A Chalice of Stone

Another Gencon

 Another Gencon has passed, marking somewhere around 20 that TLG has attended, taking a slight hiatus as we did 2017 to some year. It was a good show. Very different than our first way back when in Milwaukee. There, or is it then, it was smaller, tighter and seemed filled with a wild abandon of what could bes. Like a newly opened frontier waiting for the intrepid explorer.

Now it is huge, 73,000 attendees I heard, with a vibe wholly different. Now there seems success at every turn and we are all part of some massive cultural movement . . . not so much a wave, as during or just after the wave, a seemingly never-ending surge into the worlds of worlds.

We've all come so far, but not so very far at all.

A House of Sorcery

He stole to the wilderness, in the shadows of the Holmgrad Mountains, a land that overlooked the Gray Coast. Here no man, nor dwarf, dwelt, for it was the haunt of frost giants in the winter and stone giants all year round; dragons, small and white, prowled the craggy rooftops. Coming to an ancient path he had discovered in his many adventures he followed it to a small hidden vale. He brought with him 4 goblins, skilled in the use of stone and water.

There he built his house.

But it was no house that one might take notice of, it was roofless and without walls. With sorcery he threw up walls of air so that no wind, no tempest, storm or fog could bother him. Deep beneath his feet he poisoned the earth, hardening it so that no beast could crawl up from below. For a roof he cast out a net and captured the light of the moon and the warmth of the sun, and his vale knew only a temperature he cast. A dweomer he cast over it all, anchoring it to the rocky walls and made the whole reflect light so that any who might see it, from any direction, saw beyond it or around it and took no notice.

And so his House of Sorcery came to be.

He cleared a small patch of earth and cast runes into it, hardening it to stone. He rooted the stonework deep into the stone as tooth in bone; it turned black from his sorcery. He summoned water with another rune for he knew the goblins worked best with water as their tool. More runes he lay into the earth, and at the last the rune of mirrors; the portal opened, taller than intended and wider still. He commanded it then to open upon the words: Heiga ish Ea Tumna. He stepped through and cast another, so that he could see into other realms. With his sight he saw many things and he set to casting runes to cross into other realms.

His home became a place of twisted misery, begrimed corruption; a caliginous stain of groping evil, whose every thought rose unfettered of consequence, stripped to its uttermost ruin. It drew creatures from the edge of hate, and they ever lingered on the edge of his House of Sorcery seeking they knew not what.

~ Tales of Aihrde, Of Trigal and his House

Dragon Rider

 

Gods & Monsters A Mystery

In building the TLG publication history on the Trollwiki I've run into a few mysteries. The latest is Gods and Monsters by James M. Ward.

I have three folders on this product. The first is TLG 8017 with a ton of text files in it. The second is TLG 8017-1 with a folder marked 2010, a price quote from a printer and the ad copy. The third is TLG 80172, with the actual print files in it, but no text or cover files. 

The copyright date on the book on the print file in folder 80172 is 2009. The price quote to have it printed, located in file TLG 8017-1 is 2012. It is not signed, though this is not unusual with me and the printer.

There is no print file in folders 8017 or 8017-1. 

The question begs if 2nd printing is 2012, when was the 1st? Or was the 1st in 2012.

Here is my best guess what has happened.

The original was printed in 2009. This might have been done in soft cover format in our shop. Then in 2012 we printed the second printing via Walsworth but failed to update the copy right date (those were hard years with just me, Tim, and peter on deck).

But that leaves TLG 8017-1 in the cold. It is probably one of two things: 

1) This would have been about the time that Tim and I were working on inhouse hardcovers. It was partially successful and I think Gods and Monsters fell into this experimental stage (along with CKG and Monsters & Treasure of Aihrde). The TLG 8017-1 is a stock code that represents the first hardcover printing of which there were only a few hundred.

2) I simply annotated the softcover with the -1 in order to mark the softcover version as the 1st printing.

Another option is that there was never a soft cover version, or the records for the original walsworth hardcover have been lost. 

It is a mystery that warrants some more investigation.

Horror

 

For the Fleetest Moment...

Just before noon they spied a gauzy stain in the distance, rising across the brilliant blue sky. There a flimsy smoke rose in no discernable pattern. Largely white, likely with several sources, the smoke acted more lazy than hazardous. 

Eurich took note and gently touched heels to Blue, picking up the pace. The heavy war horse obliged but did so with some noise of hoof upon the turf. Though he sensed the subtle change in his companion’s demeanor. 

Ava, spurring her paint to a trot pulled up alongside him. “Perhaps a more subtle approach.”

“Perhaps.” He did not slow his steed, but let her spur forward and ride alone across the wide vale. By the time he reached the center of the depression she had rode up its shallow flank, abandoned her horse, and crawled to the top of the rise for vantage. 

Folcgard’s pony kept pace with Blue, though with some effort.

As Eurich began crossing up the rise the lazy smoke turned black, rising in sudden violence, fed now by fierce heat and new fuel. Ava rose from where she lay, abandoning stealth, and walked a few steps forward, her short bow in hand. As Eurich passed the paint where it stood expectantly watching, that horse followed, capping the rise next to the ranger.

Eurich stopped. The rise gave way to a cacophony of clamorous violence. The bellow of a flame newly caught, terrified screams of a woman who hope had left but the fight had not, animals braying curses, the shouts of a child, and the resounding thud of iron on bone.

Down the long slope stood a small thorpe of stone and wood houses with sod roofs. Two of them burned, the fire having passed from the roofs to the walls. A third house stood untouched. A low wall lay upon the forest side, holding some sheep, a lone steer, and a milk cow that bellowed its fear. A smattering of men moved about, some bodies lay on the ground, one being cruelly hacked at by its assailant. Some distance from the violence, down on the slope beneath where Eurich stood, were two children. A small girl holding some mewling cat and a boy before her, maybe 10 or 12. The boy held a woodsman’s axe in hand and stood off a tall, gaunt-looking man who with a glaive resting on his shoulder approached them with the grim certitude that only those who murder without compunction carry.

“Do not kill the boy.” Eurich heard Ava say it, though her voice was soft and quiet. Even so, the man’s blade cut the boy down, the child’s axe held futilely in front of him. As he fell the door to the unburnt cabin burst asunder and a woman broke out, bloodied and disheveled, shouting some name the flames consumed. A man pursued her laughing, with wild gestures to the house, and his comrades. 

For the fleetest moment Ava saw Eurich’s face. The tensions of the long journey were gone, fear and hope, joy and loss, all left the man astride that steed, replaced now with a serenity one found on the death masks of the ancient Ethrum. But there was no serenity here, for a violence of rage washed over her from him, punctuated by the grating sound of his blade as he freed it from his scabbard. 

Blue felt it too, more so than any other creature in all the world. The transformation in his rider’s being was instant and passed through to the horse like a wave of constance. Even before the blade cleared the scabbard Blue’s muscles unwound and the primeval furor of the horse’s lust for dominion over all things was unleashed. 

The two launched down the hill before thought was put to deed.

The green turf flew and the ground shook. Such was the horse’s passage that Eurich’s helm, slung as it was on the saddle horn, fell away, thumping and tumbling after the mountain of muscle and steel that bore down upon the man and child. 

Ava leapt astride the paint, “Folcgard! Eurich’s to battle!” She tore after them.

The dwarf watched her vanish over the rise and with little thought dropped the mule’s lead and spurred his pony on. Stout and bred of a long line of sure-footed steeds the pony broke into a run faster than one might expect and bore the dwarf over the rise. He rode with hands free to uncase his long-hafted battle axe and opened up with a dirge of war that those folk of Norgorad Kam are like to sing before enjoining battle above ground or below.

Eurich bore down upon man and child, driving a tumult of wind before them. The man tossed the girl hard to the side and braced himself to drive the glaive into the horse’s broad chest. In mere seconds the horse crossed the space and was upon him. Blue lowered his head as if to ram the man and the bandit saw an opening, and lifted the glaive to smite the beast in the neck instead. It proved his undoing for in that moment of shifting hesitation from one obvious target to a smaller one the horse threw its head to the side the metal but grazed its neck and was thrown high. With that the force of the charge carried man and mount past the bandit, but not before Eurich in a cross-body swing decapitated the brigand, sending his head tumbling across the green sward.

Shouts of fear and consternation rose from the village as bandits spilled out of the house and from behind it, a dozen or more. Their easy raid turned foul but the promise of riches the knight bore in saddle and gear offered motivation to join this new fight.

The first of them stood his ground, sword, and shield in hand. The others rushed forward. Blue drove fully into the man, driving the shield upward into his chin, shattering his jaw even as his bones crumbled from the force of several thousand pounds of muscle and bone. The man fell beneath the horse, its charge unbroke as it trampled the man into the turf, driving hooves into the man’s groin, disemboweling him as it thundered into the tumult of the rest of his companions.

Eurich paid no heed to the madness beneath him but leaning forward he let his sword arm drop, the blade’s point nigh touching the ground. Even before they rode into the pack of bandits Ava’s arrows began to fall. One striking a shield, another the ground by the men, a third transfixing a bandit’s calf. She shot wild from horseback.

The knight plowed into the cluster, lifting his blade in a wide arc, he severed the arm of one man at the shoulder and brought the sword down to crash with ruin into another’s skull. Eurich broke through the press and plowed into the village wall knocking stones hither and yon. Turning he saw the bandits in full press rushing him. Turning Blue to the left he brought his sword arm to bear even as the first of them pressed in on him. He clove flesh, rent bone, and showered blood upon wall and yard. But they were hard on him, one upon the wall, another stabbing at Blue who in turn slung his massive blue-black head into the man’s face, breaking bone and rupturing the globe of his eye.

                                                                    ~ Excerpt from Pools of Dunhollow

It Wasn't the Chemical Brothers!

It was Tricky! 

Unlikely Encounters

The below is my favorite picture of my brother, Davis, and I. Now to clarity, Davis is the one that got me into RPGs back in the early '70s. We shared a room in those days, as middle children that's just what we did...I will point out everyone always calls Davis the middle child, but not me, there's just no justice in the world...shared a room, shared hobbies. 

Anyway. Many years later I was traveling back from Gary Con. Well, I think it was Gary Con, it might have been one of our own conventions. It was definately cold, as that is my field jacket on the seat between us. But I would have had it for Gary Con too.

We'll go with Gary Con. 

At any rate I was traveling from Lake Geneva, and took the bus from Kenosha down to O'Hare to catch my outgoing flight. Davis had left weeks before and had been traveling all over South East Asia. I had barely heard from him. Nor did I know when he was coming back. Just at some point in the near future, as is Davis' habit. 

While standing in security the phone rings and its my brother. He asks for updates. Where are we. What are we doing and so forth. I began giving him the updates. We chatted for a minute but both of us were having to dodge a lot of noise. I finally asked him where he was. "

"I'm in security at O'Hare."

"Fuck me. I'm at security at O'Hare."

"Which concourse?" 

I rattled that off. "What the fuck (we both cuss too much). I am too." Or some such dialogue. I then asked him to hold up his hand. He did so.

There he was, about 50 people in front of me.

We hung up and once through that nightmare went to catch our separate flights back to Little Rock, I think we were like 3 gates apart. 

That taught me too things. It is a small world. But also, its a troll-lord world!

The irony is we both got on our planes and then the weather shut us down for about four hours and we sat in those lovely metal tubes until take off.

Milk and Cereal

This wandered me back a few years.

Five Doors For Me

Five Doors for Me

Momma said to sweep the floor

But Dust I leave

Gegel Gegel Gegelmesh

Five doors for me.

Pappa said to chop the wood

But cold he will be

Gegel Gegel Gegelmesh

Five doors for me.

Momma said to fill the pail

But she will have no tea

Gegel Gegel Gegelmesh

Five doors for me.

Pappa said to close the gate

But goats go free

Gegel Gegel Gegelmesh

Five doors for me.

My folks said to feed the babe

But soon they will see

Gegel Gegel Gegelmesh

Five doors for me.

Note: The Gegelmesh is a word for the Five Pools of the Wretched Plains, where lies the Homeless House and where the damned dwell in bewildered torment. Five doors lead to these hellish planes, each a cavernous mouth of the dragon Huadan, a creature of Ornduhl’s spite. The Five Doors is a euphemism for hell. “Five Doors for Me” is a nursery rhyme taught to children, letting them know, that if they do not do their chores, they will go to hell.

This is a nursery rhyme where originates the saying "Five doors for me" which basically translates to "I'm going to hell." Said in jest or fun or fear as befits the speaker.