Currently Reading...

I have just dove into the first book in the Mabinogion series by Evangeline Walton. The Prince of Annwn is one of four books that came out in the '70s. They are based on the Welsh stories of the same name, which I know next to nothing about. It might actually be nothing about.

Regardless of past knowledge I have taken the plunge. I had never heard of these books before but came across some random post on X and started taking a look. I fell in love with the covers of the books as they had that weird 1970s vibe, early 70s vibe that is hard to describe (vol 3 really caught my eye). The titles too as they are volumes but branches. That book to the right is the First Branch in the Mabinogion. I've never run across that but absolutely love it.

So with cover and titles in hand, I scoured ebay until I found the books in readable, affordable form and scooped them up. They've been on the read table since they arrived. I just finished up reading Blum's UFO book Out There and an account of WWI called Poilu and felt the need for some good old fantasy. Particularly since Blum's book was very frustrating with a great ending and the WWI book was amazing but a little depressing (read it). So on to the Prince of Annwn!

I'm only about 50 pages in but am loving every minute of it. Walton has a superior writing style. It is vibrant and engaging and epic in its feel. I feel like I'm passing through a myth.

That is the volume, or Branch, that caught my eye. I could begin to tell you why. 

Epic Cinema

 This is one of my favorite movie scenes. Pure epic from beginning to end.

UFO/UAP The War Department's New Releases

I've been reading a great deal of UFO literature these past few years. It began in Roswell but escalated to a host of books from Keyhoe's urgency, to Dolan's exploration of the Security State. It didn't stop there or in between.

There are many things about this phenomena that are strange, both earth-bound and interstellar (maybe). Simple things like the strange editions of Cpt. Edward J. Ruppelt’s "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.” Ruppelt was head of Project Blue Book and published two editions of his book. In the first he concluded that there is something out there, he didn’t know what but was sure we’d find it. In the second edition, published a few years later, he recanted all that and ridiculed the movement, even though just months before he was publicly talking about the real nature of the phenomena. Interestingly the copyright dates on both books are the same, though they were published 2 or 3 years apart; and after the second edition he died at the age of 35. There are the simple affairs like the pre-drawn conclusions of the Condone Report of '69. The latter is very interesting as Professor Condon’s conclusions, that it is all bump kiss, are contradicted by the report itself. His very report.

This is only the tip of the ice berg in this literature.

At any rate. The journey has been very informative, enlightening even. And enjoyable. I hope, as my journey continues, to begin posting here more regularly about all the nuances out there. My thoughts and mental ramblings.

I will say that the whole phenomena is strange. It is very strange. Peopl are, and have been for a long time, seeing things. They are seeing something. What that is is anyone's guess. 

Anyones. 

Even the government admits now, as it has admitted in the past, that they don't know what these things are. They don't know what they are doing. Only that they seem under intelligent control.

With that in mind, as I begin to collect my thoughts to put to paper I thought I would post a video here. I've downloaded the War Department's latest releases. This bundle of about 20 videos of UAP/UFOs are pretty strange. No real saucers yet, but plenty of orbs. 

So I'm posting here the most interesting of them, at least of those I've gone through thus far. It is marked DOD_111688964. It is an MP4 File.

I leave it to you to guess what this is.

More in the near future.

Have You Ever Seen The Rain? - Grace Carras

 My dad was born in 1969. 1969 was Jim Steinman’s senior year at Amhurst College. In order to fulfill the requirements for an independent study course that year, he wrote the lyrics and music for a musical called The Dream Engine, as well as an accompanying book. From what little I understand, The Dream Engine is about a guy who hates his girlfriend’s parents and fights “society”. According to Wikipedia, it literally ends with an “ensemble-wide display of nudity”. It sounds SO weird and, to my Gen Z sensibilities, a little bad. It’s exactly the shit I love, made by the exact type of person I love. Weirdos who make weird shit; people who aren’t afraid to tell about it. That was a common refrain from my writing professors when I was a senior at Michigan State. “Tell about it.”

I always knew that the phrase “turn around bright eyes” was from something, but never what. I’ve maintained a lukewarm, polite appreciation for Bonnie Tyler for 29 years, but had never heard (or, somehow, even heard OF) “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Turns out, the lyrics “turn around bright eyes” actually first appeared in Jim Steinman’s The Dream Engine in 1969, the year my dad was born. That image is used to reference or describe the blast flash of a nuclear explosion. The poet in me has to appreciate the metaphor, though I haven’t written poetry in a long time.

I actually still haven’t listened to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” all the way through. My dad has; when I mentioned to him that I was writing this, he said the song "isn't that good". 

In 1975, Bonnie Tyler signed on with RCA Records, where she was marketed as a pop star. She would later choose not to renew this contract, because they were pushing her towards country music. During this time, Jim Steinman was making music for movies. In 1975, my dad was 6 years old. My great grandfather was an architect who loved technology; in the pictures he took of my dad when he was 6, we look like the same kid. 

My great grandfather was kind of a weird guy too. He loved trains so much that in the home he designed for his family, he had a train track that would run along the ceiling through a few rooms he spent most of his time in. He invented an experimental type of art theater called Somnophonics: “Music becomes a picture painted in sound; a picture becomes music played in color”. We’ve preserved a lot of the video footage that he filmed in his life; among recorded birthdays and ceremonies and parties, there are hours of sunlight dancing on the surface of lakewater. I think my great grandfather was hypnotized by the reflections in water. It’s a precious weakness, for which I probably have him to thank.

But anyway, Bonnie Tyler leaves RCA Records and signs with CBS/Columbus in, I think but don’t quote
me on it, 1982. She was asked to choose her own producer and Jim Steinman was her first choice. Apparently he initially said no because he wasn’t interested in working with a pop star (god, help me imagine Bonnie Tyler as a pop star), but agreed after she sent him a rock demo. In 1982, my dad was 13. I think that by this point, he had probably met my mom at least in passing. My mom’s grandfather worked with my dad’s grandfather, and their families lived close by. I love that about my parents; their lives and families were intertwined, just like everything important seems to be.

Bonnie Tyler performs “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for the first time in the living room of Jim Steinman’s apartment. Jim Steinman would later refer to the song as a “showpiece” for Bonnie Tyler’s voice; a lightning clap heard in households across the world. Apparently he was also working with Meatloaf at the time, and Meatloaf got super mad at Jim for giving the song to Bonnie instead of him. My great grandfather got in a huge argument of the same sort with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1952 when they both submitted their interest for the same job: a contract to design an art museum in Arizona. After my great grandfather was brought on instead of Wright, Wright sent him a letter calling him a “cheap competitor”. My great grandfather replied saying, “Perhaps the tulip looks upon the lily as a cheap competitor, but as a gardener, this idea never occurs to me.” 

Wright had been a close friend and mentor. I had a close friend and mentor in 2017, with whom I founded a poetry open mic series during my senior year at Michigan State. One of the first lessons he impressed upon me was, “be approachable, but unattainable”. To keep a healthy distance between myself and others, because anyone who gets to know me will be let down by the reality of who I am and stop coming to our shows (yes, he really said that). I was too awkward, shy, off-putting. Not smart enough, not kind enough, not old enough. The best I could be was pretty and surface-level friendly. Our success, he said, hinged on me showing everyone around me reflections of whatever they wanted to see, never revealing what’s underneath; on leaving the friendships and opportunities for real connection to him. I found this remarkably easy to do in poetry: to spill out my heart onstage, not so I could be understood, but so audiences could see reflections of their own lives in my words. To know they weren’t the first or only ones to feel alone or scared, because someone else wrote about it and shared it. Writing has always been the tool I relied on to try to close the gap between myself and other people, and it was also the shield I hid behind. It kept me approachable, but unattainable. I’d share a poem about heartbreak, but wouldn’t meet other poets for coffee or respond to their texts. Desperate for connection, but convinced that I had nothing to offer and didn’t deserve it.

Bonnie Tyler decided to really take a crack at being a singer when she competed in a competition in Wales in 1969, the year my dad was born. She came in second place to an accordionist. My dad told me, many years later, “whatever you want to do, just don’t half-ass it.” Bonnie Tyler certainly didn’t. She went on to become one of the most accomplished musicians of her time. I think a lot about the people I love when I write. My dad’s dad was a lawyer and a pilot and the son of greek immigrants; his grandfather a wildly successful weirdo who very intentionally dodged fame. My mom worked herself to the bone in a financial office for a sexist boss who made her life miserable while juggling classes and exams. My parents dated long distance until they were engaged. My dad commuted two hours both ways to Detroit for night school and worked a full-time job while my mom fed and cared for three babies at home alone. Sometimes, it feels like no one in my entire lineage has ever half-assed anything except for me.

In April of 2021, around the time that Jim Steinman died, I started my own actual play online. It was my first time ever running a TTRPG for my friends, and it‘s all been documented on the internet to haunt me forever. It wasn’t very good. By the end, I don’t think anyone was having any fun. I’ve heard that’s par for the course for most people’s first-ever campaigns, though that game started as, and will always be in my heart, a love letter to my friends: the people who gave me the time and patience I needed to come out of my shell after being deeply harmed. Some of those friends have moved on by now and aren’t in my life anymore, but we immortalized something important to me; a story about people whose lives intertwine. That was the thing that drew me to TTRPGs in the first place, and to poetry before that: the way we can draw lines that extend from me to you. The connection it allows someone like me, who still feels like they need permission. It’s a game, sure, but it’s also storytelling, as vulnerable as you care for it to be. It has made me softer; “attainable”. 

When I told my dad I wanted to take a crack at working in the TTRPG industry, he told me, “just don’t half-ass it.” 2025 is loosening its grip on us all, and I’ve spent nearly two years at Troll Lord Games, with people who love music and aliens and fantasy and stories of all kinds. What a privilege it is to hear about it all, to learn more about what people appreciate and in turn know them better. How lucky I am to look back on the last almost-two years and see memories of myself surrounded by weirdos who, for the first time, I don’t see myself as separate from or a burden to. I worked hard to have the opportunity to work hard here. I had to fight and defeat myself. Everything I write at Troll Lord Games is scraped from the marrow of the girl I had to kill in order to be here, who would rather see me dead than ever hear me speak.

So anyway, I wanted to share a review of Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman’s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”, the starting track of their album Faster Than The Speed of Night. It’s a cover; the original is by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I’ve always loved covers; by now, I hope it’s apparent how much I appreciate art that calls back, that connects artists to each other. Jim Steinman waves a shimmering layer of mystique over every song he touches. Bonnie Tyler’s voice just cuts to the bone; at times, it takes on a delicate, icy quality that calls to my mind a glassy replica of the pop star she started as. The song goes, “When it’s over, so they say,/ it’ll rain a sunny day/ I know/ shining down like water”. I can’t help but think of my great-grandfather’s reflection videos. To me, it’s a song that questions whether everything will, eventually, be alright, and in the asking, the answer becomes clear. The storm is anchored to the calm that precedes it. The past will one day reach a tendril-like finger forward to break the surface between itself and the present. All of the hard work of yesterday will finally lend its hand.

The World of Aihrde Growing

We have completed the Codex of Aihrde Expansion Dwarven Trace and it is set to be released any day. This piles on top of the recently released Expansion Tarvine Belt, and, once Trace is out, will make it 9/17 Expansion Books. The 10th Northern Waste is complete and just need my final pass and then on to editing. And the 11th, Reavers Fairway, is roughly 1/3rd written and should be finished by early next week.

As I work on these expansion books I am going over the large Lands of Ursal map and adding new place names and existing locales, as well as fixing and correcting various errors I’m finding along the way. I am attempting to retro fit the early expansion books as well, including place names, roads, bridges, etc. 

You can grab this map for FREE here!

There are 8 titles left to release (after Trace)!

Northern Waste (written)

Reavers Fairway (being written now)

Dolgan Fells

Umbrian Flats

Voralberg Basin

Evaline Sea Lanes

Saerian Heath

Usral Main 

I might break Avignon off from Ursal Main and make it its own book.

Also, I will take the material on dwarves, elves etc from the Players Guide to Aihrde and perhaps make it into an expansion book.

If you are enjoying the World of Aihrde, or want to learn more about it, take this coupon code and dive in!   Use code AIHRDE10 for your 10% discount at checkout!

Here is the intended book and maps:

Deathstalker - Steve Chenault

The ‘80s had a wonderful slew of fantasy movies that were horribly good. There is the famous Beastmaster, Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull, there was another that escapes me, it had two twins in it, who may or may not have been Playboy Playmates. There was a bunch of them. There were some exceptionally good ones as well, Excalibur, Legends, Dragon Slayer, Conan the Barbarian, and so on. It was a great time for cinema. I well remember going to some of the better ones at the theater (for Conan the Destroyer I was the only one in the theater). The others I watched on the television,  usually late at night, Cinemax, HBO, and another that began with an S or some such.

But of them all, one stands out as insanely hilarious. Or rather four, as I believe there were four of them. Deathstalker.

Deathstalker was unmatched in its camp and crazy. It is really indescribable. I remember a scene, in the fourth I believe, where one dude with a giant hammer splattered another one into a bug splat in an arena. Absolutely over the top, and under it, all around it.

It is good to know that Deathstalker has made or is making a return. It stars that guy that John Wick killed in the first movie, and that Nobody killed in the first Nobody. He’s the current heavy fist-a-cuffs for Hollywood I suppose. Regardless of his role or roles, I’ll be there when it opens, ticket in hand. For how can one miss Deathstalker V, or whatever it is.

Unfamiliar? Go have a gander online to the ‘80s versions. Absolutely crazed!

No Small Part - Steve Chenault

No small part of the games I’ve run over the years spills itself into the design work I do on Castles & Crusades, Aihrde, and the monsters I put together. Demons and devils have always been my favorite. I have long since broken them free of any real world connotations, landing them squarely in either a generic game context or, more often than not, an Aihrde-centric mythos.

Orcus is a great example of the first. I have never used Orcus at the table very much. I could not tell you why; no particular reason. I preferred others like Amon, who just had “that” feel about them I suppose. But in writing the entry for Codex of the Planes (should be out in 2026) for the Abyss, I spent some time on Orcus, marrying up that content with what I was fleshing out in the Codex Infernum (out now). That was a lot of fun and in my mind, Orcus was suddenly anchored to the Unclad Pate in the Glass Tower. I could feel him there, sitting upon his throne, laughing without mercy or humor.

For the second, Mephistopheles offers himself up as another great example. Some years back I ran a high level party into Aihrde’s Wretched Plains. These are a little different than what one might think, as they are really just
one big plain with varied terrain. Tartarus is in the Wretched Plains, but consists of a different terrain than, say, Pandemonium. I leaned heavily on my reading of Michael Moorcocks Corum and Elric series and the stark borders that he always describes between realms: suddenly you are here. Then there. It’s wonderful mind jumping, and lodges the concept in your mind that there is something more to this or that place than the terrestrial feel of earth and water. So it was that the party came to a Lake of Fire that surrounded a Mountain of Glass. They had to cross the lake to find a particular morsel of information (I believe they were looking for a lost soul). But when they crossed these obstacles, they came upon massive, gilded halls: the Hall of Merriment. They assumed it was a dungeon complex but it turned out to be the table and board of Mephistopheles. The devil welcomed them at his table, so long as they did two things: they ate what was put in front of them, and they discussed with him the current events of their day and age. What followed was a massive several hour long role playing session that we all enjoyed. And this image of Mephistopheles.

We only just released the Codex Infernum and it is beyond the pale in what we’d hoped for, the art, much of it by Zoe DeVos is breathtaking. As with the particular demon genteel persona.

Check out the new Codex Infernum and Codex Exaltum!

Tiny Pebbles - Steve Chenault

There was a momentary euphoric feeling as I flew. I remember the board beneath me, at a dead stop. I can see the pavement too, cavorting in unnatural angles. The pavement swirled through my vision, then grass. I couldn't find the sky as my face closed with the earth and my feet dashed heavenward. Impact. The pavement bends me as my face grinds to a stop, but my torso still has a few inches left to ride.  Sliding, rolling, pin points of pain as the asphalt breaks away in small pieces sticking to me and pieces of me to it. 

By the time inertia took over, I lay a jumbled heap of limbs and tube socks. I remember the grass more than the sky, so I must have been on my face.

I limped back home. Half carrying, half riding the dinged-up penny board. Scraped and scratched, cursing tiny pebbles.

That would have been about 1978 and the world was a wild and wonderful place. We were living at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and my dad had just taken command of some aviation unit with the 101st (Air Mobile or Airborne, I can't remember what they were in those long ago days). The Cold War was on. New York seemed to be perpetually falling into blackouts. Disco was storming the coastal cities. Movies were a crazed mix of weird camera angles and psychedelic colors. Comic books were not yet the sole purview of the elite, and I had just picked up Green Lantern/Green Arrow 95. I dove into all things DC (and pavement, evidently), but latched onto Mike Grell's Warlord and a few others. Star Wars was out, sinking its talons into all things. And a little game called Dungeons & Dragons was beginning to get its stride.

Davis and I had been playing D&D for some few years. It was quickly becoming a passion of ours though it was just another game in the small pile of SPI and Avalon Hill games that Davis had either bought or found under the Christmas tree. I remember my first character was Tarzan. He had 7 companions, all named after the apes in Tarzan's band. I had been reading Tarzan since I was knee high to a jumping frog and devoured all things about the legendary Ape Man that I could.

I don't remember much about those early adventures. Snippets really. A vorpal blade. Some character burning on an X, tree of woe type thing. I remember Dwarven Glory by Wee Warriors and other crazed adventures. I shot Arioch with a machine gun. In those days the game was a contest of survival, not in the 'this is too hard' type of thing, but in that it was more of a wargame and in war you either lose or you win. For me it was a little different. It was about the glory.

I played my characters then even as I do now. I'm not worried about figuring things out, or finding the treasure, or marking up my characters. What I devoured in print, reflected how I played on paper. In every comic the Warlord was always on the attack. Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, had only ONE pre-requisite: he was fearless. And Tarzan. What's to say about Tarzan? He is the primeval will personified in literature. More so than Conan, or any other, Tarzan is a beast first. One of the Great Apes.  He was written by Burroughs to have human morality as a second tier benchmark at best. 

So I played my characters in those early days. In the wild blacked-out, disco-fueled, Blondie-filled days of the 1970s when the world seemed reckless and everything was possible. I played my characters that way and they died that way. Countless characters. Fallen in the quest for glory, soon replaced by another character equally charged.

That didn't change, even when later in '78 Davis picked up the AD&D Players Handbook. I don't know where he got it or why. I was with him when he bought the Monster Manual, but he got the PHB on his own. I do remember seeing it for the first time.

He was VERY excited, probably 13 years old. I was leaning over a bed, knees in the shag carpet, scribbling on my note paper. He handed me the book. Whatever he said is lost to time, other than something like "before we play again, you have to read this book."

I took the book. The red idol, lizard man, the warriors. Soaking it all in. I thumbed through it for a minute or so. "I'm not reading that." I gave it back to him and went back to scribbling on my character.

We were playing in a few minutes and no doubt my character was soon euphorically tumbling down some chasm in a mad fight with some epic monster he never stood a chance against. 

Those tiny pebbles.

Free Map! + Codex of Aihrde Expansions

Greetings from the Troll Dens,

We wanted to share an exciting development regarding our Aihrde: After Winter Dark campaign setting. We have been steadily working on our Codex of Aihrde Expansions: a series of setting expansion books that dive deeper into each of Aihrde's locales. These books offer adventure hooks, the detailed history of each region formatted usefully as it pertains to worldbuilding and adventure writing, terrain descriptions, and much more. 

We are extremely proud of Aihrde, as this campaign setting served as one of the founding cornerstones of Troll Lord Games (anyone remember that first Gen Con trip back in 2000?). That's why we're so excited to show you this updated map of Aihrde's many regions, all of which have either received their own expansion book or will soon. Here it is:

Additionally, we're excited to offer a free, updated PDF version of the Lands of Ursal Map from the Codex of Aihrde. This will be an ongoing process over the course of the next year; with each new expansion book Steve writes, we'll be making additions and adjustments to the Lands of Ursal map. Once an expansion is complete, we'll update the map accordingly and upload the latest version to the store where you can download it for free. This cycle will continue for about a year as the world of Aihrde continues to grow.

Please note, this update only applies to the free downloadable map—the printed map within the Codex of Aihrde itself will only be updated once all the expansion books are complete. We love printing maps of Aihrde, but not enough to print a million different versions as all the expansion books are being completed 😂 Just know you'll always be able to download the most recent version for free in our store!

As always, thank you all for your support of Aihrde and our efforts over the past 26 years. If you're interested in the Aihrde campaign setting, do check out the Codex of Aihrde or any of our current expansion books. Live readings of the Codex of Aihrde and other Aihrdian ficiton take place every Wednesday at 7pm CST.

All the best,

The Troll Lords

The Factory: Postponed, But Still Coming

Greetings from the Dens!

You may have noticed our silence on this campaign; we’ve had a lot going on behind the scenes, much of it out of our control. But long story short, we were set to begin building. We hooked the camera up and watched as the first equipment was unloaded. About then things came to a halt as the permitting process ran into some snags. Several weeks of back and forth saw an increase in the overall price of the project amounting to about $30,000 (which means $45,000 by the time it is done), and that put us uncomfortably over a threshold I had imposed on the build cost ($350,000).  Coupled with all the new equipment costs we’ve taken on, it raised some serious red flags.

After giving it a great deal of thought, I decided to shut the current build down. I do not feel TLG can risk the companies’ finances when we have so many commitments to the wider gaming community (Castle Zagyg, Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds, and the Adventurers Backpack, and Barsoom, for instance).  The current build is shut down, and this campaign will follow in the next few days. I do not want to take any pledged funds and end up sitting on them for what could be a week or a year. 

So where does that leave us? We are back to square one with a great deal of experience in our pockets and have a better understanding of the lay of the land. We have put the Beebe land up for sale and are currently looking for another yard to play in. Hopefully it won’t take long, though things are hopping here in Arkansas. Everyone and their dog has decided to move here! Ha, it a beautiful state.

As we are not in any way shape or form giving up the idea of getting the names of supporters installed into our new build, we have set up a new sign up page. If you are interested in a future commitment, just hop over and join the list. We won’t be emailing you or contacting you unless we have land and have begun the build or bought a building. You can find that page here: https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/3e1af271-336e-413b-8d10-e7ccbbf907df/landing

We wish to offer a hobbit-style thank you for the support and help you have already shown. We are only at the beginning of this adventure and a little setback is nothing more than a chance to catch one’s breath.

Thank you ALL!! Trollzah!!

Steve Chenault

CEO

Troll Lord Games

An Important Update re: The TLG Factory

Greetings from the Troll Dens,

We have some interesting news. A little bit of a setback, but nothing the trolls aren’t used to.

As many of you know, particularly those backing this campaign, Troll Lord Games purchased a 5-acre plot last spring and have been working toward building our print facility and warehouse there. Once purchased, we set about designing two buildings and then began the financing process. Expecting about a 30 day turn around, we were all keyed up to go forward. Of course, the bank took a month’s worth of Sundays to get the loan worked up, but after a long wait and a small mountain of cash for closing on the loan, we were good to go. 

Last week we installed the webcam and live streamed from the site of the build for a half hour. Those who tuned in could see a dozer sitting there ready to begin scrapping.

Enter the city planning commission. Turns out they updated the building codes back in June, unbeknownst to me or the contractor. Suddenly our building was illegal and we were denied a permit. The changes the city required were not to my liking nor to the betterment of the building. Even if they were, our bank loan was tied to a specific build and would not apply to a new build; we would have to begin that lengthy process all over again.

With that we were left with a choice. Change the building design to meet the new regulations, increase cost significantly, loose the loan, and start all over again; or sell the land and move the project.

I have opted for the latter. If we are lucky, we can sell the original 5 acres for more than we paid and use that money toward the build. But what this means is that we are going to be delayed a spell until we find a new spot. Hopefully that doesn’t take very long.

Where does that leave your pledge? Nothing changes. We are going forward with the build regardless; it’s just delayed again. We have asked Backerkit to extend the campaign so that you are not charged in a few weeks during this time of crazy turmoil. To no one’s surprise here, they have generously done so; we are incredibly grateful for support of Backerkit’s team.

This journey has been one wild ride, and both I personally and the trolls in general have encountered a host of new challenges, problems, and twists and turns. It’s like we are actually playing Paper and Landscapes, a game of building in the modern world! 

I’m glad you all are along for the ride though! Never worry! We’ll get there. The trolls always do.