Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

It's also a case of "you win a war by defeating your enemy's will, not killing every soldier." Victor was still in high school at this time, and just as much of a twit as when I was when I was his age... AND Chirine and I knew that he got flustered rather easily. So we totally ignored all the ironmongery floating up in space and proceeded to engage the adversary where he was the weakest... psychologically.

Craig S., who played General Kadarsha, used to do this at the Little Tin Soldier Shop all the time. As the battle would start he'd say things like "Ha ha I'm gonna capture your general and cut his peepee off" and other inanely juvenile taunts... and after about ten minutes of this something like 85% of the local players would lose their composure completely and charge blindly into Craig's refused center and get annihilated.

And they didn't LEARN.

No, they didn't. I watched this happen on many, many occasions, and it always played out just this way. Quite a few of the locals here, back then, were very - and I do mean very easy - to out-think at the table for just this reason. Which is why I tended to play at CSA - more mature players, frankly, and resulting more mature game play. In the few games I played at the Little Tin Soldier Shoppe, it was very much like what Groan describes; if you'd tried it at Coffman, you'd get laughed at and your butt kicked all around the table.

Originally Posted by Baron

Chirine, sorry to disrupt the thread, but I sent you a very time-sensitive email, can you please check it? Thanks!

Answered, and thank you!

Originally Posted by The_Shadow

Recently I found this http://tekumelcollecting.com/2015/03...drawing-found/ which shows this early MAR Barker illlustration

It dates from 1950 but is strikingly similar in subject and style to the 2 or 3 full-page illustrations Phil did that were published in the original EPT rulebook.

I find these pictures strangely compelling. Phil has a naive but vivid style and his use of hatching and line is excellent. In the EPT rulebook, the picture of the preparation for the human sacrifice is well-known (notorious?) and the grotesquerie of the evil-looking priest and the disembodied leering masks in the background is very effective.

So, why are there so few of these pictures by Phil? Did he only go through a short phase in which he expressed himself in this way? Do the pictures in the EPT book date from the same period as that fanzine illustration?

They were all done in the same time frame, 1948 to 1950, when Phil was most active in fandom. The specifically Tekumel ones are all signed by one 'Firu ba Yeker', of the Clan of the Uttermost Secret, a retired Priest of Sarku and a fellow Chakan. From what I can tell, from internal evidence and his letters, these follow the art in his college notebooks (which I made sure to make copies of, as the original pages were in sad shape) and from before he went to South Asia as a Fulbright Scholar.

Yes, I do think this was from a short period of time in his life. There is this drawing, the Yilrana one, the Mi'itlanesh one, the sacrifice one, and two more unpublished drawings: one of Elara hi Vriddi getting arrested by the OAL and one illustrating the legend of The Two Brothers. I would think that they were time-intensive to draw, given the style, and so his output was pretty limited. Later on, in our games, he'd do much simpler drawings for us to show us something, and he'd whip off these pencil sketches while he was talking.

As a side note, the priest in the sacrifice drawing looks a lot like Phil's father, Loris, and the unfortunate lady is one of his college friends. We found the slide he took of her posing, and it's obvious that the two of them are laughing their heads off at the 'inside' joke. The leering masks also look a lot like some of the artwork on the cover of the menus from a tiki bar in Berekley, from that same time when Phil was there. One wonders...

Does this help?

Originally Posted by bconsidine

I'll bite. What is your real game?

Blaise

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner!!! You, gentle reader of this massive thread, are literally the very first person to ask me this question in forty years. Consider yourself given the big prize!

A long, long time ago, I set myself the primary objective of being Phil's archivist, documenting the creative process that engendered Tekumel. My primary goal was to get a complete copy of all his work, and catalog and index it for future fans. Nothing more, nothing less. I made copies, I made notes, I collected artifacts, and now - all these years later - I've done it. I have everything; not the originals, as I'm not a 'collector' , but all the data. It's all in digital format, and we keep it all very, very safe.

As I got into gaming Tekumel, I set myself the goal of having all the miniature figures we'd need for any particular scenario or adventure; this is why there are over 5,000 miniatures in my basement, only about 200 of which are not intended primarily for use in game set in Tekumel. I've done that, too; I have anything and everything I need to run my games, and to do so in the kind of 'grand manner' that Phil and I dreamed and talked about for years. No masking tape on bare tables, here; I've brought my years of railway modeling experience to bear, and I'm told I do pretty cool-looking tables.

I set myself the goal to do the best I could do at anything I did, after some advice by a senior NCO; I think I've managed that, too. My wife has a roof over her head, plenty to eat, and health care for her many ills. I've had five young people become my daughters, and they've brought into our extended family a goodly number of other young people to be sons and daughters. I'd call that one a success, too.

I have set myself the goal of telling you our story as our alter-egos in Tekumel, and that's moving along; 128,000 words, and still being written.

My goals, all those years ago, were - and still are - to paint my figures, run my games, and tell my stories. Nothing more, and nothing less. looking back on it over the past forty years, I think it's been a success. Sure, there have been some bad patches, but I did get my Missus of some 27 years, and five really cool kids out of it all.

So, there we are. I win. Hands down.

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Chirine,

A bit of a strange question, but if you had to transfer a kaitar into today's currency (say dollars for simplicity's sake) how much purchasing power would it have? Is it that a kaitar buys as much as a dollar does today, or five dollars, or ten dollars, or more?
The reason I ask is that almost everything in EPT is "x" number of kaitars and very few items are given a price in quirgals or hlash. Is gold so common a metal that it's value is not as high as it has traditionally been on earth? Perhaps this is just unique to the foreigner's quarter of Jakalla where, presumably, gouging is the norm, or is it a " national" constant? Or is this Phil merely simplifying things?
Thanks in advance.

Oh! Good question! We never really discussed it, and I think Gronan in his reply to you has a good point. I look at it this way: three million of the little gold coins, each with 3 grams of gold in it, will buy all of the equipment needed to raise four full legions of Imperial infantry - 32,000 troopers - in full steel heavy infantry armor, and pay and feed them for five years.

If we look at the pay rates in EPT, I think it's possible to say that a kaitar might be equivalent to USD$5 or so, and that's a very rough approximation.

I think Gronan does have it though; since very few transactions are paid for in coin, and normally in writs, it's more likely to be a handy unit of accounting. Phil very, very rarely used the 'small change', unless we were out in rural areas where a silver coin was a village's net worth. We had to specifically carry coppers around to be able to pay for things; see also the old UKP 'fiver', which was very hard to break into change during the time it was in circulation.

Does any of this help?

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

For the same reason that in OD&D a ten foot pole costs 1 or 2 gold. Convenience in bookkeeping.

Agreed. Remember the night dear old Jajal bore Phil to tears while he worked out his taxes to the nearest hlash?

We did the 'breakfast in the bastion scene' instead, and had a great night.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

They were all done in the same time frame, 1948 to 1950, when Phil was most active in fandom. The specifically Tekumel ones are all signed by one 'Firu ba Yeker', of the Clan of the Uttermost Secret, a retired Priest of Sarku and a fellow Chakan. From what I can tell, from internal evidence and his letters, these follow the art in his college notebooks (which I made sure to make copies of, as the original pages were in sad shape) and from before he went to South Asia as a Fulbright Scholar.

Yes, I do think this was from a short period of time in his life. There is this drawing, the Yilrana one, the Mi'itlanesh one, the sacrifice one, and two more unpublished ones of Elara hi Vriddi getting arrested by the OAL and one illustrating the legend of The Two Brothers. I would think that they were time-intensive to draw, given the style, and so his output was pretty limited. Later on, in our games, he'd do much simpler drawings for us to show us something, and he'd whip off these pencil sketches while he was talking.

As a side note, the priest in the sacrifice drawing looks a lot like Phil's father, Loris, and the unfortunate lady is one of his college friends. We found the slide he took of her posing, and it's obvious that the two of them are laughing their heads off at the 'inside' joke. The leering masks also look a lot like some of the artwork on the cover of the menus from a tiki bar in Berekley, from that same time when Phil was there. One wonders...

Does this help?

Thanks Chirine, and may I say I find this a very interesting question as well.

So, you reference the OP drawing, Yilrana and Bazhan on the cover of EPT, Mi'itlenish at Purdimal, and the Durritlamish sacrifice.

and you mention two of Elara hiVriddi, and one of the Two Brothers, which none of us will have seen, so that's that.

But it seems to me there' at least four more "big drawings": Nayari and her hapless husband, the Legion of Serqu mounting their final assault on a Yan Koryani fortress, the functionaries waiting in the outer halls at Avanthar, and (from the Sourcebook), Nyelmu perving on Princess Ma'in.

My impressions based on style are that the Nayari drawing dates from the same time period, and maybe Nyelmu/Ma'in as well. They both look ca. 1950 (or even 1940s) to me. But I could be convinced that "functionaries at Avanthar" is a later drawing. Serqu, I can't even make a guess, could be early, could be later. Or are those both Sutherland drawings? My EPT isn't handy right now.

What do you think, are they all 1950s?

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

see also the old UKP 'fiver', which was very hard to break into change during the time it was in circulation.

yeah the old five pound notes were not only hard to break, they were the size of broadsheet newspapers. Big-ass legal documents. You'd need a dining room table to unfold one. I'm exaggerating. A little. But spending one was a big deal

Originally Posted by Zirunel

Thanks Chirine, and may I say I find this a very interesting question as well.

So, you reference the OP drawing, Yilrana and Bazhan on the cover of EPT, Mi'itlenish at Purdimal, and the Durritlamish sacrifice.

and you mention two of Elara hiVriddi, and one of the Two Brothers, which none of us will have seen, so that's that.

But it seems to me there' at least four more "big drawings": Nayari and her hapless husband, the Legion of Serqu mounting their final assault on a Yan Koryani fortress, the functionaries waiting in the outer halls at Avanthar, and (from the Sourcebook), Nyelmu perving on Princess Ma'in.

My impressions based on style are that the Nayari drawing dates from the same time period, and maybe Nyelmu/Ma'in as well. They both look ca. 1950 (or even 1940s) to me. But I could be convinced that "functionaries at Avanthar" is a later drawing. Serqu, I can't even make a guess, could be early, could be later.

What do you think, are they all 1950s?

Yes, you are right! That'll teach me to not check a copy before I type! There are the four more, published in EPT and S&G, and they are also from this same time period - they have the same notes / signatures on the backs of the originals. So, that's ten I know of and have seen the originals of. There's only the one of Elara getting nicked by the OAL in Fasiltum; I've gone back and corrected my previous post on this.

I always really liked these drawings of his; he was always very insecure about them and their supposed lack of quality. Phil was, if you asked me, a good artist, and getting his original vision of his world was something to behold back in the day.

Sorry about the confusion; I've lived with all this stuff for so long I tend to not really think about the published stuff, unless asked about it.

Originally Posted by Zirunel

yeah the old five pound notes were not only hard to break, they were the size of broadsheet newspapers. Big-ass legal documents. You'd need a dining room table to unfold one. I'm exaggerating. A little. But spending one was a big deal

Yes, very much so; they tended to accumulate the signatures of the people who held them for a while, if I recall.