God, I'd forgotten that...Originally Posted by chirine ba kal
Your memory does serve; the GI's drove the jeep into the ditch, and got on their radio. And as predicted, the 88 was under - wait for it! - The Pink Tree Of Death...
God, I'd forgotten that...Your memory does serve; the GI's drove the jeep into the ditch, and got on their radio. And as predicted, the 88 was under - wait for it! - The Pink Tree Of Death...
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
Say what? Run that one past me again, Glorious General? I think I just boggled.
I'm working on it; right now, I'm just starting the Affair of the Malcahiran Emerald.
All we ever saw was hordes and hordes of Grey Ssu; we'd encounter small parties of them in the Underworlds, and then larger groups in remote areas. The Black Ssu showed up later, about 1977, mostly as parties of explorers and adventurers; our first big fight with them happened right after Phil got his first samples from Ral Partha.
The 'green' Ssu happened because the artist who did the cover art for "Flamesong" got the color wrong. Phil was mightily upset, especially as he'd had me send Don Wohlheim a complete set of all the then-available miniatures and a copy of the Painting Guide for Don to send out to all the artists - this came about because of the Whelan cover to "Man of Gold", which Phil Did Not Like. as soom as the book came out, Phil was inundated with anguished letters and phone calls asking about these 'new' Ssu.
Eventually, the other group ran into some of them, over on the far side of the world, but there's very little documentation from that period and from that group. You pays your money and you takes your chances. We never encountered them, anyway.
The Ssu speak in what sounds like wind-chimes, and humans do not understand it. There was no communication between the two species over the years, as the thought processes are too different - this was Phil's reason why the 'Telepathy' spell didn't work on them. No parleys with them; they hate us, we hate them, and usually if anybody hung around to fight it was to the bitter end. There were also times when one or both sides would run off and bring back help, and those nights got pretty hairy.
Last edited by chirine ba kal; 01-07-2016 at 01:34 AM.
The background to this is perhaps a good cautionary tale, with even a moral at the end. So, on with Story Time With Uncle Chirine!
This game was one of the bigger ones we did at the Conflict Simulation Association meetings (The U of Mn club) on a Saturday; Gronan had gotten a huge pile of 1/72 Minitanks together, and a huge table for the game; this was going to be one of the really Big Shows, and he wanted to do it up right. I was the yanks, and Tom was the Krauts. One added wrinkle was that there would be an air battle fought over the table, so there were extra players at a seperate table in another room.
My objective was to relieve the paratroopers at Bastonge; this was set during the Battle of the Bulge, and I was Patton and his Third Army come to save the day. Tom's objective was to stop me. I had to get most of my force off the table, or I'd have failed; I had a full, and I do mean fully modeled, armored regimental combat team to work with. Gronan set up the table as a nasty killing field, with all sorts of lovely spots for ambushes. The Pink Tree was off in the 'upper right' corner of the table.
First turn, my recon jeep drives up the road, and Tom lets loose with his 88 - waaay overkill, and he misses. Second turn of the game, 60 (sixty) Sherman tanks roll onto the board, and I cut loose with a rolling barrage that cleans off all of the cover and camo from the Krauts. Sure, they shoot back, but I have a platoon of tank destroyers up on a hill that wipes out anything that is shooting at us. The Luftwaffe attacks, and Gronan gets writer's cramp counting all the .50 cal heavy machine guns firing at them - every US vehicle had one, and I am using them the way that they were intended to be used. The Luftwaffe gets turned into metal confetti, and that's that.
Eventually, the battle winds down because there are no more Germans with weapons shooting at us. Gronan announces that I've won the battle, but lost the game, because I have lost more then half my force during the fight. All true, I observed; legend has it that a sneer crossed my lips and a cruel laugh interrupted Tom's victory dance, as...
I brought in from the other room the reserves I had kept out of the battle, which amounted to twice the force I had fought the battle with.
The 'victory conditions' had been to get 2/3rds of my force off the table at the end of the game; a US combat team had three combat units, so I fought the fight with just the one. The other two rolled on to Bastonge, and that was that. The look on Gronan's face was priceless; it was one of the very few times I have ever seen him struck speechless.
Later, at the pizza place, one of the gamers asked why this was such a big deal, as I had a poor reputation as a miniatures gamer because I rarely fought battles out to the bitter end. Gronan looked at the guy over his beer, and said...
"Listen and learn. Chirine doesn't fight battles as if they are one-offs; he fights all of his games as if they are part of a campaign. Sure, you can win today's battle, but what about tomorrow? He may have left the battlefield when things weren't going his way, but he and his army will be back tomorrow to hit you again. And he'll keep doing that, over and over, until you haven't got anything left. He's lost his share of battles, but he's never lost a war. In the time you'd take to take a pee, today, he looked over the tactical situation, made both a winning tactical plan and a winnning operational plan, and carried them out to win both the game and the battle."
True. I'm not Bobby Lee; I'm Sam Grant.
I have only one thing to add to Chirine's tale.
I'm the bugger what organized all our Minitank forces, and as a model builder I had at the very least painted and decaled all the tanks. With correct markings. We had enough of the damn things to have three or four different German paint schemes from Panzer Grey to ambush camoflage and US tanks with and without sandbags, etc. Plus entire forces in whitewash for winter.
So I **KNEW** that he had really held out 2/3 of his force, because the regimental and company markings matched. I know Chirine wouldn't cheat, but the Internet is full of skeptics.
He did it honestly, my children.
Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, as we said in Seminary.
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
How many Ssu are there? Could the Ancients communicate with them? If they couldn't and the Ssu were always hostile, why did they leave them alive? How do they communicate with the Hluss? If they can't communicate with humans, how does the Zu'ur trade work?
With regards to Temples, internationally speaking are the foreign branches of a Temple independent? For example, does a Temple of Vimuhla in N'luss acknowledge the High Priest back in Avanthar as their leader or are they, to borrow the Glorious General's style, The Vimuhla Temple of N'Luss- Reformed, or some such thing? Given that so many Temples appear to be tied so close to the Petal Throne, it would seem that foreign pulpits would be in danger of being politicized against the local government.
I have seen many people be dismissive of historicals but to say that they are not wargames? My gast is flabbered.Say what? Run that one past me again, Glorious General? I think I just boggled.
Last edited by Big Andy; 01-07-2016 at 12:09 PM. Reason: poor grammar
The "chimes" (and the "odour of musty cinnamon") are genius touches of imagination. Can you imagine something like that in the mind of a Hollywood scriptwriter? No way. The Ssu would just roar and growl like any other "scary" screen creature.
You can shake your fists at the sky. You can do a rain dance. You can ignore the clouds completely. But none of them move the clouds.
- Dave "The Inexorable" Noonan solicits community feedback before 4e's release
Agreed; you could see it in his face throughout the entire game - he did indeed know that I was fighting the battle short-handed. He kept giving me funny looks, waiting to see me pull the rabbit out of the hat.
What got him was the difference between knowing something intellectually, and feeling it emotionally. He knew something was going to happen, and it happened when I plopped the boxes full of stuff in front of him at the end of the game. That golden moment, which I was - and still am very happy to have given him - was one of the instances when the referee / GM sees that the whole thing has been worth it and all the hard work and effort has paid off.
We were lucky. We had a lot of those moments.
Yep.
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
[From Big Andy:]How many Ssu are there? Could the Ancients communicate with them? If they couldn't and the Ssu were always hostile, why did they leave them alive? How do they communicate with the Hluss? If they can't communicate with humans, how does the Zu'ur trade work?
We don't know, really. Enough to survive all this time, but not enough to wipe us humans out.
Not that I am aware of, but I'm sure that they could (machines, etc.) They were kept as 'curiosities' on their reservations, to amuse the Lords of Humanspace. "Oh, look! See the quaint natives, honey! Aren't they cute!"
No idea. They do seem to, though.
The Hlyss run the Zu'ur traffic, through silent trade. Humans leave stuff the Hlyss want on the beach, and the Hlyss leave the drugs in trade.
With regards to Temples, internationally speaking are the foreign branches of a Temple independent? For example, does a Temple of Vimuhla in N'luss acknowledge the High Priest back in Avanthar as their leader or are they, to borrow the Glorious General's style, The Vimuhla Temple of N'Luss- Reformed, or some such thing? Given that so many Temples appear to be tied so close to the Petal Throne, it would seem that foreign pulpits would be in danger of being politicized against the local government.
Each of the Temples is 'loyal' to the nearest government, usually to the one with the most troops nearest the temple. Keep in mind that the Temples are independent from the governments - there is no 'leader back in Avanthar'. (The Temple of Vimuhla holds that the High Priest of the First Temple out in the Chakas is 'first amongst equals', and is the head of the Council when and if it meets.) In this particular case, the temples in Mu'uglavya make sure to support the state there, just like the ones in Tsolyanu support the Imperium. However, the central governments are quite aware that all of the temples have their own political agendas, and would be more then willing to start up their own theocratic states if they had the chance. Hence the secret police agencies all over the place; everybody is watched, all the time.
[Edit: I'm going to add a little bit, here. None of the various organizations on Tekumel are monolithic. All of them have factions, sects, secret societies, and power groups all seeking to advance a particular agenda. This interplay makes for a lot of adventures...]
Only the Nyemesel Isles has a 'state religion', as the place is a true theocracy.
I have seen many people be dismissive of historicals but to say that they are not wargames? My gast is flabbered.
Me, too.
Last edited by chirine ba kal; 01-07-2016 at 01:49 PM. Reason: clarification
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