SLUGGO

 (Puppet Factions in the City Mickey Dugan)

Some number of years ago, I was a tertiary and relatively non-contributive member of an OSR book club run by a luminary we will for the moment call Bat Masterson —

— the first book of which was Clifford Geertz’s Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Nobody, as far as I can tell, liked it. Geertz is famous for this concept of "thick description"— a kind of "everything is everything" kind of deal: that without the FULL context you can't know if it is a blink or a wink or some sort of ironic riff on the inability of said wink-blinker to affect such a gesture.

This seems simultaneously kind of obvious and non-actionable, really — witness all the pieces that grapple with but ultimately fail to capture the 6, 7 phenomenon (crossed over to mass cognizance just this week and soon to depart). There's ultimately no accessing the DEEP MAGIC unless you were when it was written, Witch. I know Geertz is critiquing contemporary practice and academic tendancy to make grand proclamations out of paper-thin evidence, but his core thesis in Negara, that these Balinese polities were ones where "power served pomp, not pomp power," seemed pretty grand and dodgily evidenced itself. 

No matter how much bread and circus we have to wade through on the daily, or our sneaking suspicion that typography is running the rpg product, I would be hard pressed to reduce such soup down to anything more than Power in the Raw makes everything sugary.

Mork Borg, via Explorer's Design

Patrick Stewart has a characteristically cogent engagement with Geertz here.

Anyhow, I ran across a print copy of Negara the same day another, better book, arrived via the gutted remnants of the USPS. Written by a different osr veteran (let’s for the sake of call this fellow Gearóid Ó Ruagáin), this second (which I heartily recommend) got me to thinking, or at least something that to the outsider would LOOK like thinking: 

"It was obvious from the body language of some of the individuals
that they were merely going through the motions"

Here side by side are two imaginary renderings of south-east Asia. How do they, as per the Geertz, "construct expression on their surface enigmatical?" 

Ruagáin's Yellow City has an overcast of slug men. They are plenty cute lil' guys but to my mind and I'm sure to their subordinates they are MONSTERS most foul. But why are they like that? The corruption of Power? The debasement by gilded Pomp? The nature of the forever inscrutable invertebrate? Let's instead take the G. man at his word and assume the slugs are instead putting on ... a Show.

Skottie Young

The Slugs in this case have spheres of influence in the real world — the SHAREHOLDERS — politicians/ criminals/ criminal politicians and the like. Bosses, underbosses. Each overarching Slug-run organization is a called BODY CORPORATE. A given Body Corporate is the equivalent of a single actor in our world. So say, the Body Corporate Christopher Lloyd - a consortium of mad scientists, spaced out peace and love aristos, and black robed inquisitors. 

These B.C.s play out a cycle of dramas which are choreographed power struggles. Pro wrestling, really. They (or rather the slugman's cronies as a collective) audition for parts just like any actor. The B.C.C.L., by way of example, is known for their work as the trickster type: Herla Cyning certainly, although in some epochs as Dottore Spaccastrummolo. They are good at it and get consistent work.

I guess all of this is maybe a little bit Xorvintaal – but it’s not a game. It’s a play. And the play is Our American Cousin forever and ever.

“Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice
president? Jerry Lewis?” – Dr. Emmett Brown

You know how history repeats itself? The whole K.M. first as a tragedy, second as a farce bit? Well, the second go wasn’t supposed to be farcical – the actors involved just botched the tone of the production. I was in the audience with a bunch of 14-year-olds who laughed like mad at the end of Othello, too. "Yes. 'Tis Emilia. Emilia — By and by — She’s dead.” Her leg twitches. When the audience starts breaking into giggles, it’s hard to go hard on with the, "Ha, no more moving. Still as the grave.” Man, the actors were pissed.

The reviews, if the Shareholders screw up, will be savage. You're finished in this town, Sluggo, it's somebody else's part next time and moving forward to infinity. The Company's time at the center of events has passed and they are little more than an applauding audience anymore, if that. Sometimes there's a comeback. "I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box" and that. Sometimes there's just the long tail (slime trail?) of denial.

Here are the roles then (you will perhaps notice I have stolen the structure from SJG Revolution and a VERY loose interpretation of commedia dell'arte mixed with some Germanisms):

Miles Gloriosus	Zarzuela	Attaccabrighe	Flour Tortilla
Pickelhering	Chiusette	Il Magnifico	Soubrette
Pavironicas	Erlkönig	Dottore Spaccastrummolo	Pollastrello

Play Report - Anomalous Subsurface Environment Session 2

Well, that took a bit . . . much like Bjork's purported goldfish turned MTV star, said campaign fizzled spectacularly outside its native marine environment (more on that to come). That said, in light of future posts regarding the trans-dimensionally regenerative qualities of yellow bile, the context contained herein may prove elucidatory. And so . . .

Where were we? Stanton, Blumbert, and Bamford the Crabman depart the Temple of Nysses, but are unable to resist the compulsion to hotwire a tank, which they then drive end over end into the river Effulent, in process freeing a malnourished prisoner barbarian, Bat Nilsonson. The quartet are promptly helped escape, and then held at knifepoint by, a team of super-predators led by one Lord Mush. They resist, Stanton sets fire to the surrounding bustee, Mush makes a run for it, but not before surreptitiously handing Blumbert a packet of seeds for "special delivery".

Session 2 - BIG BRASS BAND

And away to the shadowy underground (colloquially “Down-athix”) that lies beneath the central city we go. Lord Mush, in retreat upsets statuette and apple-cart alike in the time-honored manner of all the best poursuite effrénée dans les rues. Stanton in pursuit. Theo Adorno sportscasting: "the throwing of all meaning overboard like ballast in the snapshot of the situation, in the unresisting subjugation to the empty hegemony of things."

Stanton is dodging a lot of hedges, lots of monies (the casting of pennies over the shoulder, useful both against demons and unctuous scavengers), and needless to say (being a higher-order category encompassing the above and more), lots and lots of things. 

[cue an over-under gambling mechanic with playing cards loosely adapted from here - They flip, you choose, you flip. On the over, you catch up. On the under, you keep pace. Choose wrong, you've lost them. Aces low. Face cards are obstacles or intercessors - J-Person, Q-Environment, K-Event].

And lo - it's market day in the Down Below [K of Hearts, dig?], supplying extra props for Mush to mow over and toss behind as barriers. Down go several cages housing exotic animals from the Eastern frontier. Down goes a stand of pots and pans of varying quality (is one of those tarnished mithril?) Down goes the oversized ophicleide and it's wiry player from a five-piece band playing for gruel lucre.

Enter one Dr. Emil Teroq, a graverobber, err, archeologist, idly watching the band's performance until the Mush interrupts his reverie.

The balance of the party, meanwhile, remain above-ground, circling the remaining cutthroats. The pretty flames and the fwip fwip fwip of revealed playing cards (and the whisper of the Bernard Hermann score) are hypnotic. The thugs, however, grasp the situation more succinctly. They disengage to fetch water, blankets and the odd bag of gravel to douse the fire lest the authorities are attracted by the smoke and fall upon them all. In Mush’s absence, his lieutenant Vorveist negotiates a truce. He is very persuasive, and soon everyone is playing whack a mole against many smaller fires.

[Effectively 1hd, 1 hp monsters, but gains 1 hd each turn and 1d6 "children", so don't dilly dally ye dandies or you'll burn down the entire sector]

Ruffians and rowdies have no choice against a monster such as this but to work as a team and are soon fast friends, never mind poor Brosta and Zlosek, face down in pools of blood. 

It's hard labor, but they win out, ultimately. The détente extended. B+B grab one of the thugs and give him a ritual shaving, causing an abrupt conversion to Nyssesian cosmic worldview, creepy crawlies everywhere. Bat Nilsonson has been badly burned and is now unconscious, losing a point of constitution permenantly. Not for the last time.

The former antagonists descend together arm in arm, leaving only the bartender, Karloff, to continue his vigil, polishing such glassware as has survived the conflagration. Surely the Fuzz will be on-site shortly, pinching everyone - except there isn’t anyone. Karloff, mute as mittens, can only gesture downward they-went-thataway.

Down below, Dr. Emil Teroq has become quite agitated and mercilessly needles the band, "That guy doesn't respect music at all!" "Not to go on all fours, that is the law! Are we not men?" "Is this the kind of treatment you will stand for?" No, they won't, and the chase is back on. After that pushy crimelord! Onward Mush, trailed by Stanton, followed by the five-piece, and last of all Dr. Emil Teroq, noting in his blotter the intricate zigzag through conduit, cave, and sewerage cyclopean.

Theodor Geisel

Mush nearly makes it up one of the many ladders lying around the underground to a catwalk but is yanked off mid-ascent by Stanton and immobilized by the quintet irate musicians for a good kicking.

Friends,” says Mush, arms over covering his face against reciprocating muso-boots, “Surely you are not so unsettled as you wouldn’t consider swapping resources? You, being numerous and entirely without direction . . . " Stomp stomp stomp.

After a bit of handwaving, the rest of everyone abruptly arrives in the same spot. The balance of thugs have dispersed, but Vorveist and Wiverne, freshly bic'd brother in the cult of Nysses, have come along a new minted PC and B+B's henchman, respectively.

“The gangs of the Underdim aren’t too bright,” opines Mush, winking if his black eye would allow at his former colleagues Vorveist and Brother 'Verne. “Behold an info dump! The grand camp of the Salties is an eyesore, to be sure, and that just rubs those Whoresons, cleancut little fascists that they are, the wrong way. On my information and belief, they are about to attack and scrub it immaculate. Problem being, the inventor Blue Bear live there in a hut with alligator legs, and he's working on a project for me. I'll make it worth your while if you rescue him before the egg cracking begins . . ."

The party, suitably convinced, leave Mush to his machinations, braving the Bald Bridge (in plenty poor condition, its name suggests) and brain bats who live underneath it as a shortcut against time to find this "Blue Bear" individual and warn him. 

They are too late, though, and arrive to the cacophonous sound of cannon-fire and fitful screaming as the Whoresons are mid-assault, and in the process mid-unleash of eldritch entities soon gawping for breath in the semi-oxygenated air of the subsurface (no, not the titular one either).

John Hendrix

Never fear, per Bill Gould, FNM "wound up letting that fish go into the river when we were finished". Far from being inhumanely tormented for no purpose, the fish (plural - it's film-making innit) went through its/their reverse dip into Urðarbrunnr before learning the runes and living out its/their invasive species dreams to the fullest.

*No malevolent entities were harmed in the making of this episode - no promises going forward*

Bibliography: ASE 1 - Anomalous Subsurface Environment (Patrick Wetmore), Augmented Reality (Paul D. Gallagher), Burndhachaigh (Ian Butterfly), Howling Tower: Chase Scenes (Steve Winter), Infinigrad: The Weird City Toolkit (Michael Ralston), Shadelport & Exile Island (Christopher Tamm), Operation Unfathomable (Jason Sholtis), there was a dog at work today, he was a special mister guy (Scrap Princess), Yoon-Suin (noisms).