More on Tomoe Gozen

I am not sure whether it was Lee Gold's Land of the Rising Sun RPG, or Jessica Amanda Salmonson's novel Tomoe Gozen where I first learned of the rapid draw-strike-sheathe sword art of iaijutsu, but the novel ends with a moving dueling scene as ably depicted above by Wendy Adrian Shultz. (I love her illustration, and I believe she also illustrated Phyllis Ann Karr's Wildwraith's Last Battle).

It's a moving scene - particularly the aftermath of the duel.

Prior to the Epilog, which is where the duel occurs, the third part of the book deals with a mishap at sea, and adventures on a mysterious island. There is a memorable sex scene (among many other things). So I am not sure how I had forgotten this part of the book entirely.

Or had I?

You see, in our recent Ryuutama RPG games, I had created a setting called The Sinking Lands, which served as an alternate setting which allowed Rachel to play from time-to-time rather than GM. I had thought that this setting was more influenced (if anything) by the swampy landscape in C.J. Cherryh's Gate of Ivrel but now that I have re-read the third part of Tomoe Gozen, I notice a couple of supernatural similarities (for clues, seek the Labels to this post).

There's no failed marriage though.

Tomoe Gozen

Jessica Amanda Salmonson is our Guest of Honor at this year's Diversicon 24, July 29-31. Right now I am re-reading her first novel, Tomoe Gozen, for the first time since I read it the year of its publication in 1981. It tells the story of Tomoe Gozen, a female samurai who is mentioned in the Tale of the Heike, the epic poem of the struggle between the Taira and Minamoto clans in 12th Century Japan.

This may have been the first novel I read that had openly LGBTQ characters, but at any rate it was definitely the first novel (for me) that did not make a "big deal" out of same sex attraction. This was just a few short years before I came out. My first reading of Tomoe Gozen was at roughly the same time that I was reading Death's Master and Night's Master by Tanith Lee, as well as Runequest 2nd edition.

The early 1980s was a good time for fantasy.

I'm about two thirds of the way through Tomoe Gozen, the first novel of a trilogy about the character. The novel has held up very well in the 35 years since its original publication. One of the things that is very striking upon re-reading it is how much the novel also touches on the hero's sense of her own madness/sanity as she has terrible and wonderful experiences across the landscape of fantastic medieval Japan.

After I finish Tomoe Gozen, I am going to read for the first time Salmonson's novel set in fantastic China, Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman (1985). My goal is to complete reading that novel before the Second Foundation reading group meeting on June 12, 2-4 PM at Parkway Pizza in South Minneapolis. Our topic will be the works of Jessica Amanda Salmonson - advance reading for the convention.

My itinerary after the reading group meeting will be to complete Tomoe Gozen trilogy, re-read The Swordswoman (Jessica's only ostensibly SFnal novel), and then read Anthony Shriek (her horror novel). I'll also be preparing a Ryuutama game for the convention, taking at least a little inspiration from her novels.

"I am a petty god at the moment."

"You will find me more lordly and benign when I achieve the position of a greater god."

Those are the words of the immortal sorcerer, Prince Shool. Today I noticed that the phrase "petty god" was used in Michael Moorcock's first Corum novel, The Knight of the Swords. The term is deployed in both senses of the term, designating both a lesser god and a god with a propensity for pettiness. The novel is filled with petty gods in fact: Pilproth, the Gorged God; inadvertent organ donor deities, Kwll and Rhynn; and the sad deity who accompanies Serwde, the Brown Man of Laahr; perhaps the Dog and the Bear as well.

There's also just a suggestion of an association between giants and gods, which reminds me of another blogger's recent question of why there wasn't more interest in giants as a monster type...

Over the last week, petty gods have come up in a couple of other ways too. At last weekend's Fate of Tekumel game at Con of the North, I had a chance to use the Tzitzimine Star Demons minions and the non-canonical Eyes that I wrote for Petty Gods.

In fact, the Eye a player selected for her character was none other than the Eye of Petty Theogony! An ordinary sellsword was elevated for a good chunk of the session into a petty god in his own right, taking on the mien of a minor god of war. When I wrote up that Eye, I never dreamed that anyone would use it on anyone other than their own character! Players do find ways to do things with our creations that surprise us.

Co-creation makes us all petty gods.

Iterative Adventure

Last night I had the good fortune to play one of my favorite games and game settings: Heirs to the Lost World, an alternative 17th Century RPG set in a Mesoamerica with Aztecs, Mayans, Maroons, and Eurpean settlers, pirates, occultists, and traders. Heirs author Chad Davidson ran the adventure, which was an updated and improved version of a game I ran maybe 10 years ago at Con of the North. The scenario was partly inspired by an old Shadowrun module, translated into Heirs' 17th Century multicultural setting.

I won't give away the plot, beyond saying that it had something to do with high stakes synchretism.

It was such a fun group with which to play! Heirs has a great wager-based stunting system (really, the best one that I have played), and this group of players really got into it. Stunts (and PCs) were flying around the main scene of the action: a huge 3D Mayan temple that Chad had built. It was a really stunning prop, the kind of thing I wish I could pack up and take to Tekumel oriented cons like U-Con!

Here's hoping I get another chance to play with this group of players.

Free RPG Day Event

On Saturday, June 20, we'll be running Atlantis: the Second Age as a Free RPG Day event at The Source Comics and Games in Roseville, Minnesota. The game will run from 2 PM-6 PM.

Atlantis: the Second Age is a swords & sorcery RPG set in an antediluvian age where heroes can affect the course of world events. Inspirations include the works of Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith.

With giant sloths and intelligent apes.

And Vodun.

This new iteration of a classic pulp fantasy RPG has a strong Afrocentric vibe- although it is accessible to anyone.

Saturday will be my first time running the RPG, and I'll be using the streamlined rules presented in the Free RPG Day book. I'll also have the core book and supplements with me during the session, and plan to use the Action Deck designed for the game.

Please stop by and play the secnario or just kibbitz for bit if you have time!

Sword & Soul

I first learned about Charles R. Saunders back in the 80s, when DAW published his first sword and sorcery novel, Imaro. Saunders is a U.S.-born African American journalist who has written a number of novels, as well as numerous essays and short stories. Today he lives in Canada.

Since the republication of Imaro several years ago by Night Shade Books, Saunders has helped give birth to a new genre, Sword & Soul, which takes what it needs from swords & sorcery, but is based in African and African American culture and themes.

Recently, I discovered that Charles Saunders had a new novel out, Abengoni (2014). I asked one of our two local SF&F stores to order a copy for me. Their buyer noticed a few related titles and ordered those as well for the store's new shelf: the anthologies Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology (2011), edited by Milton J. Davis and Charles R. Saunders, and Griots: Sisters of the Spear (2013) by the same editorial pair.

Fans of RPGs like Nyambe and Spears of the Dawn will want to check these out.

Sertorius

Thursday night I picked up a copy of Sertorius at our FLGS.  Sertorius is an East Asian flavored fantasy RPG that has rather unique interpretations of a number of standard fantasy races. You play powerful spellcasters whose godlike abilities draw followers, introducing (rather quickly I gather) the elements of domain level play. However, magical power can also be corrupting, and you can easily end up as a cursed feature of the landscape called a Grim.

These are very much my first impressions of Sertorius, but I think the result here is something like a cross between Exalted and the Adventurer Conqueror King System. The book is a brick with some 465 pages of content on character generation, spells, monsters, and the world before you get to the character sheets at the back of the book. It is a skills-based fantasy RPG system that uses d10 dice pools against a target number to determine outcomes.