya.  Haak's 2005 ancient DNA paper, which bridged one of the remaining archaeological problems; the connection between Yamnaya and the Corded Ware were always archaeologically fuzzy, and many workers didn't recognize them; but Haak's analysis showed that the Corded Ware was 75% identical autosomally to the Yamnaya.  So now, it was clear that the Corded Ware came from the steppe, but exactly how was still unclear.

However, similar genetically to Yamnaya and derived from the Yamnaya genetically are not the same thing, and as more and finer detail became available, it became clear that it was impossible to derive the y-DNA haplogroups in particular associated with the Corded Ware and later expansions into Central, Western and Northern Europe out of the Eastern European steppe directly from the Yamnaya; it had to have come from a very similar yet distinct population.  Since the Yamnaya horizon can be derived specifically from an eastern variant of the pre-Yamnaya steppe, the expansion of the Corded Ware was looked for in a western variant.  The Usatovo and Middle Dnieper cultures, which integrated late Sredni Stog with Old European cultures like Cernavodă or others; again speaking very broadly.  While there was some obvious hybridization, and the Old European cultures were clearly EEF in origin, genetically the Corded Ware picked up relatively little from this hybridization; enough to be notable, but not enough to fundamentally change its clear relationship with Yamnaya.

It's from this complex that the R1a-Z93 and related claims spreads, and now there's at least one R1b-L51, and Davidski is telling us that he's aware of many more soon to hit print that will pop up from among this para-Yamnaya proto-Corded Ware complex.  Meanwhile, the R1b-Z2103 haplogroup of the Yamnaya and its related clades is not actually associated with any later appearing Indo-European group.  So, we have the following situation, based on the known language families of Indo-European:

• Anatolian - from Usatovo or similar culture that extended westward from the western steppes through the Balkans.
• Tocharian - unknown; appears to be a branch isolate, often associated with the Afanasevo culture, but genetic evidence is spotty, and finding clear connections with Afanasevo remains elusive.  One of the only ones that might not derive from a Corded Ware or proto-Corded Ware population.
• Italo-Celtic - derived most likely from the Tumulus culture, or other post-Unetice cultures, which are in turn derived from the Bell Beaker complex, which are in turn derived (mostly) from the Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware culture.
• Germanic - Derived from the Nordic Bronze Age, which in turn owes its likely genesis to the Unetice culture too.
• Balto-Slavic - derived from (probably) the Lusatian culture or earlier Trziniec-Komarov culture, which also ultimately derives from the Tumulus culture; a post Bell Beaker phenomena.
• Indo-Iranian - derived from Andronovo, which is in turn derived from Sintashta, which is in turn derived from the Abashevo variant of the Corded Ware culture.  It's curious that most post-Yamnaya steppe cultures that followed in the same territory show both genetic and archaeological links with Sintashta and Corded Ware than they do with Yamnaya; it looks like a reflux migration of western steppe peoples admixed with European central European farmers and northern European hunter gatherers in turn replaced the Yamnaya, which had earlier replaced them across the western steppe.
• Paleo-Balkan Indo-European languages - which include the current languages Greek, Armenian and Albanian, as well as several extinct languages like Illyrian, Phrygian, Thracian and Dacian.  The relationships between most of these are unclear, although if not somewhat genetically related, they are clearly benefiting from long contact relationships with each other (and in some cases with Indo-Iranian too.) This is another one that may possibly have a linguistic connection to Yamnaya instead of Corded Ware, although there are plenty of candidates for Corded Ware derived (or even proto-Corded Ware derived) Central European antecedents to give rise to them without needing to call for late steppe Yamnaya people.

Almost every Indo-European language, even ones that belong to branches nobody still speaks, is almost certainly derived from a Corded Ware or proto-Corded Ware population, not a Yamnaya population  The only possible exceptions are Tocharian and the paleo-Balkan languages, but even in those cases, a Corded Ware derivation is just about as attractive a null hypothesis as a Yamnaya derivation.  Now, of course, the Yamnaya people were genetically and culturally and almost certainly linguistically closely related to the Corded Ware people, even if they weren't ancestral to them.  They were more like brothers or cousins instead of fathers and grandfathers, and there were obviously lots of interactions between the Yamnaya and the Corded Ware on the steppes; it's difficult to imagine a situation in which Yamnaya women, at least, weren't incorporated into expanding Andronovo peoples, for instance.  Just as much, the proto-Yamnaya and proto-Corded Ware populations while on the steppe clearly interacted with each other a great deal, and probably saw each other as broadly culturally and linguistically similar; when the Yamnaya expanded out of a Repin origin in the eastern corner to incorporate the entire steppe, it may well have forced out proto-Corded Ware people, but probably assimilated a great deal of them as well, just as later Srubnaya or Andronovo peoples derived from Corded Ware probably did the same thing with lingering Yamnaya peoples

Anyway, this may seem like a small thing, but I find it very fascinating.  As I said at the beginning of the post, just because this stuff predates written history doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot more complexity and fluidity going on than we are able to perceive.  Simplistic one to one correspondences are proving time and again to be too simplistic, and the idea that the Indo-European languages may have developed out of only a subset of a related group of populations is hardly revolutionary; but having the ability to see it is.

Races in DH5

My last post made me think about the races of the Hill Country and Timischburg, and how maybe I want to discuss them in more depth and detail just for the heckuvit. I did, after all, create a label tag for each of the races; why not explore them more?  However, before I do, let me put the races out there, by copying and pasting from the pdf document.  Then I'll go through them in order, a separate post for each, detailing exactly what they are, how they work in the setting, and how you should or could expect to see them if you were a PC wandering about the karst kills of Waychester or the streets of glittering Simashki or the forests of Timischburg, or whatever.

• Human: +1 to all skills. Humans are, of course, the baseline. All of us know what a human is. Humans in this setting may belong to one of several ethnicities, but the mechanics for using them remain the same regardless. Due to their variability and flexibility compared to the other races, all humans gain a +1 bonus to all skills. This mostly represents the Colonists, who look like Medieval western Europeans, but there are also much more foreign humans who live in some other parts of the setting.
• Skraeling: +1 to DEX and Stealth affinity. Skraelings, or Wendaks in their own language, are the original inhabitants of the area where the protagonist nations are, and some of them still linger deep in the wilds and woods that are lightly settled by the Colonists. They look human enough, albeit exotic: fairly short and dark, with bright blue eyes, and a primitive technological material culture. Never very common to begin with, they have not prospered in competition for the same land as the Colonists.
• Orc: +2 to STR. Orcs are similar to humans, but with a greenish-gray skin, prominent tusks, and a more robust, muscular build; orcs are famously stereotyped (correctly, to be fair) as savage and barbaric and not particularly intelligent. They are sometimes prized as neighbors for their ability to outdo others in manual labor, however. While they mostly come from and still live in their own homeland of Gunaakt, some few have spread to other lands.
• Goblin: Small, often perceived of by others as ugly and untrustworthy, goblins are a different phenotype or subspecies related to the orcs, and share the same homeland as they do. They usually have a greenish or brownish leathery skin, pointed ears and teeth, and average 3-4 feet tall. They are rangy and wiry most of the time. +1 DEX and a +2 to the Subterfuge skill.
• Cursed: Racial affinity for Stealth, +1 to Athletics and +1 to Knowledge. These characters are exiles from long-lost Hyperborea. They have exotically pale skin, hair and eyes, and are altogether almost completely colorless. They tend to speak in a voice that sounds like a rasping whisper. They mostly live in their new country of Lomar in the boreal forests to the north, but pressure from invading Inutos has caused more of them to be seen in the lands to the south.
• Jann: The jann present themselves as exotic humans with just a touch of ifrit ancestry, which affects their physical appearance, personality and abilities. The jann have brick-red skin, but pale blond hair and piercing yellow eyes, and tend to be hot-headed and passionate in their personality. The jann gain a +1 to any 2 skills, and also have the fire strike ability; they can infuse one attack per day with the power of the ifrit and their weapon will burst into flame doing an additional 2d6 damage for 5 rounds. They hail from the High Desert region on the Plateau of Leng, but in the past have had vast empires that stretched over much of the territory now occupied by others.
• Kemling: Like the jann, the kemlings are humans with just a touch of exotic ancestry, in this case daemonic. This has not allowed the kemlings to be seen as desirable or trustworthy neighbors by others, so in the past, they had powerful Imperial polities in the mountains to the West. Those days are past, and the old kemling empire, Baal Hamazi, is now a Balkanized land of warring city-states. In many, the kemlings no longer hold social and political sway as much as they did in the past, as the formerly oppressed human (and other) underclasses have wrested power from them. Many kemlings have fled the turmoil in their homeland and now live elsewhere as part of a massive kemling diaspora. Kemlings have soot-dark skin, tiny horns poking up through their hair, and yellow "predator" eyes (think of Nightcrawler and Darth Maul combined). Kemlings gain +1 to DEX, a racial affinity for Stealth, and the ability to see in the dark with a biological equivalent to night vision goggles.
• Nephilim: Another "human, but touched with a small bit of exotic ancestry" are the nephilim (both plural and singular). They claim that their exotic ancestry is angelic, and they do look the part, with beautiful, well-proportioned bodies, pale skin, silver-white hair, chrome eyes and clear voices. However, if angels left progeny amongst mortals, then they must, by definition, be fallen angels... They gain a +1 to MND and a +1 to Knowledge and Communication.
• Wose: The woses were, according to legend, once werewolves, but the power of their lycanthropic "gifts" faded over generations, until they became merely a race of hardy outdoorsmen with a few bestial physical features and abilities. They fare poorly in civilization for the most part (although ghettos of them serving as muscle for organized crime are not unknown in many cities) but live in small holdings and "packs" in the wilderness. They are a bit shorter than humans on average, and often walk with a stoop, sometimes putting a hand to the ground as they move. They are covered in short brownish hair, or even fur, and have yellow wolf-like eyes, as well as pointed ears and teeth. Their nails are often almost claw-like and they rarely wear shoes or boots. Woses gain +3 to STR, -1 to MND, +1 to their Survival Skill, and -1 to their Communication skill.
• More races: If you need more options, creating a race is an a la carte option endeavor that's relatively easy to do. Use two Racial Template Points (RTP) and add them to your character at creation. The same RTP can be taken, if desired, more than once. One RTP is equal to either:
• A +1 Stat bonus. This could also include a +1 to AC as natural armor, even though AC isn't normally a "stat" per se.
• Two skill points (i.e., +2 to one skill of your choice, or +1 to two skill bonuses of your choice.)
• A special trait or ability (usually an affinity, as described above in the Expert class. If a character has the same affinity for both race and class, allow them to reroll twice! They clearly really want to be good in that area, and are spending character generation capital to do so at the expense of something else.)
• Another special ability, which can be designed to suit, if desired. Here are a few samples:
• The ability to breathe water as well as air.
• Retractable claws which allow you to climb vertical surfaces.
• The ability to see in the dark as if you have biological night vision goggles.
• The ability to run twice as fast as a regular humanoid creature (+10 to chase rolls.)
• Subject to GM approval, some races may give up the equivalent of a negative RTP to gain an effective third RTP, but I wouldn't do much of this (the wose is an example who has a negative stat bonus and a negative skill bonus.) Otherwise, however, players are strongly encouraged to play around with this race system to create the customized version of their character that they want. 
• Using these race creation rules should come after discussing your race concept with your GM. While it’s true that the world of Dark•Heritage is an exotic place with room for all kinds of weird peoples, places and monsters, using another race besides the ones listed here should be something that happens extremely sparingly.

Curses in DH5

I often describe DH5 as a humano-centric setting,but that's not strictly speaking true.  I certainly focus more on nations made up of humans, and my expectations are that humans make up a vast majority of the individuals that you'll find unless you wander farther afield than the portions of the setting that I intend to develop and detail.  That said, there are small pockets of demihuman communities in the Hill Country and Timischburg both, and any of them could potentially be found anywhere in either country.  Most of them would arouse curiosity, especially in the smaller towns where cosmopolitanism is completely unknown, but in larger cities, especially Simashki and Waychester (and to a lesser extent, Upwater) they are relatively commonly spotted for those who are looking for them, and there are a number of permanent residents of every demihuman race.

I use demihuman quite deliberately.  I'm not quite sure what Gary Gygax meant by the term; he seems to have used it for the most anthropomorphic of the non-human races; i.e., dwarfs, elfs, halflings, etc. were demihumans, but orcs, goblins, gnolls, etc. were not, because they were more savage and less anthropomorphic in rough terms.  I use demihuman to refer to the fact that the non-human races are, in fact, mostly human—their differences are the result of either a curse or a monstrous admixture into their genetic matrix at some point in the past (with the exception of orcs and goblins, who are simply monstrous non-human humanoids).  This is usually quite minor, but it has effects that are immediately obvious on their physical appearance, and more sinister in some cases than one may think.  Few of the human populations, hillmen, drylanders, Timischers or others are truly aware of the nature of these curses, and they often only manifest at very low levels among the population; but these dark secrets are not unknown to most members of the races in question, and they often police their own very carefully to avoid having these curses manifest among mixed populations, because they would make the race unwelcome in Hill Country, or anywhere else, for that matter, if they were better known.

In terms of the game (as opposed to the setting as a place for potential fiction) I'd suggest that unless a player wants to roleplay out the effects of one of these curses, that they be seen as not affecting PC characters.  I suggest, in fact, that they not affect major NPCs either, unless it's a theme or something that you want to explore deliberately.  I'd suggest that if you needed a statistical number for how likely it is to occur, that in every case, that number is less than 1%.  However... there are considerably more than a hundred individuals (or even a thousand, in most cases) of these races in the lands that I'm detailing, so if this is something that you want to use for whatever reason, you can.  I'll have a very brief section below on all of the available demihuman races.  And folks; although DARK•HERITAGE as a label is now out of date; i.e. the reason I picked that name no longer applies, the fact that every demihuman race is cursed, and there is still a fairly strong Lovecraftian vibe in the setting means that the label still works even so.

• Cursed: The Cursed are originally from the land of Zobna which is a subset of Hyperborea, but they were chased from that home country by the invasion of the savage Inutos.  They have since established a new home in Lomar, but that is under attack as well, and refugees have been fleeing southwards for many generations.  The most likely places to find Cursed are the seaside town of Inganok, and Daikos in the far north of the Hill Country.  The Cursed have been cursed many generations ago by the gnophkeh, whom they swept aside when they conquered Lomar.  This curse, when it manifests, takes the form of an uncontrollable urge towards cannibalism.  Nobody knows for sure how many cursed are cannibals (some engage in the practice culturally whether affected by the curse or not), but those who fall under the curse must consume human flesh, or they will slowly devolve into ghouls.  For the most part, the repast must happen once per month at the least.  Some Cursed in Inganok suspect that their own people, devolved into ghouls, and then clawed their way out of savagery into sentience again are the origin of the vampires of Timischburg; although that seems unlikely that it is the only source of such, given that the land of Timischburg, especially Grozavest itself, has been laboring under a dark curse for far longer than the Cursed have lived in the area anyway.
• Kemling: The Kemlings believe that their ancestor was a daemon-lord named Chernavog, who lived for a time among mortals and fathered seed who's daemonic traits are now watered down to represent their own race.  This is pseudo-legendary; nobody knows for sure that such a person actually lived, although by tradition, Chernavog's son Hutran Kutir, the Hex-King, is the founder of Baal Hamazi, their glorious empire of the past.  Whether that's true or not, it is true that the kemlings are more likely than any other race to fall victim to the Black Choler, a kind of violent madness.  Such victims are usually quietly locked away or even put down entirely for the good of the community.  In fact, the latter is often preferred, although family members sometimes object; in the worst case scenario, someone afflicted by the Black Choler may burst open when the condition is fully ripe, and a daemon (usually merely an imp or servitor daemon, but sometimes more powerful ones are able to latch on to the bloodline and follow it to the mortal world) will claw its way out of the bloody corpse to afflict everyone around.
• Jann: Ifrits are to jann as daemons are to the kemlings; i.e., supposedly an ifrit lord, possibly Hammu Qaiyu himself, is the mythical ancestor of the entire race.  While the jann are often fiery tempered and emotionally dramatic, a trait that they somewhat ruefully blame on their distant, legendary ancestor, the truth is that there is a connection of some sort between Muspelheim and the jann.  Any jann who move to the City of Brass (a bit of a non sequitur, since leaving the mortal realm is something hardly anyone knows how to do) are immune from this curse, but every once in a while, a burning flame will find its way from Muspelheim to a jann person, who will spontaneously combust in a wild conflagration that can consume entire houses, or any nearby people.  Luckily, this is rare, but it has been known to happen, and the jann themselves have a body of lore and old wives tales about spontaneous combustion, how to avoid it, how to cause it in your rivals, etc.
• Skraeling: Skraelings, or Wendaks, are often considered to be merely a highly variable race of humans; short and often lanky; dark-skinned, but with brown hair and bright blue eyes, very broad, flat faces, etc.  The Skraelings have some connection to lost Atlantis, however—they are either the degenerate descendants of the Atlanteans, or feral former slaves of the Atlanteans, or some-such; even their own folklore is unclear.  Atlantis is the most evil civilization that ever lived, however—even more than Baal Hamazi, or so it's mostly believed, and everyone associated with Atlantis bears a curse that fell upon the land, destroying it, and even tainting the survivors who weren't on Atlantis itself when it sank into the sea, such as the Wendaks.  The technology of the Skraelings is limited by their curse.  They do not work metal, and do not even keep metal taken from their neighbors, as it will cause the Shrieking Sickness to come upon those who possess it.  Skraelings, if they encounter the hillmen or other more "modern" people are xenophobic, surly, often violent, and primitive, refusing to trade or speak with other people as much as possible, and more likely to simply attack them or flee from them, depending on the circumstances.  The exceptions are outcasts from Skraeling society, which exist for various reasons, but they are relatively rare and tend to keep to themselves and try and hide, as much as possible, their ethnic origin if they travel among the other peoples of the land.  But even they still use stone, wood or bone tools as much as possible, and possess no metal.
• Orcs and Goblins: Orcs and goblins are not a cursed human race, but rather a unique race (well, two associated races; the relationship between them is a source of much discussion, even among themselves) that, while humanoid, have obvious physical differences.  Orcs are relatively large and robustly built, much like Neanderthals would have been.  They also have inch long (or occasionally more) tusks protruding from their lower jaw, and very flat noses but large pointed ears, and grayish-olive skin but they otherwise appear human enough.  Goblins, on the other hand, are quite small and sneaky, with brownish-gray skin, pointed ears and sharp teeth, and beady eyes.  Neither are cursed per se, but their obvious inhumanity puts them at a severe disadvantage socially.  Both are also creatures that are less at home in the daylight than humans are, and find the sun both irritatingly hot and bright during the day (their home country of Gunaakt is near the sea, and almost always overcast and/or foggy.)  While there isn't any mechanical penalty in game for this nocturnal or crepuscular preference, if you want, on extremely sunny days, you could give a -1 penalty to almost every roll that these guys make; although in a crepuscular environment (they prefer this to nocturnal; they don't see in the dark, after all, like kemlings do), they might have a +1.
• Nephilim: While people see the "angel-people" as both beautiful and avatars or exemplars of the glories of celestial life, the reality is that the only reason nephilim can exist is because of fallen angels, and therefore, the nephilim, rarely appearing as they are, are just as cursed as the kemlings are by their heritage.  If you're looking for a roleplaying hook for a nephilim character or NPC, consider giving him a specific temptation or weakness that is his weakness.  Here's a page that has a big list of potential flaws to choose from, but I'd stay away from the more prosaic, "that's kinda annoying" and look more towards the, "uh... dude, that's messed up" choices on the list.  If that makes sense.  Nephilim are the kinds of characters that may seem beautiful, charismatic and glorious at first blush, but as you get to know them, most of them are sociopaths, psychopaths, perverts, sadists, or have other truly disturbing personality traits that make them off-putting.
• Wose: Woses are the descendants of werewolves, and while the potency (and chaos) of the original werewolf curse is much reduced and diluted in their blood, in many cases it goes beyond them merely having an affinity to nature and a somewhat bestial physical appearance. (See image for example.)  However, in many of them, additional flaws and aspects of the curse of werewolfism lingers; during full moons, they are at -1 to all checks (except combat, where their savagery gives them a +1) and they may take additional damage, or suffer from nausea or other symptoms when in the presence of silver.

Funk'd

I've sped this up to 150 bpm on the copy I keep on my phone.  But honestly, even at the original 139 bpm, it's a monster track.


Listening to all of this electronic music should make me feel more cyberpunky, even though this is usually 2000-2005 Wave II hard trance rather than 80s music.  So, just because of that, here's the best three 80s synthesizer instrumentals.

Depeche Mode Five Questions: Black Celebration

Once again, the five questions are:
1) Which song would you lose from the album?
2) Which song is the most radical on the album (he's using the vinyls as masters; I'll use the complete CDs with the bonus tracks, i.e. B-sides as the masters myself; although they won't be eligible for answering in #1)
3) Which song have you listened to the most?
4) What is your favorite song on the album at the moment?
5) How would you rate the album overall?

Black Celebration was the second Depeche Mode album I picked up, I think, about 1988 or so.  It would have still been fairly newish, but not so new that Music For the Masses wasn't already out, because it was Strangelove specifically that brought me back to Depeche Mode in a big way.  One could say that it makes a triptych of sorts with the albums Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward as the albums Gareth Jones produced, bringing his indie industrial methods to the band, which guys like Alan Wilder adopted and adapted readily and quickly, turning them into their own hallmark sounds.  I rather tend to see it as the middle part of a triptych along with Some Great Reward and Music for the Masses as the mature, dark, aggressive electronic music sound that I associated with the band so strongly during the 80s.

It's a longer album than Some Great Reward; or rather, at least it has more tracks.  It's arguably even more "artistic" if you will, with a number of songs that not only weren't ever going to be singles, they were even strange as album tracks or b-sides.  Luckily, most of these experimental art tracks are short; but they actually add considerably to the album as a whole (with one exception, which I can't stand.)

The Black Celebration era is also notable for a number of non-album tracks of some note.  Shake the Disease maybe doesn't quite have the right sound to fit on this album; it's certainly not dark enough to work.  But, along with its b-side, Flexible, it featured prominently on the compilation Catching Up With Depeche Mode, and it is actually one of the boys' better tracks.  Martin Gore said so as well, for whatever that's worth, and he regrets that it doesn't really fit in with the albums, because he thinks that it makes it unfortunately kind of not have a place, and get under-rated.  He might be right, but they've done all that they can to promote the track even so; it usually plays in all of their live shows even now, for instance.  The other single of this era was "It's Called a Heart" which the band didn't like, and many fans now consider it pretty forgettable too.  It would have fit on the album even less well than Shake the Disease would have, although its b-side was Fly on the Windsceen, which was remixed and added as the second track.

But Not Tonight is another odd case.  It isn't usually listed as one of the album tracks in rereleases, and is stuck in with the bonus tracks, but of course, I always had the US release (both in cassette tape and later CD) and it's just the last track on the album in the US.  This is another one that the band themselves don't love, although they've gradually accepted that the fans seem to, and they've added it to some of their live sets in the last few years, at least, finally.  In fact, curiously, I think the whole album works much better with it as the end, even though it has a different feel than the rest of the album.  Black Celebration is on the whole so unrelentingly dark, that having this relatively lighter (but only relatively; if Erasure had done it, it wouldn't be considered light, for instance) it somehow seems like a cathartic coda to the album that the album needs in order to feel complete.

Of course, much of that is probably driven by the fact that I never heard the album without it and had no idea that it wasn't on the album in the UK until after I'd had the US release for years and listened to it hundreds if not thousands of times.  With the deluxe edition re-release, the video documentary (which you used to be able to watch on Youtube, but now you can't seem to find it anywhere) Martin Gore paraphrased Daniel Miller, Mute's owner, as describing the album as: It's not good enough, there aren't any singles, and it'll never get played on the radio.  Black Celebration has become a real cult classic, though, and it did have some successful singles after all, as well as being integral to building up a groundswell of sleeper fans in the US.  I still think it stands alone as the best album, the most cohesive (even with But Not Tonight at the end!) and the one that feels the most like a solid piece of art.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it's perfect: the weird ballads Sometimes and It Doesn't Matter Two are both strange; the former sounding like it's trying to be a remake (almost) of Somebody in a way.  And the even stranger ballad Dressed in Black is just terrible and kind of embarrassing; it's a little hard to listen to. (A lot of the Martin Gore sung ballads are.)  On the other hand, the strange ballad World Full of Nothing is brilliant and I consider it one of the stand-out tracks of the album.

The cover art is also a bit weird, and although I'm so used to it that it's hard for me to imagine anything else, I also have no idea what it's getting at, and apparently nobody from the band or the label ever really liked the piece that the photographer turned in either.

Anyway, on to the questions:

1) I would absolutely lose Dressed In Black.  I really don't like that song at all.  It has very little to redeem it other than at least it fits the tone of the rest of the album, I guess.

2) Stripped is the most radical, especially as it was released as a very unlikely single.  The sampling is also just really strange; Dave Gahan's car starting is the opening of the song, a slowed down and treated sample of a motorcycle engine makes up the bassline, and sampled fireworks feature in the end of the song.  It also features a single little strum on an acoustic guitar.  Now, the band used a handful of guitars in Construction Time Again, but since they'd built their identity on being an electronic band, they had avidly avoided them for a long time too.  Of course, I think they did kinda like them, and the producer on their next album kind of gave them the "go ahead" if you will to use them if they wanted to, and Music For the Masses has quite a bit of guitar in it, although it's often more subtle than you'd think, and for a while, I didn't actually recognize most of the uses of it, because it was kind of in the background.  Now don't get me wrong; radical isn't a problem.  Stripped is one of my favorite songs of all time, and certainly a standout on this album.

3) Which song have I listened to the most?  I'm actually not sure.  It's certainly either Stripped, Question of Time or But Not Tonight, but I don't know which of those three would really be in the lead.

4) But Not Tonight is my favorite song.  It actually always probably was, although a few others give it at least a little bit of a challenge.  This is odd because it's technically not part of the album, but again, because I have the US version and always have, it is as far as I'm concerned, because it is on my release, and it's not called out as a bonus track or anything even.  I've long tried to wrangle down every remix of it I could find, but there weren't a lot (the Stripped maxi-single has an extended version.)  However, the song has been covered a lot, and sometimes it sounds really different than the original in interesting ways.  Scott Weiland's cover (lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots) in particular stands out as unique, although I'd wager that most of the covers are by synthpop artists that are at least in some degree similar to Depeche Mode in style (Jimmy Somerville, for instance, or Paradigm, or Elegant Machinery or Æon Rings.)

5) Ten out of ten.  Along with Music For the Masses, it is the iconic Depeche Mode album.

City of Towers by Keith Baker

I tried to read this book when it was pretty new, nearly fifteen years ago, but I never really got very far into it for whatever reason.  After stumbling across my EBERRON REMIXED tag recently, I decided to try again, and got this from the library and read it; I remember thinking in the past that it was fairly thick and dense, but this time around, I found it more light and breezy.  Anyway, even with my busy schedule, I was able to finish it in a few days and request the next book in the series, which I've now also started.  Even though the book is old, I thought I'd review it.

I've long been fascinated with stories that take place in a definitely fantasy setting, but which tell a different kind of story.  The City of Towers by Keith Baker is one such story.  Keith Baker is the creator of the Eberron setting, and this was not only the first Eberron novel, but also Baker's first novel.  It's part of a trilogy; The Dreaming Dark, and while Eberron is, of course, a fantasy setting (given that it's a D&D setting) this story is really a noir story, and it hits all kinds of noir beats as it develops.  It takes place almost entirely in an urban setting, and it focuses on the amoral; the criminal elements, and the skulduggery of the elites who maneuver and connive to get ahead politically or otherwise.  There's a fair bit of mystery involved, and the plot is certainly involved with solving a mystery of disappearing victims, but there are other "meta mysteries" that are touched on and often left unresolved so they can dangle into the rest of the trilogy.

The characters are also very much like noir characters; kind of cynical and weary, veterans of a war that recently ended, unwanted and unwelcome in their new environment, and struggling to find their place and deal with their past.

The book logs in at just about 335 pages, plus a lot of appendices and stuff at the back giving some setting explanation.  I personally think that was unnecessary; the story stands on its own without it, and most people who read it will have bought the actual setting book too.  About typical for this kind of fantasy story, really.

For a first time novelist, Baker does a pretty decent job.  There are only a handful of minor complaints about his writing that I can make, and I've certainly seen worse from more established writers.  For instance, the novel feels occasionally like it's making stops for no other reason than to show off some aspect of the setting.  I guess he can hardly be faulted for doing so, and maybe it's even a good idea given the purpose of the novel in being published, but occasionally I was left wondering what the point of some vignette was other than to give us some kind of gratuitous exotica (even within the standard terms and conventions of D&D.)  The tone was occasionally jarring too; the main point of view character in particular, who's usually kind of somber and bitter, would occasionally throw out this strange one-liner joke; almost a dad joke, even.  I felt like the clues pointed more towards the meta mystery than the mystery associated specifically with this novel; it almost felt like a scenic detour when we did the resolution.

All of those seem kind of nitpicky, though, and I almost hesitate to call them out for fear that they sound like crippling flaws.  They are nothing of the kind; there are merely minor technicalities; the novel would be marginally better if they were fixed, but they don't really harm its initial impression too much.  What is perhaps more irritating is one aspect of the characterizations; the main characters seemed to have bizarrely emotional sensitive triggers, and were suddenly either really mad or really sad at the drop of a hat.  For supposed officers and veterans of a war, they were lacked an equanimity that that experience should have given them in dealing with certain kinds of adversity, and I thought that this aspect of their characterizations was both juvenile and unrealistic.  And a structural flaw that, admittedly, might be a personal pet peeve of mine, but I don't think so: a lot of stuff is held back to increase suspense, I presume, but it is information that the main characters know quite well; we just aren't told as the readers, so when the main characters finally say, "I yeah, I'm a member of that house" or whatever the big reveal is, rather than it seeming like suspense, it just felt like irritation and frustration.  Why don't we as the readers know that if the point of view character who's head we've been in obviously does, because it's his whole freakin' backstory?  This is a very cheap trick and only works on the most unsophisticated of readers; pretty much everyone else will find it irritating.

In any case, the novel was certainly competent enough that I was willing to move on and read the rest of the trilogy.  I'm about 20% or so into the second book now, so hopefully by the end of the week, or at most, early next week, I'll review that one too.

Extra Art Attack

I spent at least a little bit of time this weekend on my phone looking at my Friday Art Attack posts.  Although I move images that I've used on my blog to a "used" folder to keep them from being used again, I found a number of repeats; one image, and it's not even a great one, was used three times!  Either I've forgotten to move it, or I've had the image under more than one file name, or I've found them again and redownloaded them back in to my To Use folder without realizing that I've already had this image before.  I also note that in my earlier posts on this tag, I used fewer images and more text talking about the image.  I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but it is certainly a changed thing.

Anyway, I decided that doing a bonus art attack today isn't a bad idea, and then I'll get around to that book review I promised last week. We'll see if I end up putting lots and lots of pictures with relatively little discussion by me or if I swing back the other direction a bit.

Some more computer game art for undead.  I've actually used a fair bit of Guild Wars undead concept art in various forms over the years; they've got some really great looking undead.  This is less of the undead itself and more of the necromancer who calls them.

A half-orc sailor.  I kinda tend to like half-orcs and other "savage humanoids" illustrated as just normal people around the setting, sometimes.  Because, why not?  Especially in some settings; not so much Golarion, but certainly something like Eberron that'd be true.

A concept art piece of a Han Solo spinoff story of some kind.

I actually kinda prefer harpies with arms, but this is still a nice image, in a real 70s kind of sword & sorcery style.

Happy October, y'all!  I used to try and watch Sleepy Hollow every October, although I missed it more often than not.  I've since decided that that movie isn't really all that good, and I'm pretty much over Tim Burton in general.  Now, I've been meaning to watch the Wolfman remake every October for the last three years or so, but I've also not actually gotten around to doing it.  I'll want to make sure I catch it this year.  But, I don't dislike Sleepy Hollow because I dislike the concept.  I just think that it's mostly a pretty poorly executed movie.

I like spaceships flying through space, but there is something to be said for them entering and leaving the atmosphere, of course.  I imagine they'd be more aerodynamic than these are, but space opera doesn't really quibble too much with reality if it gets in the way of a cool visual.

Another lich with a vaguely Egyptian kind of vibe going on.

Now, in space itself, aerodynamics is pointless, of course, so these are cool looking ships here.

Not quite sure what's happening here. Cyberpunk?  Anyway, these cyborg gypes are attacking the hospital, and people who look kinda sorta like yakuza are fighting back.

A very interesting fantasy parade, or maybe a Roman style Triumph with exotic animals and dinosaurian type things in the parade.

A WAR image from Magic of a hydra.

I could do a lot with this image.  It seems to suggest an awful lot of story, actually.