White Dwarf: Issue #44

Though I was – and remain – a big fan of Daniel Collerton's "Irilian" series of articles, the first two installments of which appeared in the previous two issues, issue #43 of White Dwarf (August 1983) isn't one for which I'd had any strong memories. You'd think I'd have remembered the cover by Jim Burns, if nothing else, since it's quite unlike what I consider a "typical" WD cover. That might be because the magazine was still in the midst of its "new look," the last phase of which would be implemented in issue #44, according to editor Ian Livingstone. In any case, re-reading this issue almost felt like I was reading it for the first time, even though I know I owned a copy in my youth.

"On ICE" by Marcus L. Rowland is a Traveller article that focuses on Interstellar Charter Enterprises (ICE), a business that rents starships – and starship crews – to those who lack them. Of course, ICE offers other services as well, those of a criminal variety, such as outfitting their rented vessels with equipment and modifications for engaging in smuggling, piracy, etc. The article details not just ICE itself but also the kinds of scenarios in which they might be involved. Rowland even provides three sample patron encounters as examples of how the organization might be used in a campaign.

"Open Box" reviews Shadows of Yog-Sothoth for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, to which it gives its highest rating (10 out of 10). Despite its shortcomings, I think that's more than fair, especially in 1983, since it was the only example of a complete, prewritten CoC campaign available at the time (and it is quite good). Meanwhile, Illuminati Expansion Sets 1 and 2 both receive 6 out of 10. I don't believe I ever owned or played these expansions, so it's hard for me to judge the fairness of these ratings. On the other hand, I owned all four of the AD&D modules reviewed: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (9 out of 10), The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (9 out of 10), Against the Cult of the Reptile God (8 out of 10), and Danger at Dunwater (8 out of 10). The two Gygax modules are true classics and among my favorites; the other two are also quite creditable, though I'd probably have given them both 7 out of 10, but that's a quibble. Finally, there are reviews of two Endless Quest books – Revolt of the Dwarves and Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons – both of which garner 5 out of 10. 

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" begins his column complaining about the lack of contemporary British science fiction and fantasy authors in a UK book marketing campaign, which, I suppose, is fair, though it doesn't hold much interest almost forty years on. Much more interesting is his praise of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Langford has a few small criticisms – he wouldn't be Dave Langford if he didn't – but, by and large, he recommends the series highly. He even uses its excellence to get in another dig at Stephen R. Donaldson (one of his favorite sports, as I recall). 

"True Sight" by Lewis Pulsipher is a short column discussing "realism in D&D and other fantasy role-playing games." This topic was no doubt a tired one even in 1983 and certainly is so now. However, Pulsipher manages to make it more interesting by noting that the kind of realism that interests him is believability. To that end, he focuses on three areas: familiarity, self-consistency, and completeness. It's an unusual approach but, in the course of the article, he manages to raise some good questions for any referee to consider. I still wonder why the article references "realism" in its subtitle, since the article doesn't spend much time on that topic as it's usually understood in gaming circles (perhaps Pulsipher had nothing to do with the subtitle?).

"Counterpoint" is a new column devoted to boardgames. Its inaugural article, by Charles Vasey, spends most of its single page on extended discussions of two games: Sanctuary from Mayfair Games (based on the Thieves' World anthology series) and Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. Vasey likes both games a great and he spends some of the column musing on the similarities between the RPG Call of Cthulhu and the Holmes game. It's an angle I hadn't considered before, but it makes sense after a fashion.

"Dealing with Demons" by Dave Morris is the first part of a series dealing with demon summoning in RuneQuest. The first part presents rules for magical protections, binding, and pacts, not to mention curses and possession. It's rather remarkable article, full of good ideas for incorporating demonology into RQ for those so inclined. Accompanying it is a comic strip that imparts some genuine information about the process of summoning demons, in addition to being funny. I remember the second and third parts of this article quite well, so it was good to have the chance to re-familiarize myself with the first one.

The computer column, "Microview," looks at combat resolution computer programs for both Tunnels & Trolls and AD&D. The former is given a completed program by D.G. Evans, while the latter gets only an overview (by Noel Williams) of what one would need to consider before making such a program for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Articles like this are of interest only as historical artifacts and this one is no exception. Part three of Daniel Collerton's "Irilian," however, continues to delight. This issue's installment offers information on another quarter of the town and its businesses and inhabitants. This one is noteworthy for including details on certain guilds – or "gilds" in the Old English it uses for naming – like the guild of beggars. 

"Rune Rites" presents two new monsters for use with RuneQuest, most notably the golem (and the necessary spell create golem). The theme of this month's "Fiend Factory" is "Tribes and Tribulations," meaning intelligent monsters that organize themselves into tribes. None of them are particularly notable, I'm sorry to say, and the less said about the "Blacklings," halfling counterparts to the drow, the better. Graeme Davis's "Seeing the Light" is much more intriguing. It's a simple system for handling religious conversion of monsters and NPCs by clerics. There's also another "Gobbledigook" comic strip.

Issue #44 continues to demonstrate that White Dwarf is really hitting its stride at this time. The selection and quality of its articles continues to be solid, with several of them being worthy of examination even today. I'll admit to finding it odd that there's not a single Call of Cthulhu article in this issue, but I have little doubt that's only a temporary absence. As I've no doubt written several times previously, I associate White Dwarf most strongly with four RPGs: AD&D, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and RuneQuest (all of which, to varying degrees, I can see as influences upon Games Workshop's later Warhammer Fantasy Role Play). Since the first three are in my pantheon of the favorite roleplaying games of my youth (and the fourth has subsequently been added), it's little wonder why I continue to enjoy these weekly re-reads.

Pulp Fantasy Library: A Traveler in Desert Lands

As a general rule, I tend to be skeptical of the efforts of writers who take it upon themselves to play in someone else's playground. Heck, I'm similarly skeptical about the efforts of writers who return to their own playgrounds many years after the fact. The results in both cases are rarely good in my opinion, which is why I tend to avoid them. Nevertheless, I occasionally make exceptions, usually because I'd either heard something positive beforehand or because I allowed my own enthusiasm get the better of them. The Last Continent: New Tales of Zothique is an example of the latter.

Edited by John Pelan and published in 1999, The Last Continent is an anthology of original stories set in Clark Ashton Smith's setting of Zothique. Now, Zothique is a favorite of mine. Of all of Smith's creations, it's the one I most enjoy – which is saying something. Consequently, when I heard about this collection, I quickly snapped it up, hoping I'd find at least one new Zonthique story worthy of the Bard of Auburn himself.

As it happened, I found several, but the one I most recall, years later, is "A Traveler in Desert" lands by Gene Wolfe. Wolfe is, of course, the celebrated author of The Shadow of the Torturer and the other volumes of The Book of the New Sun, so his byline on a short story set in Zothique is not entirely surprising. The world of Severian is a kind of far future "dying earth" with some similarities to Zothique and Wolfe's command of archaic and esoteric vocabulary is every bit as hypnotic as that of CAS. That said, "A Traveler in Desert Lands" contains little that explicitly links it to Zothique beyond its mellifluous style and morbid subject matter. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed it as much as I do; unlike some of the other stories in this collection, it doesn't read like someone's Clark Ashton Smith fan fiction but rather a wholly original homage to his works.

The titular traveler is making his way across a desert on the back of a camel. Tired and thirsty, he stops "in the soft and shifting dust of the lost town of the dead" where he spies a very slender woman walking with a water jar upon her head. Courteously, he asks her if he might take some water from her.

"You would honor me by drinking," the woman with the jar said, "and by filling whatever skins and bottles you may have. If you empty my jar," her face convulsed as if to dislodge some brass-backed carrion fly that none but she could see, "it is a matter of no moment, for I can easily refill it at our well."

Though this surprises the traveler – he did not expect to find water so readily in the desert – he is very grateful. He takes a drink of water to slake his thirst and then asks where the well is, so that he might fill all his canteens and water his camel before moving on. 

The woman does not respond; instead, she simply walks away. The traveler and his camel follow her into the nearby town and its "bleak streets of tombs." 

Some remained sealed – or so it appeared. Others had clearly been broken into, looted, and abandoned. Still others gave evidence of habitation; and at the door of one he saw an old man seated, his dusty cheeks streaked with tears and his raddled face stamped with grief. The woman with the water jar halted to speak to this old man, though the traveler could not hear what she said; the old man nodded in response, his face perhaps a trifle less hopeless than it had been. 

As he continued to follow the slender woman, hoping she was leading him to the well of which she had spoken, his mind wanders. He thinks about the tombs he sees everywhere and what they imply.

Where there were tombs and men who robbed them, there might be silver and gold besides, necklaces and emeralds and torques starry with opals. The thought revived him more, even, than the water had – for the traveler had been born of woman and suckled at the breast, and like all the breed was in need of money. 

I smiled when I first read these sentences, as they struck as being not only true to so many of Smith's venal protagonists but also to the player characters one encounters in many a fantasy roleplaying game campaign. In any case, the woman does eventually lead him to the the well, located underground and accessible by a set of stone steps. She tells the traveler to leave his camel behind and to descend into the depths with her.

He agrees and fills canteens to capacity. He also takes up water for his camel, a process that, even while aided by the woman, takes some time. Before long, the night is beginning to fall. This leads the woman to ask him, "Will you stay in our town tonight?" Again, the traveler agrees, hoping that, in addition to rest, he might be able to buy or trade for provisions from the inhabitants of this strange settlement. The woman assures him her people can provide him with goat's meat, cheese, and vegetables – but only in the morning. The traveler accepts this and prepares to settle in for the night.

This being a pulp fantasy story – and one after the fashion of Clark Ashton Smith, no less – things are not what they appear to be, as the traveler soon learns. What separates "A Traveler in Desert Lands" from other stories of this kind is not so much its revelations as the overall mood of the piece. Wolfe does a superb job of slowly building tension through the accumulation of small details and hints. His description of the town where the woman and her family live is a good example of this, as the reader slowly comes to realize that they actually live inside of a looted mausoleum. "Town of the dead" is not a metaphor; this is no ghost town in the conventional sense. Rather, it is an ancient cemetery whose tombs have now become the dwelling places of later inhabitants. It's wonderfully macabre and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect to find in a good tale of Zothique. That I found it in a Zothique tale not written by Smith is all the more remarkable – but then Gene Wolfe is no ordinary writer.

Elementary Particles

I can't quite recall when I first encountered the notion of the four elements. I suspect it was quite early, probably through my reading of classical mythological stories, though it's possible I learned about it from some other source. However, I vividly recall that, when I cracked open the Monster Manual for the first time in early 1980, I was almost instantly enamored of elementals. There was something powerfully, if you'll forgive the term, primal about beings composed solely of a single substance. Also, the existence of elementals and indeed the entire conception of the four elements served as a useful reminder that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Dungeons & Dragons takes place in a pre-modern world, one not merely operating according to different laws than our own but one whose inhabitants conceive of it in a different way than we do ours.

Over the years, my interest in the elements and elementals has endured. I remember when I first read about other elemental systems, like those of the great civilizations of Asia. What particularly struck me about the latter was that many of them included a fifth element, a concept not unknown in ancient and medieval European thought but less well known in popular presentations of them. I was likewise struck by the fact that many of these non-European elemental systems included different elements, like wood or metal. As a younger person, this was eye-opening and helped me to realize that there was room for variation within the broader notion of fundamental elements.

Lately, I've been working on a science fantasy setting rooted in Burroughs, Kirby, Wolfe, Zothique, and The Dying Earth – a formerly high-tech setting brought low to the point it appears to be a weird and/or exotic fantasy world. Think Jorune or Tékumel but more immediately accessible than either. As I began to work in earnest, one of my earliest thoughts was its elemental system, which I wanted to be unique and interesting but also intelligible. The result of my cogitations is depicted in the crude image above. While I need to give it some additional thought, I'm quite pleased with the results, especially the way it interacts with the psychic powers and sorcery of the setting. If nothing else, it's different from the usual fantasy presentation of the elements and their relationships, which pleases me. 

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Shadow of the Torturer

Like a lot of things in this blog, my understanding of "pulp fantasy" is idiosyncratic. I don't use it as a term of opprobrium, since I adore the genre and read it voraciously, including the works of lesser authors whose ideas and execution are often deeply flawed. While pulp fantasy has a lot of different elements that draw me to it, the one that stands out is its powerful focus on individual wants and desires, thoughts and feelings. The goals of the protagonist -- and often his antagonists -- are what's important and everything else are largely obstacles to or consequences of that individual's peripatetic search for his (typically ephemeral) intensely personal destiny. That's why I view Moorcock's Elric tales, for example, as pulp fantasy, even though they're set against a backdrop of a cosmic battle between Law and Chaos. In the end, that battle is secondary to the battle within the character of Elric to find his place in the world, as it is in most pulp fantasy.

For that reason, I feel comparatively little shame in dubbing Gene Wolf's 1980 novel The Shadow of the Torturer a pulp fantasy. This book and its three sequels tell the story of Severian, an apprentice Seeker of Truth and Penitence, which is to say, a torturer. Unfortunately, Severian chooses to be merciful to one of his charges, allowing her to commit suicide rather than suffer, thereby breaking the oath to his fellow Seekers. Rather than being punished with death for his oath-breaking as he expected, Severian is instead sent away to a far-off city to serve as its executioner, precipitating the beginning of the protagonist's many travels and his growth and development into one of the most interest characters in recent literature.

The Shadow of the Torturer is an extremely difficult book to characterize. It definitely occupies a similar place as Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels, taking place in a world so far in the future as to be beyond time. Like Vance, Wolfe effectively uses language to convey the decadent antiquity of his setting, Urth. Through a combination of English archaisms, Latinate neologisms, and words purely of his own invention, the text can sometimes prove hard going. Additionally, Wolfe maintains the fiction that the novel is in fact a mere translation from "a language that has not yet achieved existence," which, when combined with the unreliability of Severian's first person account of his activities, creates further levels of complexity and nuance.

I read this book long ago and dismissed it out of hand, mostly because I found it impenetrable. Fortunately for me, I read some articles about Wolfe that convinced me I'd missed out on a classic of science fiction and fantasy. I then took my time and re-read The Shadow of the Torturer and very soon thereafter made my way through the rest of the The Book of the New Sun series, very much enjoying it. There's a great deal going on in these books, on both a dramatic and literary level, and it's an amazing thing to behold. Wolfe's talents as a writer are unique; I can think of no other fantasy/science fiction author else who manages to achieve what he does in this series of books.

Because of publication date, there's no question that The Shadow of the Torturer exercised no influence over the development of D&D or AD&D. Even if it had been published earlier, I'm not sure what kind of influence it could have had. Though there are certainly lots of things within it, such as Severian's sword Terminus Est, that I can easily see some gamers swiping for use in their campaigns, doing so strikes me as far more crass than any of OD&D's borrowings from Tolkien, the author whose work strikes me as closest to that of Wolfe and even his closeness is limited at best. Nevertheless, I highly recommend Wolfe's work. It is not an easy read by any means, but it does repay the time and energy spent in working through it, making him one of the few authors I've ever given a second chance.