Gaming Interlude

I don’t suppose it will surprise anyone if I mention that for many years, I was a player of table-top role-playing games. Not the painted-miniature sort of things, but the complicated dice-rolling games. Like Dungeons and Dragons, yeah.

And it was a total fuckload of fun. (Why else would I bother?)

RPGs got a bad rap for a while there, associated heavily with the geekiest of nerddom. (Like I ever gave a flying fart.) But then, I was never one for memorising rules and arguing over which specialist combat table to use: I liked the storytelling aspect of the games, and I made the most of it. Made a lot of friends, spent a lot of time in imaginary worlds doing wild shit. List the games I’ve been part of... yeah, that would go on for a while. I’ve been superheroes and space travellers. I've played wizards and warriors and thieves and spies. I’ve been a half-mad monster-hunter with his trench-coat pockets full of dynamite. I’ve been a master of super-science, battling fiendish villains from the worst of the pulp fiction era. I’ve been good guys and bad guys, monsters and men of all kinds, and I completely goddam enjoyed myself.

When I shifted here to Tasmania, the gaming was something I knew I’d really miss. I figured I could stay in touch with friends; I was already used to living three hundred kilometres from them. But we still used to get together every month or so, break out the dice and lose a weekend to junk food and booze and wild storytelling. Down here? Well, I didn’t know anybody who might play, for starters. (Except Tansy. In Hobart. And that’s a long way when you’ve got kids.) And of course, it’s hard to explain to people who don’t understand why a man of forty-odd might want to play nerdy table-top games like that... so I quietly let that side of my life go, and got on with being a dad, and a writer, and a martial arts instructor, and all that other stuff.

Still. I really missed it. At its best, a good role-playing game is like fast-moving, plot-driven improv theatre. Everybody’s got a job, something to be or do to keep the story rolling along, and the game master has to be on top of things at all times. Keeping a tale unfolding while five or six different wannabe heroes are all trying to go in different directions and screw things up in their own unique fashion — that’s damned difficult. Holding their interest while you do it is even harder. And subtly guiding the whole show so that the story unrolls beautifully and the players think it’s all their own doing, and keeping it up for four or five hours at a stretch: that’s one hell of a challenge. Seriously: writing a novel is goddam difficult, but keeping a game campaign happening is one hell of a good way to practice.

So why am I mentioning this? Well... because I sorta figured that these games also do a lot more than entertain.

In a proper Role-Playing Game, the players must literally take on the problems and the personalities of their characters. They need to think ahead and plan carefully. They need to consider each other’s part in any action. They need to negotiate, often quite intensely. They need to be able to react quickly and improvise when needed. In short, a really good player has to show a range of complex thinking skills.

Then there’s the matter of imagination. There’s no screen here. Sure, some people play with miniatures and little wipe-clean map-boards to display terrain — but you don’t have to. In fact, that kind of thing just slows it down. All that business of measuring distances on a simulation surface... dull. Much better if the player asks ‘Am I close enough to jump over the table and punch out the drunken barbarian?', leaving it up to the Game Master to say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or add something else to it, such as ‘sure, but don’t forget there’s a big puddle of ale on the floor. Step in that and you’ll probably slip and fall instead of making the jump.’

The best games are a fluid, ever-changing narration negotiated between the Game Master and the players, with the dice providing (apparently) neutral moderation. They’re feats of concentration and vivid imagination, and they’re near as entertaining to listen in on as they are to be part of. The mental challenge they provide to the Game Master is a real kick; I always enjoyed that job. But more importantly, the wide range of mental challenges that a good RPG puts to the players is potentially very valuable.

Imagine you have a smart kid, hooked on imaginative narrative in a big way. Now imagine he lives in a small town where most of his contemporaries are far more interested in footy and whatever cartoon show is currently providing a crop of spin-off toys to K-mart. A smart kid, naturally talented in communication, can really be a handful. He can be highly manipulative, for example: not because he’s so very smart (if he was really smart, he’d soon learn that manipulation is a fool’s game) but because he can naturally and easily talk his way around most of the kids he knows. He can be moody, and sullen, and bored if he doesn’t get enough input. He can be temperamental. And while one day he will need adult levels of sophistication, right now most of the adults around him are more than impressed enough by his vocabulary and his eclectic general knowledge that he can get away with far too much.

That was me, age 10. Yep. And yes, that’s the Elder Son now, more or less.

By inclination he’s a decent kid. There’s no malice in him. But like any kid, he’s fundamentally self-focused, and since he can communicate quickly and think quickly, he very naturally uses his talents to manipulate situations and people to suit himself. Of course, that’s not super-easy at home. I remember this time of life, how it felt, what I wanted, and how I went about trying to achieve it. I have, in fact, a very unfair advantage in this game, and I’m sure it pisses Elder Son off no end. But at school? And elsewhere?

Imagine you took that kid, and in the guise of a game — a game that involved all his favourite kinds of magic and monsters, treasure and rescues, villains and heroes and exploration and all the wonderful stuff that goes with that kind of story-telling — you made it necessary for him to take on the role of an adult. A member of a team, or an interdependent group. Imagine now that the other players in that group need his skills and abilities to help them survive the story; and that he needs them just as much.

Now you know what I’m doing.

Today, I ran my first fantasy RPG session in maybe a decade. It involved Elder Son and Younger Son, and a couple of the very bright lads from down the hill, who are just a couple years older than my two. I’ve sketched up the basics of a useful set of rules, and I laid out the very simplest of plots and settings, and I expected it might go for two, maybe three hours.

It lasted four, and could easily have gone longer. The boys had a marvellous time. First they uncovered a changeling baby in a little coastal village. Then, realising that meant there must be a nest of vile gobliny evilness somewhere around, they teamed up with a local ranger-type, and tracked the goblins to an old, ruined Roman-era villa in the deep forest. By the time Natalie came home, Younger Son had sneaked in and recovered the baby while the others kept up a satisfyingly violent distraction...

The upshot? Very happy boys with lots of stories to tell. All kinds of odd bits of subtle history. (For example: did you know that a hypocaust is an ancient Roman system of central heating? The boys know that now: that was how Younger Son sneaked into the ruined villa.) Heaps of discussion and negotiation and turn-taking — nobody dominating the storyline, everybody taking part where they could. Planning ahead. Improvisation. Truckloads of imagination.

And then there’s me. Yeah, sure: I’m telling stories on the fly with a bunch of young kids. But you know what? They’re at least as challenging and imaginative as grown-up players would be. Maybe even more.

That was fun, and I’d earned it. I’ve worked damned hard these last two weeks of holidays, and hardly taken much time at all to be with the boys. It was great to spend an afternoon that way — and even better to see them learning to enjoy something I’ve had so much fun from down the years. We’ll do this again — or so I was told, with great vigour and enthusiasm — and I’m already looking forward to it.

Just for the hell of it, I’ll put the rules and the background information for the game here. I don’t think anybody needs ‘em. RPG systems are a dime a dozen, and then some. But who knows? Maybe someone else will see an opportunity to have some fun too.

What Is It With Cats And Vomit?

Goddam animal.

I hate that noise they make. You know the one: like someone quietly saying 'Ork! Ork! Ork' into a paper bag. You hear it from a room or two away, you know it's already too late. But you're gonna try. You've got to try. You dash in, jump over a piece of furniture, and there's the fucking cat. Hunched. Head down. Tail flat. And that goddam 'Ork! Ork! Ork!' shit keeps going on, and every time the cat says 'Ork' it's whole body jerks.

So you grab the cat around the middle, heave it up and sprint for the Great Outdoors, just in time for the Arrival Of The Grotesque. Cat gives a squirm, says 'Ork' a little louder, and suddenly you're holding not a cat, but a vaguely warm and furry sort of gun designed to project hideous and disgusting blobs of... stuff... at random around the room. Brown stuff. Cat-food scented stuff. Wet, sticky, fucking horrible stuff.

So you put the cat down somewhere relatively harmless, and you fetch the paper towels and the cleaning solution and the eucalyptus oil to kill the stink. You work at it for a minute or two, gathering all the gloppy lumps into a paper bundle that you can stuff into the garbage. Then you clean up the residue, and de-stench the place.

And when you look around, where's the cat? Oh, he's back at the food bowl, stuffing yet more pre-vomit mix into his furry fucking face. Mmmmm-yeah, love that crunchy kitty treat! Gotta get it in me, else what can I vomit all over the rug?

Crapulent animal.

Sunny winter's day today. Nat took the kids for a bike ride. More accurately, she rode to the neighbour's place, recruited STILL MORE kids, and went riding farther. I wanted to work in peace, but the moment Natalie and the kids looked like leaving, a couple visitors arrived. Oh, and the goddam dog broke his chain, and went chasing after Nat and the kids. I had to call him back, fix his chain, and tie him up. No way he can be allowed to go with them: he's completely bloody unreliable in the company of bicycles. They act on his tiny, doggy brain much as trampolines do: a total, intelligence-annihilating provocation of chaos. He simply cannot see a bicycle with a kid on it without trying to chew on the front tyre. Which is hard on the kid, hard on the bike, and even hard on the stupid dog (I've seen Elder Son run over the dog's face at least once), but it doesn't stop him. Dumbass dog.

Anyway, I wished the visitors good day, and zipped down the hill to Scottsdale. Got a new, stronger chain from the hardware store. Picked up dinner supplies in Woolworths. (We're having curried lamb and sweet potato tonight, with home-made pita bread and salad. The boys will love it. The daughter will spit chips, and be sent to bed early because her mother is not here.)

Halfway through the shopping, I got a phone call from Nat. She and the kids, having ridden a long way downhill, didn't want to make the ride back uphill -- and could I collect them on the way home?

Well, yeah. Naturally.

So I collected Nat, and my three, and two of the neighbours kids. Dropped off kids with neighbours. Headed home, ran the pump, did some gardening, set up the curry. Wrote for a bit. Washed laundry. Washed dishes. Put the trailer away properly once Natalie got back. (Yeah, I refused to go back down the hill and fetch the bikes from where they were left. Figured I didn't have to own that job.)

Now Natalie is off to the Launceston General. Or more accurately, she's off to Sunday Night music at the Royal Oak, but later she's going to do an all-nighter at the LGH, keeping up her skills in Obs/Gyn. So it's just me and the kids for the evening. Curry and Dr Who, and then when they finally go to bed, I get another couple thousand words in.

I hope.

In Space, No-One Can Hear You Fart

Presumably, anyway. Unless you leave your intercom open, I suppose.

I know. That isn't a spacesuit. But... I have no idea what the hell it really is. And the hideous turgor of the thing! Whatever that suit is, if she DID fart, the whole thing would probably just pop.

A Moment Or So To Spare

Working hard at the moment, trying to make up for lost time in writing and all. I'm way behind on emails, though. And Facebook? Don't make me laugh. I just don't have the time.

Today was good, even though it's School Holidays. Natalie did the morning in Launceston, at the hospital, and the kids went down to play with the Viking Brood at the nursery. Given most of the morning to myself, I achieved 3000 useful words. This is good.

I also did a lot of laundry, and nailed some more decking boards onto the landing in the garage. I've built a platform there at the back, rather than a stair up to the storage loft: a big, solid, deck-like landing, with a short ladder anchored to the building frame leading up to the loft, and another short ladder leading down. The dog can't climb ladders, and the landing is too high for him to jump up, so I can use the loft space without worrying about the stupid creature.

Wheels are turning fast now. I'm behind on virtually everything, I've got school holidays like a rash, and as soon as they end I'll be doing an Introductory Martial Arts Class at the primary school, just to take up one extra afternoon per week. Yeah. (Reminds me. Must send a copy of my paperwork to the relevant people...)

Anyway, I'm still alive and all. Elder Son got over his croop, for which we are all infinitely grateful. Oh, and there was an all-too-brief visit from the wonderful Rowena, along with her partner and the youngest of her Mighty Brood. We managed a kind of hectic post-lunch luncheon, with a bit of walking-around-in-the-rain thrown in, but it was definitely too short. Maybe next time.

Well, I've got an hour or two before bed yet so I'm going back to the writing. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this URL, which leads to an article on the ABC website. If you've been reading around here recently, you'll probably get a chuckle out of the viewpoint of the writer -- but he does state his case rather well, doesn't he?

RSPT: Money We Deserve

Not Good

Sick kids -- croop time.

Friends with dying parents.

Random arrivals needing airport collection.

Computer malfunctions.

"Scheduled power outages".

School holidays starting next week.

Natalie doing a raft of extra days at the hospital in Launceston for the ongoing obs/gyn stuff she needs to keep up.

And yes, you'll notice I haven't listed a single fucking thing relevant to my own ongoing activities so far.

I'll get back to you when I can.

A Tale Of Two Nations

The following images come from Norway. Norway is a large country in the Northern hemisphere, notable for regularly and routinely clocking into the top ten for life expectancy, quality of life, education, health, air quality, water quality, environmental quality and pretty much every other positive aspect of a decent human existence that ever gets polled and turned into a pretty graphic for the UN.

Pretty, aren't they?

Of course, Norway has an unfair advantage. When they realised they were sitting on a truly fucknormous oil field, the Norwegian government of the 1970s set up the State Oil company (Statoil) to handle the resource. The capital investments required to become a major oil producer and exporter were so great that the oilfields didn't actually become revenue positive until somewhere in the 1980s... but for some reason the Norwegians felt it was reasonable for their national government to bear the costs, develop the infrastructure, and do all the things that privately owned oil companies do elsewhere in the world.

Possibly they thought this was okay because they saw the oil as a national resource, which could be used for the benefit of the whole nation. Possibly they felt that a democratic government was more likely to look after the environment and not just the bottom line. Either way, the outcome was pretty good. Although Statoil was privatised in 2001, the Norwegian government - and hence, the people of Norway - remains the single largest shareholder. According to Wikipedia, Norway is the the third richest (in monetary terms) country in the world, and has the highest capital reserves of any country.

From inception, the profits from Statoil have been turned to the use of the Norwegian government: for infrastructure, for social welfare, and as a safety margin against the unknowns of the future. And today, by practically any standard of decent human living that you care to apply, Norway is one of the very best countries of the world in which to live.

So much for Norway. Now, let's take a look at a few more images. These come from the South Pacific island nation of Nauru:

Unlike most other green and lovely South Pacific island nations, Nauru looks like a pile of shit. And while poverty is endemic amongst the smaller nations of the South Pacific, Nauru is an outstanding case. Things have been so bad for them that in the 1990s, they tried becoming a tax haven, and a front for all kinds of exciting money laundering and banking operations run by (most notably) the Russian mafia. When the global financial heavies got together and shut down these operations, Nauru turned to Australia. More specifically, they turned to John Howard, who paid them all kinds of interesting monies and "aid" in exchange for acting as a concentration camp for boatloads of refugees trying to get to Australia.

Of course, with the unstable governments in the region, one might well think this is par for the course - just a blip, an outlier on the curve of marginalisation caused by factors like isolation and small size. But there was a time, once, when Nauru was wealthy. No, not wealthy: stinking, filthy rich. For a time in the 1960s and 1970s, Nauru boasted the highest per-capita income of any sovereign state on the planet. Including Saudia Arabia, yes. And other small-sized nations like Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Monaco, where banking has brought wealth.

So... what happened?

Well, it was all about the phosphate rock. Phosphate is vital to agriculture, and very handy in munitions, and Nauru was pretty much made of the stuff. Throughout the 20th century, various corporations and nations pulled an unbelievable amount of phosphate out of Nauru. Just -- ripped it out of the earth underfoot, packed it into boats, and shipped it off. And as the figures and the historical facts show, a rather incredible profit was made.

But not by the people of Nauru, no. They now rank among the poorest on the planet. There's literally nothing left in Nauru that anybody wants. In fact, what with the damage left by the mining operations, there's hardly a Nauru to speak of. Just a fringe of green around a wasteland. Just the kind of place where a real bastard might send boatloads of helpless and vulnerable refugees from a range of war-torn countries -- a place so utterly dispiriting in aspect that places like Afghanistan and Iraq were supposed to look good in comparison.

So. Two countries. Each with a (proportionately) massive fortune in natural resources. In one country, the development of those resources was wholly managed by the state, and the profits were put back into the country. In the other, the exploitation of the resources was handled by corporations and the free market, and the profits went... where profits go.

And the point of this discussion?

Simple. I live in a large but isolated South Pacific country, with what is a rather marginal ecological structure. This particular country has truly enormous assets in the form of mineral deposits: iron, coal, aluminium, magnesium, copper, lead, tin, zinc, gold... you name it, we've got it.

Our Prime Minister has just suggested that we should tax the profits -- not the gross, mind you, but the profits -- of mining companies operating in this nation at 40%. Our Prime Minister seems to believe that the government of the country, and therefore the people of the country, and their inheritors, deserve a 40% share in the bonanza being reaped by the corporations currently getting fat on the natural wealth of this land.

For some reason, the mining companies don't like this idea. Well, fine. But oddly, there are a lot of otherwise sane and normal people who seem also to dislike this idea. And to me, that's just beyond bizarre.

Nauru versus Norway. I know where I'd rather live. And if the mining companies really don't like it -- why, they can fuck off out of my country completely, because it looks to me as though the Norwegians had it right.

A Letter To The King

Note: I discovered the remarkable PC game 'Dwarf Fortress' a while back. Cool Shite needed a review, so I found some tutorials, and figured out how to play this... utterly bugfuck insane game.

I really don't want to waste my time talking about the mechanics of the game and the system. You can, after all, find my review on Cool Shite here: Dwarf Fortress Review. Or you can just Google on Dwarf Fortress, and see what you find. It's worth the effort.

In the meantime, here's a letter from the Town Manager of my fortress to the king that sent him and the other dwarfy colonists into the wilderness, hopefully to prosper and thrive. Hopefully it'll give you some idea of how this lunatic game plays out...

Your Highness:

The Baroness has gone mad.

At least she’s had the decency to do it in an appropriately aristocratic fashion. A forlorn, ragged figure, she haunts the byways of our mighty Fortress Alebaldness, clutching her annoying baby, whining endlessly about the Dungeonmaster having a nicer dining room than her, and occasionally screaming with hallucinations as the withdrawal symptoms set in.

The Baron was much more forthright about it. He went mad about a month after his wife, and promptly turned berserk in the ground-level statue garden. He managed to kill one of the war dogs before The Hammerer turned up and put an end to the brief, rather pathetic rampage.

I’m quite grateful to The Hammerer, really. Because I must admit: we do have an alcohol problem in Alebaldness. As you know, the dwarfs you sent here only function properly at a high level of regular drunkenness. Apparently, our fields and farms are too damned fruitful. We have room after room of food storage: piles of prickleberries, wild strawberries galore, oceans of plump helmets... and meat! We have cat meat, dog meat, cow meat, muskox meat, carp meat, sailfin mollymeat, rhesus macacque meat, deer meat, goat meat, and some mouldering piles which the cooks assure me are still edible, but can’t actually be identified at this point. Then there’s the plants. We’ve grown them and harvested them. We’ve gathered them from the wild. We’ve processed them endlessly, and now we have so many stocks of ‘plant’ that nobody really knows what to do with them, except stick them in yet more goddam barrels.

And therein lies the problem. Apparently, the brewer can’t actually create any more sweet, sweet moonshiny booze until he has a barrel or two available, and even though I've got three carpenters working fulltime turning out nothing but barrels, the damned food-storage lackeys keep running off with them all, to stuff them full of yet more anonymous plant matter, mouldering meat, and plump helmets. (Note: what, exactly, is a ‘plump helmet’ and why do we eat it? It sounds terribly... metaphorical. Like a coy nickname for an erection. I’m not really sure that sort of thing constitutes a good diet.)

In any case, I’ve put a stop to all farming. I’ve even created a Royal Guard, in the hopes that perhaps the few remaining nobles will be suitably flattered, and thus not go quite as insane as the Baroness and her consort. The Hammerer and the Dungeonmaster are actually quite useful chaps, and I’d hate to see them charging about the place, rending their shabby clothing, gnashing their yellow teeth, and baying at... well, the ceiling, what with us living mostly underground.

At least the goblins have backed off for the time being. Now that we’ve got two squads of marksdwarfs and two teams of champion wrestlers in chainmail, they have been taking a much softer approach. True, we still get the occasional snatcher wandering the boundaries, but in general the populace seems quite cheered by the spectacle of goblin snatchers being torn to pieces by mighty champion wrestlers. And now that the perimeter wall is finished, the only ways in are through the gates with the chained war dogs, the cage traps, the stone drop traps, the weapon traps, and the drawbridges which we can close on a moment’s notice, providing the dwarfs in the control room aren’t too fucking drunk to to pull a lever. Still, it can be quite entertaining if they’re a little late. Three or four goblin pikemen racing frantically around the compound, screaming in horror as the dogs and the wrestlers tear them into itty-bitty green and bloody pieces is a bracing spectacle.

The last goblin raid was actually rather helpful. Since we’ve completed the wall and the drawbridges, the greenies have seemingly decided to time their attacks for the arrival of the regular merchant caravans, in the hopes we’ll leave the gates unguarded. Or something. They sent a score or so of goblins with pikes and crossbows, led by a human Axelord. The arriving caravans were overwhelmed so fast that pieces of caravan guard were still raining down by the time the greenies got to the wardogs chained at the gate. I sent three heavily armoured Champion Wrestlers out to greet them, and raised the bridges. Meanwhile, a team of perpetually half-drunk and insubordinate marksdwarfs set up behind the fortifications and supplied some alleged covering fire. They didn’t hit any of the All-Star Homicidal Wrestling Freakshow this time, so I suppose that’s good.

The slaughter was unspeakable. We lost a hunter who didn’t get inside the perimeter in time, and two babies carried into battle by the lunatic leader of the Pleasant Syrups, which is the title our foremost squadron of steroid abusers has taken. The goblins and their axelord, on the other hand, were ripped into so many pieces by the withdrawal-maddened Pleasant Syrups that over a month later, we’re still cleaning up the mess.

The conflict was so horrific that the sole surviving human merchant instantly went stark raving mad. And his dromedary, too. They just stood there amidst the blood and severed limbs and heads and the vomit and the dead babies. Naturally, I was forced to rescue all the gear they brought with them. We got barrels of free booze, still more plump helmets, a remarkable variety of meats, a range of iron toys, some useful weapons, an entire mule in a cage, and best of all, we got five iron anvils. Five! Added to the four we so laboriously purchased from various over-charging merchant bastards, and we now have more Magma Forges than any sane fortress could possibly use.

Did I say sane? Strike that. In any case, how can you possibly have too many Magma Forges?

The only drawback of the whole event seems to be that the human diplomat went away unhappy. (And how did he survive, anyway? I certainly didn’t see him anywhere near the carnage. Where was he?) Evidently the sight of a goblin army eating his fellow men alive distressed him. Or possibly it was just the fact that we took all their stuff after the event. Which is just tough snot for him. We would happily have negotiated with the remaining merchant, except all he did was stand in one spot and babble meaninglessly. Him and his equally insane dromedary. And you can’t barter with a mad camel, can you?

No, I think the goblins are under control for the moment. And once we complete the Very Long Fake Entrance Hall Of Hideous Trap-Laden Doom With Optional Flooding And Drowning, I think we’ll be fine. So it’s the skeletal mountain goats that really piss me off. They hang around the slopes to the south, where the dwarfs inexplicably go wandering.

Why? Sometimes they say they want a drink. And yet the fortress abounds with wells and underground canals, all nicely set up for guzzling. Sometimes they claim they’re ‘putting items in stockpiles’. What items? What stockpiles? I have a feeling the dwarfs in question are out gathering up bones and skulls of previous victims of the evil skeletal goats, or even the skeletons of previous evil goats torn apart in hideous training exercises by the demented Pleasant Syrups... so you can see it’s a sort of self-sustaining cycle, and I’m damned if I can figure out what to do about it. Except maybe drink more. And even that’s problematic in Fortress Alebaldness, isn’t it?

Of course, the most horrific problem is the children. There must be something in the water here, or perhaps it’s just the perpetual exposure to heavy metal residues. The children are suicidally stupid. They wander around the magma forges at will, getting in the way of the smithies as they pound molten bronze (oh, how I wish we could find some goddamned iron!) into chainmail for the Pleasant Syrups and their fearsomely violent ilk. They play games on the edge of the bottomless chasm, which is particularly annoying because nobody else will go there for fear of the skeletal antmen some ten levels down, who are trapped forever and permanently incapable of harming anyone or anything. Nevertheless, I can’t use the chasm as a garbage dump because my dwarfs get scared and run away from the edge whenever they see the skeletal antmen down there, waving their bony antenna in feeble, futile menace.

But the children aren’t scared, are they? Oh no. Nor are they scared of goblins. In fact, they love nothing more than rushing to the forefront of a battleground before the military actually arrives, so that the goblins can dismember them and make a fine, nutritious snack of young dwarf jerky in order to prepare themselves for the upcoming battle. And of course, there are the babies. Why do the soldiers always breed? And why do they insist on carrying their babies into the battle with them? Why arent the other dwarfs whooping it up and producing offspring at the same rate as those hideously fecund champion wrestlers?

Never mind.

Just a few notes to finish up, your Highness. Fortress Alebaldness is short of a few vital things. We can trade for iron (if the merchants survive the goblins long enough to avoid catatonia) but so far we have no sources of sand with which to make glass, and weve run out of turtle shell. These may sound like small matters, your Highness, but so far two of my dwarfs have been taken by Fey Moods and seized the glass furnace... only to gradually go mad for lack of raw materials. The score for turtle shell is even worse: weve lost three. Naturally I walled them up until they died, but the stench is dreadful, and since nobody wants to bury the corpses of these maddwarfs, I’ve had to order them dropped into the Magma Pits for disposal. You can imagine what thats done to morale around the place, I’m sure.

Therefore, if you could just see fit to include some glass and turtle shell with your next shipment of totally fucking useless nobility, your Highness, we might possibly see another year or two out of Fortress Alebaldness. Only -- please, for the love of Armok, don’t send us any more fucking Philosphers. The one you sent keeps changing the prices of goods without warning, and staggering about the corridors muttering “I drink therefore I am”, and giggling to himself in a very disturbing fashion. I think one Philosopher is really all that any fortress should have to take.

Yours sincerely,

Cog Tosidlar,

Town Manager of Mabdugroder (Alebaldness.)

PS: And send more booze. Or at least send us a lot of empty barrels. The goddam elves have demanded we restrict our tree-cutting this year, which makes barrel-making and therefore brewing quite difficult. And if it comes to a choice between the entire fortress going mad from alcohol withdrawal or war with the pointy-eared treehugging hippie stoner bastards, you know which way I’m going to jump, don’t you?