Tag: commentary

…Since generosity is one of the marks of true nobility, supporting a large household brings status to the lord of the household. The lord will maintain as many people as he can feed, far more than necessary to do the actual work….

The most important members of this crowd are the retainers and officials of noble rank. In medieval society, there was absolutely no shame attached to performing the most menial services for a person of higher rank—to the contrary, it was an honor to be chosen for the task. Likewise, having retainers of noble blood increases the status of the castle’s lord. It is the goal of powerful lords to have as many noble retainers as possible, even for such mundane jobs as falconmaster. Exactly how many castle officials will be noble-born depends of course, on the castle-holder’s wealth and reputation….

Among the ranks of common-born servants in the castle there is a further distinction—between servitors, who have a certain amount of respect and position, and the crowd of peasant servants who do the actual daily labor. The servitors have a craft to offer, such as blacksmithing, cookery, or hunting technique. These skilled laborers hold their positions by hereditary right, passing the job down to their sons or daughters as long as they have heirs. Servitors are generally proud of their position and very loyal to their lord if he’s any kind of a decent man at all.

The servants, recruited from the peasantry on the manor, are treated like valuable farm animals. Kicks and curses are their daily lot from those above them in the hierarchy. They sleep wherever they can find a spot usually on the floor or on a table in the lord’s hall, or out in the stables. For wages, they receive food, one suit of clothes a year, and a few small coins at Christmas. Yet, odd though it seems to modern minds, being a servant in a castle is a sought-after job. Since status demands that the lord have more servants than are necessary for the work, no single servant works more than three or four hours a day—a much better lot than breaking one’s back on the farm. Servants are also assured of getting enough to eat, which is not the case for other peasants.

— Who Lives In That Castle?, Dragon Magazine, issue 80

My first magazine excerpt, and from the first issue of Dragon Magazine I ever owned.

Doctor Strange:

Kanna, I’m handing you the keys to my forge….

Kanna:

Is that a Faltine Furnace? Is that a Wall of Infinite Elements…?

— “Doctor Strange“, Volume 5, #8 (2019)

Used without permission.

Another wonderfully evocative name—completely self-explanatory but still mysterious.

Doctor Strange:

…I’m healing.

[He casts The Gorgerell Self-Healing Spell, from the Scroll of Melsalam.]

Help me prepare Hellstrom for a healing….

[He casts The Terranotti Healing Spell, from the Scroll of Melsalam.]

— “New Avengers” #2 (2010)

Used without permission.

I like the nuance that there are separate spells for healing yourself and healing others.

Nightmare:

Good-bye, Doctor Strange!

[Giant-sized Nightmare crushes Strange in his grip.]

Dagger:

Cloak—he—he just exploded—became so many streamers! …But the—the streamers are still fighting Nightmare!

Nightmare:

No, Strange! You can’t do this! You can’t trick me—

Doctor Strange:

But I can, Nightmare! This way, I can envelope you, limit you…

[Nightmare shrinks back down to human size.]

…until we are more evenly matched!

Nightmare:

Strange—you—you fool!

Doctor Strange:

Oh, I know! I have defiled my body with this black trick—I have warped my self and my spirit in terrible ways—but I am indeed fool enough to fight you whatever it takes!

Nightmare:

…You would rather make yourself pay the price for using dark magic than sacrifice others! Your false nobility will be your downfall!

…For all your prowess, Strange, you are still a mortal—full of trivialities, quirks, and limits! Even though you burst your bag of skin, you reweave it—if badly…!

— “Strange Tales” #7 (1987)

Used without permission.

This scene has stayed with me across the decades—and primarily the dialogue written by Bill Mantlo. Larry Alexander’s artwork shows a magic that probably should not have been performed, but Doctor Strange’s verbal admission of how it has defiled his body and warped his spirit is crucial. Paired with that is Nightmare’s taunting retort on how Strange can reweave his bag of skin—though only badly. So evocative.

But there were other men, too, men of a kind Walsingham had already begun cultivating during his time in France, men who lived deeper in the shadows, men who could be bought and sold and flattered into betrayal, men who, out of desperation or vanity or a longing to believe in their own importance—or, the cooler ones, out of simple businesslike calculation of what they possessed and what someone else would be willing to pay for—were prepared to undertake more shadowy tasks.

Some of these were simple enough transactions for a neophyte spymaster. Ambassador Walsingham once sought to bribe one of the French Ambassador’s men for news from Spain, a commonplace enough transaction: a good many hangers-on about the courts of Europe were the beneficiaries of such “pensions” from foreign princes. But even in those early days, Walsingham set afoot some more elaborate and dangerous games. There was a charade aimed at neutralizing the intrigues in France of a worrisome Irishman, Maurice Fitzgibbon, the former Archbishop of Casel; Walsingham sought out for the job a certain Captain Thomas, a mercenary who had fought for the King of France in the civil wars, an Irish émigré himself, a man presumed to be a good Catholic, and known to be well connected in the French Court. The deposed Archbishop was plainly seeking the help of the Guises for an Irish rebellion against their Protestant English rulers; Thomas offered his services to Casel in the convincing role of supportive fellow countryman. He then brilliantly poisoned the well, arranging an audience for Casel with the Cardinal of Lorraine, to which he ostentatiously accompanied the Archbishop. “Two days after,” Walsingham reported, recounting the tale with obvious satisfaction to Burghley, “the Captain was sent for by the Cardinal; and being demanded, what manner of man the Archbishop was, of what estimation in his country, answered to every point as I required him. Since that time, I learn, that the Cardinal maketh not that account of the Archbishop that he looked for at his hands.” So much for the Archbishop and his dreams of glory.

These kinds of services did not come for free; this was new territory, and it was a fight to get the Captain the reward Walsingham had promised him….

Sometimes Walsingham probably paid such men out of his own pocket and hoped to be reimbursed later, or not even that; any great gentleman maintained a household establishment of servants and messengers and secretaries and clerks, and the line between private and public duties was ever blurred. In France he had had an Italian servant, Jacobo Manucci, who kept working for him for years afterward, doing curious little jobs, keeping in touch with other Italians in Paris, and Milan, and the Azores, traveling to odd places—once to Constantinople, even….

But for the rougher and darker stuff there was no substitute for cash on the barrelhead, and men hungry enough or low enough to do what the more genteel neither would nor could. It was all well and good to rely on merchants and travelers for casual news, but when he wanted specific information about an Irish adventurer seeking Spanish help for an invasion and rebellion, Walsingham sought out a man to pose as a merchant, provided him with a ship and a cargo of corn, and dispatched him to Portugal: not a cheap enterprise. When it came to a scheme to kidnap the papal legate as he traveled to France by sea and interrogate him about papal plots, Walsingham thought that Huguenot pirates might do; in the end, he dropped that idea, but his reading of the men required for the task was right enough.

And though any Englishman abroad might pose as a malcontent Catholic refugee, an easy enough disguise, and thereby hope to work his way into the confidences of the Spanish and French and Italian and English-émigré circles, it was also easy enough to get killed in the process, and in ignoble enough ways that appealed to few idealists or well-born. A man named Best, in Walsingham’s service, befriended the Spanish Ambassador’s secretary in Paris under such a pretense; one night a suspiciously staged fracas erupted outside the embassy, and when the man went out into the street to investigate he was killed, the perpetrators vanishing into the night.

— Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Chapter 6

Emphases mine.

In a fantasy roleplay campaign world, most people are rogues. 😀

Ynyr:

We seek the Black Fortress.

Emerald Seer:

Such a vision will be opposed.

— “Krull” (1983)

Divination magic! And with complications! 😀

For the children of the samurai, training for their martial way of life began early…. Particularly between the ages of seven and eight they were encouraged to be sociable and cooperative with their playmates, and discouraged from being confrontational or overly self-absorbed. At nine and ten, they concentrated on more academic subjects like reading and writing, although from the age of seven they were likely to be studying regularly at temple school.

The serious work took place between the ages of ten and twelve, when the child’s day could include as many as twelve hours of work in subjects ranging from abstract academics to learning musical instruments or undergoing physical training.

By the time he was thirteen, he was ready to fight: more than one famous daimyō fought in his first engagement at this age….

— Samurai 1550-1600, p. 10

While discussing this excerpt last week with my brother, a comment of his gave me a crystal-clear mental image. He said, “remember our [American high school] freshmen football team.”

[In Japan, the] last half of the sixteenth century [C.E.] was a period of almost constant warfare; weapons training was more often than not done ‘on the job’. It was a sink or swim mentality, where warriors fought their first battles at a youthful age, and if they lived, they had learnt something for the next time. Tokugawa Ieyasu was a general at sixteen years of age.

Most who fought in the campaigns were in their late teens or twenties. Save the generals and the lords, samurai armies were very young in makeup. Few from the ranks attained a venerable age.

— Samurai 1550-1600, p. 15

Xenograg was also a general at age 16. 🙂

James Bond:

I’m posing as Koskov’s friend to see what leads I can get from her. You know he bought her a cello in New York called “The Lady Rose”.

Saunders:

A cello with a name?

James Bond:

It’s a Stradivarius. They all have names.

— “The Living Daylights” (1987)

I remembered this quote reading a Mastodon toot by SlyFlourish:

[Publius] Decius Mus [was an early] Roman [Republic consul] who, when faced with an impossible battle, vowed himself (according to an old ritual of human sacrifice) to the infernal gods, along with whoever he killed and who killed him. He then charged the enemy line singlehanded and opened a hole the Roman Army under the other consul (Rome in those days sometimes took the field with both presidents) then used to defeat the enemy.

— Legions of Hell, General Glossary

Now that is patriotism.

[Palpatine] ticked his fingers one by one. “I have kept the secret of your marriage all these years. The slaughter at the Tusken camp, you shared with me. I was there when you executed Count Dooku. And I know where you got the power to defeat him. You see? You have never needed to pretend with me, the way you must with your Jedi comrades. Do you understand that you need never hide anything from me? That I accept you exactly as you are?”

He spread his hands as though offering a hug. “Share with me the truth. Your absolute truth. Let yourself out, Anakin.”

“I—” Anakin shook his head. How many times had he dreamed of not having to pretend to be the perfect Jedi? But what else could he be? “I wouldn’t even know how to begin.”

“It’s quite simple, in the end: tell me what you want.”

Anakin squinted up at him. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t.” The last of the sunset haloed his ice-white hair and threw his face into shadow. “You’ve been trained to never think about that. The Jedi never ask what you want. They simply tell you what you’re supposed to want. They never give you a choice at all. That’s why they take their students—their victims—at an age so young that choice is meaningless. By the time a Padawan is old enough to choose, he has been so indoctrinated—so brainwashed—that he is incapable of even considering the question. But you’re different, Anakin. You had a real life, outside the Jedi Temple. You can break through the fog of lies the Jedi have pumped into your brain. I ask you again: what do you want?”

“I still don’t understand.”

“I am offering you…anything,” Palpatine said. “Ask, and it is yours. A glass of water? It’s yours. A bag full of Corusca gems? Yours. Look out the window behind me, Anakin. Pick something, and it’s yours.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“The time for jokes is past, Anakin. I have never been more serious.” Within the shadow that cloaked Palpatine’s face, Anakin could only just see the twin gleams of the Chancellor’s eyes. “Pick something. Anything.”

“All right…” Shrugging, frowning, still not understanding, Anakin looked out the window, looking for the most ridiculously expensive thing he could spot. “How about one of those new SoroSuub custom speeders—”

“Done.”

“Are you serious? You know how much one of those costs? You could practically outfit a battle cruiser—”

“Would you prefer a battle cruiser?”

Anakin went still. A cold void opened in his chest. In a small, cautious voice, he said, “How about the Senatorial Apartments?”

“A private apartment?”

Anakin shook his head, staring up at the twin gleams in the darkness on Palpatine’s face. “The whole building.”

Palpatine did not so much as blink. “Done.”

“It’s privately owned—”

“Not anymore.”

“You can’t just—”

“Yes, I can. It’s yours. Is there anything else? Name it.”

Anakin gazed blankly out into the gathering darkness. Stars began to shimmer through the haze of twilight. A constellation he recognized hung above the spires of the Jedi Temple.

“All right,” Anakin said softly. “Corellia. I’ll take Corellia.”

“The planet, or the whole system?”

Anakin stared.

“Anakin?”

“I just—” He shook his head blankly. “I can’t figure out if you’re kidding, or completely insane.”

“I am neither, Anakin. I am trying to impress upon you a fundamental truth of our relationship. A fundamental truth of yourself.”

“What if I really wanted the Corellian system? The whole Five Brothers—all of it?”

“Then it would be yours. You can have the whole sector, if you like.” The twin gleams within the shadow sharpened. “Do you understand, now? I will give you anything you want.”

The concept left him dizzy. “What if I wanted—what if I went along with Padme and her friends? What if I want the war to end?”

“Would tomorrow be too soon?”

“How—” Anakin couldn’t seem to get his breath. “How can you do that?”

“Right now, we are only discussing what. How is a different issue; we’ll come to that presently.”

Anakin sank deeper into the chair while he let everything sink deeper into his brain. If only his head would stop spinning—why did Palpatine have to start all this now?

This would all be easier to comprehend if the nightmares of Padme didn’t keep screaming inside his head.

“And in exchange?” he asked, finally. “What do I have to do?”

“You have to do what you want.”

“What I want?”

“Yes, Anakin. Yes. Exactly that. Only that. Do the one thing that the Jedi fear most: make up your own mind. Follow your own conscience. Do what you think is right. I know that you have been longing for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. Commit to that life. I know you burn for greater power than any Jedi can wield; give yourself permission to gain that power, and allow yourself license to use it. You have dreamed of leaving the Jedi Order, having a family of your own—one that is based on love, not on enforced rules of self-denial.”

“I—can’t…I can’t just…leave…”

“But you can.”

Anakin couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t blink.

He sat frozen. Even thought was impossible.

“You can have every one of your dreams. Turn aside from the lies of the Jedi, and follow the truth of yourself. Leave them. Join me on the path of true power. Be my friend, Anakin. Be my student. My apprentice….”

— Star Wars – Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Chapter 15

Author’s emphases.

The novelization truly redeems the film. Anakin is not a petulant man-child but a young man who is tormented by having seen too much war and having foreseen his wife’s death. Palpatine’s seduction occurs over years. This is the moment where the Lord of the Sith overtly tempts him.

The essence of all martial arts and military strategies is self-protection and the prevention of danger. Ninjutsu epitomizes the fullest concept of self-protection through martial training in that the ninja art deals with the protection of not only the physical body, but the mind and spirit as well. The way of the ninja is the way of enduring, surviving, and prevailing over all that would destroy one. More than merely delivering strikes and slashes, and deeper in significance than the simple out-witting of an enemy; ninjutsu is the way of attaining that which we need while making the world a better place. The skill of the ninja is the art of winning.

— Ninjitsu, p. 3

The author makes ninjitsu sound so appealing. Yet another grand master asserting his martial art is supreme. 🙂

Although military historians have tended to confine their attention to the formal engagements of the war [in the Low Countries], to the sieges, battles and major manoeuvres, these events formed only the tip of the iceberg of military conflict. Beneath the interplay of the big battalions, at least until 1590 [C.E.], smaller parties of troops fought, intrigued and killed ceaselessly for the control of villages. Spain’s piecemeal reconquest of the areas in rebellion in the first phase of the war created a jagged “floating” frontier, running from one fortified town to another, from one village to the next. Until 1594 the frontier ran from Groningen in the north down to Liège and then westwards to the Flemish sea-coast. All along this invisible line hostile parties of troops conducted a gruelling war of skirmish and surprise. In this situation…war became a matter of “fights, encounters, skirmishes, ambushes, an occasional battle, minor sieges, assaults, escalades, captures and surprises of towns”. It resembled a series of uncoordinated guerilla conflicts rather than a single full-scale war.

These localized dog-fights, this guerre aux vaches, was a highly intensive and exhausting form of warfare. It called for troops with an unusually high degree of endurance and experience. In battles or mass manoeuvres a commander required from his men corporate discipline, good order, careful drilling in certain collective movements and above all stoicism under fire. By contrast, for the skirmish and surprise of guerilla fighting, discipline and unit-organization hardly mattered: the critical qualities were independent excellence and complete familiarity with weapons.

Sixteenth-century commanders and military commentators naturally realized that these different forms of warfare required different types of soldier: one for routine garrison duty and mass manoeuvres, the other for guerilla action. On the whole they agreed that it was more difficult to find troops who excelled in skirmish-and-surprise, in what the English called the “actions” of war. For that veterans were required. The duke of Alva always insisted that some trained troops were indispensable for success in the Low Countries’ Wars because “One cannot fight any ‘actions’ with other troops—unless it comes to a pitched battle where entire formations are engaged.” To the duke’s mind (and he had a lifetime of experience to draw on) any troops could fight a battle but it required trained veterans to win a skirmish.

— The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659, pp. 12-13

Emphases mine.

Shall we say “adventurers?” 🙂

[El Cid confronts the soldiers taking Prince Alfonso to the dungeons of Zamora.]

El Cid:

Will you give me your prisoner, or must I take him?

Guard Leader:

[incredulous] There are thirteen of us, and you are alone.

El Cid:

What you do is against God’s law. Were you thirteen times thirteen, I would not be alone!

— “El Cid” (1961)

That last line is a declaration of a D&D paladin, if there ever was one.

Narrator:

That year, at dawn of the twenty-first day of the tenth month—the month without gods—the main armies clashed. It was in the mountains near Sekigahara, astride the North Road. By late afternoon, Toranaga had won the battle and the slaughter began.

Forty thousand heads were taken.

— “Shōgun” (1980)

The year is 1600 C.E.

The book and television mini-series are a fictionalized account of the events leading up to this historical battle which de facto unified Japan.

40,000 heads!

Lamont Cranston:

You know my real name?

The Tulku:

Yes. I also know that for as long as you can remember, you struggled against your own black heart and always lost. You watched your spirit, your very face, change as the beast claws its way out from within you. You are in great pain, aren’t you?

[Cranston leaps at the Tulku who magically avoids the attack.]

The Tulku:

You know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, for you have seen that evil in your own heart. Every man pays a price for redemption; this is yours.

Lamont Cranston:

I’m not looking for redemption.

The Tulku:

You have no choice. You will be redeemed, because I will teach you to use your black shadow to fight evil.

[Cranston continues to violently resist but only succeeds in exhausting himself.]

Lamont Cranston:

Am I in Hell?

The Tulku:

Not yet.

— “The Shadow” (1994)

An unique and fascinating concept: a holy man forcibly redeeming an evil man—a lost soul, really—through both great compassion and (implied) harsh discipline.

…[The Native American] self bow and the seventeenth-century musket had comparable effective ranges (50 yards optimum, 100 to 150 yards at the outside)….

…For Amerindians, because the bow or the musket had to serve in both war and the hunt, something in the technology had to satisfy the needs of both pursuits…. A musket ball was less likely than an arrow to be deflected by vegetation, and it also had a greater kinetic impact on the target. A deer hit with an arrow receives a very deep wound…, which, though eventually lethal, might require the hunter to pursue the bleeding deer for some distance. In contrast, a musket penetrates flesh, shatters bone, and creates a larger wound cavity. It “smacks,” whereas an arrow “slices….” A military musketball at 50 yards hits a target with 706 foot pounds of kinetic energy. An arrow from a typical modern bow hits at 50 yards with 50 to 80 foot pounds of energy. This is more than enough to penetrate flesh and tissue and produce a killing wound, but it is much less likely to drop an animal in its tracks.

The musket has similar advantages against humans. Much of a human target is limbs, especially when walls or trees are used to cover the trunk of the body. An arrow wound to the leg or arm is rarely lethal, although it can be debilitating. But a musketball strike to the arm or leg may shatter the bone and is more likely to carry debris into the wound, lead to infection, sepsis, and death.… In the immediate term, a man with a shattered leg or arm, flung to the ground by the weight of a musket shot, also makes a better target for being taken prisoner…. Unable to flee, he becomes vulnerable and may hold up his fellows trying to carry him away from the field…. More obviously, bullets cannot be dodged, whereas arrows in flight over any distance (especially on an arcing trajectory) can be seen and dodged. Modern film footage of the Dani people’s arrow and javelin battles in New Guinea shows this process clearly, and numerous European witnesses commented on the Amerindians’ ability to dodge arrows.

— Empires and Indigenes, pp. 56-58

Emphases mine.

Players of fantasy RPGs should note the quoted effective range for bows. Many games have much longer distances, but those are derived from battlefields where archers are loosing volleys at large enemy formations. Gamers should further note the ease of dodging an arrow at anything beyond short range.

The Ancient One:

Matter is energy which is all around us. Sorcery is simply the art of wielding that energy….

Control the forces around your hands, and limitations become irrelevant.

— “Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme” (2007)

Not eliminated. Just irrelevant.

Yoda:

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it; makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you: here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere….

— “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980)

Emphasis mine. This is the original, understated spirituality of the Star Wars saga.

Jean [de Carrouges]…held the rank of squire. Rather than the “gallant youth” this term often brings to mind, he was a battle-hardened veteran already in his forties, one of those “mature men of a rather heavy type—knights in all but name.”

By 1380 [C.E.], Jean…commanded his own troop of squires, numbering from four to as many as nine, in the campaigns to rid Normandy of the English. In war he sought to burnish his name and enrich himself by seizing booty and capturing prisoners to hold for ransom, a lucrative business in the fourteenth century. He may also have sought a knighthood, which would have doubled his pay on campaign…. [A] knight’s daily pay on campaign was one livre, while a squire received half that.

— The Last Duel, Chapter 1

Emphases mine.

A squire would not be knighted if he could not afford to maintain that higher station. Thus the drive for booty and ransom.