0:12

This is writer and game designer

0:14

Robin D. Laws. This is game

0:16

designer and writer Ken F. Hite.

0:18

And this is our podcast, Ken

0:21

and Robin, Talk About Stuff. Bandwith

0:23

brought to you by Pelgrane Press.

0:25

Stuff we're here to talk about

0:28

in this episode include... Campaign reading

0:30

lists. Robert Cecil! monstrous Wales! And

0:33

Abby Warber! Okay,

0:49

can we've been summoned? I

0:51

mean, invited to attend another

0:53

gloriously gloomy party at Castle

0:55

Slogar. Remember, keep your eyes

0:57

peeled and your reflexes ready.

0:59

The Slogar's festering festivity involves

1:02

more cleavers than confetti. Where

1:04

did everyone disappear to? Did

1:06

they all get ludicrously lost

1:08

in the hedge maze again?

1:10

I think I heard muffled laughter or

1:12

was a sobbing? It's coming from

1:14

behind that door. Oh! Of course,

1:16

it's locked. Just our luck. Hold

1:19

your skeletal horses, Ken. Look at

1:21

the floor. The tiles have markings.

1:23

Just like in that puzzle game

1:25

book I have. Unhappy birthday at

1:27

Castle Slogar! Aha! Found the book!

1:29

How will a book about a

1:31

birthday gone wrong help us find

1:33

a party that might not even

1:35

exist? Well, in unhappy birthday at

1:37

Castle Slogar, things go awfully awry

1:39

during Melissa Slogar's latest, night birthday

1:41

party. Guests are lost and Lord

1:43

Slogar is missing. Sound familiar? Whoa,

1:45

that's eerily similar. Wait, the book has

1:47

a map. But it's blank! How do

1:49

we navigate with that? Patience can. The

1:51

book describes each room in the exquisitely

1:54

eerie obstacles you have to overcome. You

1:56

can even use a special website to

1:58

check your answers. Get hints. then

2:00

veil the map as you explore.

2:02

So we need to solve a

2:04

puzzle in this room to get

2:06

to the party in the next

2:08

room. You're catching on now, let's

2:10

see. I remember the four-year puzzle

2:12

involved. And then you just want...

2:14

Look, the password! And the door!

2:17

It's unlocked! Now let's go party

2:19

like it's 1899! Hey, can I

2:21

borrow that puzzle game book? No

2:23

way! It's mine! But you can

2:25

get your own copy of Unhappy

2:27

Birthday Castle slogan from Atlas Games

2:29

at Atlas dash games.com/B-D-A-Y. Or check

2:31

the link in the show notes.

2:33

of miniatures, the crunch of the

2:35

readers in the benevolent case of

2:37

Peter Franklin coming alive, welcome us

2:39

once more into the gaming hut.

2:41

And today, there's more books on

2:43

the table than just game books

2:45

and more than just the history

2:47

of World War II that's on

2:49

the bookshelves down here in the

2:51

game hut basement because beloved Patrick

2:53

and Becker Tom Abella has asked

2:55

When starting a campaign in a

2:57

setting inspired by the real world,

2:59

how do you make a reading

3:01

list to inspire and inform your

3:03

players? What important areas need to

3:05

be covered? So first, in something

3:08

that no one will predict me

3:10

saying, check that your players want

3:12

to do homework. Yeah. Because I

3:14

think that you could borrow all

3:16

of Ken's players from his long-standing

3:18

group who are all history buffs

3:20

and like to... Even out research

3:22

you, right? Many of them, yes.

3:24

So the bulk of this segment

3:26

will assume you are assembling a

3:28

reading list for Ken's players. However,

3:30

I think your standard gaming group

3:32

probably won't want to break your

3:34

heart by saying that they don't

3:36

have time to check out anything

3:38

on your reading list, but chances

3:40

are that even if they say

3:42

they're going to... read all this

3:44

stuff, they're not, or you're going

3:46

to have an imbalance of reading

3:48

where one person has the time

3:50

and interest to check all this

3:52

stuff out, and everybody else has

3:54

a theoretical interest to do that,

3:56

and they won't. Because they can't,

3:59

because they're super busy people, not

4:01

a poor reflection on them at

4:03

all, but the more time you're

4:05

asking people to spend doing anything

4:07

outside of game hours on your

4:09

game depends heavily on their time

4:11

and interest level. Having said that,

4:13

can I would suspect that the

4:15

first answer to the actual question

4:17

is, well, you kind of just

4:19

parallel the research you did yourself

4:21

to either write the game that

4:23

you're play testing with them or

4:25

that you did as just hobby

4:27

side gaming to figure out how

4:29

to do this game set in

4:31

a historical setting, right? Yeah, I

4:33

mean, let's sort of back, because

4:35

you are correct, my players are,

4:37

I believe, all, they're all University

4:39

of Chicago graduates or affiliates at

4:41

some point, so they are sort

4:43

of selected by, you know, very

4:45

well-paid admissions departments to want to

4:47

read a lot. And so... It's

4:50

a, you know, I think I'm

4:52

at way one end of the

4:54

bell curve, but I don't think

4:56

that I'm the only GM in

4:58

the world with players who like

5:00

to read, who like to do

5:02

research, who like to follow along

5:04

if you're learning about the setting,

5:06

and in fact, since settings like

5:08

Forgotten realms or the world of

5:10

darkness exist that involved a ton

5:12

of reading, clearly other players out

5:14

there like to read and like

5:16

to involve themselves in the setting

5:18

of the game. So I will

5:20

be assuming in this discussion that

5:22

some... player on your group is

5:24

maybe a little more like me

5:26

than they ought to be and

5:28

are interested so we're going to

5:30

keep on with that. But that

5:32

said, if you're doing a historically

5:34

set game or a game inspired

5:36

by the real world as Tom

5:38

says, start with sort of trying

5:41

to establish a baseline of knowledge

5:43

and decide how much more than

5:45

that baseline do you need. doing,

5:47

as I mentioned at the top

5:49

of the hour, a World War

5:51

II set game, maybe you don't

5:53

need any more knowledge. Maybe every

5:55

red-blooded young American or Briton has

5:57

grown up with World War II

5:59

in their veins, knows basically everything

6:01

you need. They know what tanks

6:03

look like. They know Hitler is

6:05

bad. They know Stalin is bad,

6:07

but on our side. They know

6:09

that the plucky British and heroic

6:11

Americans will stop the Axis, etc.,

6:13

etc., etc., etc. It's all... you

6:15

know in your blood and there

6:17

are going to be groups that

6:19

have other sorts of stories in

6:21

their blood and if you're running

6:23

those games maybe you don't need

6:25

a reading list right and the

6:27

reality level is also going to

6:29

matter right right you were doing

6:32

swashbuckling pirates in the vein of

6:34

Errol Flynn you probably don't need

6:36

much more historical background than a

6:38

classic Hollywood movie puts in its

6:40

title card at the beginning. If

6:42

you are going to do something

6:44

where, you know, a year-by-year history

6:46

of the Caribbean that takes everything

6:48

into account, where that is part

6:50

of the play, is dealing with

6:52

historical fact, or detourning historical fact

6:54

as you're probably doing in an

6:56

unknown armies game, that is also

6:58

going to make a difference in

7:00

terms of the quantity of reading

7:02

and the nature of reading that

7:04

you're going to give them. you

7:06

know, runs way up and down

7:08

the gamut, I certainly never insist

7:10

that players, you know, do the

7:12

reading before they join the game.

7:14

That is never the rule. But

7:16

as you say, Robin, I've done

7:18

a lot of reading and I

7:20

might as well make that assembled

7:23

bibliography available. The next sort of

7:25

level down, as you say, depending

7:27

on the realism, depending on the

7:29

setting, you can maybe get away

7:31

with a movie night. I haven't

7:33

ever seen an Errol Flynn movie

7:35

says some poor child of this

7:37

century. And so you say, okay,

7:39

and you have a movie night,

7:41

you watch, you know, the Sea

7:43

Hawk, and you watch Pirates of

7:45

the Caribbean, the good one, which

7:47

is easily found because it's the

7:49

first one. And, you know, then

7:51

you're done. Everyone has pirates on

7:53

the brain and they can go

7:55

to Session Zero and make up

7:57

their character. The next level down

7:59

is the... Gerps book, and I'm

8:01

using Gerps as a synectic key

8:03

for all of those books, the

8:05

hero books, the arms law books,

8:07

used to do this, but they

8:09

have 128 pages of historical research

8:11

from before Wikipedia, send out and

8:14

set up to, ideally, and in

8:16

the case of most Gerps books

8:18

of a historical bent. pretty successfully

8:20

sift them for gaming utility. So

8:22

it's what kind of people are

8:24

we going to be in the

8:26

setting? How much does everything cost?

8:28

How many boats are there? That

8:30

kind of thing. And those sorts

8:32

of books do a really good

8:34

job of setting it down. They're

8:36

all available. I mean, Gerps is

8:38

all available on the Steve Jackson

8:40

website. You can get in PDF.

8:42

It's not that expensive. And maybe

8:44

that's enough for your group. Now

8:46

we start moving into, you know.

8:48

is there one book that you

8:50

can recommend? So when I ran

8:52

the Shakespearean Dromaturgy campaign using he

8:54

request set in the war, the

8:56

theaters between David Garrick's Drury Lane

8:58

and the Calvin Garden Theater, which

9:00

my player characters ran, I used

9:02

one book on the, I think

9:05

it was the wife of Colley

9:07

Sibber, but it was basically a

9:09

biography that ran through that whole

9:11

era. That was my main source,

9:13

aside from Shakespeare, and my general

9:15

knowledge of Georgia London. And that

9:17

was the only book that I

9:19

recommended anyone read besides Shakespeare. Right,

9:21

because often you can find a

9:23

book that covers an era and

9:25

looks at everybody of note in

9:27

a particular period of time, and

9:29

it helps if you were doing

9:31

it in a very distinct era.

9:33

So I found a couple of

9:35

books that were helpful for that,

9:37

for the Yellow King, for example.

9:39

But in a lot of other

9:41

cases, if you were looking for

9:43

just sort of the... details of

9:45

everyday life. There are a couple

9:47

ways to go for that. And

9:49

one of them is to pick

9:51

a biography of someone who was

9:53

in the middle of everything because

9:55

there will always in a well-done

9:58

biography be a lot of explanatory

10:00

detail about everything about the era

10:02

that you need to know to

10:04

understand a person, including everything from

10:06

the politics to the art to

10:08

the economic background to the material

10:10

culture and you'd be surprised how

10:12

many biographies are basically one-stop shopping

10:14

as far as that's concerned. Yeah

10:16

if you find someone who is

10:18

sort of in the middle of

10:20

your milieu and as you say

10:22

you find a really good biographer

10:24

you find a lot of times

10:26

there will be maybe a sensational

10:28

work of popular history about it.

10:30

It might not even be a

10:32

very good book in the sense

10:34

of narrative flow or anything else

10:36

but it will at least... open

10:38

the window if you will for

10:40

someone to get into that milieu

10:42

and know the fun exciting things

10:44

that someone I mean it's fun

10:46

and exciting enough that someone made

10:49

a popular history out of it

10:51

so that's that's sort of the

10:53

point and then as you get

10:55

deeper in if a game is

10:57

meant to explore a whole milieu

10:59

like say my unknown armies game

11:01

set in the old west did

11:03

or as my current game in

11:05

Venice does that's when it starts

11:07

becoming the actual reading list and

11:09

that That is basically when I

11:11

say, well, this was the best

11:13

book on the Johnson County War.

11:15

I've read a bunch of them.

11:17

This is the really good one.

11:19

That one goes on the list.

11:21

You don't have to sort of

11:23

show your work. This is not

11:25

a term paper you're turning in

11:27

for Mrs. Malar in social studies.

11:29

You just have to say, this

11:31

was the good one, this was

11:33

the most gameable one, this was

11:35

the one that maybe my players

11:37

will be more interested in getting

11:40

through or that's more accessible. You

11:42

know, if there's one that's in

11:44

print, that's usually better than one

11:46

that they have to borrow from

11:48

the library and fight over or

11:50

whatever. But your job is to

11:52

already have sifted it and then

11:54

provide that as a resource or

11:56

an option. And then I guess

11:58

at the very far end, when

12:00

you are really dealing with people

12:02

like my players, or I guess

12:04

the Moodle Arts Modica player, that's

12:06

when you do say, here is

12:08

everything I've found on the topic

12:10

that is good, and then you

12:12

try and sort of list it

12:14

in order of accessibility. And so

12:16

my Venice reading list for Swords

12:18

of the Los Arnese, the Swords

12:20

of the Serpentine game, is. I

12:22

mean, there's probably a dozen and

12:24

15 books on it, but they

12:26

begin with some GIRPS PDFs on

12:28

the topic, move to sort of

12:31

overviews, what I call the Vibes

12:33

of Venice. There's like three of

12:35

those ones by Peter Acroyde. So

12:37

it's not even asking someone to

12:39

read, really. It's asking someone to

12:41

settle back into a beautiful swimming

12:43

pool of Peteracroy pros. And then

12:45

if they want... you know, histories,

12:47

there's some straight histories, and then

12:49

there's special topics like, you went

12:51

on, your newsbook on the Venetian

12:53

Secret Service, that's one that I

12:55

think they're more likely to pick

12:57

up, but also there was a

12:59

good history of masks in Venice,

13:01

and so if the players are

13:03

interested in that, that sort of

13:05

points them to it. And again,

13:07

it saves them the trouble of

13:09

what I had to do of

13:11

finding the good book on Venetian

13:13

masks. So at some level, I'm

13:15

still the necessary filter, I guess

13:17

on this process. And another thing

13:19

that you're often trying to do

13:22

is to help them conjure the

13:24

visual world. And one way to

13:26

do that, obviously, is to direct

13:28

them to films set in that

13:30

place. Some of those things are

13:32

going to be thin on the

13:34

ground, right? I don't think there's

13:36

a ton of movies set in

13:38

Renaissance fitness. Not enough. Not enough.

13:40

Or, you know, in ancient Mesopotamia.

13:42

I can't think of a lot

13:44

of those. Yeah. So for that

13:46

you can reach for, often books.

13:48

aimed at kids, particularly ones by

13:50

darling kindredly, do a really good

13:52

job of presenting what everyday life

13:54

was like in different eras or

13:56

what a castle looks like or

13:58

what have you, and they do

14:00

it mostly visually, and has the

14:02

advantage of being something that people

14:04

can look at quickly, they can

14:06

pass around the room, that way

14:08

everybody's got the same picture in

14:10

their head, which isn't necessarily necessary

14:13

to a successful role-playing session, but

14:15

it certainly... helps. And if it

14:17

is an era of history that

14:19

is recent enough that there is

14:21

realistic figure of art, that also

14:23

really helps to get an art

14:25

book of paintings from that period

14:27

in order to show them. And

14:29

it's worth, you know, looking at

14:31

American art, if you're doing a

14:33

sort of a quasi-Babylonian game, but

14:35

that is not going to show

14:37

you what everyday life looked like

14:39

for people. But, you know, if

14:41

you're doing something, you know, said

14:43

in the 16th century somewhere in

14:45

Europe, there's going to be a

14:47

book of paintings that you can

14:49

show, and that will still be

14:51

up until a certain period, will

14:53

still be a slice of, just

14:55

one slice of life, because it

14:57

isn't until relatively late in art

14:59

history that people start painting. ordinary

15:01

people doing regular things, but even

15:04

so it will give you a

15:06

sense of costume and style and

15:08

what people look like, at least

15:10

at the, you know, level where

15:12

people can afford to commission paintings

15:14

of themselves. And in fairness, player

15:16

characters are seldom playing the baker

15:18

who's, you know, grinding out bread

15:20

for the aristocracy. They're playing someone

15:22

who's going to be wearing a

15:24

fancy shirt. So many of those

15:26

paintings are going to be more

15:28

valuable for role play than they

15:30

would be for sociologists, for example.

15:32

In the Venice game, that's Gary

15:34

Wils' Venice Lion City, which is

15:36

a history of Venice and the

15:38

themes of Venice, specifically in my

15:40

era, I think it's 1400 to

15:42

1600, maybe his period, and it's

15:44

all illustrated with great art, with

15:46

Venetian. Renaissance art and some I

15:48

think decorative art as well. But

15:50

it's exactly as you say, the

15:52

notion is that Will says you

15:55

have to be able to see

15:57

Venice to understand Venice and now

15:59

I'm going to tell you what

16:01

you just saw in, again, Gary

16:03

Will's is a terrific thinker and

16:05

terrific historian. Yes, so if you're

16:07

going to run a campaign where

16:09

you're going to have a reading

16:11

list, pick a city where lots

16:13

of painers lived. Yeah, right. Try

16:15

and run a running campaign set

16:17

in an era of great visual

16:19

art if you don't if you

16:21

don't set it. during the era

16:23

of photography, which of course, my

16:25

old West game, I could just

16:27

show a picture and say, that's

16:29

why it erp. And everyone would

16:31

say, okay, we're going to cross

16:33

the street and avoid that guy.

16:35

Right. Well, it's time for us

16:37

to cross the street, not to

16:39

avoid Wyatt Erp, but to avoid

16:41

running out of this segment and

16:43

into another segment. Or let's go

16:46

into the other segment. Yeah, let's

16:48

do that. Why'der can't stop us?

16:50

Please don't stop us, Whyder. the

16:52

Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs,

16:54

the B&DD. And within it, the

16:56

forces of Delta Green. In the

16:58

Morales Connection, the new globe-spanning mega

17:00

campaign for the fall of Delta

17:02

Green, you become the mythos hunting

17:04

agents hidden inside the B&DD. Play

17:06

eight linked operations as separate stand-alone

17:08

or linked into an epic hunt

17:10

for an infamous target. Escort a

17:12

sniper carrying a death warrant for

17:14

a sand warlord. Surveyal a Saigon

17:16

drug summit. Track heroin couriers on

17:18

a flight. from Hong Kong to

17:20

LA. Investigate the disappearance of an

17:22

archaeologist working the Bozoo Kepi ceremonial

17:24

site. Smash a Beirut drug deal.

17:26

ID the actors broadcasting the necronomicon

17:28

from a CIA-backed Munich radio station.

17:30

and wage the drug war amid

17:32

France's May 68 riots. Designed by

17:34

Kenneth Hite. Written by Gareth Ryder

17:37

Hanrahan. The team that brought you

17:39

the Zalajni Quartet and the Dracula

17:41

dossier. The Borellis Connection. Gorgeously designed

17:43

and horrifically illustrated by Jen McCleary.

17:45

A tale of sordid intrigue. Cosmic

17:47

horror. A desperate action against the

17:49

mythos. Now available in Titanic Hardback.

17:51

From specially cleared gaming retail stores.

17:53

And the Pelgrane Press. Web Store.

17:55

Now also at the Web Store

17:57

as an instantly available PDF-only purchase.

17:59

This time the retinal scan is

18:01

an old-timey cipher and the background

18:03

check was just a bunch of

18:05

lies we told to a person

18:07

with a... caller because we're in

18:09

the trade craft hut, but as

18:11

we have been sometimes in the

18:13

past, we are in not the

18:15

Elizabethan trade craft hut, but the

18:17

Jacobian trade craft hut to look

18:19

at the career of Robert Cecil

18:21

past trade craft hut segments that

18:23

have dealt with espionage in this

18:25

general era of English history have

18:28

included our segment on Christopher Marlow's

18:30

buying activity and all the way

18:32

back in episode 32. 32. And

18:34

we also did one on the

18:36

gunpowder plot in Ken's Time Machine

18:38

episode where we looked at what

18:40

would have happened if it had

18:42

succeeded because Ken, the story of

18:44

Robert Cecil will eventually win its

18:46

way to the gunpowder plot. It

18:48

will indeed. And speaking of searches

18:50

and high security, you went to

18:52

some effort to secure the book.

18:54

that inspired this segment? I did.

18:56

I read an article in The

18:58

Guardian, which I grant is a

19:00

mistake, but it was about a

19:02

recent discovery of a folder in

19:04

the archives, the British. royal archives

19:06

called the names of the intelligencers

19:08

and it's a folder from 1595

19:10

ran through about 1599 and was

19:12

discovered by anything that's kicking around

19:14

in the archives and discovered by

19:16

a scholar named Stephen Alford and

19:19

it had the list of all

19:21

of the spies the intelligencers who

19:23

worked for Robert Cecil And in

19:25

the Guardian article, they talk about

19:27

how interesting the discovery was and

19:29

blah blah blah. And Alford says

19:31

something on the order of, you

19:33

know, when I discovered this, it

19:35

really, you know, threw a lot

19:37

of what we thought about spycraft

19:39

in the era into question. And

19:41

then the Guardian says, and he's

19:43

written a book about this discovery.

19:45

And I looked it up and

19:47

sure enough, it's a book called

19:49

All His Spies, The Secret World

19:51

of Robert Cecil by Stephen Alford

19:53

Alford. Foils will surely have it.

19:55

Well, it turns out Robin, foils

19:57

did not have it. and not

19:59

only did they not have it

20:01

when they said, well, there's one

20:03

at the Waterstons in Charing Cross

20:05

Road just down the street. They

20:07

didn't have it either Robin. They

20:10

looked around. It's not a big

20:12

store. They looked around all of

20:14

it. They said, it must have

20:16

been an inventory error. And yeah,

20:18

it was a throw Jacobian ghost.

20:20

Yeah, let's not miss words here.

20:22

So I was forced to buy

20:24

this book from Amazon and it's

20:26

from Amazon reshipper, a Z shop

20:28

that sends you English books that

20:30

are not in print in America.

20:32

So I paid about as much

20:34

as I would have if I

20:36

bought it at Foils. But Foils

20:38

got none of it. book in

20:40

stock. At the end of the

20:42

day it turns out that the

20:44

Guardian article was misleading. in that

20:46

a guardian article misleading never never

20:48

that Stephen Alford was already writing

20:50

a biography of Robert Cecil and

20:52

just was doing the research for

20:54

his biography found this folder and

20:56

said great now I have a

20:58

thing for you know chapter 19

21:00

or whatever and he talks about

21:03

it. The book that I thought

21:05

it was which would have just

21:07

been those 19 guys in a

21:09

in a drill down a specific

21:11

book on that spy ring turns

21:13

out to be a biography of

21:15

Robert Cecil with the notion that

21:17

Robert Cecil was always up to

21:19

something. He was an intrigue and

21:21

a courtier back when that had

21:23

two meanings and he ran the

21:25

British spy network from a relatively

21:27

young age and was up to

21:29

a lot of shenanigans and this

21:31

book is about him and his

21:33

shenanigans less about the specific nature

21:35

of that spy network. Right, and

21:37

at least the holding of power,

21:39

if not necessarily shenanigans per se,

21:41

were the family business. Yeah, exactly,

21:43

because his father was William Cecil,

21:45

the first Baron Burley, and if

21:47

you read historians, Elizabethan histories, they'll

21:49

usually refer to him as Burley,

21:51

because if they call him Cecil,

21:54

then you have to explain which

21:56

Cecil. So, and it's Burley with

21:58

a GH. Right, yeah. Because you're

22:00

typing for typing this into your

22:02

standard. Right, and he was Secretary

22:04

of State through 1572. He was

22:06

Lord Treasurer and Lord Privy Seal

22:08

until 1598, which is when he

22:10

dies. Right, and unfortunately for the

22:12

interestiness of this segment, or perhaps

22:14

fortunately for the length of this

22:16

segment, it was the father, William

22:19

Cecil, who corresponded with John D.

22:21

Yeah, and he basically took

22:23

over from Francis Walsingham, who was

22:25

the Secretary of State. from

22:28

1573 to 1590 and ran

22:30

Elizabeth's spy network, Secretary of

22:32

State did not mean at that

22:34

time that you went out and

22:37

met foreign dignitaries. What it meant

22:39

was you were the person who

22:41

wrote all the official correspondence for

22:44

the king, and if you wrote

22:46

it under the privy seal, meaning

22:48

the secret seal, then you were

22:50

running the spy network. And that's

22:53

what... William Cecil did or Burley

22:55

did after Francis Walsingham dies. And

22:57

Walsingham ran John D as an

22:59

agent or an asset, let's say, and

23:02

then William is the guy who

23:04

gave him probably the code number

23:06

double 07 because he gave everyone

23:08

a number so that he wouldn't

23:10

in his reports reveal sources and

23:12

methods, right? He was very good about

23:14

that. So Robert Cecil is the younger

23:16

son of William Cecil. He is born

23:18

in 1563. He has scoliosis as an

23:21

infant and still has it through his

23:23

life. So he's somewhere between five feet

23:25

and five foot four. Queen Elizabeth called

23:27

him her pygmy. James the first called

23:30

him his Little Beagle. So obviously had

23:32

to put up with a lot. His

23:34

first cousin was Sir Francis Bacon, speaking

23:36

of conspirators and courtiers. He becomes a

23:38

member of parliament in 1584. Once his

23:41

father takes over as Secretary of Secretary

23:43

of Secretary of state. and continues to

23:45

be Lord Privy Seal, he basically

23:47

brings Robert Cecil into the family

23:50

business. His brother Thomas, while an

23:52

excellent person, doesn't have the head

23:54

for intrigue that Robert does. Perhaps

23:56

because he's an excellent person. Exactly.

23:58

And also because... Robert has basically

24:01

had to smile when people call

24:03

him pygmy for his whole life.

24:05

So he's good at being duplicitous.

24:07

Right. And that's an era in

24:09

which anyone with a visible disability

24:11

is considered inherently evil. Right. You've

24:13

got to work with that perception.

24:15

Exactly. And the fact that he's

24:17

able to make something out of

24:19

that, even with the advantage of

24:21

having his dad be lord Burley,

24:23

it still speaks to him and

24:25

his useful qualities to the throne.

24:27

So once Burley takes over his

24:29

secretary of his secretary of state.

24:31

He brings his son in, son

24:33

gets knighted, and then becomes a

24:35

member of the Privy Council basically

24:37

so he can go to meetings

24:39

without his dad, then he becomes

24:41

Secretary of State in 1596 and

24:44

Ward Privy Seal in 1598 when

24:46

his dad dies, and he takes

24:48

over that job. He's inherited Walsingham's

24:50

spy network. He's inherited his father's

24:52

spy network, which means that he

24:54

has inherited Walsingham and his father's

24:56

rivalry with the Earl of Essex,

24:58

who runs his own spy network.

25:00

And Essex launches his rebellion against

25:02

Queen Elizabeth in 1601, which is

25:04

marketed to the people of London

25:06

as a rebellion against the hated

25:08

Robert Cecil. And as you mentioned,

25:10

people with a visible handicap are

25:12

as you say thought of as

25:14

evil, so it's very easy for

25:16

propaganda to say, look at that,

25:18

there's a hunchback advising our beloved

25:20

queen, surely everything we don't like

25:22

about taxes must be his fault.

25:24

and since he's the treasurer, it

25:27

sort of is. So Cecil becomes

25:29

the focus of Essex's rebellion. He

25:31

fails because Cecil has a spy

25:33

network of his own. Cecil basically

25:35

nails the coffin shut on him

25:37

at the treason trial. He is

25:39

accused of having been in correspondence

25:41

with the king of Spain. He

25:43

says, yeah, it's my job to

25:45

be in correspondence with the king

25:47

of Spain. Here are the letters.

25:49

And everyone on the previous council

25:51

can testify that when I said

25:53

the infanta of Spain has a

25:55

claim to the throne, I then

25:57

said, but we shouldn't let her

25:59

be queen and everyone says yep

26:01

that's what he said because he's

26:03

got a spy network so he's

26:05

also been in secret correspondence not

26:07

just with the king of Spain,

26:09

but with the King of Scotland,

26:12

James VI, because he as well

26:14

as anyone else knows that Queen

26:16

Elizabeth is not long for this

26:18

world. They need to have a

26:20

stable succession, and James VI has

26:22

a credible claim, and Cecil basically

26:24

writes him and says, if you

26:26

just shut up about being King

26:28

of England, you will become King

26:30

of England, as long as you

26:32

trust me and let my network...

26:34

sort of insert you into power.

26:36

And then when you take over,

26:38

I don't know, maybe you'll need

26:40

a Lord Privy Seal in a

26:42

Secretary of State. Who's to say?

26:44

Elizabeth does die in 1603. Cecil

26:46

then uncovers the buy and main

26:48

plots, which are to kidnap James

26:50

VI as he's riding south to

26:52

London and replace him with Lady

26:55

Arbella Stewart, who is thought to

26:57

be more pliable to the plotters.

26:59

The plot includes Sir Walter Raleigh

27:01

and two of Cecil's late wife's

27:03

brothers. He has one of his

27:05

brother-in-laws executed, which I think is

27:07

the dream of many English bureaucrats.

27:09

Many people with spy networks. James

27:11

does take the throne in 1603.

27:13

Cecil becomes Baron Cecil. He stays

27:15

on as secretary of state and

27:17

as Lord Privy Seal. that in

27:19

1605 he becomes the first Earl

27:21

of Salisbury and so that's why

27:23

he is often called Salisbury in

27:25

history books because you've already got

27:27

a Cecil so we have Burley

27:29

and then Salisbury because now we

27:31

have no Cecil. Burley's oldest son

27:33

is becomes the second Baron Burley,

27:35

not Robert Cecil. So in 1605

27:38

also he springs Ben Johnson from

27:40

prison. Ben Johnson had written so

27:42

Janus his fall about Cecil's surveillance

27:44

state and he did time for

27:46

calling attention to the fact that

27:48

England was full of spies and

27:50

informers but you know he's learned

27:52

his lesson thanks Robert Cecil he

27:54

was wrong but you can't blame

27:56

him for trying he discovers the

27:58

gunpowder plot in 1605 or provokes

28:00

the gunpowder plot who can say

28:02

he becomes more treasurer in 1607

28:04

because James is basically the position

28:06

of having You know, one guy

28:08

who's good at everything, so he

28:10

moves him from intelligence work and

28:12

that administration to war treasurer, Northampton

28:14

becomes privy seal and takes over

28:16

the spy network. As Lord Treasurer,

28:18

he balances the royal budget, but

28:21

he's worked to death by King

28:23

James. He dies in 1612, not

28:25

even 50 years old yet. And

28:27

that is the story of the

28:29

diminutive but effective Robert Cecil. So

28:31

in a role-playing campaign where you

28:33

are on his list, You were

28:35

among the intelligencers. Yep. Perhaps you

28:37

could even call this campaign the

28:39

intelligencers. Right. What are your adventures?

28:41

Well, your realistic adventures were to

28:43

keep an eye on the Spanish

28:45

Navy. That was the most exciting

28:47

one. Many of his intelligencers worked

28:49

as merchants or merchants factors in

28:51

France or in Spain and they

28:53

would just sail out on a

28:55

little merchant ship and then they'd

28:57

take a detour past the Spanish

28:59

naval shipyards and count masts and

29:01

send a note. Another of your

29:04

missions is to infiltrate a embassy

29:06

and steal all the mail from

29:08

that. So you'd be infiltrating the

29:10

embassy, supporting a secretary, stealing their

29:12

mail. You might be working in

29:14

other government department, but keeping an

29:16

eye on all those magicians that

29:18

are running around. John D's not

29:20

alone. There's the whole school of

29:22

night. They're connected to Sir Walter

29:24

Raleigh. He's a known trader. Trouble

29:26

could ensue at any time. So

29:28

you might be the sort of

29:30

equivalent of the FBI. or MI-5,

29:32

actually, keeping an eye on possible

29:34

magical treason. So it's sort of

29:36

an ex-files monster of the week,

29:38

where you're more cigarette smoking man

29:40

than Mulder. It might be if

29:42

you're an overseas agent, you're involved

29:44

with chicanery amongst England's enemy Spain,

29:46

and it's a more sort of

29:49

a taught espionage campaign where you

29:51

have to, you know, sneak across

29:53

the French border. or sail along

29:55

the coast of Spain and make

29:57

contact with an agent in under

29:59

deep cover or whatever else. Because

30:01

each of these intelligencers is running

30:03

their own network of people, there's

30:05

not just 19 people working for

30:07

the equivalent of MI6, there's, you

30:09

know, those guys run their own

30:11

asset groups. Well, since we're talking

30:13

about a naval campaign where you're

30:15

sailing, there's possibly weird things going

30:17

on, it just occurs to me

30:19

that there might be a terrible

30:21

monster that you could encounter whenever

30:23

you're on the sea, so let's

30:25

listen to a soothing commercial and

30:27

then be terrified. by the very

30:29

worst monster that lives in the

30:32

sea. Speaking

31:02

of the King in Yellow, like

31:04

Carcosa, Chambers wisely does not restrict

31:06

the King in Yellow to one

31:09

mythic role. In this story, he

31:11

appears to be the personification of

31:13

both Castain's delusion and of secret

31:16

conspiratorial power. In Chambers' other stories,

31:18

he embodies hopelessness, degeneracy, or death

31:20

itself. In all of these tales,

31:22

however, he uses the play as

31:25

his gateway. his seduction, his channel

31:27

to enter the mind of the

31:29

reader, and perhaps the mortal universe

31:32

as well. Although this story predates

31:34

the arrival of the Tibetan word

31:36

topa into Western occultism, the King

31:38

Yellow resembles a thought form, as

31:41

theosophical occultists termed a similar concept

31:43

in the 1890s, given shape and

31:45

malignity, by the words of the

31:48

play. The King and Yellow, annotated

31:50

by Kenneth Hite, illustrated by Samuel

31:52

Ariah. Now in paperback and e-book from...

31:54

Art Dream Publishing. Protect this podcast from

31:57

Cetacean Perfity. by joining such beloved Patrick

31:59

and Bakers as Chad Ward, Robert Dean,

32:01

Brian K. Eason, Chris Leiden, and Chris

32:03

McCarthy. The Noise in the Night, the

32:06

snapping of great teeth, and the surprising

32:08

profusion of body parts floating past us,

32:10

welcome us to a nautical edition of

32:13

The Monster Hut. And today, we're going

32:15

to look at... What I believe historically,

32:17

Robin, is the worst ever monster to

32:20

live in the ocean. And that's right,

32:22

that horrible man-killing beast, that embodiment of

32:24

Satan, that dangerous thing, the beloved whale.

32:27

Yes, the whale is recently beloved. Yes.

32:29

As the scholar and writer Tim Flight

32:31

points out in his book Basilists and

32:34

Be a Wolf, which is about monsters

32:36

in the Anglo-Saxon world and what the

32:38

Anglo-Saxons... believe to be monsters and and

32:40

a whole chapter is devoted to the

32:43

whale and you're thinking a modern listener

32:45

the whale the beloved sweetheart of the

32:47

sea the endangered creature that we all

32:50

wish to cuddle with it it sings

32:52

and you can watch it and and

32:54

and uh... play its lovely song we've

32:57

been deliberately go on tourist trips to

32:59

go and visit that this is not

33:01

a terrifying monster well this is a

33:04

very recent perception yeah and the thing

33:06

that accounts for that is that only

33:08

during the last century the 20th century

33:11

he says crumbling to Mum and dust.

33:13

Yeah. Did we achieve enough mastery over

33:15

the sea and succeed in killing off

33:17

enough whales, I guess, that our attitude

33:20

on these creatures flipped. But even, you

33:22

know, into the middle of the 19th

33:24

century is Herman Melville. We'll tell you

33:27

later in this segment. Yes. He'll just

33:29

spend a whole chapter just on how

33:31

scary its eyes. Whales are monsters. They're

33:34

hideous creatures. They're out to destroy you.

33:36

And part of that is just that

33:38

until very, very, very recently. I mean

33:41

the ocean is still a super scary

33:43

place so food attempts to get in

33:45

or on the water, still kill lots

33:48

of people every year, but we're not,

33:50

we consider ourselves masters of this and

33:52

we consider ourselves caretakers of the beloved

33:55

whale. Even the whales who rip rudders

33:57

off boats, we sort of love and

33:59

sympathize with them. Yes, but before then,

34:01

just being on a boat was terrifying

34:04

and being on a boat when a

34:06

whale came along was super terrifying because

34:08

it could... hit your boat it could

34:11

destroy you and even if you weren't

34:13

throwing harpoons at it the whale might

34:15

get mad at your boat and try

34:18

to ram it or just you know

34:20

to its citation mind minding its own

34:22

business could sink your boat yeah a

34:25

lot of a lot of why we

34:27

like whales now is not just that

34:29

as you say we've killed enough of

34:32

them that they're not a threat but

34:34

also our boats aren't made of wood

34:36

anymore exactly I think that makes a

34:38

big difference that makes a huge difference

34:41

if a whale breaching nearby can't accidentally

34:43

destroy you, you have a little more

34:45

leisure to take a philosophical and humane

34:48

view of the situation. Right. And especially

34:50

in the medieval or quasi-med evil era

34:52

of the average F-20 game, you're definitely

34:55

in a wooden boat, unless you're in

34:57

a super magical, you know, divine boat

34:59

or something, and seafaring is extremely precarious,

35:02

and you are very much at risk

35:04

from the whales, but it goes beyond

35:06

that, in that if it was in

35:09

the sea, if it was dangerous, it

35:11

was gigantic, the clerics and scholars of

35:13

the time equated it with Satan. So

35:15

in fact, a little while ago we

35:18

talked about the Silk Roads exhibit at

35:20

the British Museum, one of the big

35:22

superstar artifacts that is included in that

35:25

is the franks casket which is made

35:27

of whalebone and on it there's a

35:29

riddle that talks about the material that

35:32

it's made from and because it's made

35:34

from a whale bone from a beach

35:36

whale and it describes the whale as

35:39

the king of terror and this wasn't

35:41

just a physical but a metaphysical threat

35:43

that whales represented because the sea is

35:46

allegorically connected to hell, it is the

35:48

abyss, because just as we sometimes imagine

35:50

hell as a place of flame and

35:52

torment that's inimical to ordinary life, of

35:55

course the sea is even more hostile

35:57

to life and it plunges deep down

35:59

into crevasse, just as often the sea

36:02

has hellish or satanic imagery associated with

36:04

it. And there's also allegorically the idea

36:06

that We are in little fragile boats,

36:09

we being our souls, and we are

36:11

floating on an ocean of sand, and

36:13

it's very very easy to tip over

36:16

and fall into the ocean of sand,

36:18

so something that dwells in the water

36:20

is just inherently evil and bad, especially

36:23

when it comes to knock us out

36:25

of our boat. Tim Flight makes the

36:27

point that in Anglo-Saxon terms anyways, monsters

36:30

dwell in the wilderness. They're out there

36:32

in the scary places where people can't

36:34

survive and the ocean is another wilderness

36:36

in fact. It's one that's even more

36:39

hostile than a forest would be. It

36:41

is innately a wilderness. A fen you

36:43

could drain a forest you could cut

36:46

down. You can't plant anything in the

36:48

ocean. The ocean is always going to

36:50

be wilderness, and it's like, you know,

36:53

original sin, but for geography. Right. So

36:55

obviously, if it's a wilderness, there's going

36:57

to be monsters there. And the whale

37:00

is only the biggest, therefore the worst

37:02

of them. Fish is in general, are

37:04

bad news in the Anglo-Saxon worldview, as

37:07

Beowulf discovers when he goes on his

37:09

swimming race with Breca. And fish swarm

37:11

swarm them and try to eat them,

37:13

because, of course they do. And another

37:16

of the sea monsters that Beowulf kills

37:18

in that race are the Nekor, which

37:20

is the same word that they use

37:23

for hippopotamus, which I just like, that

37:25

Beowulf is attacked by hippopotamuses. That doesn't

37:27

mean hippopotamus, it means water monster, but

37:30

I just enjoy that. I like the

37:32

notion. So the hippopotamus, of course, swallows

37:34

you and whales famously swallowed Jonah in

37:37

the Bible, so that's a bad look.

37:39

Again, the whale is death and... because

37:41

Jonah goes into the whale and he

37:44

comes out three days later with a

37:46

message from God so that's obviously a

37:48

pre-figuring of the resurrection. In the Bible

37:50

they mention the Leviathan a great horrible

37:53

sea monster that only God can command

37:55

and control and the Leviathan may just

37:57

be the biggest or bossest of what

38:00

are called the Tananim which is a

38:02

sea monster that the people who wrote

38:04

the Bible probably got from the Babylonians.

38:07

There's another monster called Tanu up in...

38:09

Mesopotamia or maybe it came through Syria.

38:11

There's a Syrian sea monster with a

38:14

similar name. So they mention the Tanin,

38:16

that's the singular, and God makes them

38:18

in Genesis. They're in, you know, when

38:21

he makes the oceans and fills them

38:23

with. creatures. They explicitly say God made

38:25

the Tanin, but then in Isaiah 27,

38:27

when God is finishing up the world

38:30

on the last days, he's going to

38:32

kill all the Tanin because they're bad.

38:34

And he doesn't want them in the

38:37

new world that he's going to be

38:39

in charge of. So even the relatively

38:41

non-ocean-going Hebrews, they were scared of whales.

38:44

The ketos, of course, is the Greek

38:46

whale monster. That's what tries to eat

38:48

Andromeda. Perseus puts a stop to that

38:51

and the ketos becomes the the constellation

38:53

Cetus where we get cetacean. And then

38:55

the other great late antiquity whale is

38:58

the aspedok alone which means whale turtle.

39:00

So maybe Godzilla, but the whale pretends

39:02

to be an island and when you

39:05

put your boat up on it, you,

39:07

you know, light your little campfire, and

39:09

then the whale wakes up and he

39:11

sinks and he pulls you in your

39:14

boat underwater, and that's, you know, how

39:16

Satan betrays you, he looks like a

39:18

cool island, and when you hang out

39:21

on him, he'll drag you to hell.

39:23

Right. Then the aspedak alone is also

39:25

called the KORha in Talmudik monster war,

39:28

the Jaskonius, according to St. Brendan, and

39:30

the fastitocal in what form he goes

39:32

into Middle Earth. You can get a

39:35

monster whale in Middle Earth if you

39:37

want one. And of course, you can't

39:39

talk about whales as embodiments of the

39:42

devil as emblems of all the... is

39:44

terrible and man-killing without talking about Moby

39:46

Dick who is all of those things

39:48

and is based on a actual whale

39:51

named Mocha Dick who had adventures and

39:53

Mocha Dick was covered over... Not to

39:55

be confused with his cousin Lata Dick.

39:58

No, Lata Dick is really very... he's

40:00

vibby, he's cool. Mocha Dick though, he

40:02

was covered with barnacles and so when

40:05

his... The head would come up, everyone

40:07

would go, oh my God, and also

40:09

he was a white whale, so they

40:12

could see, but he had this horrible,

40:14

crusty barnacle face, and that made him

40:16

scary. So he was like the whale

40:19

version of toothace, I guess, except he

40:21

would flip your boat instead of a

40:23

coin. So that is the Western tradition,

40:25

and we're going to return to that

40:28

once we get to the point of

40:30

putting them in your game as evil

40:32

monsters. But of course, that's not universal.

40:35

The Japanese still very helpfully have a

40:37

monster whale for us, even better than

40:39

a regular monster whale. The Bakekjura is

40:42

a yokai, just a spirit slash monster,

40:44

but he's a skeleton whale. And he's

40:46

accompanied by other scary fish. So once

40:49

we start to develop our list of

40:51

evil whales, we've got to get the

40:53

skeleton whale in there. Now, other mythologies,

40:56

the whale is not universally despised, does

40:58

not have the two alignments of the

41:00

Western tradition good and evil. And so

41:02

in hide a myth, for example, the

41:05

Orca's. are bad news at first, but

41:07

they're tamed by the culture hero Natsilane,

41:09

and a deal is struck with them

41:12

not to kill people anymore. And after

41:14

that, I guess they just, you know,

41:16

occasionally kill boats or wear salmon hats.

41:19

That's part of the arrangement. In Chinese

41:21

mythology, there's kun, the whale, and or

41:23

giant fish, because... Until recently the distinction

41:26

between whale and giant fish was not

41:28

one that you bothered to make and

41:30

he turns into pang the bird and

41:33

therefore becomes a symbol of balance. So

41:35

like a lot of other mythological creatures

41:37

that are evil and scary in the

41:39

West, he's a love. contemplative creature that

41:42

you know you might even you know

41:44

show you how to meditate and to

41:46

the innuet they're a food source that

41:49

has to be carefully husbanded so they're

41:51

not considered evil or scary but rather

41:53

a thing that was sent by the

41:56

creative you got to be careful around

41:58

them you got to make sure that

42:00

they're happy with the arrangement where you're

42:03

eating some of them but they're not

42:05

an evil monster by any means but

42:07

in the F20 game that I'm now

42:10

imagining, whales are evil. They're one of

42:12

the worst things in the world. And

42:14

they're especially scary because the player characters

42:17

are on a stupid wooden boat when

42:19

the whales attack them. Their alignment, I

42:21

think they're basically going to have to

42:23

be chaotic evil. There's an counter argument

42:26

that more sort of satanic creatures where

42:28

there's a set of rules and so

42:30

forth are lawful evil. But I don't

42:33

think there's very much lawful about an

42:35

evil whale. I think he's... an embodiment

42:37

of chaos and catastrophe and surprise. Yeah,

42:40

he represents the ocean. That's chaos on

42:42

stilts. Right. And like any F20 creature,

42:44

they could have terrible magics as well,

42:47

in addition to being able to just

42:49

knock over your ship with their tail,

42:51

which is, you know, pretty magical in

42:54

and of itself. They could have terrible

42:56

magics that they... bring to the surface?

42:58

Well, the medieval whale, Robin, could light

43:00

up the inside of its mouth and

43:03

draw fishes in with a beautiful smell.

43:05

So maybe your F20 magic whale can

43:07

hypnotize people with, like will the wisps

43:10

that come out of his mouth and

43:12

draw them in to be champed on.

43:14

There's also the idea in Inuit mythology,

43:17

although it is not... necessarily an evil

43:19

creature that there are orchas who can

43:21

turn into wolves. So that's that's literally

43:24

like a nine-year-old came up with that.

43:26

Well there's a lot of chimerical creatures

43:28

in your mythology. So I'm just I'm

43:31

just saying that is like the most

43:33

bawler monster ever. Yes. It's a werewolf

43:35

but he turns into orca not a

43:37

person. Well it may have been an

43:40

early role-playing kid in the up over

43:42

the Arctic Circle. Right. It's like he

43:44

was running a campaign and it's like,

43:47

oh, they got away from the whale,

43:49

but I need the well to go

43:51

after them. How is he going to

43:54

wreak his vengeance? They're seeing it out

43:56

of the water. Oh, he's going to

43:58

turn into a wolf. But that's definitely

44:01

a thing that some of the smaller

44:03

whales could possibly do is transform into

44:05

animals that can, you know, come briefly

44:08

on to the land in order to

44:10

the land in order to the land.

44:12

in our real evolutionary prehistory started out

44:14

as land creatures and they went back

44:17

into the water so you have ones

44:19

that can grow their legs back to

44:21

come and stop your village, kaiju style.

44:24

Yeah, and then we really do have

44:26

the turtle whale comes after you. It

44:28

could be a camera, only use a

44:31

whale. Yes, and unlike camera, evil. Yeah,

44:33

he does not prefer children everywhere. He

44:35

eats the children. Yes. I think that

44:38

a lot of it is, if you

44:40

have sharks in your ocean, whales become

44:42

the good guys, that's just might... culturally

44:45

reductionist theory, but the whales also, we

44:47

can add elements of our own belief

44:49

and mystical imagination of whales that they

44:52

can sing and communicate across miles and

44:54

miles and miles that they have a

44:56

large distributed intelligence. Well, if all of

44:58

that is in the service of a

45:01

chaotic evil, monster, yeah they can sing

45:03

and that's another way of their magics

45:05

is that they can knock down things

45:08

with sonic beams or they can hypnotize

45:10

people with song, they have banshee powers

45:12

or they have powers like that, and

45:15

the fact that they can communicate with

45:17

each other means that even if you

45:19

kill one whale they've telepathically sent the

45:22

description of you guys to the next

45:24

bunch of whales and you better not

45:26

go back on the ocean because the

45:29

whales aren't going to wait around, they're

45:31

going to ambush you when you sail

45:33

out. And the first time you're out

45:35

of sight of shore, here come two

45:38

whales to come smash you up. Right.

45:40

And it could be that people think

45:42

they turn into whales, because it's not

45:45

because they do, but because they're allied

45:47

with wolves on the surface land. So

45:49

the wolves can push you toward the

45:52

ocean when the whales call. That's like

45:54

a double threat. and whales. Yeah, it

45:56

could be like a trade-off that the

45:59

wolf, the, the, the gunoles or the

46:01

wolfman or whoever are teamed up with

46:03

the whale and that they chase things

46:06

off the cliff to be eaten by

46:08

the whale and sometimes the whale will

46:10

slush up an innocent dolphin or something

46:12

for them to tear out on the

46:15

shore. Right, or they're just, you know,

46:17

spit out the armor and weapons and

46:19

weapons and jewels and then the wolfman

46:22

go down and sell it. Yeah, that

46:24

works out. It's all economy. That's a

46:26

great monster ecology for the closest ocean

46:29

cliff side in your campaign. Right.

46:31

So now that we've got new

46:33

whale allied lichenthrops for you, and

46:36

of course this scary well themselves,

46:38

I think we've produced plenty of

46:40

terror for your F20 characters and

46:43

can now exit this segment with

46:45

our heads held high, high above

46:47

the water, far from whales. Hold

47:06

the presses! Stop typing the teletypes!

47:08

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48:17

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48:19

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48:21

our friendly elemental pal, and then

48:23

head on him to the parlor

48:25

of the consulting occultist, where at

48:28

the past of beloved Adrian Becker,

48:30

Philip Masters, and Philip was put

48:32

in mind of this by a

48:34

discussion of terror on the live

48:36

episode, he wonders if you can

48:38

have something to say about Abby

48:40

Warburg. And so this is twice

48:42

in one episode, a case of

48:44

us being cruelly disappointed by something

48:46

in the Guardian, this time around

48:48

though, it was because the... newly

48:50

reopened gallery space of the Warburg

48:52

Institute. We wanted to go visit

48:55

it when we were in London,

48:57

but it's closed on Mondays, which

48:59

is our museum day. So we

49:01

were awarded saddened and can only

49:03

imagine what we would have seen.

49:05

But Ken, you can make everybody

49:07

imagine what we had seen by

49:09

describing the person who put that

49:11

collection together, Abby Warburg. Yeah, Abby

49:13

Warburg is born in 1866 in

49:16

Hamburg. If you are familiar with

49:18

the 19th century and 20th century

49:20

banking world of Europe, you know

49:22

about the Warburg banking family. And

49:24

guess what? That's his family. He's

49:26

the eldest son. And shortly before

49:28

he turns 21, he makes a

49:30

deal with his brother Max. to

49:32

give up his right to inherit

49:34

the bank in exchange for Max

49:36

providing him, and I quote Wikipedia

49:39

here, with all the books he

49:41

ever needed. And man. That's a

49:43

slick way of getting out of

49:45

working in a bank, your whole

49:47

lot. What a deal. If I

49:49

could make that deal. Well, I

49:51

promise I won't work in a

49:53

bank, but you have to buy

49:55

me every book I want. I

49:57

made a similar deal with Sheila,

50:00

and we'll see if she likes

50:02

it as much as Max liked

50:04

the deal. Anyway. If you're not

50:06

artist and so he's studying with

50:08

various scholars who are also talking

50:10

about the history of art and

50:12

most importantly for him he goes

50:14

to Florence and spends two years

50:16

studying art and develops the notion

50:18

of basically doing for art what

50:21

Linnaeus did for biology coming up

50:23

with a system of classification so

50:25

that you can instantly refer to

50:27

art based on its content. And

50:29

for that purpose, he invents what

50:31

we now know as iconology, the

50:33

study of icons, the study of

50:35

symbols, and you know, so basically

50:37

he's like everyone with a hand

50:39

over their face, that's the same

50:42

art. Right. It's the granddad of

50:44

semiatis. Exactly. And the granddad of

50:46

memes in some way. He studies

50:48

psychology in 1993 in Berlin because

50:50

he's interested in what art does

50:52

to people. He doesn't really care

50:54

about studying the brain. He wants

50:56

to study the response of people

50:58

to the outside world. His brother

51:00

Paul marries an American banking heiress,

51:03

Mena Lobe, in New York City

51:05

in 1895. So Abby goes to

51:07

America for the wedding. And once

51:09

he's in America, he gets curious

51:11

and tours the southwest and studies

51:13

the Pueblo and the Hopi and

51:15

their art, and he takes a

51:17

bunch of photographs. of things that

51:19

apparently the Hopi are mad that

51:21

he took photographs of. There's sort

51:23

of a contratomp with the Warburg.

51:26

Yes, there's a lot of things

51:28

in indigenous cultures that you are

51:30

not supposed to access. I'm not

51:32

sure a very specific person and

51:34

a European with a... tourists with

51:36

a camera is not that person.

51:38

Not that person. So he goes

51:40

back to Germany with his hopey

51:42

photographs and everything and he marries

51:44

a Lutheran woman, gigantic scandal, and

51:47

so they moved to Florence to

51:49

let all that blow over and

51:51

then he goes back to Hamburg

51:53

in 1902, sort of noodles around

51:55

doing his own independent study. In

51:57

1907, he joins the faculty of

51:59

the Hamburger Vissenschofla Stiff-Dung, which is

52:01

the Society for the Expansion of

52:03

Scientific Knowledge, basically, and sets up

52:05

his own library for art historical

52:08

research. He rejects some offers of

52:10

being a professor at various places,

52:12

but in 1919, He joins the

52:14

University of Hamburg. And the reason

52:16

he joined the Shiftung and the

52:18

university is Max Warburg built both

52:20

of those and said, you have

52:22

to work there. I don't care

52:24

that you're not working at the

52:26

bank, but you have to at

52:29

least work at the art history

52:31

job I invented for you. So

52:33

he does that, he's institutionalized in

52:35

1921, he's been behaving erratically apparently,

52:37

they diagnose him with schizophrenia, so

52:39

he's in a Swiss asylum sanitarium,

52:41

and in 1924 he's being visited

52:43

by various art scholars because they

52:45

still want to talk to him.

52:47

And in 1924, enough art scholars

52:50

are in one place. He says,

52:52

you know what, I'm just going

52:54

to do a lecture on the

52:56

religious symbolism of the snake in

52:58

Greek and Hopi culture. And the

53:00

lecture is so well thought and

53:02

put together, that the art scholars

53:04

say, this guy doesn't belong in

53:06

an asylum, he needs to go

53:08

back to teaching, and they spring

53:10

him on that basis. So his

53:13

schizophrenia diagnosis is. crossed out. It's

53:15

changed to manic depression, which is

53:17

far more handleable than and now.

53:19

And in 1926, again, Max sets

53:21

up the Warburg Institute to formalize

53:23

the sort of art school that

53:25

he'd set up in his, or

53:27

art history school, I should say,

53:29

that he'd set up in his

53:31

library. In 1927, he begins to

53:34

assemble what he calls the Builder

53:36

Atlas Nemosini, which is the picture

53:38

atlas of nimosani, the goddess of

53:40

memory. It's 971 images, distributed between

53:42

65 different panels. The images are

53:44

related, but also not related. And

53:46

so your job is to look

53:48

at them and trace the connections.

53:50

And so the job of the

53:52

builder atlas is to show how

53:55

the image of the snake, for

53:57

example. moves between cultures and for

53:59

some reason people are mad at

54:01

the builder outlessness and they're saying

54:03

it's all diffusionist it's like no

54:05

he only has information about European

54:07

and Middle Eastern culture he doesn't

54:09

have enough stuff though he does

54:11

use some of his photographs from

54:13

New Mexico and he wants to

54:16

talk about the commonalities in the

54:18

human representation of symbols. Are those,

54:20

you know, he's sort of fumbling

54:22

toward archetype theory, maybe Allah Young,

54:24

or maybe he's saying, it doesn't

54:26

matter where it comes from, the

54:28

fact is that it's here, and

54:30

we need to study the symbol

54:32

as the symbol, not the symbol,

54:34

as is it a pretty snake

54:37

or a not pretty snake, which

54:39

is how people have been studying

54:41

art. Right. So he's certainly paralleling,

54:43

if not drawing influence from Young.

54:45

But it's I think much more

54:47

justifiable to make the argument that

54:49

there are recurring motifs of images

54:51

that often mean the same thing

54:53

across cultures than to say that

54:55

they are embedded. in our psychology,

54:58

although with snakes I think both

55:00

are true. We are actually literally

55:02

programmed with a symbol of snake

55:04

means alarm and danger, whereas our

55:06

attitude to, for example, whales may

55:08

be culturally dependent. So he's assembling

55:10

the builder at last, he dies

55:12

in 1929 of a heart attack,

55:14

the builder at loss is not

55:16

complete. his private library and archives

55:18

removed to London in 1933 when

55:21

Hitler takes power and a Jewish

55:23

banker's son's art collection is the

55:25

first thing on their minds. So

55:27

they're there before they loot it.

55:29

Yep. So they install the Warburg

55:31

Institute, move it from Hamburg to

55:33

London and they install it at

55:35

Thames House where their co-tenant is

55:37

MI5. So if you're looking for

55:39

a crossover. There we are from

55:42

1934 to 1937. The MI5 Semiotics

55:44

Department. The MI5 Semiotics Department is

55:46

right there. MI5 and then both

55:48

leave Thames House in 1937. They

55:50

moved to what's called the Imperial

55:52

Institute Buildings in 1937 in Kensington.

55:54

And then in 1958, they moved

55:56

to a purpose-built building in Bloomsbury

55:58

on the University of London Campus.

56:00

and the University of London, by

56:03

the way, attempts to mulch the

56:05

Warburg Foundation and does a lot

56:07

of wasteful spending on the Warburg

56:09

account. There's a big lawsuit about

56:11

it and the independence of the

56:13

Warburg. Institute has just been established

56:15

by a court. It is now

56:17

blown up to be 350,000 books.

56:19

When they moved it to London,

56:21

it was not that big. It

56:24

was about the size of my

56:26

library, actually, and 450,000 images. The

56:28

word is that half the books

56:30

at the Warburg are the only

56:32

copies in Britain. That's how good

56:34

that library is. Well, let's up

56:36

the new building as well, fortified

56:38

against fire. Exactly. We've learned a

56:40

lot in recent weeks about the

56:42

vulnerability of things to fire. So

56:45

the Guardian, when it talked about

56:47

the new debut of the new

56:49

facilities with beautiful gallery space and

56:51

everything and initially thought the whole

56:53

thing was open to the public

56:55

and then the other track that

56:57

just a couple of spaces are

56:59

open to the public, they mentioned

57:01

that it is an occult library.

57:03

Phil's question talks about the terro,

57:05

but we haven't mentioned the occult

57:08

at all in any of this.

57:10

He seems to be mostly an

57:12

art historian. Why? Are we talking

57:14

about this in the consulting occultist?

57:16

Partially because a lot of the

57:18

collections of images that he assembled

57:20

were alchemical because alchemy is all

57:22

about image and symbology in print

57:24

anyway. Yeah, speaking parallel and young.

57:26

Right. He has a lot of

57:29

the art that became tarotex or

57:31

that were used for tarotex. He

57:33

has samples of the tarot. Again,

57:35

you're talking about an icon and

57:37

a symbol. And so Warburg is

57:39

not an occultist in... any sense

57:41

that I was able to find

57:43

out. He just liked art. This

57:45

is not to say you can't

57:47

say he was a secret occultist

57:50

because as you say, you know,

57:52

he rooms with MI5, he's collecting

57:54

tarot art. What else do you

57:56

need? But... The biggest contribution that

57:58

the Warburg Institute has made to

58:00

the occult is that they hired

58:02

Francis Yates to be one of

58:04

their scholars in residence in 1941.

58:06

Her first job was to edit

58:08

the Warburg magazine and then do

58:11

her own research in the giant

58:13

archive of occult knowledge. And she

58:15

stayed at the Warburg until her

58:17

retirement in 1970 and she was

58:19

one of the pioneering scholars of

58:21

occult history. and looking at the

58:23

occult as a body of intellectual

58:25

knowledge not as a bunch of

58:27

weird side effects of knowledge if

58:29

you follow me. So her thesis

58:32

is that the occult is one

58:34

of the ways that people study

58:36

the world was a very important

58:38

way and she wrote a biography

58:40

of Giordano Bruno to demonstrate the

58:42

importance of the hermetic to his

58:44

worldview and talked about the notion

58:46

that the Renaissance was... as occult

58:48

as it was anything else. And

58:50

then she did a very famous

58:52

book called the Rosicrucian Enlightenment, saying

58:55

that that impulse then succeeded into

58:57

the early modern era, and she

58:59

is one of the most important

59:01

towering scholars of the occult in

59:03

history. And if it hadn't been

59:05

for the Warburg, she would have

59:07

had to do something else with

59:09

her life, and probably something vastly

59:11

less cool. So as you suggest,

59:13

turning... iconology into iconomancy and figuring

59:16

that he's gathering all these powerful

59:18

symbols and understanding them in order

59:20

to create a new, hopefully safe,

59:22

perhaps even anti-nancy magical system and

59:24

that you can be in the

59:26

1930s, you can be trail of

59:28

Kithulu. investigators who are part of

59:30

the process of unpacking everything in

59:32

1933. Some of the characters might

59:34

be M.I.5 characters and from there

59:37

it's a pretty short hop and

59:39

a jump into fighting the Ahanurba

59:41

and of course the minions of

59:43

Nero Latham. Yeah. And the focus

59:45

on art means that you could

59:47

have a great tie-in with a

59:49

fearful symmetries game, which is all

59:51

about Blake's iconography. Well... I'm sure

59:53

that there's copies of Blake in

59:55

the Warburg Institute Library, and if

59:58

there weren't, they got added shortly

1:00:00

after they moved to London, and

1:00:02

the notion of William Blake, you

1:00:04

know, Task Force Bula on MI-5,

1:00:06

going out there and... dealing with

1:00:08

the occult magical threat in Britain's

1:00:10

more remote areas I think is

1:00:12

a great way to tie your

1:00:14

more hardcore spy action into the

1:00:16

wonderful occult world of Britain in

1:00:19

fearful cemeteries. And it's probably too

1:00:21

early for somebody in Germany and

1:00:23

then in Britain to be collecting

1:00:25

a surrealist, but of course if

1:00:27

you're looking for other people who

1:00:29

are engaged in reinventing and inverting

1:00:31

iconic imagery, particularly dream energy, you've

1:00:33

got the... Dreamhounds of Paris, so

1:00:35

you could take a jaunt across

1:00:37

things channel, go to Paris and

1:00:39

bring Dalai and Max Ernst and

1:00:42

all of those other people into

1:00:44

your campaign as well. So once

1:00:46

we've tied a whole bunch of

1:00:48

different trail of cathedral campaigns together

1:00:50

into one exciting campaign, I think

1:00:52

it's time for us to pat

1:00:54

ourselves on the back as we

1:00:56

so often to and anticipate that

1:00:58

we'll have another episode, but we'll

1:01:00

probably also end in backpacking a

1:01:03

mere week from today. Stuff having

1:01:05

once again been talked about is

1:01:07

time to thank our sponsors. Atlas

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1:01:13

software. Music as always is by

1:01:15

James Simple. Audio editing by Rob

1:01:17

Borges. Support our patron at patron.com,

1:01:19

at patron.com, backslash, Ken and Robin.

1:01:21

Make sure this podcast isn't closed

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forgot their battering ram. On X

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Sky he's Robin Dlaws.bisky.social. See you

1:01:45

next time when once again we

1:01:47

will talk about stock.