Rip It & Run! The Lovecraft Denouement

HPL has a tendency, in ending many of his stories, to enact a dreadful revelation and then have his protagonist run screaming into the night. It happens at the end of “The Whisperer in Darkness”, “The Outsider” and, to some extent, in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. In the short story or novella format, this is entirely acceptable: once the climax has been reached, very little more needs to be added to complete the tale: BAM! Aaargh! The End. Anyone who’s ever read a book by Alan Garner knows the deal: every single one of his books – Elidor, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Owl Service, Red Shift – concludes in just this manner. That’s not to imply that this is a problem; it isn’t... until someone tries to tell the story in a different medium.

When The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS) turned “The Whisperer in Darkness” into a movie recently, they ran into a serious issue in translating HPL’s ending to film. While it’s OK to just have your narrator go crazy and head for the hills in print, it’s not very effective on celluloid. In this instance, the HPLHS guys took a step back and came up with an alternative ending that was very satisfying and fitted well with the source material. In essence, they just wrote a short ‘what happens next’ sequence to tack on where Lovecraft left off.

However, I don’t want to give the impression that Lovecraft’s ending is not useful, or is somehow less valuable than other approaches. One of the reasons that HPL’s work sticks with the reader long after they’ve put down the book, is that the mind formulates extensions to the material, cogitates what would take place after those final words: it’s this practice of seemingly leaving things hanging which grabs the reader and brings them back for more.

In a gaming format, this tantalising resolution is just as useful. Every now and then, things go pear-shaped for the Investigators: every roll is crap; everyone gets knocked out; everyone who isn’t unconscious goes temporarily insane. What to do? BAM! Aaargh! To Be Continued. Just wrap things up at this point (if you’re close to the end of your playing time anyway), or jump to a new scene. Investigators who go temporarily loopy tend to run – a lot. Have them regain their senses at some other locale some time later, preferably one that will put them back on the trail once again. As a bonus, you could have them come to holding the McGuffin that they were after in the first place, allowing them to backtrack and find out what happened to their buddies (with a view to rescuing them). Or, if the team were simply overcome due to combat, have them regain awareness in a holding cell somewhere, close to the action, with the possibility of escape and of continuing the narrative. These things don’t have to spell total disaster for the party or your finely crafted story.

And if your players question how it is they were let go by the Servitor Beings who seriously had them on the ropes, or why the creatures didn’t just kill them out of hand once they had them dead to rights, remind them that these are alien beings we’re talking about: their actions don’t have to make sense to rational human minds. (If they do, then perhaps the players should think about having their characters take a quiet rest cure somewhere, in order to build up some Sanity Points...)

In one of my own tales, I had my team investigate a run-down old building due for demolition, which contained a serious cache of nitro-glycerine, precariously perched on the edge of an unsteady workbench in the basement. Ideally, the party should have found the gallon jar and carefully removed it to a less potentially dangerous place, but their gamers’ instincts got the better of them and the basement was the last place they wanted to check out. So, what with them kicking-in stuck doors and randomly falling through rotten floorboards upstairs, the glass jar hit the floor and – BAM! Aaargh! To Be Continued. Since I had stuck enough explosive material in this ramshackle building to wipe out everything in a 100-metre radius, I decided to simply draw a veil over that night’s session and move on. At the beginning of the subsequent session, we began with the team being dug out of the rubble, somewhat chastened, a few hit points worse for wear, but still able to carry on fighting the Good Fight.

How did they survive? What confluence of physics and surrounding wood-panelling kept them from harm? Who cares? The point, of course, was that everyone got to live to fight another day, and months of my writing and preparation didn’t just get flushed down the crapper because my players were too lily-livered to simply walk downstairs and see what was going on. Personally, I blame the “Evil Dead” movies...

The first duty that both the team of Investigators and the Keeper have is to the story. Breaking things up into scenes, drawing a veil over something that didn’t go as planned, editing the narrative around poor decisions and bad dice rolls, gives everyone involved flexibility, creative input, and – best of all – longevity. And it will keep them coming back for more!

Calling Cards & the Custom of Calling

Throughout the Victorian era, into the Edwardian period, and through the 1920s into the 1930s, the custom of calling on other people and the associated etiquette of using calling cards was the hallmark of a polished individual. Although the practice quickly fell by the wayside in the early ‘30s, knowledge of the rules involved was still observed for dealing with the older generations and those moving in Royal circles.

It was considered polite to call upon one’s friends and neighbours on a fairly regular basis. When one moved into a new district or neighbourhood, it was considered correct to wait until the new neighbours chose to call upon one before making such a move oneself. Not allowing them to have the first move was considered a sign of being forward, or pushy.

Such calls were always made in the afternoons, after 3.00pm, and well-mannered folk ensured that, if they were staying at home to receive visitors, they would set aside this time especially for this purpose. If the person being called upon was an invalid or infirm, then an earlier visit was permissible, with the understanding that a refusal might occur if they were not up to it.

An essential piece of equipment required for making calls was the visiting card. In the Victorian era these were known by the French term ‘cartes de visite’, but by the ‘30s they were simply referred to as ‘cards’, or ‘visiting cards’, and the practice of making calls was sometimes informally known as ‘slinging pasteboard’, especially by the younger generation.

In the late Victorian period, cartes de visite were sometimes adorned with a photograph (or an image produced by some similar process). This served the double-purpose of making the caller instantly recognisable to the called-upon, as well as demonstrating that the card’s owner was up-to-date with the current technologies. By the 1920s however, these flashy types of cards had largely passed beyond the pale and a plain card was by far the preferred item.

A visiting card should be plain white pasteboard and should have square corners. In size it should be 3.25 inches long and 2.25 inches wide. The correct manner of printing upon these cards was to have them ‘engraved’ resulting in a raised finish which could be felt with the fingertip. Business cards - those used by tradespeople - were never so printed, the words being flush with the surface of the card, and such a printed item informed the one receiving it that one’s intentions were purely ‘commercial’.

The card-bearer’s name should be clearly printed across the middle of one side of the card; one’s address would always appear in the lower left-hand corner. It was considered highly improper for one to include their telephone number on their card: such information would be written upon the card if required.

Women were required to very clearly indicate their marital status on their cards. If unmarried, their cards would use the title ‘Miss’ along with their surname; their first name would only appear if they had sisters and were not the oldest of the girl children (eg., “Miss Humperdinck”, “Miss Amelia Humperdinck”, “Miss Beatrice Humperdinck”, etc.). A married woman’s cards always followed the wording of their husband’s card with the appended title ‘Mrs’ (eg., “Mrs Algernon Wilberforce”, “Mrs A. H. Wilberforce”, or “Mrs Algernon H. Wilberforce”). An unmarried woman who still lived at home with her parents often had her name printed below that of her mother on her mother’s cards and they would both use these, crossing out the name of anyone not present during the call.

Cards were essential for letting people know who had called upon them in their absence, giving them an opportunity to make arrangements to meet later on. The rules for how, why and when one left their calling card were a tangled little system that took some getting used to but, once understood, came effortlessly.

For men and women, calling upon a business premises, it was usual to hand over a visiting card to the servant or receptionist in order to identify oneself to the proprietor. Note that these are the only proper conditions under which a woman may give her card to another man. This is an instance where the card is given despite the one being called upon being in attendance.

If a man called upon an acquaintance only to find them not at home, he simply left his card with the servant answering the door and went on his way. This procedure is also standard practice for an unmarried woman; however, if she were calling upon the premises of a single man, in a capacity not connected to business, she would not leave her card under any circumstances. Should the object of the call be an invalid, or infirm, the caller would simply write the words “To Inquire” at the top of the card before leaving it with the servant: this indicated that the caller was seeking to inquire as to the status of the called-upon’s wellbeing.

For the married woman, the process becomes a lot more complex. A married woman calling upon another married couple only to find them not at home, would leave two of her husband’s cards and one of her own: the absent pair would then both be in receipt of her husband’s cards but, again, since it is not seemly for a woman to give her card to another man outside of business transactions, the woman’s card would be retained only by the wife. If the married woman was calling upon an absent single woman, or widow, she would leave not only her card, but one of her husband’s also.

If the married woman called upon another couple and the woman in that relationship was present but not the husband, she would not leave her own card (the hostess being available) but she would leave one of her husband’s cards as she left.

Finally, if the married woman called upon the house of a bachelor living with his mother or sister in residence, she would treat the situation as if the household were run by a married couple: she would leave one of her cards for the senior female resident and two of her husband’s. Likewise, the people in such a domestic arrangement would leave calling cards as if they were a married couple.

Cards would be handed to the servant answering the door at the time of the call. These would be left on a tray beside the door, or just inside the entrance, and this would be checked by the owners of the residence upon their return. It was not the role of the servant to draw their masters’ attention to the pile of pasteboard on the tray, as they had better things to be getting on with, rather than organising their employers’ social calendar. A woman leaving cards on behalf of her husband after visiting with another married woman would, in lieu of handing these cards to her hostess, simply drop the necessary cards onto the tray as she left at the end of the call.

If invited to a dinner party or some such similar gathering, it was considered polite to drop off your calling card at the hostess’s residence, regardless of whether the invitation was accepted or not; this was considered a polite way of thanking the hostess for their thinking of you by opening up the possibility of their calling upon you. By the mid 1930s, this practice had largely fallen by the wayside.

Being in receipt of another person’s calling card placed an onus upon the receiver. It was polite to return a call within ten days of the call having been made, or a fortnight (14 days) at the very outside.

*****

Nowadays, in an age of shameless individuality, sexual equality, answering machines and message banks, we do without the quaint to-ing and fro-ing of ‘pasteboard slinging’, but for those gaming within these milieux, it was the way that the world back then worked and it may well repay one’s efforts to recreate the period correctly to incorporate these traditions in the action. Not to mention the useful plot-orientated aspects of the calling card system: are those the missing words of the ritual chant scrawled on the back of your associate’s calling card? Why does this ladies’ card claim as her husband the name of someone you know to be a long-term bachelor? And what revelations could a discreet rummage through the card tray inside the door of the potential villain of your tale reveal? There are endless possibilities...

Review: Shadows Over Innsmouth

JONES, Stephen, (Ed.), Shadows Over Innsmouth, Titan Books / Titan Publishing Group Ltd., London, 2013.

Octavo; paperback, perfect bound with illustrated wrappers; 496pp., with many black and white illustrations.

If anyone ever needed an indicator as to the staying power of Lovecraft’s oeuvre, the sheer quantity of emulative writing that pours out on a yearly basis from publishing houses across the planet must surely prove the point. It seems that each year that goes by, another book of new Mythos fiction, or a new collection of the old mainstays, or a new Cthulhu-themed board- or card game, rolls off the production line. I enjoy stumbling upon these new vehicles which follow in HPL’s footprints, and coming across this volume was a good instance.

As a new innovation, this collection takes as its starting point, one of the best-loved (if not the best) of HPL’s short stories, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, and then, having laid it before the reader, follows it up with the stories of modern day writers taking their inspiration from it. Having, myself, derived my own short fiction from the decaying waterfront hovels of this inbred, benighted town, I was greatly looking forward to seeing what other authors would do with it. Given that those writers included Ramsay Campbell, Brian Lumley, Basil Copper, Kim Newman and Neil Gaiman, it promised to be something quite special.

To kick off though, I’d like to discuss the editorial aspects of the book. Stephen Jones does a highly expert job in keeping his authors wrangled and pointed in the right direction, as far as the source material is concerned. Especially pleasing (to me at least) is the fact that there is not a single instance of the ‘Devil’s Reef’ heresy, although I’m sure many first drafts had to be culled of this persistent eyesore. Under his sure guidance it’s ‘Devil Reef’ all the way! Too, the geography of Lovecraft’s fictive county is deftly corralled: except for one instance, names of places and people are as they should be and the whole project lines up neatly, four-square under Lovecraft’s aegis. As well, the artwork has been thoughtfully commissioned and executed, seamlessly augmenting the text with sympathetic images. There are a few typos towards the end of the book, but nowadays, this is pretty much par for the course in modern publishing: on the whole, this is quality helmsmanship.

Then we get to the stories themselves. An opportunity to re-read HPL’s masterpiece is one I’m always willing to take, and putting it first in this collection helps to set the bar in terms of expectations. It’s a good idea but also a gamble: if the rest of the material doesn’t make the grade, then they’re reduced to a pale, fish-belly wanness by comparison, which is great for highlighting HPL’s accomplishments; not so good for showcasing the state of modern horror short fiction. An effort to avoid this is probably the reason behind some dubious selections:

The pieces presented by Ramsay Campbell and Brian Lumley are not new. “Dagon’s Bell” by Lumley is a solid mainstay of the Innsmouth canon and possibly not often encountered these days; trotting it out here gives it a new lease of life and admirably supports the source material. On the other hand, Campbell’s “The Church in High Street” is an old trouper that is very familiar, but it doesn’t really tick all of the boxes that an Innsmouth work should: benighted, crumbling town? Check. Inbred, half-human denizens of the deep? Um, not so much. This is an excellent story, no question; but is it an Innsmouth story? I’m not convinced. Since the receipt of his Lifetime Achievement award in 2010, I imagine that Lumley is quite content to rest on his laurels and dust off “Dagon’s Bell” for a new(er) audience; but would it have really hurt Campbell to squeeze out something, not only new, but more apropos? But then, “The Final Revelation of Gla’aki” is doing the rounds, so maybe he has his energies tied up elsewhere.

So sadly, these contributions, while solid mainstays of the Mythos in general, come off as something of a marketing exercise by the publishers, which is a pity.

Moving on to the other ‘big name’ contributors, there isn’t really enough pizzazz to get the fireworks flying here either. Both Neil Gaiman and Kim Newman decide to poke fun at the canon material, rather than trying to move it into interesting new areas. In “Only the End of the World Again”, Gaiman takes the hackneyed old route of writing from the perspective of the monsters – a gimmick that has served him well time and time again – and which misses the point of the exercise entirely: in Innsmouth, the Outsiders are to be feared; we are not part of them or privy to their ways. And the schtick of tossing in a standard Hollywood Universal Studios monster with the Mythos mainstays doesn’t make it fresh either: rather it makes for a rather sneer-y, belittling commentary on Lovecraft’s work, as if it’s just as trite as anything else shambling out of Hollywood. It’s unworthy.

“A Quarter To Three”, Kim Newman’s contribution (surprisingly, of his two pieces represented here, the one he attached his actual name to), is simply a long-winded shaggy-dog tale with an appalling pun as its punchline: along with its sexist aside that ‘large member equals chick magnet’, it’s simply not worthy of inclusion in a volume that’s already pushing the 500-page limit. I suspect that he deliberately published this waste of ink under his own name to ensure that it got included: the publishers obviously wanted to capitalise upon his inclusion in the exercise and, faced with the choice of yanking the relatively anonymous ‘Jack Yeovil’s’ decent effort, or Newman’s crap, the easiest compromise was to leave both in. So, yes Mr. Newman, well played, and thanks for letting us suffer for it.

The pseudonymous ‘Mr. Yeovil’s’ story (“The Big Fish”) is actually very good, combining the gumshoe detective fiction of Raymond Chandler with Lovecraft’s verbiage. Not that this is actually a very new concept either (“Cast A Deadly Spell” anyone?), but it’s nicely pulled off here. I was strongly reminded of Barbara Hambly’s Bride of the Rat God while reading this, a novel that’s not without its flaws but which has a similar sense of place and time.

This brings us to Basil Copper, the last of the ‘big guns’ assembled for this project. Coppers’ Mythos stuff always has a Rider-Haggard-esque feel to it, an adventure story, ‘maps and chaps’ sensibility, to round out and reveal the Mythos nastiness; his novel The White Space is a case in point. His story here, “Beyond the Reef”, is of massive scope and sits nicely as a bold follow-up to the 1928 Federal Raid, in which those shameless Esoteric Orderers of Dagon try to enact revenge on the eggheads of Miskatonic University whilst snatching back their holy books from the Orne Library (with a few snacks along the way). It has twists and surprises a-plenty and ticks all of the boxes for an Innsmouth tale.

My one quibble about it is a geographic one: the collective consciousness of the Arkham landscape firmly places Innsmouth east and north of Arkham; in the story, the Deep Ones (and their associates) dig tunnels from the benighted town to Miskatonic University, which our heroes later trail down westwards to the sea. West from Innsmouth gets you closer to Arkham and Boston, but you have to travel east from Arkham to get to Innsmouth. This is the one instance where the editor’s otherwise ruthless adherence to the landscape slips up; maybe he decided to let it stand since, sadly, Basil Copper died shortly before this book went to print. R.I.P.

So much for the headliners. The other contributors are less well-known and, for the most part they not only take the job seriously, but they deliver the goods. That’s not to say that they are all perfect by any means; but, in that they honour the source material and generally strive for homage, rather than pastiche or mocking humour, they approach the project with some degree of respect. It’s certainly remiss of me to include Guy N. Smith in with these others when, for me, the inclusion of his work was what clinched the deal in my buying this book; sadly though, his effort – “Return to Innsmouth” - was generally lacklustre, essentially a re-telling of HPL’s original story, and lacking all of the marauding giant crabs that I was anticipating. Well-written; nicely paced; nothing new.

Brian Stableford’s “The Innsmouth Heritage” plays with the genetics of the Innsmouth Look, and follows a researcher trying to get to the bottom of the science behind the Deep Ones’ chromosomal virulence. The writer’s take on Innsmouth is gentrified rather than crumbling, which felt odd, and any shocks or creepiness in the tale happen – disappointingly - off-stage. Meanwhile, in “Deepnet”, David Langford transforms the town into a gleaming IT technology park and cyber-enhances the ‘Look from a physical taint to a computer-promulgated psychological one, underscoring the disturbing potentialities within the availability of real-world, pornographic internet product.

Some writers riff on a “Wicker Man” theme, showing their narrators stumbling into Innsmouth only to flee in terror after the role of unwilling participant in the worship of Dagon is foisted upon them. David A Sutton’s “Innsmouth Gold” treads this path, as does Peter Tremayne’s “Daoine Domhain”, which is set in a similarly dark, and possibly older, Deep One settlement off the Irish coast. His playing with the notion that the Deep Ones have been pressed into legend as the ‘Formorians’ of Irish myth is a cute concept. However, both of these tales – nice concepts aside – are short of menace or scares, most of the horror being flagged well in advance: any twists involved are only the expected ones.

Brian Mooney’s “The Tomb of Priscus” is a piece strongly redolent of Brian Lumley’s Mythos fare, with its Ancient Roman references and archaeological leanings; it too however, suffers from being a little ho-hum in the horror department. D. F. Lewis’s “Down to the Boots” is a frothy piece of well-written inconsequence about a man drowning in a bog after an argument with his wife concerning his undergarments – ‘not seeing the influence of Dagon at all in this. “The Crossing” by Adrian Cole posits a magical doorway between a sleepy British village, Rowling-esquely named ‘Appledore’, and the deadly town of Innsmouth, the crossing to which locale serves to reveal some rather obvious secrets about the narrator’s dad. I was left wondering why the author bothered with the trans-Atlantic shenanigans at all, except that, without them, this is just “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” all over again.

A hallmark of most of these stories is that they are beautifully crafted and couched in glittering prose; they just don’t shock, and I’m confused as to why that should be. “The Homecoming” by Nicholas Royle is a superlative descriptive work concerning a woman’s return to Bucharest, in Romania, after the fall of the Ceausescu regime; it’s evocative, bleak and terrifying all at once, but I was left wondering what it was doing here. The connexion to the Mythos, and especially the Deep Ones, felt forced, as if it had been worked in just to make it fit in with the rest of the stories in the book; but, as in so many of these kinds of tales, the real-world horrors of such times and places make the fantastic elements seem childish and hollow.

By far the stand-out piece of the volume is Michael Marshall Smith’s “To See the Sea” although it’s not perfect by any means. This is the tale of a stressed urban British couple who seek a relaxing weekend escape in the village near where the woman’s mother nearly drowned in a nautical misadventure which almost claimed over 100 lives. As we expect this far into the volume, the run-down, sleepy village is populated by a cast of physically and mentally deficient types who unnerve and bewilder the young pair; the atmosphere is drab – despite the fact that a local festival is due to take place the same weekend – and the only intellectually alert person in the district is the restaurant owner and waiter (also the cook) who doesn’t actually live in the village (or stay there after dark). The sombre and brooding quality of the story is only marred by a ludicrous sequence towards the end, where one half of the couple pursues a parade of festival goers through the town, always just missing them as they turn a corner: I had the “Benny Hill” theme tune running through my head all the while I was reading this. The ending of this tale is in fact a surprise, so working through the farce was worth it in the end.

In the final analysis, it seems that, if you’ve seen one sleepy, inbred, run-down coastal village populated by pelagean horrors, then you’ve seen them all. While well-written in and of themselves, the majority of these tales lack punch and don’t really have anything new to tease out of the mix. That’s fine, if you’re a “Shadow Over Innsmouth” fan, or have some Deep One ancestry, but you may be stifling some yawns before you reach the last page of this effort. The presence of old favourites in the canon lore helps signpost some possibilities and potentialities, but they’re still old; and Gaiman and Newman’s goofing around, making hamburgers out of sacred cows, certainly doesn’t help things at all. It’s worth it for the art; for Basil Copper’s last hurrah; and one or two other little gems along the way. And of course, also for the opportunity to wade through HPL’s fishy freakshow once more.

Three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors from me.

The Library of Rokugan...

While “Call of Cthulhu” is the game I hold most dear, I do strike out into other genres occasionally. Given that I am a bit of a ‘samurai tragic’ I have dabbled quite a bit with the Alderac product “Legend of the Five Rings”, and have even made contributions, both artistically and in terms of content, with some of their game releases. I quite like the game world of Rokugan but I’ve never liked the game system: systems should support the genre for which they are the engine, in my view, and whether I play a game or not depends strongly upon this issue. “Call of Cthulhu”, “Feng Shui”, “Pendragon”, and “Cyberpunk” are my games of choice, simply because the mechanics that run them support the nature of the stories that they tell; when I run “L5R”, I replace the rule system with my own home brew system of “Pendragon” rules, simply because it makes more sense.

Most things about Rokugan and the Rokugani I’m quite comfortable with; however, there are a few times when the writers go off the rails and do things which – to my mind anyway – don’t do the genre justice. Mostly it’s just the fact that they don’t take things far enough in recreating a fantasy Feudal Japan equivalent: compare Rokugan with Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori or Ruth Manley’s Plum Rain Scroll and the presence of mainly surface detail – facts that don’t really cut to the meat of what this kind of fantasy can be like – is all too apparent. I’ve reached a point with Alderac’s offerings where I only absorb a source book after I’ve checked who wrote it: I’ll take anything by Ree Soesbee; John Wick’s contributions I can take or leave.

One of the things I do with my L5R games, in order to give the world some gravitas and depth, is to drop literature into the environment (and obviously, since this is me, that should come as no surprise to anyone!). Feudal Japanese environments are incredibly literate, compared to their equivalents in a more European setting. People read – a lot. Written transmission of ideas and information is highly prevalent in these settings and, especially when it comes to the way warfare was conducted, was crucial to forging the paths of progress. Accordingly, I provide my players with a library of worthy tomes which they can carry with them and discuss with the non-player characters and each other.

Rokugan – as detailed by the Alderac crowd – certainly isn’t text-free. There are books mentioned in the rules and I have included them faithfully here. Alongside these, I have taken real-world, important texts which were crucial to the development of Feudal Japan and have modified them to suit the Rokugan environment. There are notes at the end of this list which discuss the historical derivation of these works. Interestingly, and this is a testament to the designers’ efforts in outlining their game world, not too much modifying had to take place.

*****

Bansen Shukai by Yasuki Fujibayashi

A tract with surreptitious circulation. It outlines the usefulness of ninja in battle, the ways that they can be employed and also their more notorious strategies, so that they can be recognised and avoided. Amongst many other standard ninja tricks is detailed the insidious tactic of kyojutsu ten-kan-ho. Essentially this plan involves dressing up your ninja troops in your enemy’s colours, firing upon a guarded section of wall at night during rain or fog and waiting for the dismayed defenders to extinguish their lights. In the resulting dark, ninja scale the walls despatching the defenders while siege engines move in, uncontested, to occupy positions for attack¹.

Kyujitai Shinjitai (“In the Shadow of Leaves”) by Togashi Tsuramoto

This is a practical and spiritual guide for a warrior, drawn from a collection of commentaries by the samurai Mirumoto Tsunetomo the third daimyo of the Mirumoto family. Tsuramoto compiled these commentaries from his conversations with Tsunetomo, but they were not published  until many years afterwards (and it’s highly possible they were never meant to be). Known as the Book of the Samurai or the Tsunetomo Analects, this is possibly the best known and most widely read work in Rokugan².

The book records Tsunetomo's views on bushido, the warrior code of the samurai. In The Shadow Of Leaves is sometimes said to assert that bushido is really the "Way of Dying", or of living as though one was already dead, and that a samurai must be willing to die at any moment in order to be true to his lord; his saying "the way of the warrior is death" was a summation of the willingness to sacrifice that bushido codified.

Leadership by the Kami Akodo

"Without honour, there is no victory. Without fear, there is no defeat."

Leadership is a treatise on military discipline written by the Kami Akodo in the 1st century. It is one of the most widely read books on the military arts, and can be found in most dojos throughout Rokugan.

Lies by Bayushi Tangen

"A living enemy is dangerous; a dead enemy is dead. Better to have a graveyard of dead enemies than a single angry one."

Lies is a treatise on politics written by Bayushi Tangen, and it was presented to the Emperor. It was published shortly after Akodo’s Leadership and attacks it directly, and it also provides examples of Scorpion "sincerity". Along with Mirumoto Hojatsu's Niten, Kakita's The Sword and Leadership, it is considered one of the major literary works written during the foundation of the Empire.

Tangen also wrote another treatise, Little Truths, but apparently - and that’s a dangerous word to use in the context of the Scorpion Clan - it was never published.

Makura no Shōshi by Ida Shōnagon

A revolutionary work comprising the random thoughts and scattered journal notes of a Unicorn courtier written between the years 798 and 802, during which the Unicorn clan returned to Rokugan from its wanderings abroad.

Shōnagon's idle notes are praised for their subtle poetry and adeptness of description. They also capture the spirit of the time and the concerns of the Unicorn clan, especially the uncertainty of their reception back to their homeland.

More than this, the form in which the book is composed – comprising as it does many off-the–cuff observations and unstructured thoughts – inspired others to write in a similar fashion and gave rise to the fude ni shitagau (“following the brush”) form of writing: collections of poetry interspersed with rambling, personal essays, criticisms and observations. Chief among these are Moto Norinaga’s Aiko-ka and Soshuro Sadanobu’s Makura no Seppuku, written in the weeks whilst awaiting the order to commit suicide.

The writing style has become a hallmark of an extreme cultural movement within the Crane clan which espouses ascetic values and an appreciation of art for its own sake, blended with a hardline reading of Shinsei’s ethical teachings. Typically, these wandering epistles cavil against cultural philistinism, the trials of aristocracy, and the general “unpleasantness” of the world and its peoples. Such cultural elitism has its opponents: “The Dog Pillow” is an anonymous parody of Ida Shōnagon's original work which ruthlessly targets the Crane clan and the more effete members within its ranks³.

The Mortar Sutras compiled by Daidoji Akihito

“The Kaiu Wall was built with Crab hands and Crab hearts: it will never fail. This is all that you need to know.

If all the Gods and all our ancestors turn their faces from us and the Wall fails, we have our castles and fortresses to fall back to.

If, by treachery, these strongholds are breached and so fall, we have armour on our backs and weapons in our fists.

If these fail, we have hands; and teeth; and hearts.

These will not fail.”

This is a collection of inspirational chants used by troops along the Kaiu Wall. Akihito was stationed on the Wall for a period of ten years during which he collected these pieces of doggerel and re-worked them into uplifting pieces of rambling verse that are often used throughout Rokugan as a positive character sketch of the Crab Clan.

Niten by Mirumoto Hojatsu

“The samurai in the watchtower who says ‘at least that distant war isn’t happening in our territory’ is the one who will open the gate for an invading army…”

Niten (literally, "two skies") is the swordsmanship discipline devised by the first Dragon Clan Thunder, Mirumoto, and used almost exclusively by the Dragon Clan samurai, particularly those from the Mirumoto family. Unlike the Kakita school of thought, niten-ryu believes that it is dishonourable for a samurai to die in the defense of his lord while there is still another blade by his side. Because of this, practitioners of the style fight with both wakizashi and katana.

Although Kakita's iaijutsu technique is more widely accepted for use in duelling, niten maintains its applicability and contends admirably in both duels and combat.

“Seijutsu na Ansatsusha” a play by Akodo Jimomen

A play that was famously banned during the reign of Hantei XII. It tells the romantic story of Bayushi Aramoro, the brother of the Scorpion daimyo Bayushi Hajioki, who was a ninja jonin. At the command of Hantei X, all the Scorpion ninja are ordered to surrender themselves to the Emerald Champion to answer charges of the use of black magic: after a travesty of a trial, the noble ninja are all boiled alive in oil. Amid declarations of honourable purpose and tearful farewells to loved ones, the play offers the message that the individual exists at the whim of Heaven, regardless of rank, reputation, or ability. Despite its proscribed status, it is still a favourite among the lower classes.

Shonshi Nihongi (“On the Conduct of War”) by Akodo Shonshi

A very early work which is well thumbed by any samurai, especially those with direct experience of massed combat. The essence of the work is that any and all strategies are expedient if they deflect the possibility of open warfare, including “dishonourable acts” such as the employment of ninja troops. Consequently the work is considered unsettling and controversial⁴.

The Sword by Kakita-sama

"The secret of swordplay is not the swift defeat, not the prolonged strike and block. A pure stroke will defeat technique."

The Sword is the record of the philosophy regarding swordsmanship and discipline written by Kakita-sama, the founder of the Kakita family and one of the earliest and strongest proponents of iaijutsu. This treatise also served as the foundation for duelling in Rokugan and included Kakita's thoughts on the theory and technique of kenjutsu.

The essence of Kakita's technique is that an enemy could be defeated with a single strike and that it takes only that single strike to end any conflict. The key to the technique is that of perfection: the strike must be of perfect form, with perfect speed, and perfect accuracy. Kakita summarized this philosophy with the following: "One man, one sword, one strike."

The final manuscript of this great work is held in Kakita's dojo in the Crane lands.

The Tao of Shinsei

The main religious text of Rokugan which outlines the order of the Universe, the effects of karma and which codifies “correct behaviour” during one’s existence. Most Rokugani know at least one verse or parable from this work and many of the stories have been re-worked into derivative local legends⁵.

*****

Notes:

1 This is a real world text. Fujibayashi Yasutake’s Bansen Shukai is a real-world ninja tract, one of only very few ever written. Rather than make up a new name for him, I dropped a few letters from his real-world name to make him a Rokugani Crab.

2 The closest real-world equivalent of this work is the samurai handbook called Hagakure. Many samurai leaders often posted notices around their troops’ barracks, either regulations to be observed (with detailed punishments if these were ignored) or words of wisdom to ensure good conduct. These were often gathered together by the samurai and published in limited editions so that they could be read and pondered over during rest periods or tedious watch duties.

3 This of course is a re-working of The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. All of the non-Rokugani details here accord directly with the impact which this memoir had upon real-world historical Japanese literature. The Moto and Shosuro works are my own inventions, but “The Dog Pillow” is an actual work too, a parody of the original Makura no Sōshi.

4 “Shonshi” is the Japanese transliteration of the Chinese Sun Tzu; it’s close enough to Shinsei, I feel, to make him the flipside of Wick’s peaceful neo-Buddhist. It also makes sense to me that he be a Lion Clan theorist. The Shonshi Nihongi was the first Japanese book to espouse Sun Tzu’s philosophies – there was never a contemporary translation of The Art of War, but many Japanese books made reference to the original.

5 This text seems like a combination of the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tze and the Tripitaka of Buddhist faith. Wick seems to like his fantasy Buddhism to err on the side of Zen but, to my mind, there is so much more versatility to be gained from underscoring the different mystical schools of thought that Buddhism (and even Taoism) offers, that a great opportunity to broaden an L5R campaign is being missed.