0:12

This is writer and game designer Robin d Laws,

0:14

and this is game designer and writer 539. This

0:17

is our podcast. Can you robin talk about

0:19

stuff? Bandwidth brought to

0:20

you by Pel grain press. Stuff we're here

0:22

to talk about in this episode include, solving

0:25

the mystery early, Crusaders versus

0:27

Santa, late fifties science fiction

0:29

cinema, and Eve Klein. In

0:48

Sunset City, there's always something

0:50

fishing going on, and we're not

0:52

talking tuna. Normally good neighbors

0:55

are suddenly stealing jewels, kidnapping

0:57

kitties, and blackmailing the mayor.

1:00

The magical kitties of Sunset City

1:02

have their

1:02

pauseful. That's why they've formed

1:05

the cat eyes detective agency.

1:07

Because even though human detectives are pretty

1:09

good at their jobs, sometimes it

1:12

takes magic to uncover what's really

1:14

going on in this town. Magical

1:16

Kiddie's Save The Day is the family

1:18

favorite roleplaying game for

1:21

all ages. I am so

1:23

excited about this. I have to break character.

1:25

You know I love cats noir.

1:27

Atlas Games adds mystery and intrigue to

1:29

your game with kitty noir

1:31

hometown. Are there scratches? Do the

1:33

cats get scratches, kitty noir? Has

1:35

players explore a whole new detective series

1:38

or throw in mystery that any visiting

1:40

Kitty can uncover. Okay. But

1:42

is it really noir? Kitty noir

1:44

takes its inspiration from classic film

1:46

noir and crime movies 539 the

1:48

nineteen thirties to the nineteen 539, and

1:51

from Golden Age science fiction stories of time

1:53

travel, someone has frozen the

1:55

city in

1:55

time. Inside a magical bubble, andor

1:57

they don't want anyone to know about And it's

2:00

coming to Kickstarter on March 28th, you

2:02

say. You said that. But you are correct.

2:05

Are there any other new magical kitty

2:07

treats can add to my collection? Well, it's

2:09

the new game master kit too. You know, it's

2:11

got a sturdy g m screen plus a handy

2:13

poster of kitty breeds to help

2:15

you pick your perfect kitty

2:17

character. Don't you mean my perfect

2:19

kitty character?

2:21

That up. I won't mention the full size poster

2:23

map of Sunset City. Find magical

2:25

kitties noir on Kickstarter from

2:27

March twenty eighth to April twenty seventh.

2:30

Twenty twenty

2:30

three. Learn more at atlas dash

2:33

games dot com or follow the

2:35

link in the show notes.

2:42

The rattle of dice, the thump of

2:44

miniatures, the crunch, O Doritos

2:46

and the Benavuque gaze of Peter 539 coming

2:49

alive. Welcome us once more

2:51

into the gaming

2:53

hut where we have Looks

2:55

like we've got a an old country

2:57

house plan, a butler. We

2:59

got a butler mini, thumbing around.

3:01

Robin, is that a mystery? I figured out that it

3:03

was a mystery. Do I win? Do I

3:05

win? Yes. So what we wanna

3:08

look at is 539 we need

3:10

to worry as GMs and scenario writers,

3:12

how important is it that the

3:14

players discover the

3:16

answer to the mystery in

3:19

the big reveal

3:20

scene. Is it so bad? Is it so terrible?

3:22

If they work things out a little

3:24

bit ahead

3:25

of time. And I think my phrasing

3:27

may even be tipping my hand to what

3:29

my answer is on this because The

3:32

investigative genre is not

3:34

just the who done it genre andor

3:36

it's not just about surprise andor

3:39

often it is as much a journey as

3:41

about figuring out what's going or

3:44

do you have a contrary

3:45

thought?

3:45

mean, I think that the Palm card

3:48

in your summary was a little bit

3:50

ahead of. I feel like if

3:52

you introduce the situation,

3:54

the mystery, and the players immediately

3:57

figure it out, andor they jumped to

4:00

the end before they've got

4:02

all of the, you know, evidence or

4:04

or marination that you thought that they needed.

4:06

That can be, I think, a problem, first of all,

4:09

because they probably don't have any proof. But second of

4:11

all, because you are then

4:13

left with the the big middle

4:15

part of the adventure unplayed, which

4:17

sort of puts a bad taste in your mouth.

4:19

And the players, I think,

4:21

might feel like the adventure was little

4:24

arbitrary because they walked in andor course, it was this

4:26

guy, and they might have sort of cheated

4:28

themselves out of their own fun. But I think that

4:30

that holds less and less and less

4:33

the more of the adventure you've played out,

4:35

and I personally love it 539 the

4:37

players figure out the mystery

4:40

two thirds of the way in or even half of

4:42

the way in. Because often they're

4:44

deep enough in that they know that they

4:46

have to go get 539 or they have to if it's

4:48

a Cthulhu type mystery, they have to still assemble,

4:51

though, whatever it will be, that will keep

4:53

them maybe alive during the confrontation. I

4:55

mean, that's the downside of figuring out a trail of Cthulhu

4:58

mystery in act one is you're gonna get eaten.

5:00

Yes. You just get to the ghouls faster.

5:02

Right. And then so in many cases, the

5:05

mystery is do I really have to go down

5:07

and face to ghouls and you spend three

5:09

acts doing that, least you knew with some of my players.

5:11

But the larger mystery genre,

5:13

I feel like 539 the players

5:15

don't have the sense within

5:18

them that they can in fact figure things

5:20

out ahead, that they are not merely

5:22

waiting to be shown all the cards

5:25

that their deductive ability is kind

5:27

of for not, then that I

5:29

think is more pernicious than a

5:31

mystery they solve too fast. So

5:33

I feel like the players need to

5:36

be in control of their own character

5:38

actions as much as possible. And if that

5:41

means they solve the mystery and act early

5:43

or even half the story early,

5:45

I generally I I'm happy with it. I

5:47

I go with it. I I praise them and

5:49

reward them and then point out the practical

5:53

obstacles between this and a proper data

5:55

model, which might in fact be the Google

5:57

tunnels or finding proof

5:59

of their brilliant

6:00

insight. Right? Right. I think this is one

6:02

of those things that GMs are much

6:04

more afraid of happening than ever

6:06

really happens because what

6:09

do you have to do basically in order to short

6:11

circuit the entire scenario

6:13

and jump right to the end from the beginning

6:15

Hite you have to make a series

6:17

of wild guesses. Yeah. And

6:20

when they do that, first of all, that

6:22

doesn't happen that often. We're just gonna leave

6:24

the GM because they're super predictable. Right.

6:26

Because Generally, even if one

6:29

player goes, well, obviously, the

6:31

carnival is a front for

6:33

the insects from Shagai. Everyone

6:35

else will go, well, what are you basing that on?

6:37

Like any GM where their salt is not

6:40

going to have the clue in the

6:42

very first scene that leads to the very ant scene.

6:44

That's not a mistake anybody's gonna make.

6:46

And so, generally, if you have other

6:48

players, they will talk the one player

6:50

out of the lucky league. But

6:52

as you suggest, the interesting

6:55

thing about an investigative scenario is

6:58

not just the revelation, but

7:00

rather what do you do about that

7:03

revelation once you've found it?

7:05

And there are no gumshoe 539,

7:07

for example, where the final scene is just simply

7:10

you unveil the identity of of the murderer

7:12

because we haven't gotten around to cozy

7:14

mysteries yet. And usually, there's

7:17

a moral dilemma as an Ashen Starz or

7:19

there's monsters to fight or

7:21

in Hite blues or somebody to

7:23

arrest. Sometimes when the players

7:26

do go through the series of steps to the scene

7:28

and solve the mystery, they want

7:30

the end bit to be per

7:32

539, which is a different issue

7:34

entirely.

7:35

Mhmm. But in general, you're much more likely

7:37

to have the opposite problem of

7:40

you think there's an easy series

7:42

of clues, but the players manage to

7:45

confuse themselves and to talk themselves

7:47

into their being a much more complicated

7:50

answer than they can possibly get to.

7:52

So the thing that people

7:54

don't worry about so much which is

7:56

that the players won't figure Hite at

7:58

all, is actually the bigger

8:01

issue. So now that we've established,

8:04

that it's

8:04

okay. It's actually good, I would argue, because

8:06

the players get to feel clever.

8:08

Hite point of investigative play.

8:11

If you think you know what's going

8:13

on, then you have to prove it,

8:15

and then you do prove it, you get to feel

8:17

smart. Now some players

8:20

will complain about anything. So, yeah, get

8:22

you know, sometimes you'll have the same player go

8:24

well. We 539 this out too easily, and

8:26

then the next week, though, this was too confusing.

8:29

That's you know, the nature of players

8:32

andor humans. But in general,

8:35

the thing is is that if they're proceeding

8:37

efficiently, find ways to

8:39

make them realize they're doing it andor make them

8:41

realize that they are are smart

8:44

about it. And the thing to do

8:46

then is to find other ways

8:48

to make the rest of the session big

8:50

and interesting after you've

8:53

figured out what the reveal is. So

8:55

let let's say that, you know, you get to that

8:57

ideal situation that you've talked

8:59

about where they're a little bit ahead of the

9:01

mystery andor they know what they need

9:03

to do what are your sort of go to's

9:06

in order to make sure that the rest of session

9:09

not only fills the rest of the allotted but

9:12

continues to be exciting to offer

9:14

opportunities for for play other than

9:16

just answering the the main

9:17

question. I mean, one of the things that I find

9:20

with Cthulhu mysteries especially is

9:23

that, you know, in fall of Delta Green

9:25

most recently, is that the players

9:27

when they figure something out are

9:30

then consumed

9:32

with tactics of of how to bring it

9:34

down. And I think that you can generalize

9:36

from that to almost any sort of

9:38

miss Like in I mean, in Hite Blue's game,

9:41

if you figured out that it's old

9:43

monoclops that killed all those people

9:45

with the particle Hite beams burned right through

9:48

their faces, that's great. I mean, you still

9:50

have to track down monoclops and

9:52

find him and fight him ideally in a

9:54

super fight. But then

9:56

sort of knowledge that it's monoclops makes

9:58

it a different kind of a game makes it

10:00

a more sort of a Hite black agent's

10:03

hunt or targeting game. And think

10:05

that the vibe of that is 539, and

10:07

it's very different in a game like Colin Cthulhu

10:09

or Trailhead 539, where you don't

10:11

usually get to be the hunter. You're usually the

10:14

oh, my gosh. What is that? Let's run away

10:16

from it. But if you're thinking, We

10:18

know that that's a shoggoth in the bottom of that well.

10:20

539 figured it out. They get a little bit of

10:23

that, you know, shunned house Columbo

10:25

vibe 539 that ever wear a

10:27

blend, which I guess it is now, of

10:29

figuring out what sort of things they might wanna

10:32

dump into the well ahead of having to go down.

10:34

Yes, the old colonial steps. Yes, we

10:36

we heard it the first time you said Ken. Thank

10:38

you so much. But they get

10:40

that that opportunity to be proactive

10:42

in a way that I think is is a juicier

10:45

play. I actually prefer that across

10:47

the board in any game that 539 my players are

10:49

proactive in doing things and trying

10:52

to you know, tear off bits of the scenery

10:54

and hit each other with them, then if they're just

10:56

sort of going through with a, like, a dark

10:58

ride and keeping their arms inside the boat at all

11:00

times and oohing it on. I mean, I like that do,

11:03

but I really prefer players who are

11:05

trying to manipulate the world around them

11:07

because that is where my sweet

11:09

spot as a GM comes because I then have to figure

11:11

out, oh, they figure out the mystery says

11:13

monoclops. How do I, you know, cover

11:15

up my giant staring particle

11:17

beam I? How do I make it look like

11:19

didn't do Hite? Or how do I throw it off onto

11:22

somebody else or how do I just get out of town in

11:24

time? You know, that becomes a

11:26

more challenging thing for me than

11:28

just tour guiding the players from seeing to

11:30

seeing Andor you'll see the,

11:32

you know, boy scout troop that was all, you know,

11:34

burned with the particle beam. And

11:36

over here, you'll see the mirror

11:38

that caught the back splatter of the

11:40

positrons, etcetera. Andor more

11:42

fun for me if the if the players are

11:45

driving

11:46

the story and have their own goals and want to grab

11:48

539. Hite. And so if you as a GM are

11:50

wondering how to accomplish this

11:53

in general, the thing to remember

11:55

is that Stories are a series of

11:58

questions, which then get answered,

12:00

but the answers raise another question

12:02

until you get to the end. In which case, everything

12:05

is finally resolved unless

12:07

it's like a contemporary franchise movie,

12:09

which -- Okay. -- there's fifteen minutes

12:11

of nonsense advertising other

12:14

movies that might get. So

12:16

if they find out, you know, who

12:19

the killer is, and they find out a little

12:21

earlier, a, make them feel smart.

12:23

Point out that, you know, obviously, you've outdone

12:25

any other sort of investigator who would realize

12:27

this. But what new question does

12:29

it present to know who the killer is?

12:31

Well, first of all, there's how do we

12:33

prove it? Right? If there's a -- Yep. -- game

12:35

where you are required to operate within a

12:38

legal system, it's very common,

12:40

in fact, in real crime investigations

12:43

for the detectives to

12:45

know pretty clearly from the outset who

12:47

did and that's because in real life crimes,

12:50

there's only a few motivations you

12:53

look around for who you think did it. Now

12:55

that of course, and real life also leads

12:57

to wrongful convictions when

12:59

the cops look at somebody and

13:01

go, well, this is the obvious person andor

13:03

it's not banned. The old touch of evil syndrome.

13:05

Yeah. But what they then have to do

13:07

is they have to assemble enough information

13:09

to be able to show that to somebody else. And

13:11

so what is the roadblock? What

13:14

you know, you may have decided who did it, but

13:16

how do you establish that to the satisfaction

13:18

of of the legal system of other people?

13:20

Then there's the one you already mentioned, well, you know

13:22

who did How do we catch them?

13:25

How do we find them? It's not a who done

13:27

it, but a where are they? Or rather,

13:29

you might have known where the creature

13:32

is even before you know 539

13:34

sure that they are the ones responsible for the rampage,

13:37

which is I think an interesting exercise,

13:39

a scenario where it starts with you discovering

13:42

a monster, and then you're trying to figure out, you

13:44

know, what is what is it up to? What is

13:46

it done? Should we risk going

13:48

in and dealing with it? Or is it possibly some

13:50

other monster. But at any rate, if you once

13:52

you know where the monster is, then the mister can be well,

13:54

how do we stop Hite? How do we kill it?

13:57

How do we banish it? And so there's

13:59

always another mystery that you

14:01

can add. And on top of that, you can

14:03

even Hite, you know, once the thing is vanquished, what

14:05

effect does it have in the community. Right? That's

14:08

this monster has left its

14:10

toxic acre in the groundwater

14:12

for generations andor poisoning

14:15

people, but they don't wanna leave because they know that

14:17

the government relocation program is

14:20

going to rip them 539. How do you solve

14:22

that problem? And, you know, you

14:24

can add thrills and spills to that as

14:26

well, but you can always throw another conundrum

14:28

at people andor the conundrum will always

14:30

be suggested by whatever it is that was answered

14:32

at that moment. And so I think

14:34

that is something that people spend a lot of time

14:37

worrying about, but is in fact one

14:39

of the easier fixes in

14:41

role playing scenario that you're either

14:44

adapting

14:45

from a written scenario or inventing

14:47

on the fly? Yeah. I mean, this is, you

14:49

know, one of those you know, what if the players

14:52

got to the big battle too early in champions

14:54

questions? Andor I agree that

14:56

does mess up your rhythm or your

14:58

plan, but the big battle is the core

15:00

activity. Similarly, in a gumshoe game,

15:03

solving the mystery is the core activity and the fact

15:05

that the players have gotten to it early, it

15:07

shows that they're engaged and good. And

15:09

generally, if players are being engaged and good,

15:11

you reward that in my personal

15:13

experience or you try to. And

15:16

again, yeah, you can, you know, pose other

15:18

questions. You can figure out knock on

15:20

effects. Yes. We've we've got monoclops,

15:23

but who repaired his visor this time.

15:25

He, you know, it was taken away last time

15:27

because he's a horrible murderer. And

15:29

how did he get his new visor? And maybe that's the

15:31

thing that you can improv for the rest of

15:33

the four hours or whatever. If you need

15:35

to figure out something to occupy

15:38

the time of your actual players in

15:40

actual Monday night or

15:41

whatever. Right? Right. Well, we haven't answered

15:43

this question too quickly. We've answered

15:45

it in exactly the allotted time

15:48

as it's not our won't. So

15:50

let us let us take advantage of that. And

15:53

head through this beautiful fine

15:55

tool commercial to another

15:57

segment, on the other side of it. The

16:13

skies above new Olympus are patrolled

16:15

by caped Crusaders. But these

16:17

superior beings are far from

16:20

heroes. They wield their powers

16:22

with reckless disregard, serving

16:24

the interests of corporate overseers

16:26

and silencing those who oppose their

16:28

will.

16:29

You are Clarokinig, investigative

16:31

journalist for the pedestrian newspaper.

16:33

You intend to prove that the privileged superhuman

16:36

elite do not yet hold a monopoly on

16:38

justice. Welcome to ultra

16:40

ego mania. The newest setting

16:43

for the Gomshoe one to one

16:44

system, featuring a quick start rules

16:46

guide, printable problem andor cards,

16:48

and a starter adventure. Altra Egomaniyah

16:51

contains everything you need to run

16:53

a one player 1GM game set

16:55

in a universe of corrupt

16:56

superheroes. Exclusively available

16:59

in PDF, the exciting format

17:02

unaffected by global paper shortages

17:04

that can't get stuck in customs. That's

17:06

waiting for you right now at the Pellegreen

17:09

Press Web Store or Drive Through

17:11

RPG.

17:17

The history takes us back

17:19

way back into several historical

17:22

periods. It takes us into the classical

17:24

period today andor

17:26

into the Are we saying the devil

17:28

these days? What are we saying?

17:29

Devil, Robin? Yeah. Let's say medieval. So

17:32

we got two exciting time periods and

17:34

lots of magical powers

17:36

of a shape shifting identity

17:39

altering, mystical, mythical

17:42

being who also has an actual corpse.

17:44

So let's get to the question as posed

17:47

by beloved Patrick supporter Mark DeRina

17:49

who asks, why did Black

17:51

Ops Crusaders raid the tomb of

17:53

Santa Claus in Myra.

17:55

And of course, by Santa Claus, we

17:58

named Saint Nicholas, Saint Nicholas of Myra

18:00

because 539 we'll discover

18:01

later, there's several Saint Nicholas'

18:04

due to the aforementioned mythical

18:07

transference effect, sometimes they get

18:09

each other's powers.

18:10

Yeah. That's how it works. And I think

18:12

to answer Mark DeRinn's question, it's

18:14

the same reason Willie Sutton and Rob Banks because

18:17

that's where the money was. But

18:19

before we get to that, let's talk briefly

18:21

about Saint Nicholas. He was the bishop

18:23

of Myra. Myra is a town in

18:25

Likia in Anatolia. So

18:27

if you think of the southern coast of Turkey,

18:30

it's the Western most of the two bumps

18:32

that his town is on. In history,

18:35

he barely appears, but

18:37

people who say things about Saint say

18:40

that The legend that he

18:42

slapped an errand at the Council of Nysia

18:45

implies that he was a real person because no

18:47

one would say something so indecorous

18:49

about a saint if it weren't

18:50

true. Right.

18:51

Now, they only said that a thousand years later,

18:53

but not

18:54

a thousand years later, they said Hite, four

18:56

hundred years later, but still.

18:57

Right. Andor guess 539 for the benefit of the listener,

19:00

you now have to quickly explain who

19:02

arians are and what the consul of my CEO The

19:04

Council of Nacy is where Constantine

19:06

having made Christianity legal suddenly

19:09

realizes that he has to spend rest of his

19:11

reign dealing with Christians andor

19:14

ducks trying to And their ducks trying to disputes

19:17

making Hite referee them he says, I

19:19

don't know if you noticed, but I'm still a pig in

19:21

personally. So maybe you

19:23

should figure it out. I'm gonna make you all get

19:25

together in Hite andor don't leave the building until

19:27

you've figured out what Christianity is so that I can

19:29

have made it legal. Thank you so much. The

19:31

two big factions were the arian faction

19:34

named for aries who preached

19:36

that Christ's human and divine natures

19:38

were entirely separate. Andor

19:41

what's now, the Catholic faction, the Orthodox

19:43

faction that said, oh, they were

19:45

not. They are part of the same trinity.

19:48

And Arias, argued his

19:50

case and lost at the Council of Nicaea,

19:53

possibly thanks to a well timed slap

19:55

from Saint Nicholas of Myra -- -- which

19:57

is one of the less magical things.

20:00

Right. He's sent to done. And and

20:02

539, one of the more likely to be historical,

20:04

but he also he gets his

20:06

rep of being a gift

20:08

giving guy from having given

20:11

money to poor girls for their

20:12

doubteries. Right.

20:13

Andor the legend, he drops a

20:15

gold bag through the window -- Mhmm. --

20:18

these three girls who don't have diaries otherwise

20:20

will face

20:21

horrible doom -- Mhmm. --

20:22

one at night. So you've you've got the beginnings

20:24

of the going down chimneys with

20:26

Luke. Right. He destroys the temple of

20:28

Artemis in the area.

20:30

He burlocates at one point, which is

20:32

nice

20:32

this will come in handy when you need lots

20:34

of relics to -- Yep. -- pass for now. And he saves

20:37

sailors because Myra is on a particularly

20:39

rocky and terrible coast. So

20:41

he, you know, sort of magically appeared

20:43

to them and said, don't sail on this terrible

20:46

rocky coast? It's a bad idea. Later,

20:49

stories are maybe

20:51

a little more

20:52

edited. He's he's an investigator, Ken.

20:54

He he solves some cases. Yes.

20:57

He senses that a butcher has

20:59

pickled three children, not

21:01

only correctly accuses the butcher of

21:03

this crime andor a confession from

21:05

them, but then resurrects them, which is

21:07

pretty serious heavy duty miracle working.

21:10

Right. And

21:11

this, by the way, is how he becomes a 539 saint

21:13

of children is because people see this drawing

21:15

and say, oh, he must have been the patron state of children

21:17

instead of the patron state

21:19

of, you know, detectives. Right. And

21:21

and is also associated with pickles something

21:23

is everybody needs something pasted, you 539,

21:25

if you're the pickle

21:26

makers, you gotta look

21:27

for a a pickle story. Right. And leave

21:29

out the part where we pick them children. Yeah.

21:31

That that gets that left out. Saint Lawrence is

21:33

the patron saint of grilling. So --

21:35

Yeah. -- life is just bad if you're a saint,

21:38

I

21:38

guess. Right. Another case that is attributed

21:40

to him but also Hite might have

21:43

stolen through mythic resonance 539 my

21:45

NeoPhagorean philosopher is

21:48

having proved that a juror

21:50

has accepted bribes just before three

21:52

men are put to death. So that's a real sort

21:54

of Perry Mason moment there for

21:56

that. Mhmm. He appears a Constantine

21:58

and a dream to warn him

22:00

that three generals that Constantine plans

22:03

to execute are innocent So

22:05

the original Saint Nick definitely had

22:08

series of tuck your

22:08

parents, which I guess you need to figure out who's

22:10

been naughty and nice. Right? Right. Yeah. That's that's just

22:12

that story. Part of the assembly that list Yeah.

22:15

Excuse me, Timmy. Just one more

22:17

thing. Yeah. You said you've been nice,

22:19

but we asked around. Hite

22:21

also has attributed to a story

22:23

where he chops down Cypress

22:25

trees that have been possessed by demons,

22:28

which might be a reflection of that pagan temple

22:30

destruction idea that might influence to Hite.

22:33

Pig shrine. That might be a conflation

22:35

with a different necklace, Nicholas of

22:37

cyan, but hey,

22:39

mythic drift andor also Nicholas cyan

22:41

is known to have visited nickelers of

22:43

myra's tomb, and so perhaps powers

22:46

and or mythic events could have been

22:48

transmitted between the two of them at that Hite. Because

22:51

nicholas of myra's emblem is a Cypress.

22:53

And while we're listing things these patrons of,

22:55

not only sailors which you already mentioned,

22:58

but archers repentant thieves.

23:01

You gotta slip the repented in there. Brewers,

23:03

pawnbrokers, merchants, which

23:05

will come in again when merchants come and steal his

23:07

body. And children, as we mentioned, unmarried

23:10

people. So that's, like, half the F twenty characters

23:12

-- Right. -- right there.

23:13

Yeah. He's he's he becomes very,

23:15

very pop popular, which is maybe not

23:18

the absolute slam dunk that he

23:20

was real. Say Christopher also became very popular.

23:22

And he, as I never tired of reminding

23:24

people in Catholic school, had a dog

23:26

head. But, you know, at any rate,

23:28

he does have a fairly thriving

23:30

cult. And he was possibly

23:33

buried on the island of Jamil

23:35

where he was born or camel

23:38

as it was known in ancient times because it had two

23:40

humps. It was near his birthplace, but

23:42

Islands became a bad place

23:44

to be when the Arab navies

23:46

started to besiege the Byzantine

23:48

coast. So they moved his body

23:51

to Myra, which is now the town of Demre,

23:53

twenty five miles away from where he was bishop anyway.

23:55

And that they had a church built for him there already.

23:57

But they just popped his body into a sarcophagus

24:00

because the body weeps

24:02

a clear 539 fluid on

24:05

his feast day December sixth called

24:07

Mana or Myr andor this

24:10

obviously you would sell to people

24:13

or people would come by and say I need some

24:15

sacred fur to anoint my

24:18

dying mom. You can't say merchandise

24:20

without my fur. Right. Exactly. And

24:22

they would say, well, obviously, the

24:24

Church of Saint Nicholas is happy to provide you myrrh.

24:26

Now how happy are you that your mom's not gonna

24:28

Hite? please press down hard you're

24:31

making three copies. So

24:33

the body of Saint Nicholas became a

24:35

pleasant little moneymaker for the

24:37

church in Myra which

24:40

became known to

24:42

Italian traders in the area. So

24:45

in ten eighty seven, three

24:47

ships from Bari, town of Bari, which

24:49

already had a little cult of Saint

24:51

Nicholas already, said, you know what?

24:54

If we had the body of Saint Nicholas,

24:56

we would be able to cash

24:59

in on all that solid gold goodies andor also

25:01

we'd be saving the town from

25:03

the Turks who have just invaded it. Andor

25:06

so we'd keep that sacred holy

25:08

relics safe from bad turks.

25:10

Yes. We're not 539. We're crusaders. Exactly.

25:12

Well, it's before the first crusade, so

25:15

they're pre enthusiastic crusaders,

25:17

but what they are are people with

25:19

an eye of the main chance who also don't

25:21

like the Ottomans or the Celtics, I guess, at

25:23

this time. So fair enough. Also,

25:26

they're importing Antioch and they hear the Venetians

25:28

planning the same thing. So,

25:30

hey, it's more of a matter of we

25:33

can't let Venice get the body of Saint

25:35

Nicholas.

25:35

That's in the zeitgeist. That's against the

25:37

the pride of Breeze, so they run down to their

25:39

ships they sail away. god

25:42

guides their sails as is

25:45

explicitly described in the

25:47

chronicle of of the body's translation

25:49

as it is called, a guy named

25:52

Orderict Vitalis, who is a very reliable

25:54

history of the Northern kingdoms, goes

25:56

into it in some detail 539 whence

25:58

I've gained my details. So anyway,

26:00

three ships from Bari sale to

26:03

Myra. They lead cement on the ships, forty

26:05

seven men, including two priests,

26:07

father's lupus and grimwald, which I

26:09

love, show up they

26:12

say, I assume you know how

26:14

dangerous this 539 is

26:16

now with all these seljic Turks.

26:18

And the Orthodox monks say, we really

26:21

haven't noticed any danger aren't you

26:23

heretics? Andor they said,

26:25

well, here's how dangerous it is. There's

26:27

a hundred pounds of gold in it for you

26:29

if you just wander away for a bit.

26:32

Andor they said, well, we can't sell

26:34

you the body of Saint Nicholas. We sell

26:36

the Myr. It's basic business.

26:38

Don't or that we thought you were merchants. Andor

26:40

they said, well, we tried it the easy way.

26:42

So they beat up the monks or they

26:44

sort of lure them off in a distraction, a

26:46

diversion. I said forget about the

26:48

body. Oh, look over there. Isn't that, you

26:50

know, a natural thing? And and lesson number

26:52

one, 539 a bunch of shady merchants

26:54

show up, try to buy the body your saint

26:56

from

26:57

you. Don't be diverted. Don't be

26:59

diverted. Yeah. Look out for plan b. Keep

27:01

an eye on the on the case. So lupus

27:03

and Grimwald set up a holy prayer.

27:05

They've even order it says that they falter

27:07

in their prayer because they may have thought, what

27:10

are we doing? But don't worry, there's

27:12

young guy with a crowbar named Mathias who

27:14

tears up the floor andor 539, there's

27:17

the sarcophagus of Saint Nicholas.

27:20

They smash up in the head of They reach

27:22

in. Andor actually climbs

27:24

into the sarcophagus with the body

27:26

and hands out pieces of it to

27:28

everyone. He gets merle over 539.

27:31

They don't have anything to carry the body

27:33

away in because they thought they could just, you know, buy

27:35

the 539, so they have to wrap it up in

27:37

father Lucas' shirt. then

27:39

they run away down to their boats

27:41

pursued by the angry citizens of

27:43

Myra they get away

27:46

andor then God stops the boat

27:48

dead off the Campbell Island andor

27:50

everyone has to sort of open up their shirts

27:53

and give all the pieces of Saint Nicholas

27:55

that they'd Hite out back so

27:57

that Saint Nicholas is back intact before

28:00

Saint Nicholas will allow the boat to proceed

28:02

to borrow. But it does get to borrow on

28:04

the ninth of May what assumes there is

28:06

then a

28:07

who gets to keep the body? There's a big argument

28:10

about that. Right. And the

28:11

body is already established that it has opinions.

28:13

Yeah. Hite. But eventually, they turn

28:15

it over to a Benedictine Abbott named

28:18

Elias who is then put in charge

28:20

of building a brand new church called

28:22

St. Nicholas Baselica, which is dedicated

28:24

in ten eighty nine by Pope Urban the

28:27

second

28:27

himself. Right. And

28:29

so he's cool with the relocation. Rome,

28:31

he's very cool with the relocation. First of all,

28:33

they've already declared the Orthodox monks

28:35

heretics, so you can't let

28:37

heretics have a cool saint like Saint Nicholas.

28:40

Also, the people of Bary are very

28:42

into Saint Nicholas in the U-seventeen. Nicholas

28:44

as a Christian name just blows up after

28:46

this translation, this heist.

28:48

Andor the Venetians not to be outdone,

28:51

sweep by in ten ninety nine scrape

28:53

out the inside of the sarcophagus with

28:56

lots of little bits of bone that Malthias

28:58

in his distraction and confusion did not

29:00

take away. So the

29:03

Venetians have their own Saint Nicholas

29:05

Saint Nicholas of Belito Church that

29:07

has relics they've tested those

29:09

relics later andor they're identical.

29:11

I don't know I don't think they did genetic testing,

29:14

but they're as identical as they can

29:16

figure out with the Bari

29:17

RELX. So they're from male skeleton of roughly

29:19

the fifth century 539 fourth century. This

29:22

this skeleton of St. Nicholas at one point was

29:24

turned over for forensic examination. And so --

29:26

Yeah. -- 539 for example that it has a

29:28

broken

29:28

nose. So

29:29

at some

29:29

point, whether it was a council of NICEA or

29:31

somewhere else or did likely your

29:33

story is that while it was being persecuted under

29:36

diocletion is that he Hite had

29:38

his nose broken. Now because

29:40

is medieval andor because it is my heart, I do

29:42

have to tell the Irish version of this

29:44

story, which is basically

29:47

different but also the same. This takes

29:49

place during the second crusade when two Norman

29:52

knights stole his body from Myra

29:54

and took it to Kilkenny, and

29:56

you can go to the town of Thomas town

29:59

and ask around, and they'll say it's on private

30:01

andor, you can't go there. But if you go there anyway,

30:03

they have the two of Saint Nicholas right there.

30:06

But there you would be not just contributing,

30:08

you know, science, but you'd be contributing

30:11

the given word of ordering vitality

30:13

andor don't feel like we want to do

30:14

that. But I did 539 complete Right. But we

30:16

have established that think Nick biolocate.

30:19

So -- Yeah. -- he got these these two bodies.

30:21

Right. And it turns out there

30:23

are lots of pieces that people did keep

30:25

out, and then they sold to various monasteries

30:28

around Europe. So near

30:30

Nancy andor they're they've now got a

30:32

Saint Nicholas town that's named

30:34

because they stole his arm. There's another guy that

30:36

snuck his arm out and had to sell the

30:38

silver that it was wrapped in in order to stayed

30:41

on the run he was brought down by

30:43

the cops at the border, which

30:45

sounds very cool. But the Relic Trade

30:48

Some of it, you know, done with the archivance

30:50

of the church at Bardi, some of it done by

30:52

other subrelic thieves, does

30:55

spread Nicholas' bits across

30:57

Europe. And then in two thousand and nine,

30:59

the Turkish government has requested the return

31:01

of those relics, and I don't think

31:04

that's going anywhere. But since they

31:06

didn't get them back, they then said, oh,

31:08

we've done a ground penetrating radar

31:10

search andor we found a sealed crypt underneath

31:13

Saint Nicholas Church in Desirae. And

31:16

we think you stole the wrong body,

31:19

Barry. You stole just some guy who

31:21

was in a jar full of myr not proper

31:23

Saint Nicholas. so maybe real

31:26

Saint Nicholas or his trilocated body

31:29

is still down there underneath

31:31

the church in Desirae, but they can't,

31:33

you know, just bust up the floor because they're not

31:35

mathias. They're, you know, decent archaeology

31:38

people. so we are

31:40

left with the wonderful question

31:42

of where isn't the body of Saint

31:44

Nicholas? And I guess the North Pole should also

31:46

be thrown into the mix. Hite?

31:47

So turning this into a game scenario, well,

31:50

the body of Saint Nicholas is the treasure.

31:53

End of scenario building. 539. F

31:55

twenty settings were really ever

31:57

set on Earth in in the medieval era,

32:00

Saint's relics, bits of bone, and

32:03

bits of the implements that were used

32:05

to kill the saints would

32:07

be among the most potent

32:09

treasures and not just having a cash

32:11

value, which we've established they

32:13

Hite. Yep. But also having different magical

32:16

powers. So the various bits

32:18

of Saint Nicholas. We've already established

32:21

that he's the patron saying of

32:23

Archer. So Hite there, it gives you

32:25

a plus to a bonus to missile weapons

32:28

repentant thieves. I'm sure repentant thieves

32:30

that doesn't mean you stop theaters. It just means

32:32

you start you 539 sorry about

32:34

it. Yeah. You you Hite one of the good alignments

32:36

and then you go and steal more saints and give

32:38

-- Right. --

32:39

people who really deserved them, not the heretics on

32:41

the other side of the river. You become a cool a cool

32:43

thief like Simon Temple you only steal from

32:45

bad people.

32:45

Yeah. And what do they call Hite the saint?

32:48

Exactly. Hite? Problem solved.

32:50

So now that we solve that problem, I think

32:52

it's for us to get in our sleigh,

32:54

turn on our lead reindeer's nose,

32:56

lead our way through the foggy skies

32:58

to whatever lies on the other Hite, this

33:01

commercial.

33:33

The best of Ask the Galen is

33:35

now available at drive thru RPG.

33:38

All issues of Phoenix Magazine since twenty

33:40

thirteen. That's spelled FENIX

33:43

can now be

33:44

grabbed in special English editions.

33:46

Containing stellar gaming material from

33:48

our own Ken Hite. And such other recurring

33:50

stalwarts as Graham Davis andor

33:53

Nash. Also, find

33:54

Hite, the gorgeous photo book celebrating

33:57

that classic gaming accessory. 539

33:59

way warrior, the series of postapart elliptic

34:02

choose your adventures by Joe Devere. Andor

34:04

if you speak

34:04

Swedish, not English, not Swedish,

34:07

not

34:07

English, you can delight in every original

34:09

issue of 539. And the new sagebrush

34:12

and six guns role playing game

34:14

Western. How do you say slap

34:16

leather garment in

34:17

Swedish? Oddly

34:18

Google translate refuses to help on that. That's

34:20

the best of Ask 539 on drive

34:23

thru. Keep this podcast tomb

34:25

unrated by joining in with such

34:27

jolly, old, patreon backers as.

34:30

Lewis, Sylvester, Luke Silburn,

34:32

Matthew Preston, Michael Bowman,

34:35

and Alexander, Shandy.

34:43

The horror of the projector, the smell

34:45

of the popcorn, and the scratch

34:47

of whatever that is on the 539, follows

34:50

us to the center seat, center aisle

34:52

of the cinema hut where we once more

34:54

settle in for the science fiction

34:56

cinema essentials andor Robin

34:59

there we think we're gonna get out of the nineteen

35:01

fifties today. I

35:02

think we we

35:03

might very well. We might could maybe

35:05

because we've got four full

35:07

on, no apology, straight

35:09

up essentials. And then

35:12

that gets us done the fifties pretty much

35:14

after some some footnotes. So we'll see how

35:16

far we get. We'll see how far we get. So speaking

35:18

of absolute classic, Hite, if we

35:20

had to boil the list down to, like, ten

35:22

or 539, invasion

35:24

of the body snatchers from nineteen fifty six

35:26

by Don Segal would be on it.

35:28

It has been copied

35:31

and 539 upon and probably turned

35:33

into a scenario by you, the listener,

35:36

it is, of course, the quintessential story

35:39

of paranoia and doppelganger

35:41

fear in which members of small

35:43

community realize that copies of them

35:46

are being made by the plant

35:48

like invaders from another world

35:50

of their bodies are copied

35:52

in pods down in the basement andor

35:55

friends your neighbors, the

35:57

authorities, you have to fear them because

35:59

they might have been turned into somebody else. So it's

36:02

a masterpiece of paranoia.

36:04

It is written in such a way that

36:06

you can project your own

36:08

paranoia onto so you can read it from

36:11

the left is about being about the fear

36:13

of authoritarianism and conformity. You

36:15

read it from the right as being about

36:17

the threat of

36:19

Soviet 539. And

36:21

it is incredibly well executed.

36:24

It has a doarish tone

36:26

to it because the director, Don Segal, directed

36:28

a bunch of noirs and other crime films

36:30

as well as westerns. it would

36:32

be any other director's most

36:35

famous film, most influential

36:37

film. Right. Except Don Segal

36:39

also directed it even more influential film

36:41

later. Dirty Harry -- Right. -- as well as

36:43

some absolute banger westerns. Don Seal

36:45

-- Mhmm. -- one of the sort of journeyman

36:48

directors, although think he's got more of a style

36:50

to him a little more more

36:52

down the road than our previous

36:54

example, Robert Weiss. Yeah. The

36:56

only reason he's not higher up in the pantheon is that

36:58

he was still working when QIA de

37:00

cinema was assembling its first

37:02

tour list. Right. And and and also

37:04

because he was unapologetically right

37:06

wing, which think maybe made the French avant

37:08

garde not like you as much. But, anyway,

37:10

539 for John Ford. Well yeah. But you can't

37:12

We diaper rash. We do, like, what 539

37:14

of the ratty satchers can. Now going to be

37:16

the John Ford hour But the

37:18

larger point we were making is and one of

37:21

the keys to this movie is that Don

37:23

Segal takes it absolutely seriously. Everyone

37:25

else takes it absolutely seriously. There's no

37:27

camp in it. And I think that's what

37:29

cripples the seventies remake, is

37:32

that they, on their one hand, want to

37:34

do a scary scary movie. But on the other

37:36

hand, they want to lean into the ridiculous

37:38

camp possibilities of it.

37:40

And so I think that's where the third one

37:42

in the series wildly is is the

37:44

best of the remakes. That said,

37:46

the original is 539 and

37:49

away the best one. Kevin McCarthy brings

37:52

every ounce of his 539 noir

37:54

hero sensibility to the part.

37:57

It is a perfect small town under

37:59

threat. This by now, we've seen this happen

38:01

over and over even in 539 fiction innovators

38:03

from Mars, etcetera. But we

38:05

see it again perfectly. It's based on

38:07

a banger novel by Jack 539. I should mention

38:10

It does a really good job. Of taking

38:12

the core of that novel and putting it on the screen.

38:14

And it like you said, Robin, the

38:16

the noir feel, you know, goes into the lighting

38:19

it goes into the editing. It's just,

38:21

you know, if it were, you know, some

38:23

sort of secret murder cult instead of aliens,

38:26

it would be an all time classic noir as well.

38:28

It's just a remarkable movie.

38:30

And then it also, not just the

38:32

immediate remakes, but it then feeds into

38:35

lots of other films,

38:37

including remakes of other

38:39

films. I don't think that John Carpenter's the

38:41

thing would Hite been the same without

38:43

invasion of body smatchers. Right. Right.

38:45

And most long running genre

38:48

science fiction shows somehow get

38:50

around to doing a an an homage to it.

38:52

It's just one of those things that becomes

38:54

a a staple of the genre with it.

38:57

So it it develops the trappings of

38:59

science fiction as well as itself being a classic

39:01

science fiction film. Jack Arnold.

39:03

Jack Arnold is definitely a journeyman directly,

39:05

recurring name on our list. Yes.

39:07

But in terms of, you know, science fiction

39:09

is definitely a key science fiction entrepreneur. Andor

39:12

incredible shrinking man, which is what

39:14

it says based on a Richard 539 andor So

39:16

another example of literary science fiction

39:19

feeding into cinema andor

39:21

man is is affected by a mysterious

39:24

force that begins to reduce him in

39:26

size it is a great I can't

39:28

think of an earlier example of another genre

39:31

staple, which you see all the time on Doctor Who,

39:33

which is taking something mundane.

39:37

having a radical perspective shift

39:39

that suddenly makes something every

39:41

day through a science fiction

39:43

conceit. Into a terror andor

39:45

that's Hite the man's own home

39:48

and his house cat the spider

39:50

in his house all become objects

39:53

of terror andor

39:54

as he begins to get smaller

39:56

and smaller and smaller. Yeah.

39:59

I think that the novel was a novel

40:02

that Mathieson wrote based on the fact

40:04

that he was gonna sell it to Universal as a

40:06

movie. And so basically went

40:08

away, he wrote the novel, and then he

40:10

wrote the first treatment of the script. So

40:13

it it's not quite, you know, find a science

40:15

fiction masterpiece. It's 539 a

40:17

absolute on fire genius like Richard

40:19

Mathieson, more to point. But

40:21

that sort of twilight zone sensibility of

40:24

the normal butt twist is

40:26

absolutely, you know, it's what the nineteen

40:29

fifties are building science

40:31

fiction out into in a lot of ways.

40:33

And it's presenting in even in

40:36

straight up, you know, pro science 539, a

40:38

lot more of it is taking place on earth

40:40

and taking place in seemingly normal

40:42

circumstances,

40:43

but one weird thing happens. Right.

40:45

The theme of both of these phones we talked about so far

40:48

is normality rises up to kill you.

40:50

Mhmm. Or normality is

40:52

proven to be abnormal and then kills you

40:54

or --

40:54

Yep. -- you know, whichever. But but that

40:57

sensibility that tone, you know,

40:59

flows into print science fiction starting

41:01

around the forties andor then becomes

41:03

very dominant or a dominant strain

41:05

in the fifties andor only much later

41:07

that you get back to, you know, spaceships and

41:09

ray guns in science fiction that a

41:11

lot of the the the really good writers, not

41:14

just Mathism, but 539 Brown, and

41:16

Henry Catner, lots of other writers are

41:19

working from that, you know,

41:21

normal but one but

41:23

what? And the but what is the science fiction

41:25

half of Hite? Over and above the fact that it's

41:27

also was on our horror essentials

41:29

list for a reason because it's super scary.

41:31

Even if you are a cat lover Hite 539,

41:34

you do not relish the notion of

41:36

being the size of a mouse because

41:40

don't think there's any question what Virgil would

41:42

do 539 he saw me running around the side of

41:44

a mouse andor feel like that

41:46

sort of alien world exists

41:48

all around us is a a fundamentally

41:51

science 539

41:52

realization as well as a fundamentally

41:54

horror one. An example of the

41:56

weird coming to earth and crashing into

41:58

it requiring a science hero

42:00

to fight it brings us to Quater Mask

42:02

two, which is the first

42:05

sequel on our list, also known as

42:07

enemy from

42:08

space. This also has Brian Don Levy

42:10

in it. We talked about create a mask earlier

42:12

in the create a

42:13

mask experiment, and this one can pose

42:15

something the debt to colorator space. Yeah.

42:17

Andor it is a bunch of meteorites that

42:20

fall to earth and bring a weird

42:22

gas with them. In this particular

42:24

case, the weird gas sort of

42:26

subordens people into

42:28

becoming servants to the aliens. And

42:30

in the exciting twist

42:32

of Quater Masstu, the government is

42:35

subordinate into becoming the servants of the aliens.

42:37

So there's a secret project for

42:39

the aliens being built out in Britain

42:41

And again, if you are looking for the

42:43

bones of doctor who, greater mass

42:45

too is as bony a doctor who

42:47

as you're going to get because there's a

42:50

complex There's people who are running

42:52

the complex who are in authority. No one

42:55

seems to know anything or make any intelligent decisions

42:57

on that level. And our

42:58

hero, our scientific hero has to use pure

43:00

reason to defeat them. And that, of course, is

43:02

the is is the great ability of Bernard greater

43:04

mass

43:05

shot at a futuristic looking industrial space.

43:07

Right. It's a good scary movie, but it is this

43:09

is well over into the science

43:11

fiction part of that continuum.

43:14

And because it is about this alien

43:17

contamination, it's you know, what if

43:19

invasion of the body snatchers but had a government

43:21

grant, I guess, is the is the

43:23

is the version that Nigel Neal thought

43:25

of when he did Quater Mas too 539 the BBC Hite.

43:27

And speaking of the normal becoming horrible

43:30

andor going back to the very beginnings of

43:32

the genre with the Permethian experiment

43:35

gone horribly wrong, We come to the

43:37

fly by Curt Neumann from nineteen fifty

43:39

eight. The star is Vincent Price.

43:41

That's someone whose teleportation experiment

43:43

goes awry and lines up

43:46

half human, half fly. Andor said that invasion

43:48

of the body's naturities has no camp

43:50

in it. This has plenty of it, but I think

43:52

it's all the more horrible for

43:55

And Hite I said, his

43:57

central to the very first original

43:59

science fiction

44:00

Well, one of the one of the things that the fly has

44:02

that body signatures doesn't is Vincent Price, obviously.

44:05

And so 539 you Hite Vincent Price

44:07

you can do

44:08

camp, Go ahead.

44:10

Because -- Mhmm. -- because price

44:12

will use the camp to

44:15

approach the human in a way that

44:17

is harder to do for a,

44:19

other actors, but b, it doesn't

44:21

turn into a joke entirely with him. There's

44:24

that, you know, tragic core of his

44:26

of his scientist character remains

44:28

because price is just that

44:30

good. And so

44:31

And that's how she experienced in him. Right. And

44:33

so you you when you lean into the camp,

44:36

in something like the 539, you're also

44:38

leaning into the relatable. Whereas,

44:41

it's it's not a monster origin movie.

44:43

It's not Hite turns into a fly man and

44:45

goes out and eats people. It's not Frankenstein.

44:48

It is a human tragedy. It's

44:50

a 539 tragedy in which

44:52

he's, you know, touched the science wrong

44:55

andor bad things happen. And his pathos

44:57

is, you know, a big part of the message. It's part of

44:59

the the cautionary tale. Of,

45:01

I guess, don't build a teleporter or if you do,

45:04

you know, have have a better sanitary

45:06

security system, which I guess is something

45:08

scientists could still learn even today.

45:10

Hite? So let's wrap up the fifties, not with

45:12

an essential, but if a 539, a precursor

45:14

is something that I think we need to note.

45:17

This is a big studio production,

45:19

one that they found subject matter, very difficult

45:21

to promote because it's not gonna take for some

45:23

reason. Neville shoots Neville on the beach, which

45:25

is basically about World War three has

45:27

happened. The bombs are about to drop. It's the

45:29

end of the world. And how do people

45:32

amount about that? it has 539 Astaire,

45:34

a repack, a the gardener, Anthony Perkins,

45:37

It's by Stanley Kramer, the

45:39

very sort of four square socially

45:41

conscious director of the period.

45:44

I don't think it holds up that well, but it's

45:46

the first nuclear doomsday movie

45:49

really? Yeah. Am am I unless you sort

45:51

of count things to come. But, yes, it's the first explicitly

45:53

nuclear doomsday movie. Andor

45:56

is, as you suggest, preachier that

45:58

it is good. And again, Gregory

46:00

Peck is, you know, your guy, if you

46:02

want to deliver liberal sensuality, you

46:05

will deliver and it has a lot

46:07

of, you know, moving performances

46:10

in the moment. of course, it's about

46:12

because it gets to play with that sort of civilizational

46:15

destruction, there's there's a lot

46:17

of of good touches in it, but I

46:19

think that fundamentally, it's

46:21

a little slow as well as being a little

46:23

preachy in my personal

46:25

opinion. Right. So that finishes up to fifties.

46:27

So 539, a great moment

46:29

to finish up this segment, and

46:31

we'll be back next week and start

46:33

to head into the sixties and see what

46:35

they have to offer science fiction.

46:52

In Delta Green, cosmic terror

46:55

meets modern conspiracy. The secret

46:57

group, Delta Green dedicates itself

46:59

to protecting humanity from unnatural

47:02

horrors. They misappropriate the

47:04

resources of the US government. To

47:06

wage

47:06

a war, they must at all costs keep

47:08

hidden. Delta green, the conspiracy, is

47:11

the source book. For the grungy cynical

47:14

era that started Hite

47:15

all, the nineteen nineties.

47:18

Generation X

47:19

becomes generation In

47:22

Delta Green, the conspiracy, an

47:24

updated rearranged version of the original

47:26

nineteen ninety seven, Delta Green

47:28

Source book with new art and graphic

47:30

design, featuring top secret eldritch

47:33

new appendices by Shane Black Bag

47:35

Ivy andor 539 by Ray plausibly

47:37

denialablinger.

47:39

Put on your flannels. Grab your duffle

47:41

bag of hardware and assemble your fake

47:43

passports. Enter the temple of

47:45

the dog. Exit the temple block Cthulhu.

47:47

Never mind all the brain leakage you suffer

47:50

when seeking the Nirvana of 539.

47:52

Find the fungi on the MENA airfield

47:55

why Jeremy really spoke in class

47:58

today. Tell your retailer it's at that

48:00

unmarked warehouse they always order

48:02

539. That's Delta Green, the conspiracy.

48:05

From Art Green publishing.

48:12

It's time once more to wind our

48:15

way up the Cupidicom webstairs where,

48:17

oh, wait, there's a whole bunch of people standing admiringly

48:21

around the painting of the fire of Andor

48:23

this turns out we're also in the culture Hite.

48:25

Because let's head on in to talk to the consulting

48:28

andor at the behest of beloved

48:30

Packer, Jake Moss, who says Eve's

48:32

Klein, the combination of Judeoica, Mystic,

48:35

Rosa Crusians, sorry, Ken, Levitationist,

48:38

Pregster andor 539 Artist, maybe

48:40

these are redundant, and color trade markets

48:43

are irresistible. What would you

48:45

do with him in an RPG? So

48:48

our main challenge is going to be that

48:50

most of the stuff he does is in the fifties, which

48:52

we don't have a game to put him in. Right. So

48:54

we'll have to put him in a one shot. But

48:57

other than that, he is sort of a fascinating

48:59

bridge character between the

49:02

avant guard of data andor

49:04

surrealism andor then modernism.

49:07

And he was born

49:09

to artists parents andor,

49:11

as Jake

49:11

mentioned, was also a Judeo

49:14

master, but turns out a disappointed Judeo

49:16

master eventually. Yeah. He went

49:18

to school at the Echol National,

49:20

DeLong, Oriental, all, which I assume

49:22

is where he ran into Japanese martial

49:24

arts. This is around nineteen forty

49:26

six, begins practicing judo. This

49:28

is also when he gets into trouble, but

49:30

the ross accretions in the sense that he reads

49:33

Max Heinbels, the Rasa Christian Cosmo

49:35

conception. And if you imagine

49:38

a Rasa Christian text, that

49:41

is even more fuzzy

49:43

minded than regular razz accretion text.

49:45

Max Hite was also very much influenced

49:47

by Rudolph Steiners, 539 Sophie,

49:50

but believe that Enterpost Sophie

49:52

was not good for America, that America

49:54

was too practical. For soft

49:56

headed German entrepreneur. 539 think that's

49:59

correct. It needs well, it's mostly

50:01

true, but Hite dialed in

50:03

on what American ros appreciationism need I

50:05

mean,

50:05

I I would I guess, I'd have say the American soft

50:07

headedness is of a different flavor. Right.

50:10

Yes. And and, specifically, it's Southern 539

50:12

and Razz accretionism, which Max Hite is

50:14

part of the founding movement of

50:17

anyhow, each client who seems to

50:19

be just looking for anything that isn't French

50:21

right around now, gets into basically

50:23

this sort of American hippie dipie

50:26

ross accretionism goes to

50:28

Japan in the early fifties. Right. Yeah.

50:30

It goes to Japan and

50:32

practices judo so well

50:34

that he becomes the first European Yodan

50:37

or fourth Dan Black belt gets

50:39

into Zen while he's there, which is, I

50:41

suppose, you know, Rosa Cruz is your drug

50:44

to westernized Zen Buddhism. But then when he returns

50:46

something super French happens to him. Yep.

50:48

Which is that the French judo Association

50:51

says, we do not accept the credentials

50:54

of someone who goes to Japan to learn

50:56

judo and gets to Yodan fourth

50:59

Dan Black

50:59

Belt, and that basically

51:01

sours him on martial arts on each

51:04

sides. A lot of heck with I'm going to 539 family

51:06

I'm gonna be an artist instead. A lesser man

51:08

would Hite been soured on France by that by the

51:10

way, but not our boy eves. So

51:13

he gets into art as you say. The

51:15

art that he begins to paint is I I

51:17

think it begins with a little bit of sort

51:19

of more representational

51:21

or basic sort of abstract

51:24

art. But then rapidly

51:26

realizes that what he's more interested in is

51:28

the response of the viewer. And

51:31

that's why he begins painting Monochromes So

51:34

Hite paints paintings that are all one

51:36

color. And he thinks this is gonna be great. I'll

51:38

hang my paintings of all one color andor people will

51:40

be amazed he hung

51:42

a show people went and said, oh,

51:45

we have to trail all the colors. It's it's like

51:47

a a trail of colors. Andor he says, no,

51:49

you've missed my point, so I'm only gonna

51:51

do blue. That's the only color I'm gonna

51:54

do. So in nineteen fifty seven, he develops

51:56

a kind of blue called International

51:59

Climb Blue, which is the ultramarine

52:01

pigment, which began as powdered lapis lazula.

52:04

I don't know what it's from now. Maybe it

52:06

still is. Andor then you suspended in

52:08

polyvinyl acetate, so it still glows

52:10

and is super blue y instead of

52:12

being mushed down by the linseed oil, which is

52:14

what you would get if you made an oil paint of it.

52:17

An international climb blue takes

52:19

the world by storm. III think

52:21

it is super the blue man

52:23

group. That's the blue they are. Is

52:25

international accent. Color of modernism. Exactly.

52:28

And that becomes a

52:30

big thing. People love the blue art

52:33

Client is happy because they're responding to the

52:35

individual piece even though there's they

52:37

they're getting nothing from

52:38

it. It's all 539 that they're bringing to it. He

52:40

loves that color 539 painting, though. Yeah.

52:42

The one caveat we have to introduce

52:45

here is that it's about seeing the

52:47

work in person because there are

52:49

gradations of blue in Just as in

52:51

Rothko's, there are gradations of

52:53

white in Rothko's case, there are

52:55

surface elements. And

52:57

I'm sort of arguing outside of my own taste

53:00

But in part, that's because you

53:02

can't experience these works except

53:06

as physical objects that you are in proximity

53:08

Hite. And and it's the and it's the

53:10

size and the ratios that

53:12

are also a big part of the blue. Hite?

53:14

It it has to be bigger or smaller,

53:17

taller, or squatter. And

53:19

he says any individual arc

53:22

lover will respond to one of these

53:24

blue pieces andor there will be no reason

53:26

that they love that instead of the other blue

53:29

pieces andor that no reason is the core

53:31

of my art. Andor lot of it is,

53:33

as you say, tiny gradations, but I think a lot

53:35

of that is just the technical, you know, it's

53:37

hard to paint the monochrome. Andor then the

53:39

other part is that he hangs them in these different ways.

53:41

But he then moves from your response to

53:44

no information to your response to nothing

53:46

when he displays literally nothing in

53:48

an art project called David in

53:50

nineteen fifty eight, the void. Right. This

53:53

is about the time that he is meeting another

53:55

artist named Rock Trow. He

53:57

meets her in Nice. She is the

53:59

o pair for his neighbor who's also another

54:01

artist named Arman or Arton.

54:03

I forget which andor marries her in nineteen

54:06

too, but they're they're carrying on company

54:08

together. And then, I guess, on

54:10

that same trip home, mom says,

54:12

why are you being a ross

54:13

accretion? You're embarrassing everyone. Right.

54:16

So his art's peak is marred by this

54:18

weird mystical hippy nonsense.

54:20

Hippy nonsense. And so she

54:22

gives him a copy of a book called Aaron

54:24

Dreams. By a French critic called

54:26

Gaston Bachelor, and he

54:29

gives Klein the same thoughts

54:31

and ideology, but with pedigree

54:34

that is acceptable to French art

54:36

knobs. And so Hite, the

54:38

symbolism surrealists, 539

54:41

Moller May, Samuel Coleridge, and Paul

54:43

Elouard. But the thing is is that

54:45

they were drawing on all of these same ideas

54:48

that they were influenced perhaps

54:50

of a degree of separation or two

54:53

by theosophy as well. And the

54:55

surrealists, like Klein,

54:57

thought that they would create a

54:59

psychic transformation that would alter the

55:02

world through art. And so all

55:04

this does is disguise

55:06

thetheosophy

55:08

behind those names, which were who were also

55:10

influenced by it. So, I mean, just to point

55:12

out, Coleridge's pretheosophy 539 he

55:14

thought of all that in Christian terms, not theosophical

55:17

terms, but we can talk about college

55:19

another day. Anyway, he is still

55:21

experimenting with the process of

55:23

art andor he comes up with something called 539

55:26

Tree to separate the artist even

55:28

further from his creation in which naked

55:31

models including his fiancee

55:34

Ruchot, smear the paint on the canvas

55:36

with their bodies while he stands there and says,

55:38

smear more then things like that

55:40

move over there. Mhmm. Hite also

55:42

begins painting things like the Venus to Myllo,

55:44

not the actual Venus to Myllo, but my plaster

55:47

cast of the Venus to Myllo blue,

55:49

his international climb blue to day tour

55:51

in classical art demonstrate that

55:53

the the blue is the response and

55:56

that our learned response things like

55:58

the wing victory of Samathraced don't matter.

56:00

Right. And then he also begins to

56:02

adjust sculptures Hite own

56:04

and others with flame uses

56:07

bunsen burners to sort of burn weird patterns

56:09

into the canvas, and he also uses flamethrowers

56:12

to take edges off sculptures at

56:14

Quasi

56:14

andor. Right? Right. So

56:15

he's getting very too choppy here to -- Yeah. --

56:18

another surrealist. In in my favorite

56:20

bit of his ready mids or or

56:22

automatic arc, Hite drives around

56:24

with a canvas a wet canvas

56:26

with a paint still wet on the 539 of his

56:28

car in a rain storm so that the

56:30

rain will actually be

56:32

his painter, right, uses

56:34

the rain as his paintbrush. think that's very

56:36

cool, frankly. And then he

56:38

continues to avoid figure out a way to market

56:41

the void because, you know, you can take the boy

56:43

out of American executionism, but you can't

56:45

take American executionism out of a boy.

56:47

And he begins to sell empty

56:49

spaces in Paris for gold. He

56:51

then turns the gold back into art. But

56:53

the larger point is, he's now marketing

56:56

the void, which is the next level. And he

56:58

does a famous photograph around this time

57:00

called leap into the void, which involves

57:03

him seemingly leaping out of a window,

57:05

and he just removes the friends down below

57:07

with the trampoline. And it is his

57:09

statement against NASA. Hite how

57:12

dare you leap into the void in a non

57:14

artistic way

57:14

NASA?

57:15

Yeah. So he he was very accomplished

57:17

at the media manipulation side --

57:20

Oh, yeah. -- of performance art and

57:22

and installation art andor and definitely a

57:25

precursor to warhol in that

57:27

way that

57:28

Hite. He is he is sort of the the linchpin between

57:30

Duchenne and the

57:31

pop artists and the performance artists that blow

57:33

up in the late sixties. Right. In particular,

57:36

of course, 539, the

57:39

women wearing only blue body paint

57:41

smooshing up against

57:42

canvases, was a huge cultural

57:44

deal that people were shocked intitulated by,

57:47

it

57:47

appears in the

57:50

ethical nineteen sixty

57:52

two exploitation documentary,

57:54

Mondocane, an Italian film

57:57

that is an anthology film just of

57:59

weird freakish things all around the world

58:01

that are supposed to make you drop your

58:03

draw and collect your time The segment

58:05

on Klein is very respectful

58:07

and very attractively posed. He's restaging

58:10

anthropometry there's also Hite string

58:13

section lined up against the wall

58:15

andor it's very artfully shot. But

58:17

that, I think, became synonymous

58:20

with modernism in a way that

58:22

Klein is not so well remembered

58:24

today, but at the time, he was the modernist.

58:26

He was the face of it. Yeah. Yeah. And he visited

58:28

America in nineteen sixty one, he visited New

58:30

York City where for the first time in his career,

58:32

he sold nothing, which is

58:35

a 539, I guess. But that, you know,

58:37

nothing loth. He continues to Los Angeles as

58:39

another gallery show there. Visits Death

58:41

Valley andor falls in love with the Southwest.

58:44

Just as a as a canvas, I guess,

58:46

that, again, the notion of the canvas that is

58:48

there andor you react to it is, you know,

58:50

and John Ford, there's our connection, Robin.

58:52

Monocame, like I said, like you said, happens

58:55

in nineteen sixty two. And in fact, he

58:57

suffers a heart attack while watching Mondocame

58:59

in Paris. Andor then has

59:01

some more heart attacks and dies of the last one

59:03

of those later that year. And

59:06

Robin, your theory is, that it's because

59:08

he's popping amphetamines. Right. Well, it's

59:10

not not my

59:11

theory, but -- Yeah. -- you you

59:13

joined with the theory of I assume the French medical

59:15

examiner. Yeah. It was likely it's, of

59:17

course, pass for way, very young. And so

59:20

bringing this into our various

59:22

mythologies, the obvious thing here

59:24

is to look at the link between Dreamhands

59:26

and Paris, and 539 Delta

59:28

Green. And I've always had the notion

59:31

that pop art revives activity

59:33

in the Dreamlands after it's been sort

59:36

of at a a low ebb for

59:38

several decades, which parallels the period,

59:40

the post war period when surrealism becomes

59:43

old Hite. And indeed the

59:45

abstract expressionism of Pollak

59:48

and the other New York artists who were only

59:50

interested in form, not in meaning, sort of takes

59:52

over Klein has an interesting sort

59:54

of bridge figure because he's working

59:57

in that vein of things

59:59

that are not pictorial, but he's

1:00:01

still got all of this mystical

1:00:03

meaning in him, his surrealist desire

1:00:05

to transform the world, and

1:00:08

his obvious influence from

1:00:10

Dushop andor also the huxterism

1:00:13

of Dalib are coming through as

1:00:15

well. And so presumably, if

1:00:18

you are going to the Dreamlands, anywhere

1:00:20

between, you know, forty five and,

1:00:23

you know, say, fifty eight, it's

1:00:26

blasted, empty mess.

1:00:29

There's surreal tumble weeds. There's

1:00:31

nothing much there. It's all kind of

1:00:33

died off. It's hard to get there. But maybe

1:00:36

if you're going there fifty eight or fifty nine

1:00:38

you start to see just all do these

1:00:40

blue panels beginning to appear andor

1:00:42

the blue panels, you know, become more

1:00:44

numerous it's when pop

1:00:47

art takes over from Klein that

1:00:49

the blue panel start to change

1:00:51

into other things. So it might still be 539 Delta

1:00:54

Green Times but you will be finding

1:00:56

relics of climb at what he said in motion

1:00:58

reviving the Dreamlands as

1:01:00

your Delta Green agents have to go

1:01:02

there and figure out why they're suddenly

1:01:05

active again changing and and mutating

1:01:07

and becoming more russ

1:01:09

accretion you know, blue secret

1:01:11

masters a a group of blue

1:01:13

man even perhaps --

1:01:15

Right. -- are roaming around in there. -- 539 of

1:01:17

Delta Green does begin in the sixties,

1:01:19

so that tied to the very tail

1:01:21

end of Eve's client's 539,

1:01:24

and he was against NASA, which makes him

1:01:26

a national security threat to a certain

1:01:28

breed of Delta Green. So

1:01:30

if he is either being,

1:01:32

you know, manipulated by Rosa Christian Bluemann

1:01:35

from, you know, some other Hite

1:01:37

sphere, I believe there is an intelligent

1:01:39

shade of blue lurking around somewhere in the

1:01:42

mythos. There's certainly intelligent shades of violet

1:01:44

lurking around on mythos. I feel like

1:01:46

you could have Klein or a KleinBank

1:01:49

be the the doorway that is, as you

1:01:51

say, opening the Dreamlands, but he's also

1:01:53

opening up the rest of the world to this sort

1:01:55

of entirely subjective madness.

1:01:58

The notion that only what is happening

1:02:00

in my head matters in art then that

1:02:02

has, I think, obvious mythos tie ins

1:02:05

over and above any weirdness he

1:02:07

might or might not have gotten up to with his

1:02:09

ross accretion

1:02:10

fund. Right?

1:02:11

Right. Andor if he's selling the void,

1:02:13

if he's selling literal nothing -- Mhmm.

1:02:15

-- maybe he's selling bits of Yaksothoth or

1:02:18

Azothoth. Yeah. Azothoth. Or even

1:02:20

if he is not doing it overtly,

1:02:23

he's got this sort of automatism that

1:02:25

he's, you know, carried on 539 both ross accretionism

1:02:27

and serialism. Maybe Yugg so

1:02:29

forth or whatever is sort of pushing

1:02:32

through him. I mean, Cthulhu, as we know,

1:02:34

his dreams affect artists first.

1:02:36

So Eves Klein, maybe when he

1:02:38

was in Japan, he started having

1:02:40

some Cthulhu dreams. And when he comes

1:02:42

back, he's trying to paint the

1:02:45

objection of human perception,

1:02:48

and that's why he's trying to do his monochromes

1:02:50

and his blue, and then he starts doing

1:02:52

the nothing. Is he saying, how do you get cafulu

1:02:55

out of your head, if Cthulhu is the source of all

1:02:57

knowledge, maybe having nothing

1:02:59

coming in is the way to 539 it. Andor

1:03:01

so maybe his void he thinks is an anti

1:03:03

cthulu

1:03:03

measure, but of course, it's also just another doorway

1:03:06

for Asitha. Right. Or you could be completely

1:03:08

unaware because even, you know, if you're selling a

1:03:10

bunch of nothing, who's in that nothing while

1:03:12

we already answered that question. Right. Exactly.

1:03:14

So I think we now need to have this

1:03:16

podcast, this episode turn into

1:03:18

nothing, but there'll be something for

1:03:20

you to listen to a mere week from today.

1:03:24

Stuff having once again been talked about, it's time to

1:03:26

thank our sponsors, Atlas

1:03:28

Games, Pell Green Press, ask

1:03:30

for Gal, arc dream, dark tower,

1:03:33

and pro fantasy software. Music

1:03:35

as always is by a gym, simple

1:03:37

audio editing by Rob Bortchas. Support

1:03:39

our Patreon at patreon dot com backslash

1:03:42

can and robin. Keep this podcast blue

1:03:44

vivid, but not sad, alongside

1:03:47

such modernist backers as, Michael

1:03:49

Kuehl, Ian Carlson, James

1:03:51

Candelino, Jesse Lowe, and

1:03:53

dreaming

1:03:54

Johnny. Where this show or drink it from

1:03:56

a mug with Ken Robin merch, at t public

1:03:58

dot com slash uro slash ken robin.

1:04:00

Check out our latest design. Bring

1:04:02

me the incompetent laggard file.

1:04:05

On Twitter, he's at

1:04:06

kennethite. Andor he's at Robinby

1:04:08

Laws. See you next time once again,

1:04:10

we will talk about stuff.