0:12

This is is writer and game

0:14

designer designer Robin D. is game designer

0:17

and writer Kenneth Hite. And this

0:19

is our podcast, Kenneth And this

0:21

Stuff. podcast. brought to you by talk

0:23

about stuff? Stuff for you to

0:25

talk about in this episode include

0:27

Press. Stuff we're to Game. The British episode

0:29

include... Robin And my The London Silk Roads

0:31

exhibit. And my 2024 London book raid.

0:48

Ah, Autumn! Time for Gathering the

0:50

Harvest and utter carnage in the in the

0:52

Garden. what was that last one you that me

0:54

one? You heard me, for some It's

0:56

time for some good garden warfare.

0:58

gardens Gardens is the new card

1:00

game where you combine the

1:02

joy of horticulture with the thrill

1:04

of being a total jerk. on

1:06

hold on. I thought on. talking

1:08

about gardening. We are! Because

1:10

in Vicious Gardens, you're not just

1:12

planting petunias, my friend. You're

1:14

sabotaging others in a others in a

1:16

competition. competition bit

1:18

intense for my usual pansies and and

1:21

Oh, this is way beyond pansies,

1:23

my friend. This is a battle

1:25

for garden domination. You You

1:27

sabotage your opponents, steal their

1:29

plants, and choke out their prize

1:31

-winning produce. produce. a

1:33

strategy game, but but with. Plants?

1:35

You it! the best are willing

1:38

to get their hands dirty.

1:40

get their I'm strangely into this.

1:42

Where can I join in

1:44

the into this. Where can I is

1:46

open for pre -orders now. Reserve

1:48

yours at atlas -games.com, then

1:50

prepare for the meanest, greenest

1:53

Garden yours at Atlas dash games.com.

1:55

Then prepare for the

1:57

meanest greenest garden millet

1:59

ever. dice, the thump of

2:01

miniatures, the crunch of timbits, I

2:04

guess, they don't really crunch, but anyway,

2:06

and the benevolent gaze of Getty Lee

2:08

coming alive, welcome us to a special

2:10

Canadian edition of the gaming hut, where

2:13

we're going to talk Robin about your

2:15

particular game, not necessarily your hut, but

2:17

what you've been doing at the table,

2:19

and what you've been doing is a

2:22

game that I think long-time listeners would

2:24

be forgiven for being confused and thinking

2:26

that I was running because it is

2:29

Golden Age DC superheroes versus the Kithulu

2:31

mythos. Right. So first of all, let

2:33

us clarify that there was almost no

2:35

Canadian content in this. They went to

2:38

Canada once, but otherwise this was a

2:40

deep dive into American pop culture. Was

2:42

Canada colored in black and white? Yes.

2:45

There was no Johnny Canek or anything

2:47

like that. And listeners may not be

2:49

so surprised because in a previous... segment,

2:51

we sort of talked about how fun

2:54

it would be to do a Golden

2:56

Age DC versus the Mythos. And at

2:58

that very time I thought, I should

3:00

do that as my first thing back

3:03

after the great unpleasantness. So this was

3:05

our first in-person gaming after the long

3:07

hiatus of the pandemic. And this started

3:10

in summer of 2023 and just wrapped

3:12

in late November of 2024 and went

3:14

for 25 sessions. And that's possibly longer

3:16

than I meant to go when I

3:19

originally conceived of it. And the whole

3:21

idea was to do something super light

3:23

and simple to get our feet wet

3:25

and to pursue a fun concept I

3:28

wanted to do and also to... experiment

3:30

in a couple of little ways. And

3:32

one of those ways was to ask

3:35

the players to play characters that already

3:37

existed and see how much they enjoyed

3:39

doing that and what that helped bring

3:41

to the table. And we did that

3:44

once before with the Dream Hands of

3:46

Paris where they were asked to. select

3:48

the surrealist they wanted to play. And

3:50

this time around, they were asked to

3:53

pick early DC heroes. There was a

3:55

carve-out that would have been allowed if

3:57

someone really, really wanted to play a

4:00

character that doesn't show up until later,

4:02

and then we would invent a cognate

4:04

version of that character as if they

4:06

had had a Golden Age counterpart. But

4:09

Chris almost played a Golden Age swamp

4:11

thing, but instead. opted for Superman. And

4:13

so the roster of heroes and people

4:15

kind of knew that there was probably

4:18

going to be a an occult aspect

4:20

to it and a cult aspect of

4:22

course messes up Superman equalizes in a

4:25

bit. So we had as the player

4:27

characters we had Dr. Fate, Dr. occult,

4:29

the Flash, of course that's Jay Garrick,

4:31

the Golden Age Flash, as previously mentioned

4:34

Superman. And then we had some, in

4:36

any version of the Justice Society, you

4:38

need a couple of sort of second-tier

4:40

heroes to sort of add spice and

4:43

flavor. And we had Our Man and

4:45

Shining Night. We had Wonder Woman show

4:47

up for one session, and Hawkman appeared

4:50

early on, and then the player kind

4:52

of tapped out. So that was our

4:54

roster, and the mission then was to

4:56

create things that kind of felt and

4:59

referenced, sort of a golden age vibe,

5:01

but nonetheless. had elements of the mythos

5:03

creeping in, and I would say slowly

5:05

creeping in, except they fought deep ones

5:08

in the first episode. Yeah, so, you

5:10

know, slow for the Golden Age. Yeah.

5:12

So what system were you using for

5:15

this? I think everyone wants to know

5:17

and have arguments about their favorite superhero

5:19

system. I was using this super super

5:21

strip-down version of Hero Quest, and I

5:24

altered it a little in midplay in

5:26

order to separate out the... different player

5:28

characters and have their own results as

5:30

to whether they're up and down and

5:33

not have just a group result of

5:35

the group wins or loses and then

5:37

you find out who fell. So this

5:40

is possibly 26 episodes is maybe a

5:42

long time to run a super strip.

5:44

down version of hero quest because in

5:46

this iteration at any rate if you

5:49

want to do well in a fight

5:51

or to make something specific happen in

5:53

a fight that is in progress the

5:55

solution is roll well yeah there's no

5:58

tactical element where your manipulation of crunchy

6:00

bits can help you bring the fight

6:02

to a quicker conclusion or if there's

6:05

something you want to have happen in

6:07

the fight roll critical that's what you

6:09

do maybe not ideal for a genre

6:11

that privileges the fight as much as

6:14

supers. For this length of time, although

6:16

ironically, the original concept per hero quest

6:18

comes from superheroes because in superhero comics,

6:20

everybody's ability is actually statistically equivalent to

6:23

everybody else's ability, right? Superman has as

6:25

much chance to do cool stuff as

6:27

Jimmy Olson and prevails or fails. So

6:30

this was intrinsic to the concept, but

6:32

if you're taking the role-playing form... and

6:34

having a lot of fights for a

6:36

year and a half, you maybe want

6:39

to have an option other than then

6:41

roll well as a couple of players

6:43

did. The next thing I do, maybe

6:45

on the other side of their crunch

6:48

tolerance from this. Well, so obviously I

6:50

guess people can go back and listen

6:52

to our segment where we thought we

6:55

knew how Golden Age, the superheroes and

6:57

the mythos, play out. So I thought

6:59

it was fun to have sort of

7:01

a horror... aspect, especially a couple of

7:04

people were picking a cult heroes, and

7:06

it was a matter of trying to

7:08

sort of golden age up the various

7:10

entities and stuff so that When they

7:13

met near Lathotep, he was Mr. Electric

7:15

and, you know, had a weird top

7:17

hat and was manipulating people that way.

7:20

They did go to a primal plane

7:22

in a magical plane to fight Azov

7:24

and to, they wound up shooting the

7:26

rival craft with the weightlies in it

7:29

into Azazov for ultimate destruction. And then

7:31

everything, of course, with building toward... the

7:33

rising of Kithulu at the end, which

7:35

happened in conjunction with their participation in

7:38

the creation and deployment of the atomic

7:40

bomb. One thing I tried to do

7:42

was step away from my usual default

7:45

moves, but over the course of many,

7:47

many episodes, you do kind of accidentally

7:49

wind up slipping in the thing. So

7:51

one thing I- Yeah, so my initial

7:54

plan was to never have a scene

7:56

where- you know, say for example, near

7:58

a lot hef, offers them a devil's

8:00

parking, because that's a fairly standard thing

8:03

that happens a lot of my games.

8:05

Well, it mostly didn't happen, but they

8:07

did meet the North God tier at

8:10

one point, and he exacted from the

8:12

flash an agreement that he would pay

8:14

the price of war, which is something

8:16

that paid off when they met Robert

8:19

Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman near the end

8:21

of the series. The other thing I

8:23

set up very deliberately not to do

8:25

is a... is the frenomy character, which

8:28

I do because it works, and it's

8:30

fun, which is a character who they

8:32

are somewhat allied with and is very

8:35

powerful, and they're nervous about being allied

8:37

with, or it's a, you know, it's

8:39

a source of conflict. So one emerged

8:41

anyway, and this is much less my

8:44

doing. So there was an episode where

8:46

they're fighting a maker of robots, and

8:48

one of his robots was a Mr.

8:50

Robot, naturally. This happened during the long

8:53

sort of mid-stretch where basically every different

8:55

episode they were encountering a character who

8:57

was based on one of the universal

9:00

movie monsters, which was a lot of

9:02

fun. And the head of that group

9:04

was Master Vampire, who, unlike a lot

9:06

of the villains in this, because a

9:09

lot of the early villains in Golden

9:11

Age comics are just like gangsters who

9:13

have stolen a horse or, you know,

9:15

are running a gambling ring and are

9:18

not... a big enough threat for the

9:20

entire justice society. In this case, Dr.

9:22

occult's main... adversary is Master Vampire, which

9:25

is just, that's his name. And speaking

9:27

of rolling while and rolling poorly, they

9:29

got into a fight where Mr. Robot

9:31

was present. Master Vampire was present was

9:34

a climactic battle with him. And our

9:36

man rolled a critical success on behalf

9:38

of Master Vampire. I rolled a fumbles.

9:40

best possible result against the worst possible

9:43

result in a system that heavily pays

9:45

attention to those two things. And as

9:47

a result, our man's throwing Mr. Robot

9:50

into Master Vampire resulted in the destruction

9:52

of Master Vampire, but the creation of

9:54

Master Robot, who was a hybrid of

9:56

Vampire and Robot, and an exemplar, therefore,

9:59

of both operative forces. He sort of

10:01

changed his attitude the next time he

10:03

showed up the next time he showed

10:05

up the next week. from having the

10:08

same German accent as his creator to

10:10

being a, hey guys, golly, I'm so

10:12

excited to be back at Justice League

10:15

headquarters. And so his whole arc then

10:17

was his desire to become a member

10:19

of the Justice Society. But you knew

10:21

he had master vampire in him and

10:24

then, you know, the next time he

10:26

showed up instead of looking like a

10:28

goofy 30s robot, he looked like a

10:30

scary vampheric robot. Still with that sort

10:33

of golly ggy whiz kind of energy.

10:35

And so therefore they came to both.

10:37

love and be terrified by Master Robot

10:40

and of course his storyline had to

10:42

conclude with his main participation in the

10:44

rise of Fulu at the end. And

10:46

in fact I gave all of the

10:49

players after the big fight at the

10:51

end the option of you know having

10:53

a coda to what they were doing

10:55

and our man his coda he was

10:58

possibly putting Master Robot back together because

11:00

he was he was scary but he

11:02

was also lovable friend. rich drug addict

11:05

you need a friend more than many

11:07

people do yes well and we haven't

11:09

quite gotten to the to the drug

11:11

addict part and uh... the the wealth

11:14

of our man was not a big

11:16

fact in this, he was sort of

11:18

more a small-time guy, because he's from

11:20

Appleton City, and we leaned a lot

11:23

on the very quaint way that he

11:25

gets his early missions, which is that

11:27

he has an ad in the paper

11:30

inviting people to write to his post

11:32

office box to sign emissions. So our

11:34

man was super fun and was sort

11:36

of a contrast in the more elevated

11:39

characters. Superman discovered that his... real most

11:41

important ability was as a reporter that

11:43

enabled him to get through the early

11:45

investigative phases where you find out who

11:48

you need to punch this week. And

11:50

my rule for information gathering in this

11:52

is that it would take a role

11:55

to get a useful piece of information

11:57

but that everybody had. an ability to

11:59

gain useful information and anybody who succeeded

12:01

with the role would gain the information

12:04

needed to move on to that scene.

12:06

So... Would gain all of the useful

12:08

information. Yeah, you just had to come

12:10

up with a way to get to

12:13

the new thing and get a role

12:15

and if you failed, it didn't stop

12:17

the story because there's another... three to

12:20

six people who could also then jump

12:22

in and like doctor fate could look

12:24

at his in his orb or shining

12:26

night could pray for a vision or

12:29

whatever right exactly yeah and of course

12:31

you might find it runs all over

12:33

that town looking for weird stuff yes

12:35

I did manage to bring in a

12:38

few sort of of the early classic

12:40

villains who do show up so doctor

12:42

fate's enemy the octopus showed up and

12:45

but it was mostly about creating new

12:47

villains who had either in a cult

12:49

or some sort of mythos spin, mythos

12:51

spin to them. So when the weight

12:54

lease showed up, they were, they were

12:56

the weight lease, but they, you know,

12:58

were able to participate in a superhero

13:00

fight and they're, you know, one of

13:03

them had a shotgun that was capable

13:05

of blasting Superman and so far. Right.

13:07

They're full of kryptonite rock salt. Yeah.

13:10

So all in all, it was, as

13:12

I said, it probably went on a

13:14

little. too long for what it was,

13:16

how I was waiting for an unannounced

13:19

project to get to the stage records

13:21

or play testing it. And overall I

13:23

think it was a fun dipping the

13:25

toes back in the water of gathering

13:28

every week to play a role-playing. Well,

13:30

sadly... we don't have

13:32

enough time for

13:35

you to to tell everyone

13:37

how helpful you

13:39

found my book on

13:41

versus the versus the

13:44

Cthulhu Adventures in darkness. but I

13:46

guess guess we'll just

13:48

have to leave

13:50

that as if And

13:53

if people want to

13:55

hear more about

13:57

our various campaigns, I

14:00

suppose that could

14:02

be part of the

14:04

gaming of the gaming forward.

14:06

But right now,

14:09

maybe the most important

14:11

part of the

14:13

gaming hut is the

14:15

door leading to

14:18

a commercial. the door So

14:20

to go through it

14:22

and into a

14:25

different hut on the

14:27

other side. on the other

14:29

side. Music 1968.

14:43

Sinister influences threaten to corrupt to

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corrupt America from

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within and without. The

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federal government establishes

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a new new for for

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overseas action. The Bureau

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of Narcotics and and

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Drugs, the the B&DD, and

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within it, the

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forces of Delta Green. In

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the Morales the new

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globe -spanning mega mega the

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fall of Delta

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Green, of you become

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the the agents hidden

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inside the the B&DD. Play eight

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linked operations. As As separate

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stand or Or into an

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an epic hunt

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for an infamous target.

15:27

Escort a sniper

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carrying a a death for

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a a Shan warlord. a

15:34

Saigon drug summit. Track

15:36

heroin couriers on a

15:39

flight from Hong Kong

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to LA. the the

15:43

disappearance of an

15:45

archaeologist working the... Bozo ceremonial

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site. Smash a drug

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deal. ID the the actors

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broadcasting the necronomicon

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from a CIA -backed

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Munich radio station. and wage

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the drug war

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amid France's 68 riots. riots.

16:03

Kenneth Hite. by Kenneth

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Haidt. Written by The team

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that brought The team

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A of sordid intrigue.

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desperate action against the

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Now available in title. from specially cleared

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gaming retail stores and the Pelgrane Press

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store as an instantly available PDF-only purchase.

16:34

The announcement blaring on the Tanoy, the...

16:36

Bing coming up on your phone, the

16:38

headlines from foreign newspapers comprise a travel

16:40

advisory. And today, we're advising you on

16:43

our own recent travel, in this case

16:45

to London, for Dragon Meet, and as

16:47

we always do, we... took part of

16:49

a day to do a touristy thing

16:51

that is edifying and podcast worthy and

16:54

that went going to the British Museum

16:56

or sort of fall back. Usually they

16:58

have something very fun on and this

17:00

time no different. They had the Silk

17:03

Roads exhibition which was not as much

17:05

as we found stuff in our basement

17:07

as I had thought it was going

17:09

to be. It turned out to be

17:11

kind of a good show and it

17:14

brought a lot of things from other

17:16

museums and other archives and treasuries and

17:18

whatnot so it lived up to the

17:20

hype I think we can say correct.

17:22

Yeah it was a pan cultural exhibit

17:25

which means they had to have a

17:27

thesis other than just here's the Byzantines

17:29

or here's the Vikings and that thesis

17:31

was that we tend to look at

17:33

historical civilizations in isolation, but that especially

17:36

in the period that they were talking

17:38

about, which is roughly from 500 to

17:40

1,000-ish. that the different nations all the

17:42

way from the far east to the

17:44

UK were all in dialogue with one

17:47

another, in communication with one another, and

17:49

that communication took the form of trade.

17:51

And there was perhaps even something of

17:53

an editorial going on about the importance

17:56

of trade and how it's good and

17:58

how it enriches you, nudge, wink, wink,

18:00

wink, British public. And interestingly, rather than

18:02

taking the Anglo-centric approach of, let's look

18:04

at what was going on in Britain

18:07

and then follow it all the way

18:09

to the other side of Asia, it

18:11

was let's start in Asia and show

18:13

how goods and wealth first of all

18:15

accumulated there and moved out through the

18:18

world. And so it was an east

18:20

to west version. And I think that

18:22

was really illuminating because of course. in

18:24

the sixth century China and by reflection

18:26

Japan were much bigger deals than anything

18:29

happening in the United Kingdom. Yeah, it

18:31

began in Japan, which was at that

18:33

point, at that point, he says, of

18:35

a 500-year span, but it had unified

18:38

into a kingdom for the first time

18:40

and that created a large enough economy

18:42

that it began exporting. and also it

18:44

imported Chinese imperial, what I want to

18:46

say, structures. Japan and Korea, which was

18:49

the next stop on our little tour,

18:51

both aped the Chinese court as the

18:53

only court in the world that mattered,

18:55

and so we see both of them

18:57

sort of building up their own cinified

19:00

courts, building up their own trade networks,

19:02

and then what... They accumulated, turned out

19:04

to be from, as you say, all

19:06

over Asia as far down as, you

19:08

know, Egypt or Persia, you would have

19:11

little bits of glass and whatnot that

19:13

would show up in this imperial regalia

19:15

or in this Korean treasure hoard, and

19:17

that sort of set the tone that

19:20

all of this wealth is not generated

19:22

from sensible taxation and the peasants not

19:24

fighting all the time, but is generated

19:26

from... you know exchange from other places

19:28

either via official embassies which is how

19:31

trade used to work back in the

19:33

bronze age but also increasingly as you

19:35

move farther west through commercial trade enterprises

19:37

easily spooked and moved foreigners I guess

19:39

mostly right and so trade is portrayed

19:42

again and again in different cultures as

19:44

an intrinsic element of kingly rule and

19:46

of power. So there's murals from multiple

19:48

cultures showing the king or the local

19:50

potentate, whatever he is, being attended by

19:53

a court that includes a lot of

19:55

traders. And so there was a lot

19:57

of prestige involved with that. And trade

19:59

is so prestigious that trade items go

20:02

into people's tombs. from the royal families

20:04

and as you mentioned a lot of

20:06

things from far away are deemed important

20:08

enough to be sent to the next

20:10

life with the monarch or to celebrate

20:13

their demise, whatever the beliefs are surrounding

20:15

that. And the symbol of commerce becomes

20:17

a repeated motif in culture after culture,

20:19

which is the camel because the camel

20:21

is the thing that brings you your

20:24

trade goods. And so the camel, especially

20:26

in the East, is a frequent element

20:28

of... different tomb hordes. And of course

20:30

it's not a literal camel, but it's

20:32

drawings or in one case a really

20:35

lively, cool piece of ceramic sculpture that

20:37

has a real realistic ideas. Someone not

20:39

only had seen a camel but knew

20:41

what its personality was to make that.

20:43

And so that's one of the highlights

20:46

of that show. Yeah, one of the

20:48

things that, you know, got a little

20:50

bit soft-petaled is... Why was the Tang

20:52

dynasty so interested in what was going

20:55

on in Central Asia? Why were they

20:57

so camel-friendly? And why did Sogdian dancers

20:59

become such a big thing at the

21:01

court? And they wanted to make us

21:03

believe that it's just because, oh, they

21:06

were just super enlightened. They knew that

21:08

foreign art and goods were cool. They

21:10

did not mention the Tang dynasty was

21:12

founded by Turks. It's a Turkish dynasty

21:14

in China. That's why it's, of course,

21:17

so interested in the... you know, Turkish

21:19

part of the North and the West.

21:21

So there's a little bit of special

21:23

pleading and card palming in the exhibit,

21:25

which I guess is good practice for

21:28

any museum exhibit. You should start keeping

21:30

an eye out for that kind of

21:32

jiggery pokery. Yeah, you'd want to give

21:34

people grants for the research of their

21:37

own. Exactly. And there were things that

21:39

they weren't soft peddling. For example, one

21:41

of the trade items was people. And

21:43

that labor has always been a thing

21:45

that people capture and export. And that's

21:48

a big part of the Viking story

21:50

and how the Vikings basically pushed their

21:52

cultures westward and become integrated with the

21:54

East and lead to the formation of

21:56

the roses of people, for example. So

21:59

they're not trying to say that, you

22:01

know, all. exchange is great and all

22:03

trade is great and there's a counter

22:05

force of course to why leaders would

22:07

be at times suspicious of trade is

22:10

because with trade came the travel of

22:12

ideas and in this era that specifically

22:14

religious ideas which are in this period

22:16

indistinguishable from political ideas and so you

22:19

can see Buddhism moving from India East

22:21

words, you can see various cultures that

22:23

have had two or three different religious

22:25

faiths as the cultural tides have washed

22:27

over them and you can also see

22:30

the tension between cultures that want to

22:32

close themselves off from the ideas that

22:34

come. with all of those exciting gold

22:36

items and statues of camels and remain

22:38

as they are and remain unchanged. Yeah,

22:41

we got a little shout-out for our

22:43

own podcast, episode 588, because we got

22:45

to see those Dunwang cave art that

22:47

we talked about, that Orl Stein cleverly

22:49

packed off from Xinjiang and took to

22:52

Britain where they are on display now.

22:54

So we got to see the Christian

22:56

art from the Far Eastern and... of

22:58

the Taram Desert, we got to see

23:01

a lot of the, almost the living

23:03

symbol of the Silk Road, this sort

23:05

of, you know, crossroads in the middle

23:07

of the desert, where all these ideas

23:09

are being sort of rationalized through Chinese

23:12

and through generally Buddhist appreciation and trying

23:14

to turn it into a unified whole,

23:16

even though that isn't quite work. but

23:18

it is creating this very vibrant art.

23:20

There's the origin story of why these

23:23

now isolated caves are isolated when Arlstein

23:25

bursts his way into them, had this

23:27

incredible library of items and that is

23:29

that it was a trade stop and

23:31

all sorts of things wound up just

23:34

hanging around there far from any big

23:36

city. We also saw early mass production

23:38

and early mass exporting. There's a recently

23:40

discovered shipwreck that was found near Belatang

23:42

Island. in Indonesia, and this is full

23:45

of obviously mass-produced ceramic wear, some of

23:47

which was on display. And so you

23:49

can see that it's not just, you

23:51

know, individual peddlers with packs of stuff,

23:54

but it's, you know, big-time major commerce

23:56

enough stuff to fill a ship. Yeah,

23:58

the sort of the distinction between this

24:00

was obviously cheap export wear, then it

24:02

was slammed out in some provincial... you

24:05

know factory city and that this was

24:07

the really nice stuff that is obviously

24:09

a royal gift or an ambassadorial gift

24:11

that that's right there in that shipwreck

24:13

which again is by now what 1100

24:16

years old so this distinction the notion

24:18

of Cheap mass goods being made in

24:20

the richest country in the world, being

24:22

sent out to placate the natives, is,

24:24

you know, one of those things that

24:27

rings down into our modern times, too.

24:29

Yeah, so if your medieval character wants

24:31

to, well, actually, the utterances of the

24:33

other player characters, we're not speaking solely

24:36

in the frame of reference of their

24:38

particular culture, might want to look at

24:40

a whale-bone, Frankish casket, meaning small chestnut.

24:42

coffin, where the art on the side

24:44

of this includes scenes from Christian, North,

24:47

Jewish, and Roman mythological imagery at around

24:49

1,000 AD. Therefore, this is a knowledge

24:51

of all of these different cultures and

24:53

cultural communication is very much in effect,

24:55

at least for someone who's an intellectual

24:58

and artisan who's... making something very expensive

25:00

to show to somebody else, or maybe

25:02

was commissioned to add all of these

25:04

scenes by a scholarly somebody else who

25:06

knew a lot about the rest of

25:09

the world. Where there is trade, there

25:11

are smugglers. We had some fun smuggling

25:13

stories. There was one of the many

25:15

smugglings of silk out of China. It's

25:18

always somebody. Sometimes it's a Byzantine monk

25:20

with his staff full of silkworm eggs.

25:22

In the case, we got to see,

25:24

it's a princess who married the king

25:26

of Cotan, one of the trade cities

25:29

in the Taram Desert. And she just,

25:31

you know... put some eggs and mulberry

25:33

in her, I think was it her

25:35

like her hair ornaments or something like

25:37

that? Yes, yeah, it's something you can

25:40

do in your proprietary technology is a

25:42

bug. Yes, it's the micro dot of

25:44

the sixth century. And then we had

25:46

an English monk who was very proud

25:48

of himself for sneaking Balsam out of

25:51

the port of Tyre past the Turkish

25:53

guards who had a 100% tariff on

25:55

Balsam in the sense of you really

25:57

have to pay a lot of money

26:00

to export Balsam and he being a

26:02

poor English monk didn't want to do

26:04

that. So he hit it in a

26:06

gourd and then put the gourd below

26:08

some mineral oil so that And when

26:11

people sniff for the balsam, they would

26:13

just smell the mineral oil. It's the

26:15

old coffee grounds over the cocaine trick,

26:17

except in like 110080 or whatever. Yeah,

26:19

so it suggests that next time you

26:22

play a quasi-medeval game where people are

26:24

traveling from place to place, maybe somebody

26:26

in the party wants to sneak some

26:28

valuables into a country and make a

26:30

killing and buy some better armor not

26:33

by looting it from a dungeon. but

26:35

from exploiting the rarity of balsam or

26:37

murr or whatever it is that you

26:39

want to have them carrying. So if

26:41

you're wondering why, you know, a clasp

26:44

found at Sutton, who, once you test

26:46

the gems on it, they come from

26:48

India, Bohemia, and Sri Lanka, it's because

26:50

trade was always a... big

26:53

part of the ancient and

26:55

medieval worlds be should

26:57

be part of your

26:59

game if you're

27:01

emulating those periods. And some

27:04

of of the glass

27:06

some of the other

27:08

of the that we

27:10

saw in the Chinese

27:12

and Korean hordes came

27:15

from Roman times.

27:17

They were not just

27:19

foreign, but they

27:21

were antique even in

27:23

those days were they

27:26

were hundreds of

27:28

years old had achieved achieved

27:30

such maybe value down

27:32

they were passed down

27:35

through a family

27:37

or something like that

27:39

they were they were

27:41

still given this place

27:43

of honor in

27:46

a royal or a

27:48

general's burial. So that was

27:50

was pretty neat if

27:52

So if you're

27:54

looking for a way

27:57

for something from

27:59

the previous era of

28:01

the campaign to

28:03

show up, well, someone

28:05

just kept it

28:08

around as a cool

28:10

antique and then

28:12

they buried it with

28:14

it with great Uncle pressure

28:17

is a great way

28:19

to introduce the the

28:21

of your setting

28:23

and you can have your,

28:25

you know, tell your

28:28

character, oh well,

28:30

obviously this is from

28:32

the previous previous empire and

28:34

be from this

28:36

city city and be associated

28:39

with this with this

28:41

And this you can, and

28:43

you because it's associated

28:45

with a cool

28:47

thing they found, thing they

28:50

it doesn't feel

28:52

so much like exposition.

28:54

It feels like like

28:56

characters would in

28:59

real life, life. discovering

29:01

the past as well

29:03

as other cultures their

29:05

own world. Well, we

29:07

have a more to

29:10

discover on this

29:12

podcast. Specifically, there's some piles

29:14

of books that Ken wants to

29:16

tell us about. So us listen

29:18

to let's listen get started on that. started

29:20

on that. Speaking

29:51

of King in Yellow, like Carcosa,

29:53

Chambers wisely does

29:55

not restrict the the

29:57

Yellow in one mythic

30:00

role. role. In this

30:02

story, he appears to

30:04

be the personification of both Castain's delusion

30:07

and of secret conspiratorial power. In Chamber's

30:09

other stories, he embodies hopelessness, degeneracy, or

30:11

death itself. In all of these tales,

30:13

however, he uses the play as his

30:16

gateway, his seduction, his channel to enter

30:18

the mind of the reader, and perhaps

30:20

the mortal universe as well. Although this

30:23

story predates the arrival of the Tibetan

30:25

word Topa into Western occultism, the King

30:27

in Yellow resembles a thought form as

30:30

theosophical occultists termed a similar concept in

30:32

the 1890s, given shape and malignity by

30:34

the words of the play, The King

30:36

in Yellow, annotated by Kenneth Hite, illustrated

30:39

by Samuel Ariah, now in paperback and

30:41

e-book from Ark Dream Publishing. Support this

30:43

podcast, much like I support Foils and

30:46

Treadwells, by joining such beloved battery and

30:48

backers as Steve Sigity, Terry Robinson, David

30:50

Flisk, Nate Merritt, and Urs Bloom and

30:52

Tripp. As previously alluded to, it is

30:55

time we've already looked back at our

30:57

museum day on the Monday when we

30:59

go to Dragon Meat, so Ken, it's

31:02

time for us to cast our thoughts

31:04

back. to later in that day when

31:06

you visited treadmill which is a independent

31:08

bookstore specializing in a cult and esoteric

31:11

books which also sometimes has some cool

31:13

sort of ancillary used stuff as well

31:15

and then foils which is a flagship

31:18

bookstore not far from there and we're

31:20

going to then therefore look at what's

31:22

filling cans bookshelves. I was going to

31:25

fill your bookshelves once you put them

31:27

away but now they're in beautiful little

31:29

piles for us to look at and

31:31

first of all As someone who has

31:34

to come up with titles for things

31:36

that will sell books, I very much

31:38

admire whichever member of the publishing team

31:41

came up with Roman special forces and

31:43

special ops, speculators, exploratories, protectories in Ariani

31:45

in the service of Rome by Simon

31:47

Elliot. Yeah, I mean you can't ask

31:50

for a book that will jump off

31:52

the shelf into my hands faster than

31:54

that. It's the only book on Roman

31:57

special forces. I think we may be

31:59

taking the term special forces a little

32:01

bit. Meaning that these are forces that

32:04

have special tasks, not that they're the

32:06

Navy SEALs of Rome, but on the

32:08

other hand, they might have been the

32:10

Navy SEALs of Rome, you don't know.

32:13

And it certainly is a great source

32:15

if you're running any sort of classical

32:17

game, or by God, if you just

32:20

love cool stuff about the Roman army

32:22

and you've pretty much absorbed all the

32:24

regular allegiance. This is from the people

32:26

at Penn and Sword, by the way

32:29

you mentioned the publisher, who exist. along

32:31

with Sutton Books, solely to take money

32:33

from me. So good job, Penn and

32:36

Sword. You did it again. Right, and

32:38

I'm sure the members of these various

32:40

companies would sit around and call themselves

32:42

special forces, for sure. Now we come

32:45

to the ceremonial city, history, memory, and

32:47

myth in Renaissance Venice by Ian Fenlin.

32:49

Yeah, this is a look at how

32:52

events in Venice, specifically in the 1570s.

32:54

translated themselves into ceremony, into architecture, into

32:56

public awareness. So it talks about the

32:59

Battle of LaPanto and the Plague of

33:01

1577. Those are the two sort of

33:03

big bracketing events. Then there's some other

33:05

things that happened in Venice in that

33:08

decade. And both of those had special

33:10

churches built for them. They had special

33:12

holidays declared for them that were celebrated

33:15

later on in Venice. He talks about

33:17

the publishing industry of Venice and how

33:19

it... responded to these things and presented

33:21

them to the people of Venice. It's

33:24

really just a super deep dive into

33:26

that decade of Venetian cultural production and

33:28

cultural redefinition. I think people tend to

33:31

think that Venice either got started in

33:33

the Middle Ages and kept going until

33:35

it was put paid to by Napoleon.

33:38

or that Venice was always sort of

33:40

Casanova era masks and decadence. And I

33:42

mean, Venice was changing even during the

33:44

Renaissance. It's not even that Renaissance Venice

33:47

is the same Venice for the whole

33:49

hundred years. And this is something that

33:51

I found out in my own campaign

33:54

of Swords and Serpentine. So it's nice

33:56

to have yet another book that... goes

33:58

really deep into it. It's a tiny

34:00

bit before my period, but obviously everyone

34:03

who went through these is pretty much

34:05

still alive in my game. So there

34:07

we are, I guess, except for the

34:10

plague. Yes, people will be able to

34:12

find antiques and go, well, this belonged

34:14

to the doge of so-and-so. Next we

34:16

come to a topic that sweeps through

34:19

a long period of history. A pipeline

34:21

runs through it. The story of oil

34:23

from ancient times to the First World

34:26

War by Keith Fisher. Yeah, it's one

34:28

of those books that I have basically

34:30

wanted for a good long time and

34:33

nobody seems to have ever had it.

34:35

And Keith Fisher just sort of stepped

34:37

up and did it two years ago.

34:39

So we start with, as it says,

34:42

oil in the ancient times, the ground

34:44

oil that comes up and how that

34:46

was responded to by the locals, then

34:49

the beginning of the oil industry in

34:51

America, followed by the... really exciting beginning

34:53

of the oil industry in Azerbaijan and

34:55

all the sort of insane backstabbing and

34:58

fighting over that that developed and the

35:00

fact that it has the news to

35:02

end with World War I, right as

35:05

sort of, generally people think, oh now

35:07

the story is getting good, it's like,

35:09

nope, I'm done, that's it, we're out,

35:11

this is a pregnant era for all

35:14

manner of fun, and someone who is

35:16

still declare-pilled like I am, any cool

35:18

stuff you can get into about oil

35:21

and Azerbaijan, and the monkey around in

35:23

Iraq, that's always going to be very

35:25

evocative to me and very interesting. Now

35:28

we're going to come to the trade

35:30

craft hut portion of the bookshelf. So

35:32

speaking of Napoleon, let's take a look

35:34

at Wellington Spies by Mary McGregor. Yeah,

35:37

this in the spycraft universe, there's sort

35:39

of different areas of specialty and a

35:41

lot of really cool spy stories. Our

35:44

beloved friend Steve Dempsey gave me an

35:46

anthology of spy stories edited by Dennis

35:48

Wheatley in the 30s sometime and most

35:50

of those spy stories are of these

35:53

sorts of spies. These are what we

35:55

would call now military intelligence. There are

35:57

guys who were sent out, as the

36:00

Bible says, to spy out the land

36:02

ahead of Wellington's army in the peninsula.

36:04

And so it's not so much Wellington's

36:07

code breakers or Wellington's analysts moving ships

36:09

around on a map. These are the

36:11

guys that go riding over that Spanish

36:13

hill to find out how many French

36:16

canons there are and hopefully come writing

36:18

back to say. So it's not Kim

36:20

Philby type spies. This is your rangers

36:23

type spies. which is still pretty great.

36:25

And this is about three specific operatives

36:27

of his intelligence officers and their stories.

36:29

And so it's just good Napoleonic fun.

36:32

If you've got your horn blower still

36:34

working or your sharp, this is more

36:36

good stuff on that. This is someone

36:39

who for a moment looks like they

36:41

might be a contemporary hero until you

36:43

find out who she was working for.

36:45

Manchu princess, Japanese spy, the story of

36:48

Kawashima Yoshiko, the cross-dressing spy. who commanded

36:50

her own army by fell a spring

36:52

bomb. And I have to also say

36:55

that I appreciate the new work of

36:57

people who are coming up with subtitles

36:59

for books, basically doing all of our

37:02

work for us. Yeah, it really is.

37:04

The back says that she is still

37:06

controversial in China and Japan. Mm-hmm. And

37:08

that is maybe because... she was basically

37:11

working for the Manchus. So she was

37:13

all in on Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet

37:15

state, and that's why her career came

37:18

to a sudden end in 1945 when

37:20

the Chinese executed her. So I even

37:22

got to the end to fight out

37:24

was the communists that executed her, the

37:27

nationalists, but I'm sure none of the

37:29

Chinese were super fond of this Manchu

37:31

princess, who as the title says, was

37:34

also a Japanese spy. But it's another

37:36

one of those. And so her career

37:38

is... to right in

37:40

the Trail of Trail of

37:43

the 30s. era in the

37:45

30s, so exciting. And

37:47

if you're running running a

37:50

East Asian or Asian or

37:52

Pacific game, as game, well

37:54

as you very

37:57

well might be, a

37:59

this would be a

38:01

character you could

38:03

meet and probably regret

38:06

meeting. Same part

38:08

of the world, but

38:10

closer to our

38:13

times, including our times,

38:15

our times, Chinese spies Chairman

38:17

Mao to Mao to Xi Xinjiang,

38:19

by Roger Falago. Yeah, Roger

38:22

Falago is a French

38:24

journalist. I have a

38:26

lot of books about Soviet

38:28

and Russian spy agencies and networks.

38:30

the the British, similar to the

38:32

Americans. The Chinese, despite having

38:34

had a career of spycraft going

38:37

back, you know, at least to the

38:39

least to the I don't have a lot

38:41

on. So lot on. of these sort

38:43

of overview type books will catch my

38:45

eye. This one makes a lot

38:47

of promises about Mao Zedong, but we're

38:49

out of Mal a third of the

38:52

way through the book. So this

38:54

is a lot going to be the

38:56

is a lot going to be the which, you know,

38:58

takes us down to the you know, takes

39:00

which is fine. But it's not

39:02

quite as useful for Trail of as

39:04

I guess, and more useful for Night's

39:06

Black of if I want to put

39:09

it in those kinds of terms. useful

39:11

the PRC has never thrown open

39:13

its archives the way put it in thrown like

39:15

the of terms. Right. Balken opens up another

39:17

one of his archives, that is,

39:19

gets another pile of books Let's listen

39:21

to another exciting commercial, to then we'll

39:24

be back with the crazier then more

39:26

mythical portion of Ken's and more mythical portion of

39:28

Ken's purchases. Hold

39:45

the the presses. stop

39:47

Stop typing the It's

39:49

It's time for another

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days in gaming. All year long. So

40:55

we're back people who remember the

40:57

Portland episode we did recently will

40:59

note that Ken's books in there

41:01

were of an unusually sober nature

41:03

But he's made up for it

41:05

by of course going to tread

41:07

wells and this time your stack

41:09

at tread wells It was even

41:11

bigger than your stack at foils.

41:13

So you're really evening the scales

41:15

and speaking of favorite topics we

41:17

come to something's near and dear

41:19

to your own heart catland feline

41:21

enchantment in the making of the

41:23

modern world by Catherine Hughes. Yeah,

41:25

this is a biography of the

41:27

artist Lewis Wayne who you may

41:29

know from doing these super saturated

41:31

bright colored cats. They're usually up

41:33

on their feet and having adventures

41:35

and drinking tea. and he illustrated

41:37

these cats in basically the late

41:39

Victorian and Wardian era and also

41:42

mostly from an insane asylum. So

41:44

Lewis Wayne is the doorway or

41:46

the anchor that Catherine Hughes hangs

41:48

this book on to talk about

41:50

the shift in perception of the

41:52

cat from this thing you keep

41:54

in the basement to catch rats

41:56

and mice. to a fashion accessory.

41:58

And the, you know, the institution

42:00

of the cat lady and how

42:02

it is born in the Edwardian

42:04

era. And so it's a cultural

42:06

history of, you know, falling back

42:08

in love with the cat. Obviously

42:10

there are eras where cats are

42:12

on top of the artistic world

42:14

and areas where they are neglected

42:16

by Philostines. And this is about

42:18

Lewis Wayne and his role in

42:20

making cats cool again. And also,

42:22

it's... you know, going to be

42:24

a fine, it's going to be

42:26

a fine look at sort of

42:28

Edwardian society. So if you're in

42:30

a gas lighty type mood, maybe

42:32

look at catland, I can't stop

42:34

you. A crazy guy talking about

42:36

cats, no lovecraft connection I can

42:38

think of. So from the cultural

42:40

study into the land of myth.

42:42

We now venture to Murr People,

42:44

a human history by Von Scribner.

42:46

And again, this is a serious

42:48

book by a grown-up. It's published

42:50

by Reaction Books Limited, which I

42:52

guess gives me pause, but it

42:54

looks like a grown-up book. And

42:56

wide margins. And this is a

42:58

history of people thinking about mermaids,

43:00

or more people, I should say,

43:02

seeing them. And then we end

43:04

with splash and movies and shows

43:06

about mermaids. So it's a sort

43:08

of a cultural study of the

43:10

murphoke. and how we keep thinking

43:12

about them, even though, sadly, manatees

43:14

just aren't that sexy. So there

43:17

we are. I've got other books

43:19

on the topic, but this is

43:21

a new one and it looked

43:23

nice, and I enjoy single monster

43:25

tones as much as the next

43:27

man. So there we are. My

43:29

people also, obvious Lovecraft connection. My

43:31

mission on these trips is not

43:33

to buy giant stacks of books

43:35

that will be a struggle to

43:37

get to the airport. but to

43:39

find one book to convince you

43:41

to buy, and this time around

43:43

it was Basilisks and Beowulf, monsters

43:45

in the Anglo-Saxon world by Tim

43:47

Flight. Also from reaction books, so

43:49

I guess, second look at reaction

43:51

books, this is again a serious

43:53

book, Tim Flight is a... got

43:55

a doctorate in Anglo-Saxon literature from

43:57

Oxford, he's a real person, and

43:59

he's talking about the monster scope,

44:01

what I want to say, the

44:03

teratology of the Anglo-Saxons, and it

44:05

asks on the back, why were

44:07

the Anglo-Saxons obsessed with monsters, many

44:09

of which did not exist? First

44:11

of all... Love that, love that

44:13

form. It's like, besides Grendel, most

44:15

of these monsters did not exist.

44:17

Well, one of the monsters they

44:19

were obsessed with was the wolf,

44:21

which did exist. And I think

44:23

the answer is going to turn

44:25

out to be because they were

44:27

congenitally predisposed to be scared a

44:29

lot because they lived in Britain

44:31

in the eighth century. And I

44:33

can't argue with that logic. If

44:35

night and wolves and sudden death

44:37

are as close as the neighbor's

44:39

house, yeah, you're going to think

44:41

a lot about monsters, some of

44:43

which don't exist just by the

44:45

odds. And that brings us a

44:47

little jog in a jump, take

44:49

us to ghosts and Legends of

44:52

Wales by J.A. Brooks. Yeah, this

44:54

is just a compendium of the,

44:56

you know, sort of top stories

44:58

about ghosts and whatnot in Wales.

45:00

It's organized roughly geographically, which is

45:02

handy. It's part of a series.

45:04

This is, you know, The sort

45:06

of thing that you've seen a

45:08

million times, ghosts and legends of

45:10

X, whatever it is, I'm doing

45:12

the Arthur Macan annotations, so I

45:14

need to get my Welsh mysticism

45:16

on and my Welsh ghosts internalized,

45:18

so that's really what I picked

45:20

this up for, but also, you

45:22

know, I think it's worthwhile on

45:24

its own merits. If you've got

45:26

any sort of Welsh activity, you're

45:28

doing your, you're daring to take

45:30

your fearful symmetries game over the

45:32

Children Hills and into Wales, good

45:34

for you. with the magical history

45:36

of Britain by Martin Wall. Yeah,

45:38

this is an attempt to be

45:40

a summa of Britain's, you know,

45:42

all the cool magical stuff, so

45:44

you got all the way. back

45:46

to your Stonehenges, your, the story,

45:48

it's that the Roman geographers would

45:50

say that the land of the

45:52

dead was in Britain, eventually we're

45:54

going to get to King Arthur,

45:56

we're going to get to the

45:58

revival of King Arthur in the

46:00

Middle Ages, eventually Blake and John

46:02

D and all that good stuff.

46:04

down to allister Crowley. So this

46:06

is more of a one-stop shop,

46:08

I think, and mostly I picked

46:10

it up because it was reasonably

46:12

priced and dense and had an

46:14

index, which are the qualities I

46:16

kind of look for in a

46:18

new generic. title like this rather

46:20

than something that's laser focused on

46:22

one specific weirdo or one specific

46:24

magic. If you got a general

46:27

history, then ideally you want a

46:29

good author, ideally you want an

46:31

index and you want it to

46:33

not just be large type reprinting

46:35

of everything else you've or read,

46:37

plus a Robert Plant quote on

46:39

the front. So who can't follow

46:41

Led Zeppelin into the magical history

46:43

of Britain? Now it's being subtles.

46:45

This is one where the... Subtitle

46:47

has basically turned the title into

46:49

a vestigial nub. Yeah, it's doing

46:51

all the work here. Yeah, we

46:53

have influences art, optics, and astrology

46:55

in the Italian Renaissance by Mary

46:57

Quinlan McGrath. Yeah, this is a

46:59

straight up book. Mary Quinlan McGrath

47:01

is a real scholar. It is

47:03

from the University of Chicago Press,

47:05

so stop your snickering in the

47:07

back. This is about... What people

47:09

believed in the Renaissance that's wacky,

47:11

not what Mary Quinlan McGrath believes,

47:13

and what they believed was that

47:15

if you needed the energies of

47:17

Venus, let us say, or Jupiter,

47:19

or Mars, to be in your

47:21

life, the way to do it

47:23

was either have your house built

47:25

such that it focused those energies,

47:27

sacred geometry, or... Stand near a

47:29

big painting of Venus or Jupiter

47:31

or Mars the God and that

47:33

would send that energy into your

47:35

life So it's basically the notion

47:37

that sort of taking astrology and

47:39

going one further I wasn't born

47:41

under the sign of Venus, but

47:43

I'd like to you know get

47:45

like and love, why don't I

47:47

just fill my house with paintings

47:49

of Venus, and then Venus will

47:51

still influence my life even if

47:53

I don't have the natal stars

47:55

to back it up? It's not

47:57

idolatry if the idols are flat.

47:59

Right, and also, it's not idolatry

48:02

if it's science, Robin. Think about

48:04

it. Exactly. Speaking of science, this

48:06

is one that could go either

48:08

way. I'm interested in which I

48:10

know which way it goes, Heavenly

48:12

alchemy, alchemical influences, in Shakespeare by

48:14

Paul F. Paul F. Cowlin is

48:16

a poet. He is also a

48:18

guy who is very interested in

48:20

alchemy. He's got I think half

48:22

a dozen, maybe more of these

48:24

little almost pamphlet-sized books about alchemy.

48:26

So he's a guy who is

48:28

interested in alchemy and poetry, which

48:30

I think means Shakespeare is going

48:32

to come up. I believe that

48:34

The key word here is alchemical

48:36

influences in Shakespeare, which you can't

48:38

argue, Shakespeare is influenced by every

48:40

current of Elizabethan thought, alchemy a

48:42

big part of that. I could

48:44

probably have done a couple of

48:46

pages of this book myself, as

48:48

opposed to alchemical influences on Shakespeare,

48:50

but I haven't read it, so

48:52

it could. go a full Baconian

48:54

and say, Shakespeare is secretly writing

48:56

alchemical revelations or alchemical rituals of

48:58

the sort that I've pretended he

49:00

was doing in suppressed transmission. You

49:02

know, Shakespeare in the occult has

49:04

been a hobby horse of mine,

49:06

a favorite study of mine since

49:08

forever, and this is a new

49:10

one, and it looks very nice.

49:12

Still on a similar topic, nature's

49:14

alchemist John Parkinson, her fullest to

49:16

Charles I. by Anna Parkinson is

49:18

the re-forward where Anna Parkinson explains

49:20

why she's interested in John Parkinson?

49:22

Well I think she ran into

49:24

his name and was like, I'm

49:26

I related to him? And that

49:28

was why she wanted to look

49:30

into him at first. I don't

49:32

know whether or not she turns

49:34

out to be related to him.

49:37

I've not yet uncovered that. She's

49:39

a journalist and I think she

49:41

was like, I'm a journalist, I'm

49:43

going to research this guy that

49:45

no one knows anything about. So

49:47

he's an might be about the

49:49

same chances as a real doctor

49:51

or on the other hand it

49:53

might be woo and witchcraft. I

49:55

look at that guy in his

49:57

rough I think this guy is

49:59

more of the coal pepper style

50:01

herbalist where he's just listing all

50:03

the cool plants and saying what

50:05

their mickle virtues are and he's

50:07

not a magic man at all.

50:09

He's just right there getting nature's

50:11

goodness done for you. Next we

50:13

come to Under the Dragon Bridge

50:15

by Corinne Boyer. Well I mentioned

50:17

that... There's two sides to herbalism.

50:19

This is the other side. Corinne

50:21

Boyer has written a trilogy of

50:23

books that do exactly what I

50:25

want an herbal to do, which

50:27

is that they take a plant

50:29

and then they go longitudinally through

50:31

the myth of it. So you

50:33

start with the plant, you talk

50:35

about it as a plant, you

50:37

talk about its pharmacology, if any,

50:39

then you talk about... What does

50:41

it symbolize in poetry or in

50:43

art? What do the witches think

50:45

happened to it? Does it show

50:47

up in coal pepper? Does it

50:49

show up in Parkinson? What is

50:51

the early modern, you know, natural

50:53

philosophers think of it? And you

50:55

just go all the way through

50:57

so that any time you want

50:59

to involve verveine, let us say,

51:01

in something, you have a whole

51:03

wide band of responses to verveine

51:05

and then you can tie them

51:07

in however you want. This does

51:09

include verveine because... Of the three

51:12

books available I picked the one

51:14

about poisons. So this one is,

51:16

Wormwood, Valerian, Poppy, Autumn Crocus, Mushrooms,

51:18

Mandrake, Bailoral, Daphne, Mesoron, Pariwacle, Henbane,

51:20

Angelica, Lily of the Valley, Rue,

51:22

Ferns, Verveine, Belladonna, Akkainite, Fox Club,

51:24

and Thorn Apple. is best known

51:26

as Digitalis. So good for it,

51:28

right? Right. And finally you have

51:30

a couple of items that call

51:32

us back to episode 442 when

51:34

we talked about Austin Osman Spare,

51:36

the esoteric artists of the early

51:38

part of the 20th century in

51:40

England. And the first one is

51:42

Lost Envoy, the tarodek of Austin

51:44

Osman Spare, revised and updated edition

51:46

edited by Jonathan Al. Yeah, Osbud

51:48

Osman Spare, if you recall, was

51:50

a occult artist, self-taught, I think

51:52

both as an occultist and an

51:54

artist because he just couldn't get

51:56

along with anybody. And he in

51:58

1906 designed his own terro and

52:00

hand-painted it for his own use

52:02

in his own study, and then

52:04

it was lost. It got put

52:06

in archives sometime in the 40s

52:08

and didn't surface again until I

52:10

think 2013, according to the back

52:12

of the book. So they found

52:14

it in a magic archive somewhere

52:16

and it got a release as

52:18

a smaller version of this book.

52:20

And someone said, this is too

52:22

important. Austin Osman Spare is too

52:24

cool. We have to come back

52:26

and make a much bigger, prettier

52:28

version of the book. So there's

52:30

a ton of essays in here,

52:32

by all manner of modern British

52:34

occultists. There is an image of

52:36

each of the 79 cards from

52:38

his tarrow. There is a sort

52:40

of an annotation of them. What

52:42

is he doing? What's the design

52:44

about? What's that about? and it's

52:47

just a terrific book on the

52:49

creation of one specific tarot deck

52:51

and we're talking what are we

52:53

talking like almost 350 pages on

52:55

one tarot deck which is I

52:57

think more than even the poor

52:59

writer weight has gotten maybe there's

53:01

one book on the writer weight

53:03

than 350 pages but my goodness

53:05

this is an awful lot and

53:07

it is a deep dive as

53:09

I say into his occultism and

53:11

into the I suspect the occultism

53:13

of the people writing these essays.

53:15

And that comes in handy because

53:17

the final item is the tarot

53:19

deck itself. Yes, it's called AOS

53:21

tarot and it is in fact

53:23

a reproduction of the tarot deck

53:25

which was on sale cleverly next

53:27

to the book on the tarot

53:29

deck so suckers and Americans could

53:31

pick it up. and I am

53:33

delighted to have it. Cross promotion

53:35

is magical. I have not yet

53:37

dug through it because even I

53:39

have to ration my terro fun

53:41

sometimes, but I'm looking forward to

53:43

sort of taking a look at

53:45

this and taking a look at

53:47

this book and sort of getting

53:49

a almost a surgical core sample

53:51

of Austin Osman Spares, occult art.

53:53

Well, that that takes

53:55

us yet another another

53:57

majestic I can can

53:59

attest heavy pile

54:01

of books, all got

54:03

all got safely

54:05

back to Chicago

54:07

and it's being of

54:09

getting things safely

54:11

back, we've gotten this

54:14

podcast safely in the can, but we'll

54:16

start another one a mere week from

54:18

today. today. Stop having once

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again been talked about,

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once again, when we will

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talk about stuff. about stuff.