Mystical Shadow Warrior Art
Even the words to describe the mystical shadow warrior art cannot be translated directly into languages foreign to Japan. Nin of ninjutsu and ninja, a single simple sound in Japanese, requires extensive English words to be explained. At its most elementary level, nin (also pronounced shinobi) can mean endurance, perserverance, and forbearance in both the physical and mental realms. Nin has a second dictionary definition of stealth, secretness, or concealment. The Japanese ideogram for nin…is composed of the lesser ideograms…for “blade” and…”heart.” The construction of the written character implies that the heart, or will, is channeled and directed in ways that give it the effectiveness of the blade as a tool for accomplishment. In this broader sense of the concept, nin really means to be in control of one’s body, mind, and perception of right and wrong.
It is easy to at least discuss being in control of one’s body, and it has become quite fashionable in the West to discuss personal responsibility in the control of one’s mind and emotions, but being in control of one’s perception of right and wrong, or what is appropriate, is a more difficult matter. To be in control of one’s perception of appropriateness is to be able to rely on one’s “sixth sense” and to have a working knowledge of one’s subconscious level of thinking. This broader perception of reality being based on one’s own unique viewpoint is what set the ninja apart from the conventional military tacticians during the warring states and feudal eras of Japan.
The eighteen levels of training were as follows:
- seinshin teki kyoyo (spiritual refinement)…
- tai-jutsu (unarmed combat)…
- ninja ken (ninja sword)…
- bo-jutsu (stick and staff fighting)…
- shuriken-jutsu (throwing blades)…
- yari-jutsu (spear fighting)…
- naginata-jutsu (halberd fighting)…
- kusari-jutsu (chain and sickle weapon)…
- kayaku-jutsu (fire and explosives)…
- henso-jutsu (disguise and impersonation)…
- shinobi-iri (stealth and entering methods)…
- ba-jutsu (horsemanship)…
- sui-ren (water training)…
- bo-ryaku (strategy)…
- cho ho (espionage)…
- inton-jutsu (escape and concealment)…
- ten-mon (meteorology)…
- chi-mon (geography)…
Though not listed as a separate item in the eighteen qualities above, a crucial part of the Togakure ryu ninja’s training was the application of the kyojitsu tenkan ho philosophy. In the world of combat survival, the superior fighter makes use of all advantages at hand, including the influences of the mind. As a means of increasing the difficulty for an enemy, ninja of old developed the strategy of kyojitsu tenkan ho, or the interchange of the concepts of falsehood and actuality. A strategy for winning that relies on the presentation of truth and falsehood in ways that permit the antagonist to be deceived, kyojitsu tenkan forms the basic approach for all ninjutsu activities and thinking.
Because the ninja is dealing freely with the concepts of truth and falsehood, fluidly bending one into the other, he must be well grounded in his own concept of reality. To prevent becoming lost, misguided, or swallowed up by his own deception or awareness altering, the ninja must maintain seishin, or purity of heart. In this sense, the word pure means “complete” or “total.” The ninja carries the truth in his heart, though he may appear in many psychological guises to others. His intentions remain resolute, though others may have no idea what those commitments entail. Because he is totally honest with himself at all levels of introspection, he can venture into the realm of falsehood and untruth without defiling himself or his spirit. He can willingly plunge into the cold darkness, knowing full well that he has the power to create his own light from the brightness he carries in his heart.
— Ninjitsu, pp. 10-18
Life Is Action
“Put the clubs away, Hardy,” [Rannulph Junah] said in a voice nearly inaudible. “I see no profit in them or this whole fool enterprise.”
I turned desperately to Bagger Vance. The caddie as always was the soul of composure. He motioned me to set the bag down, there in the dune grass beside the champion.
“Your mind is clearly in torment, Junah,” Bagger Vance spoke slowly and evenly. “Tell me please: what is the nature of your complaint?”
Junah glanced up sharply at this word, which seemed to trivialize his emotion. “It couldn’t be more obvious, could it?” He gestured toward the multitudes in their bright battle lines, visible across the linksland. “This whole endeavor is a freak show. A joke. What good will any of it do me, or anyone attached to it?”
“I perceive much good,” Bagger Vance replied in that same even tone. “But tell me more specifically, what is it you perceive?”
Junah’s eyes remained cast down. You could see his shoulders tremble and broaden as anger, long and deeply held, began to swell powerfully within him.
“‘Victory’ and ‘defeat'”—he spat the words with revulsion, as if their very sound were obscene—”I’m sick to death of them, and of men contending as if there was any difference between them! What good ever came of human beings facing one another in conflict? To see men of such stature as Jones and Hagen steeling themselves for this child’s game, it was all I could do to keep from howling with hysteria, or despair, which would have been more appropriate. While the world is coming apart, our countrymen starving by the millions…here we disport ourselves, chasing a dimpled ball across a millionaire’s playground. And for what? An heiress’ greed and desperation? A few dollars to be scraped from our visitors’ pockets, the pathetic need of Savannah’s war-haunted psyche to ‘redeem itself’—and through my efforts! I won’t do it. I won’t be a part of this circus.
“They’re here for blood,” he said, gesturing with contempt toward the distant hosts, “make no mistake about it. To see men contend against each other, hoping to watch one or all be torn and fall. This is war, for all its summer cottons and ladies’ frocks, and nothing good ever came from that.” Junah’s hands were trembling. He ran them in pain through his hair, eyes gazing hollowly before him into the dunes. “What is ever gained by ‘defeating’ others? What can be gained here today? If I win I take no pleasure, and if I lose…”
Here Junah’s voice choked and broke off; not, one felt, with the thought of his own possible defeat or disgrace, but with the overweening futility of contention itself, which even at my tender age I could see he had wrestled with long and hard.
Junah’s eyes rose now and met Bagger Vance’s. “I have been a warrior,” he said in a voice tremulous with emotion. “I have fought, and nearly died, in battles as grave and calamitous as any in the history of man. I have seen friends perish, and enemies who might have been friends but for the madness of war. I will never take up arms again”—he gestured toward the bag and its clubs—”even surrogates as preposterous as these.”
Saying this, Junah slumped yet deeper onto the running board, his mind tormented by grief.
Now Bagger Vance spoke. “This conduct is disgraceful,” he said. “Unworthy of any man, but more so of you, Rannulph Junah, whom I hold dear and bless beyond all others. Get ahold of yourself! It provokes me to fury, to see you cast down your eyes and give voice to such ignoble thoughts!”
Vance’s tone had changed utterly. He did not, and never did in my hearing, regress to rage; rather he spoke with a fiery primordial force and emphasis. Junah’s eyes rose again, shaken by the tone of his servant’s voice.
“What do you know of life?” Bagger Vance stood before the champion. “Are you a god that you have plumbed the depths of existence’s meaning? What statement can you make about what is real or important? Have you pierced the veil? When you have, then you may display the temerity to which you now presume! Despair. Death. You know nothing of them! Are you a god? Then shut up and do your duty!”
Junah started to speak, but Bagger Vance’s force overrode him. “What if I tell you that before a thimbleful of sand has slipped through the glass, one of your opponents today will need another man’s hand simply to rise from his chair…and the other will have passed into eternity? What if I tell you of your own death? And how swiftly it follows on the heels of this disgraceful moment?
“And war, since you yourself raise the subject. Shall I tell you of another conflagration coming—soon, Junah, soon—which will dwarf your Great War, breaking nations and peoples in their millions and culminating in horrors beyond the race’s imagining?”
Junah’s countenance was now chastened, even fearstruck. He looked up at his servant, with pure heartbreak in his eyes. “You upbraid me as if I were a child, and no doubt I deserve it. But please don’t abandon me. Do you think I want to feel these awful emotions, that I take pleasure in the desperate conclusions my heart leads me to? I’m lost, Bagger. Help me, my friend and mentor. Tell me what I must do.”
Across the dunes now sped a Krewe Island station car, a marshal’s vehicle, with a blue-blazered official driving and Dougal McDermott white-faced in the passenger seat. Its high undercarriage skimmed clear, approaching fast over the tufted greenskeeper’s road.
It was coming for us. Beyond, we could see the galleries massed in readiness, swollen to six and seven deep along the first fairway. Jones and Hagen had finished on the practice green. You could see their party, moving along the crested path to the first tee.
“We have spoken in jest many times, you and I,” Bagger Vance addressed Junah, “about why I initially attached myself to you, and why I’ve never strayed far from your side all these years. It was for this day, Junah. As we go, I will teach you.”
He nodded to me; I bent to the golf bag and passed it to him. Bagger Vance set it upright before the champion, its hickory-shafted irons flashing like quivered arrows in the sun. The Krewe Island car pulled up alongside us. Across the duneland you could hear the galleries cheer as Hagen and Jones approached the first tee.
“Your heart is kind, Junah. You have seen the agony of war and you wish never again to harm anything or anyone. So you choose not to act. As if by that choice, you will cause no harm.”
“This intention is admirable as far as it goes, but it fails to apprehend the deeper imperative of life. Life is action, Junah. Even choosing not to act, we act. We cannot do otherwise. Therefore act with vigor!”
Vance glanced once to McDermott, to let the professional know we were coming. Then he turned back to his champion.
“Stand now, Junah, and take your place. Do honor to yourself and to your station!”
— The Legend of Bagger Vance, Chapter 13
Three-Field Crop Rotation
It may have been the effect of the plough and the need to feed more draught animals as its use spread that gave rise to a practice that some think caused the centre of European wealth and power to move north of the Alps. The practice was that of running three fields at once. For centuries it had been customary to run two fields: one to grow crops on, and one left fallow for the animals to graze and fertilize with their droppings. With an increase both in population and in the number of animals being used, it may have been the need for more food than could be provided simply by assarting that caused the change to three-field rotation. It may also have been the fact that, unlike the Mediterranean, the north has enough rain in the summer to water an extra crop. Whatever the reason, the new system was to sow oats and legumes (beans or peas) in the spring, and cereals in the autumn, letting the third field lie fallow. Until then the population had lived mostly on cereals, and so legumes were an important addition to their diet. (Small wonder that one eminent historian has described the Middle Ages as being full of beans.) The advantage of legumes is that they fix their own nitrogen from the air, thus being self-fertilizing, and enrich the trace elements in the soil. They also provide a diet rich in protein, or amino acids. With the combination of carbohydrates from cereals, fats from animals, and the 50 per cent increase in output from the three-field system, the population of Europe took off. The way people lived began to change very much for the better.
— Connections, pp. 65-66
Nailed Horseshoe Was Innovative
The other innovation that came to agriculture at much the same time as the [horse-drawn plow] was the nailed horseshoe, and its origins are equally doubtful. Some dated in the ninth century [C.E.] have been found in Siberia, and there are references from the same period to their appearance in Byzantium. By the eleventh century the horseshoe was in use in Europe. Its effect was to put the horse to work in all weathers and over all terrain, for it protected the animal’s feet against both rough ground and foot rot. The horseshoe also permitted horses to be used more for transport, and because people could now ride their draught animals to the fields at a reasonable speed they could afford to live further away from them. The villages grew, as the peasants sought the benefits of community living.
— Connections, pp. 65
As Armor Improved, Swords Became Less Effective
As armor improved, and more and more foot soldiers as well as knights were equipped with it, the sword became less and less effective as a weapon. To a degree this was acceptable, because in many medieval fights between knights the object was not to kill your opponent, but rather to render him helpless so that he could be captured. After all, when ransomed he was worth a great deal of money! Another very valid reason for this “compassion” was that if you started killing others of the aristocracy, you might very well be killed yourself!
— The Book of Swords, p. 65
Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: the Lore
The original lore of 1981’s Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord computer roleplaying game (CRPG):
The land of Llylgamyn is the basis of many legends. It is the center of commerce throughout the land, and home of the academy where some of the bravest warriors are trained. In its early days it was a monarchy ruled by the royal family, but as time passed the power shifted to aristocrats and theocrats, and eventually the royal family became more symbolic then anything else.
Under a more democratic system, the High Council of Sages appointed an Overlord to govern over the kingdom. With that, the power of the royal family diminished almost completely. The Overlord was a former warrior of the realm, and a local hero. His name was Trebor. At first everything seemed well, but as time went by Trebor’s thirst for power began to show. He began searching for ways to expand his rule. He learned of an ancient amulet held in a forgotten temple somewhere outside of the kingdom. Eventually, through unknown means he was able to find its hidden location. He gathered his best men and sent them on a mission to retrieve this legendary artifact. They returned successful. Trebor, however, was not the only person who wanted this artifact. Only hours behind him in reaching its original destination was the…wizard Werdna…. When Werdna discovered that someone had found the amulet before him he grew very angry. Using his magic he was able to discover its new location. That evening the Wizard made his assault on Overlord’s Castle. Making himself invisible he was able to sneak past Trebor’s guards. He found the overlord sitting in his throne room with a group of sages studying the amulet. Werdna cast a powerful spell that made Trebor and everyone in his immediate vicinity frozen with fear. With Trebor unable to move, Werdna plucked the amulet right from his hands and left the castle.
Werdna knew that once the Trebor regained his senses he would be prime suspect. He couldn’t return to his tower, he needed a new hiding place. That’s when he was struck with a brilliant idea. Werdna decided to use to amulet to make a new home right beneath the city of Llylgamyn! There was enough underground mining activity already, he should go unnoticed. Upon the thought of this very plan, the amulet began to glow. Suddenly there was tremendous earthquake, and in a flash Werdna found himself in a giant…labyrinth in the ground below the city. Summoning monsters to be his allies Werdna explored his way to the lowest depths and made a home where he would be able to study the powers of the amulet undisturbed.
After losing the amulet and discovering the existence of the mysterious maze beneath his city, Trebor became unhinged. His madness grew daily, all he could think of was getting his amulet back. He called for the greatest warriors in the realm to enter the maze and find Werdna, but the monsters grew greater in numbers and they began to spread to even the highest depths of the maze.
A year after the discovery of the maze, Trebor had managed to secure the first four floors. Most of the warriors who tried to journey deeper were never seen again, those that were returned with their minds warped, speaking of demons and dark magic. Trebor ordered the passages to the deeper layers of the maze to be magically sealed, thus preventing these creatures from making their way to the town. He also ordered that traps be set on the first three layers. Upon completion, Trebor declared the maze his own personal proving grounds. New cadets enrolled in the training academy would be offered the opportunity to brave the maze. Those that could find the secret he had hidden for them would be rewarded. Trebor decided he could use the maze as a test, those that would be able to able to make their way to the fourth floor would be deemed worthy and told the truth about Werdna and the amulet. They would be given the chance to go deeper into the maze. If they could return with the amulet, they would be inducted as members of Trebor’s Personal Guard.
It has been five years since the disappearance of the amulet, and this time it is your characters that have volunteered to challenge the maze.
Torches Are Not the Best Idea in Dungeons
Torches, these are easy to make, and we’ve done it! They suck. The fire itself blinds you, in fiction, they always have the person in the lead carrying the torch, but it should be the person in the back, though it does get passed around a lot. The torch-bearer really can’t see very far, you can’t even see the ground which is a problem, and it is harder than you think to hold a torch above your head and out of your eyes. Even a lantern will do the same thing unless it is fixed with a shield, you don’t want the light to be too bright, just bright enough….
In regards to cave exploration, torches aren’t the best idea. The best option is a candle, low levels of light to highlight your surroundings. They told you more than just your surroundings, the flame is sensitive to changes in air quality, professional miners preferred candles to lanterns, it wasn’t just budget concerns….
— Torches: We are doing them wrong – Advanced Gaming & Theory
A Knight Proven in Battle
[Ivanhoe arrives on the field unexpectedly, and is verbally challenged.]Templar herald:Your name! Your rank! Your purpose!Ivanhoe:I am Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a knight proven in battle. I am here to sustain with lance and sword the just rights of the young woman, Rebecca—and to defy Sir Brian Guilbert as a liar, a traitor, and a murderer!— “Ivanhoe” (1982)
The Seven Liberal Arts
The reaction of the Carthaginian proconsul Martianus Capella to the fall of Rome was more pragmatic. He saw that the expansive, public life of the Empire was gone for good. If the Romans were to survive at all, it would be in a very different world,with everything on a much smaller scale. Without the centralising influence of Rome, the Empire would be fragmented into tiny states and cities that would have to exist autonomously on limited resources. They would need condensed forms of Roman knowledge to help them.
Such a condensation was Capella’s packaged version, in nine volumes, of the imperial school curriculum. That course had been divided into two sections, the first of which contained all the rules for the teaching of the primary subjects of rhetoric, grammar and argument. These had been the staple of early instruction in an expanding Roman imperialist society with a need to win over conquered tribes with oratory, teach them Latin, and formulate complex legislation to hold everything together.
To these three early subjects Capella added four more from the Empire’s later years. As Rome grew it had become necessary to expand the school curriculum with more practical subjects relevant to the day to day organisation of sophisticated urban life. Music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy were added. These subjects formed the advanced studies. Capella’s book detailed these seven subjects, which were known as the seven liberal arts, together with an encyclopedic anthology of all the facts relating to them. His work was to become standard reference for education for the next six centuries.
— The Day the Universe Changed, Chapter 2
Youth Knew No Restraint, and Despised Prudence
…Roland had bound himself in ways that he could not begin to understand. Not only to Merlin, but to all that Merlin had done, both good and ill. And—
“Child,” Merlin said in the vast silence after the oath, “be wary. Oh, be wary! The sorcerer who made me, who through your foremother bound me, is still alive. He is still powerful, though never what he was before Parsifal cast him down. That is why I was guarded—as the Grail was, to protect me from him. That is why Nimue and our daughter and our granddaughter stayed hidden here. We are all safe in this place, as the Grail is safe in its stronghold. But if we are betrayed—if the sorcerer finds us—”
“Let him find us,” said Roland in the arrogance of his youth. “He’s grown weak. We’re strong. And maybe, if he’s destroyed forever, all magics that he made will be destroyed, too. And that will free you from your prison.”
“Child,” Merlin began, but he could not go on. He should have known. He should have waited till the boy was older to tell him this of all stories—till the boy was a man, and preferably a man of ample years. Youth knew no restraint, and despised prudence.
But it was done, and could not be undone. Nor was Roland strong enough yet to break the spell. Maybe he would never be—and maybe the enemy would never find him. Even when, as he must, he went out into the world; when he took up the lordship that was his by right, and stood up before his peers and his king, and made himself known to them by name and face.
— Kingdom of the Grail, Prelude
Spears, Glaives, and Halberds
The most common infantry weapon remained the spear, which changed name and appearance according to its place of use in Europe, although it was always characterized by a sharp point. The pike, a long spear, which had been so important in the Macedonian armies of the Hellenistic period, returned to dominate the battlefields of Europe under the Swiss by the mid-fifteenth century [C.E.], but was used rarely before that. When it reappeared, it was associated with other weapons: the glaive, the bill, and the halberd. [They] were among the medieval contributions to warfare, developed from the application of the agricultural bill-hook to a pole. Around 1300 or so we find the first variations on this simple instrument. In the case of the glaive, the metal component became longer and included, besides the hook, a long spear in front and a shorter one at the back of the blade. The halberd became something like a great axe with a spearlike top and usually a hook on the back of the axe blade. Both glaive and halberd became deadly instruments against cavalrymen, for they could bring down a horse and finish a horseman who fell to the ground.
— Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, p. 135
An Armored Division Can Have Too Many Tanks
Ultimately, the most important organizational fact about armored divisions is not the number of tanks on hand; indeed a division can have too many tanks. In order to operate with maximal effectiveness, the tanks have to be supported by other arms such as, infantry, artillery, engineers, and so forth. Experience has demonstrated that the critical factors in mechanized organization are
- a rough parity among the numbers of tank, infantry, and artillery battalions, in the ratio 1:1:1, and
- that all elements be equally mobile. This greatly enhances tactical flexibility and enables the division to hold the ground it takes, a task that tanks cannot do without infantry, as tanks are most effective attacking, not defending.
To further strengthen the ability of an armored division to perform its duties it ought to have a strong reconnaissance element able to seek out and secure information. Ideally, a reconnaissance battalion ought to be something of an armored division in miniature, with tank, artillery, and infantry elements enabling it to fight for information when necessary. Similarly, an armored division requires considerable support from engineer and signal troops, the former to facilitate overcoming natural and tactical obstacles, and the latter to keep the fast-moving elements of the division in constant communication. On this basis, it can be seen that most of the divisions formed in the prewar years were deficient in some form or another.
— Dirty Secrets of World War II, Chapter 1
The Influence of the State Did Not Reach Into the Lives of Individuals
The influence of the state did not usually reach far into the lives of individuals. When frontier provinces changed hands at the end of a war, the affair was normally managed with a sedulous regard for established local institutions, so that from being an ‘Austrian’ you could find that you had become a ‘Sardinian’ without noticing any difference in your everyday routine. We are a world removed from the twentieth century, when wars have frequently been fought with the purpose of eliminating the core area of an enemy state and imposing an alien regime and ideology.
Blurred Line Between Medicine and Magic
The line between medicine and magic was blurred in ancient Egypt, and priests of Sekhmet often also acted as doctors. In the absence of effective remedies to cure many ailments, they turned to spells and rituals. Some magic was “sympathetic,” using curative substances that were similar to the perceived cause of the ailment, such as dung to alleviate gut problems.
Magicians used spells either as a direct measure, such as “ordering” a stuck bone to leave the patient’s throat, or indirectly, for instance, telling the spirit (often identified as a foreign demon) responsible for the illness to leave the sick person. Amulets were also placed on afflicted parts of the body or used to stave off illness.
Death was the greatest challenge. Observances on behalf of the dead were elaborate, at least for the elite, and aimed to unite the ka and ba, the two parts of the soul, in death. Incantations and mummification were carried out to protect the ka, the life source, and to release the ba, which contained a person’s character, on its journey to the underworld.
For kings, Pyramid Texts, written down from the 27th century BCE, let their souls fight demons, pay off otherworldly boatmen, and reach the next life. It was another 600 years before texts appeared offering magical protection to a wider section of society.
— A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, A Universal Force
No Two Copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead Are the Same
In ancient Egyptian belief, the ba (the element of the soul that contained the personality of the deceased) faced a series of trials on its journey to the underworld. Failing these trials would mean a second death—obliterating earthly memory of the deceased, who would wander as a ghost forever. To avoid this second death, the Egyptians covered the walls of their tombs with The Book of the Dead, texts containing spells for the soul’s protection. The scene here shows the ba (in white) accompanied by jackal-headed Anubis, who watches the soul’s sins being weighed against a feather. If the sins are heavier, the ba will be devoured by Ammit, a crocodile-headed demon.
The Book of the Dead was never codified and no two copies are the same. Each was composed at a patron’s request, incorporating prayers that best reflected the individual in order to help them in the afterlife. Composition of Books of the Dead began around 1700 BCE, replacing earlier texts. Spells were added until a body of around 200 became common by about 1500 BCE. Contained in scrolls up to 22 yd (20 m) in length for commoners, or for royalty painted on tomb walls, the spells were said to be spoken by the ba at key points along its journey. Spell 4 is to let the ba turn into a snake, Spell 89 to return to the tomb at night, and Spell 98 to grant it passage on a ferry to the underworld. So powerful was ancient Egyptian belief in their efficacy that the scrolls were popular until the Roman conquest in 30 BCE.
— A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, Spells For the Afterlife
A Knight Would Have a String of Horses
[An eleventh century, C.E.,] knight would look to have a string of horses: a palfrey for everyday travel, a war-horse for combat (not yet the immensely heavy horses of later medieval warriors), mounts for servants and baggage which in Spain would often be mules rather than horses because they consume less water.
— The Quest for El Cid, chapter 8
Potions of Healing Restore One-Quarter of Maximum Hit Points
I recently read Healing Potions Are Dumb (and how I fix them), and enjoyed both its analysis and proposed solution. Then an old thought came back to me.
I never played the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but one concept from it always impressed me: Healing Surges. Specifically, that a Healing Surge restores one-quarter of a character’s maximum Hit Points. No more risk of bad dice rolls on healing spells.
That fixed proportion can easily be ported to apply to Potions of Healing in D&D 5e—in any edition, really, but especially in 5e where combat damage frequently outpaces healing abilities. This is a middle ground between the current rule and Nerdwerd’s maximalist option.
