This past week, I worked on finishing a track started back in Episode 364 accompanying a short segment from The Thirteenth Hour where Logan meets his crewmates again in a dream. When I finished the episode, I put it aside since it didn’t quite feel done, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it needed. I tossed around a number of ideas for a time, but it was not until recently that I hit on the right sound – the additional of a choral backing track and modifying the bell-like lead with a wah-wah sound to make it sound more ethereal. I do think this is the last track for the second Thirteenth Hour soundtrack! Now, I have to put it all together, make sure it has the finishing touches, and make the packaging. I think the Thirteenth Hour action figures (basically done!) and the magnet dolls will be accompanying this album.
This week, Jeremy Lesniak from Whistlekick joins the show as a guest to discuss his martial arts-themed novel, Faith. It’s been awhile since we last worked together, but if you’ve been a listener of the show for awhile, you may recall our collaborations from before around a number of classic martial arts movies – The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Ong Bak, First Strike, Wheels on Meals, Dragons Forever, and Showdown in Little Tokyo. We had a great conversation on various aspects of the story as well as martial arts in general and then wrapped up with a little theater of the mind, using the post-apocalyptic setting as a way to see if it were possible to mesh interactive story telling with nuanced turn based combat. This ended up being the basis for the combat system piloted in The Thirteenth Hour DnD Patreon mini campaigns. Click on the cover below to find your own copy:
If you happen to read this in time, you may be interested in an event that Whistlekick is hosting, Free Training Day, which is exactly like what it sounds like (a day of martial arts training, various styles, no cost, no ego) being held in Keene, NH on 11/12/22. If you happen to be there, you may see some Thirteenth Hour swag floating around …
Next week! Just in time for Halloween, my brother and I revisit Young Sherlock Holmes!
This week, we are finishing Dragon Fall (1984) by Lee J Hindle. This was a fun one. I have a few of similar vintage that I may read on the show. Stay tuned =)
Tagline: Sometimes the best weapon is nothing at all.
Cover blurb:
“…I stand before you with open hands that carry no weapons. And though they may prefer to create than destroy, when the time is right to stand, either to defend or protect, then these shall be my weapons, my empty hands …
Legend has it that during the Drawing, His Majesty’s elite, the fabled Imperial Rangers, receive sidearms magically assigned to their strengths and talents. As the first Ranger class in decades, none of the eight Rangers-in-training really knows what the Drawing will entail. In fact, Logan, the youngest, smallest, and seemingly least capable Ranger frankly couldn’t care less which weapon he’s assigned; he’d settle for surviving the rest of his training in one piece. Can he and the others work through their differences and finally come together as one unit? Can they learn enough to take their rightful place beside the exalted ranks of the Rangers of old? Find out by reading this blissfully self-aware martial arts fantasy that owes much to Saturday morning cartoons, Hong Kong kung fu cinema, Dungeons and Dragons, and 80s action films. The true connoisseur of obscure 80s trivia can find clues to a surprise bonus hidden inside the pages of this story.
Like other works by the same author, this novella is a stand-alone expansion to The Thirteenth Hour and comes with its own retro 80s concept EP so while going through the story, readers can click on embedded links to hear the digital synth soundtrack created to accompany the text.”
The punch came sailing toward my head faster than I expected. No matter how much or how long one trained, the shock of actual combat always came as a bit of a surprise. There really was something to that adage about falling to the lowest level of one’s training rather than rising to the occasion. The dodge my body reflexively did at the last moment was neither particularly smooth nor graceful, but I’ll say this – I didn’t get punched in the face.
The big man who had swung the haymaker looked a bit surprised when his hand struck nothing but air, but he, too, had some previous training. With a snarling yell, he checked his momentum enough to deliver a backhanded blow with the same hand. It collided with my forearm hard enough to send a shock up though my arm which would have registered as pain had I not been focused on cocking my leg to my chest and thrusting my body weight forward so my heel would collide with the big man’s lead upper thigh. At least, that’s where I aimed. It would have made a follow-up shot to the head or neck easier. But the adrenaline surge pushed the trajectory of the kick higher than I’d intended, and my foot hit his exposed chest instead, sending him stumbling back into the barstools.
Face red, eyes bulging, he roared something in the Capital City brogue that I didn’t quite catch. I think the general gist was about him copulating with my mother. Or maybe with my brother. I don’t know. The northern accent was still hard for me to understand sometimes. He dusted the dirt off his shirt where my boot had left a fairly obvious imprint. I did catch his next words: “Mind your gods damned business, small fry! I don’t care about you! It’s him we want! He ooooooowes us!”
He shoved a finger as fat as two of mine at the drunken figure sitting propped up against the bar to my rear, mumbling incoherently to himself. I’ll be honest, the guy sitting on the floor wasn’t my favorite human. He wasn’t even a friend. He’d been a thorn in my side since the first day I’d met him, and chances are, the bastard wouldn’t even remember I’d put my posterior on the line to keep him on this side of the ground a little longer. But he was an Imperial Ranger, and we were supposed to take care of our own.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you!” the big man roared, pulling out a wicked curved blade. “You hearing me … Aron?”
The Ranger on the floor looked up suddenly and slurred through bloodied lips, “It’s … bronounced ‘Aay – rohne,’ you athhh.”
“What??”
Aron spat out a mouthful of blood, coughed, and cleared his throat. “Sorry. ‘You ass,’ is what I meant to say. Your buddy got me good.”
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
********
Let’s take a step back about nine months.
Before that fateful night at the Crimson Blade where a motley group of eight Imperial Rangers-in-training fought a band of fifteen thugs from the Tartecian underground over a monetary dispute stemming from the behaviors of a certain ‘Aay-rohne,’ that very same group of eight, eyes still full of wide-eyed wonder, were lined up at attention in the training hall deep in King Darian IV’s castle in the Capital City. The room had tall ceilings and a large, blue carpeted training floor made for tumbling and taking tumbles, both of which we would come to know well.
Our three instructors would eventually turn the eight of us into experienced, agile, and highly competent combatants – a far cry from our first day, when we were mostly raw recruits. Although two of us had been in the military for some time, we were all basically foot soldiers who had received a rougher-than-rough introduction to hand-to-hand combat by the same drill instructors who been churning out infantrymen for decades. “Pack mules ‘n arrow fodder – that’s what you is!” our drill sergeant would shout. It was his way of motivating us to do more pushups.
Over the next year, under the steady guidance of our instructors, we would go from arrow fodder who might as soon accidentally stab ourselves with our own spears into warriors skilled in not only all infantry weapons but unarmed combat. Of course, it didn’t take long for some of us to realize that while hard work and repetition was unavoidable, natural abilities could significant shorten the learning curve. This was a reality that those with natural talent, like Aron, reminded those of us with little talent, like myself, at least once daily.
“Since I’m the man, at the Drawing, I’m gonna get the double sickles for sure,” Aron would boast, referring to the rumored ceremony near the latter part of our training where we would be given weapons that fit our unique talents and personality.
We’d caught a glimpse of one of the instructors whirling around a set of those weapons when we’d arrived early one day, and since then, Aron had been fascinated not only by the flying sickles but by the Drawing. The idea was not that a weapon was chosen for you by the instructors or the castle wizards, but rather that the weapon chose you based on some combination of your personality, fighting style, strengths, and a dash of magic. No one was really sure how it worked, which lent an air of nonsense to the whole thing, but after the wizards mentioned it enough times, we couldn’t help but wonder when we looked at the display rack of weapons beside the blue carpeted floor.
“In the days of old,” Wally the wizard said after one training session, “when Rangers started their training in childhood, the Drawing was the ceremony that signaled that a Ranger was no longer a child. He or she was now a fully-fledged Imperial Ranger fit for active duty. But, that was long ago. We have shortened the training down to the barest essentials with your class. As you know, there haven’t been Rangers in many years. And now …” He cleared his throat and paused. “And now, with the King’s decree to reinstate the Rangers, we felt there should be at least some of the traditions of old. And so, for the first time in decades, there will be a Drawing ceremony. It won’t serve as your graduation, but it will signify the start of the more advanced aspects of your training. After which, you will be fine-tuning the basic skills you have acquired up until now.”
After Wally left, we milled around the wall of weapons, chattering excitedly.
Lance, who had been a fencer prior to joining the Army and already favored the sword above all other weapons, said, “I hope I get the sword. I’d have to change my whole way of fighting if it were something else.” He employed the same lunging attacks for unarmed combat as he did with the sword, and even though it wasn’t always effective, since his only real weapon was a lead-side punch, it was a strategy of sorts and kept his style consistent regardless of whether there was a weapon in his hand or not.
“I’m sure you’ll get a sword,” said Ben, a tall, sturdy fellow who moved and talked slowly. “And if not a sword, at least something you could use like one. A stick or club, maybe.”
“Hmm, not the same,” Lance said, nervously eyeing the other choices. He reached out to finger one of the blades hanging on the wall and, in the process, knocked over a staff that had been balanced precariously near it.
Aron caught it and smirked. “Like I always say, it’s all in the reflexes. Let me tell you what else I usually say in situations like this …”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Jake. There was no official leader of our group since all had the same rank, but if there were one, he’d be it. His leadership didn’t extend to offering me a spot at the card table at night, but then again, he’d never denied me a spot, either. “We know. You’re the man.”
“I am. And let me tell you. Those twin sickles are a man’s weapon,” Aron said with a nod.
“Why do you guys want to get so close? I like my opponents right where I can see them – far away,” said Blake. “Give me a bow, crossbow, or blowgun any day,” he said.
“Yup,” said Phil. “Second that. Hell, I’d take a shepherd’s sling and a few rocks. You guys can keep your sticks and swords. I don’t go in for that caveman stuff.”
Aron shrugged. “Real men know where it’s at. Ain’t that right, Logan?” he said, jabbing me in the ribs with the point of his elbow. I stumbled to the side, and Allan, the largest Ranger, caught me.
“Why must you insist on tormenting him?” Allan asked Aron, looking him square in the eye. Aron eventually started to squirm under his intense gaze and muttered something under his breath about me reminding him of his kid brother, who “is also kind of an idiot.”
Like Ben, Allan spoke and moved slowly. Fighting him was like hitting a tree trunk – the guy just didn’t budge. But as he often said himself in his deep, slow voice, “I detest violence. I would much prefer a more civilized way of dealing with problems.”
“I think you’ll get one of the staves, Allan,” Jake said, referring to the selection of magic weapons adorning the shelf.
“Ahh, yes, I do hope so,” Allan said. “And what about you, my friends?” he asked, referring to Jake and Ben. As the heavyweights of the group, they were typically matched together for most of our sparring drills and were alike in the amount of damage they could dish out. Although our trainers suggested that hitting each other full contact all the time was not a great idea, we sometimes forgot, especially in the heat of a match. I learned quite quickly that the best way to stand a chance against big men like Jake, Ben, and Allen was simply to stay out of their way.
“I like the quarterstaff,” Ben said. “It’s simple, and I like the fact I can make one easily from any stout hardwood branch in the forest. And, I’m not as fast as some of you guys. So it gives me a reach advantage.”
“Hmm. Good points. I’m tempted to say the staff as well. Or maybe the twin rvygerns,” Jake said pointing to the curved Elven blades that were part bush knife, part short sword. “I really like how they fit my hands.”
“Yeah, that’s a good choice,” nodded Aron. “Don’t get me wrong; I’ll take the sickles any day. But the rvygerns are solid.”
“Glad I have your approval,” Jake said, rolling his eyes.
The voice of Clavus, one of our instructors, suddenly came from behind us, startling everyone. “Don’t get too attached. You’re still expected to pass proficiency tests with all the basic weapons and unarmed combat prior to graduation. You’ll just be spending a bit more time with the weapon you’re assigned following the Drawing. But remember, the idea is to be able to use any of these.”
In decades past, the instructors would have been former Imperial Rangers who’d managed to live to the age where they could still do the physical skills required of the profession but also had enough experience to teach it to a new generation. But since there had not been Imperial Rangers in years, our trainers were pulled from other parts of the Imperial Army. Clavus, our lead instructor, had been teaching King Darian’s all-female Imperial Guard hand-to-hand combat prior to this assignment. Rizor had been a weapons instructor for the regular Army, and Tershel, who’d been an acrobat in a travelling circus prior to joining the Army, was teaching physical fitness to the regular Army when the wizards came with orders direct from the King.
Although none of them were Imperial Rangers themselves, they were better instructors than any of us had ever had up to that point. Unlike the “pack mule ‘n arrow fodder” attitudes of the senior officers and drill sergeants who had taught us in regular Army basic training, Clavus, Rizor, and Tershel weren’t just there for the paycheck. They could also each do everything they asked of us and perhaps because of that, gave direct and practical advice.
“The first thing I want you to do is burn that damn thing,” Clavus had said on our first day as Imperial Rangers, when we’d entered the training hall carrying the little manual we’d used during basic training. “I’ve been trying to get the Army to rewrite it for years.” He took one of the manuals and started flipping through the pages, shaking his head at the combat techniques illustrated with black and white line drawings.
“That technique is garbage. That one might work with a compliant partner. And this one … this one will probably get you killed. Burn it. Make a gods damned bonfire and stay warm tonight. That’s about as much good as this shit will get you. We’ll have to start from the ground up.”
True to his word, we had. Forgetting the techniques we’d learned in the crash course on being a soldier hadn’t been hard for me since I had no basis for comparison and could never get any of it to work anyway. It was a bit more difficult for Jake and Allan, who’d been in the Army for years, but they were naturally bigger, stronger, and more coordinated, so they relearned fast. They very rarely got the critiques of, “No, that’s not right. Again!” that I did every few minutes.
Looking back, I have to commend Clavus, Rizor, and Tershel for having superhuman reserves of patience. Not only did they endlessly correct incompetents like myself, they very rarely became angry or flustered. They might have gotten irritated when we did something truly boneheaded, but it was usually to teach us a lesson. I’m not so sure I could have been as accommodating.
As a case in point, one afternoon many months into our training, we were working on a sparring drill where one partner would advance with a series of attacks. The defender had to either counter, parry, or avoid the blows. “Every move you make should have a purpose!” Clavus shouted amid the flurry of arms and legs. “Remember, economy of movement!”
“Aron! Go easy on the jumping, okay? Remember, at the very least, you’re probably going to be carrying 10-15 pounds of additional gear with your uniform, boots, and survival belt. And a few times that amount if you’re wearing packs, not to mention body armor. If you’re going to jump, at least cover some distance or use it to gain height to do an attack you can’t do with your feet on the ground.”
Aron bounced like a human pogo stick, shadow-boxing in place, while repeating “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” in a monotone suggesting lip service compliance only. He then adjusted his pads and readied himself for the next flurry of attacks from Blake, his partner for this round.
Blake advanced with a jab to Aron’s head, which Aron avoided by leaping backwards, putting him a bit too far out of range to effectively counter Blake’s next move, a lunging side kick done in an unsuccessful attempt to chase Aron down the floor. Aron skipped backwards again, then delivered a jumping roundhouse kick to Blake’s head followed by a jump spinning backfist – both of which missed, by the way. This didn’t stop Aron from congratulating himself.
“Yeah. Nailed it,” he said as he continued hopping from foot to foot.
Clavus looked on the verge of saying something in response but seemed to contain himself. “Time!” he shouted, and we all stopped. “Blake, if you’re going to go chasing Aron like that, at least don’t leave yourself wide open. Aron, you had a perfect opportunity to capitalize on Blake being overextended and off-balance. Here, do the same attack at me, Blake,” he said.
Blake threw the same lunging side kick. Instead of leaping, Clavus simply slid back with both feet still on the ground, shifting his hips back to avoid the kick. For a split second after his kick missed, Blake was off-balance, making it easy for Clavus to bring his lead arm down to both parry and strike the incoming leg, making Blake hop, then stumble to the side. With a few deft movements, he mimed a few follow-up counterattacks. “It doesn’t have to be so complicated, Aron.”
“But what happens if you can’t avoid the kick in time, Sir?” Blake asked, rubbing his calf. “You’ve obviously practiced that and knew what I was going to do.”
“Yup,” Clavus said, with a shrug. “What happens if you can’t avoid it? You get kicked.” He shrugged again. “Remember, the Imperial Rangers are not foot soldiers. Your main goals have historically not always involved fighting. We spend a lot of time on fighting, yes, but that’s just insurance. It’s also why we say avoid fighting unless you have to. Because if you can’t, you’re probably going to take some damage, as most of you have already figured out – even in here, where things are relatively controlled. Imagine I were doing this in the snow or in mud. What then?”
“I don’t think I’d be kicking,” Blake said.
“Probably not,” Clavus said.
Aron continued shadowboxing in place, exhaling forcefully though his mouth with every strike. Clavus gave him a slow burn with his eyes before continuing. “After the Drawing, we’ll lower the amount of contact you’ll be doing, but you’ll be training in all the gear you’ll normally be wearing – your uniform, survival belt, boots, your preferred weapons, and body armor. “Things may be a bit different then. You’ll need to move differently based on the extra weight. It’s fine to try the fancy stuff or the more advanced techniques here – you have to work on them somewhere – but just remember, things don’t always go as planned. In a stressful situation, you don’t rise to the occasion. You just fall to the lowest level of your training.”
Aron’s hand shot up. “I know you always say that, Sir, but shouldn’t it be ‘to the highest level of your training’?”
Clavus shook his head. “I say ‘lowest’ since, in a stressful situation, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to pull off something that you haven’t learned very well. But you’ll be able to rely on a basic technique that you’ve drilled a thousand times or more. And keep in mind that your ‘basic’ is going to be much more refined than the ‘basic’ of a raw recruit. Yeah?”
There were nods of understanding. Even Aron stopped bouncing around and seemed to be contemplating the answer to his question with some consideration. Clavus raised his arm for the drills to recommence.
Tershel chimed in, “Hold up, Clavus. Before we start again, Logan, show me what you did with Lance.”
I paused. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d done. “Ahh, I …”
“What did you do with your glove?”
“Oh. Well, it … came off, Sir.”
“Yea, in my face,” Lance sputtered, twitching his moustache.
“Oh, really?” Tershel asked. “It just happened to fly off his hand into your face then.”
“Yes, he threw it or something, Sir. It was unfitting behavior for someone of our station … and very unsporting,” he said with a nod of his head and a swipe of an imaginary saber.
“Really?” Tershel exclaimed with a wide grin. “You know, that is … fascinating. Now, I’m no Imperial Ranger, and after you graduate, you gents can do whatever you want. But, for now, indulge me,” he said, eyeing every single one of us, “exactly how ‘sporting’ do you think anyone you face out there is going to be? You think, for example, that some giant Nevan weighing a deuce and a half who’s used to eating Imperial Army soldiers for breakfast is gonna … care about your code of conduct?” Tershel shrugged while we all squirmed. “I’m just saying. So – you two, show us slowly what you did.”
Lance repeated his usual lunging punch attack but at half speed. I blocked his arm, and Lance advanced again with the same lunging lead side punch.
“My glove started to come off here, Sir,” I said, looking down at the lacings going up and down my forearm. “I couldn’t get back it on in time so … I ripped it off, and I guess I kinda threw it.”
“You ‘kinda’ threw it.”
“Well. I meant to throw it on the ground and just get out of the way. But it ended up going a bit higher, Sir.”
“I see. But you didn’t stop there.”
“Well. He was open, so …”
“So, you took the opportunity to kick a distracted, helpless man.”
“I … I … um. Well, I guess I did, Sir.”
Lance sniffed and wiggled his moustache indignantly.
Tershel looked at the other Rangers then stared at me. I could hear Aron stifling a giggle, and I felt my ears going red.
Tershel finally nodded. “Good,” he said, and I snapped my head up, confused.
“Keep in mind that the pads you wear on your arms and legs are there not only for protection in here but also because they simulate the body armor that you might be wearing out there.” He walked over to the weapons wall and picked up one of the gauntlets that covered the knuckles, wrist, and back of the forearm. It was made of layered sheets of steel riveted together on top of a fine layer of chain mail to protect the areas that needed to bend. Underneath the metal was a leather and cloth-padded area to add a cushioning layer between metal and body. He tossed it casually from one hand to the next then flung it to Phil. “Here, catch,” he said.
While Phil fumbled with the gauntlet, Tershel said, “It ain’t light, is it?” Phil shook his head.
“Now imagine getting whopped in the face – even lightly – by something like that,” Tershel said, eyeing us closely. “I’m making a point here because even though Logan losing his glove might have been an accident, things like that will happen, and you can use them to your advantage. Like I said, there might be rules in here. There are none out there.”
Tershel let that sink in for a moment before noticing Aron’s hand. “Yes, Aron?”
“Sir, if these pads are supposed to simulate body armor, why is it I don’t got nothing to protect my nuts? The regular Army guys do.”
Tershel looked at Rizor and Clavus. They shrugged and smiled. Tershel turned back to Aron. “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say today, Aron. I don’t know. You guys didn’t historically wear that much armor, including helmets, from what I can see in the texts. We have you wear headgear in here for safety, since it’s what we do with the regular Army guys. But as far as we’re concerned, you can wear whatever armor you want in here or out there. Just remember that you’re going to need to move differently with it on, though.”
After we’d finished for the day, I eyed the wall of weapons. Frankly, I wasn’t especially attached to any of them. Not the way Aron was to the sickles or Lance to the sword. In fact, the idea of cleaving someone open with a bladed weapon and seeing their tortured expression was nauseating. I’d grown up around bows, since they were tools to put meat on the table, and while the Army ones were nicer and more powerful than the rough ones people in my village had used, I didn’t think of them much differently than, say, rakes or fishing poles. The only one I’d taken any interest in was the sling, and that was only really because in order to use it, we had to go hunting for smooth stones to use as ammunition. The stones reminded me of one of my favorite pastimes as a child – skipping rocks over the water – though my accuracy was so horrendous that I might as well have thrown the damn things.
The only weapons exercise I actually enjoyed didn’t even involve weapons in the traditional sense. It was a weekly session jointly taught with the wizards where we were given random objects from daily life, like umbrellas, gardening rakes, toothbrushes, and in one case, potted plants. We then had to defend ourselves from a partner coming at us with a haymaker or an overhand sword strike (supposedly the two most common attacks we would be facing). You could use whatever orthodox unarmed or magical techniques you wanted to defend yourself … or you could think fast and come up with a creative way to jury rig the household item you were given for your defense. I was only fair with the unarmed stuff and horrible with magic, but coming up with a new way to use an ink bottle or a folding chair for self-defense was probably the only fun I had in our combat training. However, that was a very small part of the curriculum, and before long, it was back to more repetitive drills with the sword or spear.
Of course, there were no household items on the weapons rack for the Drawing. Like I said, the whole thing seemed overhyped to me. But I did have to admit, I was attracted to the idea of how the Drawing worked. Did the weapon pick its wielder? What about that person made an inanimate object gravitate toward him or her? Did the weapon actually float to its new owner? Was there a flash of light or some other magical sign that signified what had happened? Finding answers to these perplexing questions made me look forward to the ceremony regardless of what weapon I was assigned.
I’d asked Wally the wizard about the magic behind the Drawing at one point, and he’d simply smiled and said that I’d find out in due time, which wasn’t very helpful. When I’d asked one of the Imperial Guards that I sometimes ran into, she’d just shrugged and had said it was a weird Ranger tradition and was probably a crock cooked up by some wizard a long time ago.
“No offense, kid,” she’d said. “But the Rangers have always done some really cockamamie shit. If there were any left, you could ask them, but … you guys are the first ones in a long time.” Then she’d thrown in her usual line about Rangers not living very long and how I’d better take my opportunities now if I wanted to reproduce. “Better get with the program, kid; you might not be around tomorrow, you know? Make those gorillas take you along with them next time they hit the pubs. You never know. You might get lucky, eh?”
She’d taken her own advice and had three rambunctious little ones of her own that were constantly getting in trouble during mealtimes. I’d once asked why their father never seemed to be around to help out.
“Fathers,” she’d corrected. “One dead, second a deadbeat, and the third – disappeared.”
“Oh,” I’d said. “Sorry …”
“Nah! The hell with those guys. Never did a damn thing to help anyway. I get plenty of help here during the day, and the kids get free schooling. Better than anything I ever got as a kid. And as for the menfolk, let’s just say I’d like to think I have higher standards now than when I was younger. Hope I learned a thing or two. For everything else,” she said with a wink, “there’s my stash,” she said, holding a finger over her lips as she referred to her secret trove of ragged pornographic magazines she’d somehow acquired and hidden in a treasure vault only known to the Imperial Guard. I’d accidentally stumbled on one location a number of months back, resulting in its relocation, but the new spot was unknown to me.
“So,” she’d said, “you looking forward to the Drawing? Rumor has it everyone has already picked out which weapons they want. We girls are placing bets.”
“With who? Aron?”
“Naturally.”
I’d shrugged. “Of course. I don’t really care which one I get. I’m more interested in seeing the magic behind how they match the weapon to the person.”
The guard had nodded. “Yeah, me too. I’ve never seen one of these ceremonies, so it’ll be a first for me as well. Hey – I gotta run and get the kids down for a nap. Good luck at the Drawing if I don’t run into you before.”
As it turned out, I needed luck a little sooner than that. At that afternoon’s training session, Rizor was leading us through another spear drill. The spear was the standard infantry weapon, and its natural reach advantage meant that we tended to spend more time with it than anything else, but to be honest, it bored the hell out of me. In retrospect, boring would have been preferable to what happened next.
The drill had been a simple one – parry the incoming spearthrust to the midsection by side stepping and deflecting the spear with your own followed by some kind of counter attack – and we’d done it hundreds of times. We weren’t wearing any protective gear, since we were told to stop any attack short of actual contact, and in a way, perhaps that led some of us to pay less attention than we should have. I’m not sure if it was my natural disinterest or the fact that I was still in the post-lunch slump, but I never even saw the tip of Ben’s practice spear until it nearly skewered my ribs. Even though the tip and edges of the spear were not sharpened, the spearhead still managed to rip a hole in my shirt and leave a long gash on my abdomen. An inch to the left, and my ribcage would have had a painful new addition. I felt the glancing impact, but the pain of the cut didn’t immediately register. It was mostly shock that caused me to gasp and drop my own weapon, grabbing onto Ben’s spear for stability.
“Hey, let go, Logan!” Ben shouted amid the din of clanging weaponry when I continued clinging, stuck in a catatonic freeze. At least that’s what I thought he said. There was a whooshing ringing in my ears that muffled everything. “Let go!” I think he yelled again. I detected anger in his voice, but my body seemed to be moving in slow motion. To emphasize his point, he jabbed again with the spear, overextending himself. Following the path left by the previous blow, it missed me but ripped an exit on the other side of my shirt. I felt my knees buckling.
“Time!” I heard Rizor yell, but it seemed a long way off. “Get a medic!” But in anger and desperation, I don’t think any of that registered. Survival mode kicked in, and I continued with my own counterattack. I tugged the spearshaft towards me, then slingshotted the butt-end back towards Ben. It was more a reflexive shove than anything. I don’t know if his hands were sweaty, making his grip faulty, or whether he was caught unawares in his off-balance position, but the shaft passed through his hands, and like a pool cue striking the last ball home, came to rest firmly in the pocket of his groin. Despite the pain that now registered in my abdomen, I winced. Ben’s eyes bugged out a minute, and he slowly sank to his knees, head to the floor.
“Make that two medics!” I think I heard Rizor yell. Ben’s face, now a snarling crimson red, lifted, and he looked at me with bulging eyes, spitting through clenched teeth, “That was not a good idea, pipspeak!” Anger was inescapable in our line of work, and Ben had a temper known to all of us. But I had never, ever seen Ben this angry before, and it was the first time I’d ever heard him insult someone, which was impressive given that we were surrounded by guys like Aron who dropped insults every five minutes. Then again, I did ram the butt-end of a spear into his genitalia. Most men are protective of such things.
With a primal scream, Ben lunged forward at me, both arms outstretched. He caught me around the neck, slamming me to the floor before I knew what was happening. The floor was matted, but it still knocked the wind out of me. As I gasped, my vision started to go spotty as Ben’s massive hands squeezed for what seemed like forever. A few Rangers tried to pull him off, but he bucked and elbowed them away. I tried levering the point of my chin under his hands to give me a little more room to breathe, but he was too strong, and I was too late in attempting it to do much good. With my remaining strength, I tried slamming my hands down on whatever parts of his body I could in a vain effort to get him to let go, but it was no use. I saw a few of the other Rangers standing over me, doing not a damn thing. I remember thinking, “Screw you guys. Why don’t you help, you bastards?” I would have shouted it if I weren’t dealing with a 250 pound gorilla, teeth clenched, face contorted in rage, trying to choke the life out of me.
More black spots danced before my eyes, and my head started to swim. It was hard to form thoughts, and my mind and body seemed to slow to a crawl. The only thing keeping me going was some primal urge from deep within. Perhaps it was a small inheritance I had received from my parents and those innumerable generations before, going back to when the world was young – that little bit of instinct that we humans still retained – the will to do whatever it took to preserve life.
My hands, empty of anything that could help preserve whatever life they still carried, finally settled on something small and hard – a rectangular amulet Ben wore around his neck that was now dangling in front of me. “For good luck,” he often said. That day, it may not have been lucky for him, but it was for me. I couldn’t see it from where I was, but my fingers wrapped around the thin metal bar. I blindly tried to ram the end into his Adam’s apple. The amulet hit the soft pocket of skin below instead. He yelled in pain but only applied more pressure.
I was desperate now, and for better or worse, I did what desperate men do – the same damn thing over and over, hoping despite evidence otherwise that it will work. With every strike, I could feel myself growing weaker, and by the last one, there was barely anything left.
But it must have been enough, because Ben sputtered, loosened his grip, and, color draining from his face, let himself be pulled away by Jake and Allan. He clutched his neck, which had started to bleed, and sat on the floor, rocking slowly back and forth as he panted heavily, eyes shut, sweat dripping from his brow.
It was hard for me to move, and as I welcomed gusts of cool, wonderful air, I was only dimly conscious of a medic ripping open my shirt to clean the wound on my abdomen. The medic was a grey haired woman wearing an officer’s uniform sporting a long scar along one cheek, leaving a pale slash in her otherwise dark skin.
“I’m Captain Hayes. You were lucky. A little more this way,” she said, motioning to the wound, “and …” She didn’t finish. “It’s not too bad, though. I don’t think I’m going to put any stitches in. It’s not really deep enough, and you’ll just blow through ‘em. Just try to keep it clean and wrapped tight. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll change the dressing. How’s your head?”
I croaked out something that must have satisfied her while she looked at my neck, eyes, and in my mouth.
“Aside from a few burst vessels in your eyes, I think you’ll be okay,” she said, shaking her head. I recognized her as one of the Imperial Guards. Although we didn’t share practice sessions with them, we did sometimes cross paths, and a few of them moonlighted as medics or Army instructors to make a little cash on the side. We had gotten to know a succession of medics in our training, though this was the first time I’d met Captain Hayes.
She and a few of the other Rangers helped me into a seated position against a stack of mats, and then she stood. Looking straight at Rizor, Tershel, and Clavus and then at the rest of the Rangers, she shook her head, and said, “What little I saw, I did not like. Lieutenants Rizor, Tershel, and Clavus, please explain.”
I could see their faces reddening. Either they were embarrassed or weren’t used to being questioned. Maybe some of both. Our medics weren’t usually senior officers, either.
“It … it was an accident, Captain Hayes,” Tershel said quickly. “We probably should have had the men use the fencing gear,” he added, motioning to a pile of protective equipment at the base of the weapons wall.
“That’s up to you. Look, I’m not here to police you. I’m here as a medic today. But a word of caution coming as a fellow officer in this Army.” Her eyes narrowed as she glared at our trainers. “Accidents, like anger, are unavoidable in our line of work. But what I saw, men cheering on the equivalent of a schoolyard brawl, was avoidable. There is a difference between battle and training. In battle, all the animal instincts come out. It is unavoidable. But that is what the training is for. We train for control. To control ourselves. In a few months, these men will be on their own. They will need to work together, as a unit. Clearly, they are not there yet. But you have time. You three can still shape them. Am I clear?”
Our instructors weathered the critique with silence and slight nods of assent, which clearly did not convince Captain Hayes. She continued staring them down until Rizor finally started, “You make good points, Captain. I … I think …”
Aron, who had been jostling side to side like a Labrador itching to be let out, shot his hand up at that moment, blurting out, “This all would have been avoided if we had something for our nuts, Ma’am! Maybe you can tell the King that we …”
He was silenced by incredulous glares from the instructors and an upheld hand from Captain Hayes. “Thank you for that enlightening piece of information, soldier. But were we talking to you?”
She held his gaze until he ground his foot in the mat and said with downcast eyes, “No, Ma’am.”
Captain Hayes turned back to Rizor. “As you were saying, Lieutenant?”
Rizor nodded. “Thank you, Captain. With the Drawing coming up, perhaps we should be thinking of ways to have the men function more cohesively rather than pitting them against each other.”
The Captain shook her head. “That is not what I meant. People in this Army have always learned soldier against another. How else are they supposed to? Training dummies,” she said, pointing to a worn, stuffed mannequin suspended from the ceiling that we used to practice strikes, “don’t hit back. Look, like I said, it’s your job to teach these men. I’m not here to interfere. What I’m saying is that …” she paused, sighed, and looked around to see who might be listening. “… there’s a lot of shit in this Army, especially at the top. But that doesn’t make it right. Any monkey can learn to use a spear. But not everyone can use it in the right way, at the right time, and know when to show restraint. We don’t always expect this of our regular rank and file. But we do of our Imperial Rangers. Or, at least, we used to. Do you catch my drift?”
The instructors mulled this over and straightened up to attention, saluting their assent. As if on cue, at that moment, Ben, who was still rocking on the floor, vomited.
After Captain Hayes examined and bandaged him, she motioned for us all to come over. She looked at Ben, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Son, I’m not trying to make an example of you or embarrass you. But this is one of those things that … happens. Aside from your neck, your body is fine. But the part of you that makes your body do what it needs to – the nerves, they’ve had a shock.”
Ben nodded, eyes still on the mat, drool dripping from his lips.
She turned back to us. “Have you seen a stress dump before?”
“Sometimes when I’m nervous, I get the shits,” Aron blurted out. Clavus turned sharply to him, mouthing an incredulous “why?” and put a finger to his mouth. “Please, Aron.”
Captain Hayes smiled. “It’s alright, Lieutenant. That wasn’t the kind of dump I was thinking of, though I suppose I set myself up for that one.”
She turned to the rest of us. “After the battle is over, assuming you lived, sometimes the body rebels. Occasionally, it’s just fatigue. But at other times, the hands start to shake, the legs twitch, and the stomach flips flops. And, yes, Aron, sometimes so does the rest of the gastrointestinal system. And that is to say nothing of the mind. Sometimes the body heals fine, but the mind, which you can’t see, does not. The point is, the more you understand these things, the more you will understand yourselves. And the better you will understand your enemies and how to defeat them. If you can get some sense of that and how to work together as a unit in these final months, this Army will have done its job. Got it?”
“Thank you, Captain Hayes,” our instructors said.
Then Tershel added, “We appreciate the impromptu lesson, Ma’am. I’ve never been sure why you have not been added to the training curriculum. I mean, that would only make sense.”
The Captain smiled and shrugged. “Politics. And … to be honest, I’m out of date.”
“The basic training methods haven’t really changed, though, Captain.”
“Well, tell that to the King. Besides, I’m mostly retired these days. I just help train the Guards and do occasional medic duty.”
“Well, it’s not like we have a whole lot of guidance on how to do this job, Ma’am, so … any time you want to drop by and … drop a little wisdom, I know we’d appreciate it,” Clavus said.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Captain Hayes said, smiling warmly.
When she was gone, Clavus turned to us and said, “Captain Hayes is the only surviving Imperial Ranger trainer. I think she did their hand-to-hand training back … well, that must have been forty years ago or so, right?” he said, looking at his co-instructors.
“Yeah, probably. Right before they were disbanded,” Tershel said.
“She was a Ranger, Sir?” Jake asked.
“No, just a regular soldier. Like us. It wasn’t always easy to find Rangers to do the actual instructing, so … sometimes they pulled from other parts of the Army. One of those people was Captain Hayes. Somewhere around here, there’s a picture of her,” Rizor added, waving his finger around, scanning the plaques on the wall. “You’ll see it if you look. She’s a little younger there,” he added. “So, hopefully you took something from what she said. It’s given us a few things to think about as well. It’s not like we always know exactly how to train you. There haven’t been Imperial Rangers in a long time. Speaking of which … back to the present. Logan, Ben … what are we going to do with you guys?”
Ben and I looked at each other until he averted his eyes to the puddle of vomit on the mat. He took a towel someone had given him and started mopping it up.
“Don’t worry about that, Ben. I think we should probably stop for today,” Rizor said. “Why don’t we wrap up with the usual conditioning exercises. When you guys are done, meet back here to stretch out. Ben and Logan, stay here a minute.”
While the rest of the guys went off to do pullups and other calisthenics, Rizor took us aside. “Alright, look. I realize this is awkward given that you two, umm … just tried to kill each other, but … you guys got to work this out. Like the Captain said, at the end of the day, you eight are just going to have each other out there.”
After an awkward silence, I said, “I guess Aron was right … groin protection and all. I’m sorry, Ben. It was more a reflex than anything. The butt end of the spear to the … cockerel region, I mean.”
Ben gave a short laugh and shook his head. “It’s okay, Logan. I’ve been hit harder there before; I don’t know why it made me so mad this time. When I get like that … it’s like I have blinders on. I had no idea I’d skewered you with the spear. I’m sorry about that. I just …” He paused and stared at his hands, which were trembling. “I just can’t … I can’t believe … Logan, I … I was going to kill you. That was the only thought going through my head when I had you on the ground. I almost killed you, Logan.” There were tears forming in his eyes when he turned to Rizor, and his voice choked when he said, “I don’t know if I can do this, Sir. I think … maybe I should have been a farmer like my father said I should’ve.”
Rizor nodded. “Well, to be fair, there are a lot of things you’ve said your father told you to do that …”
Ben nodded. “… yeah, that weren’t that great. But … maybe he was right on this. He always said my temper would be the death of me.” He gave another sad laugh and looked at the mat. “I got my temper from him. Except I don’t need to be drunk to lose it. Thanks, Pops,” he muttered, giving an imaginary toast.
Rizor put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and squeezed. “You know, my first commanding officer was in the Army since he was kid. Lied about his age to get in. He’d been in for, I dunno, twenty years by the time I was assigned to his unit. He taught me most of what I know about the sword. And it was all practical stuff – what I try to teach you guys now – learned the hard way. But anyway, after this battle – my first – he looked out on the battlefield, and it was just … blood, guts, fire, smoke, crying, and screaming … all the stuff no one ever tells you about when you enlist and get the shiny boots and polished armor. And there he was, looking out on it all, and I’ll never forget what he said. ‘Boys, I got you through this – at least most of you – but the fact remains that I also carried out the orders that did this. And I can’t do it anymore.’ He took off his sword belt and his officer’s insignia and threw them in one of the fires burning near us. ‘It’s been an honor to serve alongside you,’ he said and then turned around and started walking the other way. And I never saw him again. Of course, there was all the usual shit. Desertion charges and all that. But I don’t think the Army ever found him. Or if they did, they didn’t get any help from us, because we certainly weren’t going to rat him out. I guess that’s a roundabout way of saying we all have our limits. Like fire, a temper, Ben, can be helpful in certain situations, assuming you can control the blaze. But you probably stand a better chance of learning to control it here than in a lot of other walks of life.”
As I was leaving for the barracks that evening, Rizor pulled me aside.
He looked a bit uncomfortable, as if not sure how to begin. Finally, he said, “You know, I didn’t get a chance to say this before, but you did alright today, Logan.” His words didn’t really register at the time, since our instructors seldom doled out praise, and what little there was had generally been for the ears of other men.
I must have looked at him dumbly, so he continued. “I’m sure it doesn’t feel like it. But you fought a man who wanted, however temporarily, for you to no longer be in the land of the living. And, by your own hands, you lived. No one will give you a trophy, and there won’t be any fanfare or celebration like at the Drawing. Your reward is another day on this side of the ground. A lot of times, that’s all that counts, Logan. Do you get what I’m saying?” I nodded but left as confused as ever. In time, I would understand. I don’t know if the others ever got that lesson. Sometimes, even now, I wonder and wish I could ask them. But it’s too late.
And although Ben’s neck and my ribs healed after a few weeks, as Captain Hayes alluded to, the mental side of things took much longer. I would see Ben’s face, contorted in rage, at random times in the day, and sometimes I had to stop what I was doing at the moment and try to clear my head. And although we were paired together for drills and sparring matches a number of times after that incident, Ben was never quite the same around me. It was as if there was always a part of him that was afraid the same thing would happen again. And, if I could talk to him knowing what I now know, I’d tell him not to worry, to live every moment fully, since, as we were often told, the typical Imperial Ranger didn’t come with a long life expectancy. But that’s another story told elsewhere.
********
That evening, I was sitting outside, looking at the stars. Although I was generally left alone since the others were busy playing cards, tonight, I had purposefully sequestered myself under the awning on the far side of the barracks. I could dimly hear the sounds of the men laughing over their poker game but could not make out any words. I let out a sigh that had been building up since the incident at the training session.
The night sky had always been a source of comfort for me, having grown up mostly without the comfort of a mother or father’s embrace. There had been a big window near my bed at the Aquarian orphanage where I’d been raised, and sometimes, when I hadn’t been able to sleep, I would look out into the distance, above the tall treetops, into the void. The little orbs of light, ever glowing, were small sources of security. Sometimes, my childhood friend, Aurora, who was two years older and had been in the orphanage even longer than I had, would join me next to the window, and we’d sit there until the morning rays peeked through the clouds.
I’d known Aurora since I entered the orphanage at age five, and the last time I’d seen her was when I’d left for the Army at eighteen. She had been such a consistent part of my life until that point that sometimes I forgot she was elsewhere and got excited, hoping to tell or show her something. Then I’d realize I couldn’t and wasn’t sure of the next time I could, which filled me with a mix of sadness and a kind of bittersweet longing that I wouldn’t understand until I was a bit older.
I wondered what she would have said had I told her about the events of that afternoon. Could I have even explained them? I looked down at my hands, which had started to tremble slightly, and recalled the time when I had left the orphanage for the Army, when Aurora had taken my hands, placed her favorite skipping stone in my palm for luck, and closed my fingers over hers. She had held them there against her chest before giving me a sad smile to send me off. Perhaps because of my early childhood, crying was not something that came especially easy for me as an adult. But that day, it had been easy, though I had tried my best to conceal it. And now, as I looked down at my trembling fingers, remembering Aurora’s hands cupped around mine, I felt tears welling up in my eyes again. There, under the eaves in the stillness of the night, I hunched over my knees. Covering my eyes with those same hands that had given me “another day on this side of the ground,” I wept.
Afterwards, I continued sitting outside until my eyes grew heavy. Eventually, I stumbled off to bed. In the morning, I did feel a bit better. The other Rangers never mentioned the incident again. The only person who ever did, strangely enough, was the Imperial Guard I sometimes ran into. She was coming out of Captain Hayes’ office when I stopped by for my follow-up visit, and after greeting me, she stopped, as if not quite sure what to say. Finally, she asked, “You alright?”
I asked why. She simply said, “Heard you got into some shit. Are you … alright?”
When I didn’t answer, she said, “Well, none of my business, I guess. But, let me ask this – are you gonna be alright?”
That I was confident in, so I said yes. She nodded, and that was that.
Thank you for reading this excerpt. To read more of Empty Hands, look for it for the Kindle on Amazon.
You can listen to the soundtrack that was composed for the book, to be listened to concurrently, here.
This past week, we did our first Patreon Thirteenth Hour DnD session using a homebrew role playing system made from hybrid Dungeons and Dragons / Quest RPG rules. I thought we’d read some of the combat rules used in this game book, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, just to review one way they do combat with one person and 2 six sided dice. I thought it’d be interesting to see how these gamebooks employed combat game mechanics since their emphasis was primarily interactive story telling, just like our Thirteenth Hour DnD system.
The combat rules used in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. As with many of these rule sets I’ve seen, there is not much emphasis on the nature of the attack or where it is targeted – more of an assumption that the attack happens in a binary sense – it is either successful or it is not.
The example we went through in the episode.
In the second part of the pod, we are reading Chapter 6 in Dragon Fall (1984) by Lee J Hindle. One more chapter to go!
More from Dragon Fall next week! Did you check out the podcast exclusive bonus episode preview with actress Catherine Mary Stewart (about Night of the Comet)?
This week, I’ve been casting Rocketeers using the mold I made recently. Working on the third copy now. Surprisingly, I’ve been pretty happy with the mold, especially since the resin I am using to cast the limbs (Smooth On 65D) has a working (pot) life of only about 2.5 minutes before hardens, so you have to work fast. Here is the latest guy to come out of the mold with parts from the first one post priming scattered around.
I think part of the difference here was that I used a base figure that was a little easier to work with and I got a better mold to be begin with.
In the second part of the pod, we are reading Chapter 5 in Dragon Fall (1984) by Lee J Hindle.
More from Dragon Fall next week! Soon – stay tuned for a podcast exclusive episodes with actress Catherine Mary Stewart (about Night of the Comet) coming this week.
This week, I’ve been finishing up the Thirteenth Hour action figures. I’ve gotten almost all of them put together and am now putting on the finishing touches. I ended up revising the color scheme when I had to redo all the limbs so be simpler and now am glad I did – no shading, brighter colors – simpler, just like the original 5 points of articulation Kenner figures of the 70s and 80s. Logan and Aurora on Lightning below. Aside from some finishing touches, I just need to add some clear blue-green resin to the console on Lightning the hoverboard’s front. You can see a slight depression there at the front, near Aurora’s feet, where the clear resin will go.
Hopefully, some of the knowledge gained there will help when making 5 points of articulation Rocketeer figures. I just finished the mold this week. It’s always exciting to see if your hard work and planning will pay off when you crack open the mold for the first time.
In the second part of the pod, we are finishing Chapter 4 in Dragon Fall (1984) by Lee J Hindle.
More from Dragon Fall next week! Soon – stay tuned for podcast exclusive episodes with actors Catherine Mary Stewart (about Night of the Comet) and Billy Campbell (about the Rocketeer) that you can unlock!
This week, I’m taking a little trip down memory lane, talking about some of the Choose Your Own Adventure style books I recall liking as a kid.
One of the show’s previous guests, Chad Derdowski (on episodes 107, 108, and 119), wrote and illustrated his own (hilarious, I might add) 80s inspired Choose Your Own Adventure style fantasy books, Fortune Favors the Bold and its sequel that are brilliant. Look up his work on IG here!
I’ve been reminded of books like these since I’ve been working on something specific for Patreon members – a Thirteenth Hour specific Dungeons & Dragons style series of scenarios. I’m modding an existing rpg platform called Quest and adding some additions to the combat system to allow for more nuance there and hopefully make it less dependent on pure luck. Patreon members – stay tuned.
My brother, Jeremy, wrote an article on his blog about the one issue of Dragon magazine we had as kids. We read it often (even though we didn’t understand what it was about) due to the great fantasy art and the fact we knew it was about games, and though we couldn’t really comprehend what role playing games were, the game books, the imagery, the rep (Satanic panic and all), and the miniatures all made it an alluring mystery.
And another Jeremy! Shout out also to a different Jeremy – Jeremy Lesniak from Whistlekick. We’ll be recording a show this week about his martial arts-themed novel, Faith. Maybe we’ll even get to discuss some of these things in the context of his story.
In the second part of the pod, we are starting Chapter 4 in Dragon Fall (1984) by Lee J Hindle.
This week, Jeremy and I are tackling the 1982 TV movie, Mazes and Monsters! This was a movie (based on a novel by Rona Jaffe) released in the midst of the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons as well as the public fear/backlash of the Satanic panic and all that. Not surprisingly, it’s a bit of a shlock fest, but we have a surprisingly nuanced discussion on a variety of topics related to the film, role playing games and adjacent activities, distant parents, 80s social panics, steam tunnels, and more. You can watch the film for free on Tubi (click on the VHS cover below to watch)
Ironically, the showing of this TV movie was sponsored by Proctor and Gamble, who acquired the stomach discomfort drug Pepto Bismo also in 1982!
The main cast of Mazes and Monsters with their characters and game paraphernalia. Below, the article about the book the film is based on from the 7/1983 issue of Dragon magazine is below.
There are a few things that are notably positive about the film that I think deserve some mention. I liked the scene where two of the characters are painting their miniatures. I liked the fact they had game notebooks. Then there’s the interesting subject of gender, which has an interesting history in DnD.
I think it was notable that the story actually included a female character at all, and she took a more active role in the story (the fact the book was written by a woman may have had something to do with it). Glacia (Kate Finch) was the party’s only fighter, which I think is notable since Dungeons and Dragons was still fairly overtly unbalanced in its gender roles. At the time of the filming of this game, DnD was still in its first edition, where female characters of different races had lower stats (e.g. lower strength) and the game was generally written using only male pronouns (e.g. “fighting men”). Although the female : male player ratio is more even today (about 60% male : 40 % female), it was apparently much more male dominated at the time (estimated around 10 % female in one source I found).
As we talk about in the episode, DnD drew heavily from earlier (more male dominated) historical wargames, so it’s interesting to hear what female players of the time thought of it (here’s a interview with RPG pioneer Jean Wells, the first woman hired by TSR). However, my main exposure to DnD as a kid in the 80s came not from the actual game but from TSR’s Endless Quest books, many of whom were written by a woman, Rose Estes, a TSR employee who, like many other women of the time, was frustrated at the male centric nature of the game and the play – centered around stats, dungeon crawls, and combat – which she felt took away from the telling of a cohesive story.
So I think it is admirable that this film gave the fighter class role to a woman, who, though she does feature in a requisite love triangle, is not passive in her involvement in the main story. She seems to be the only one for most of the film that actually owns a car, and the movie does not relegate her to passenger status in favor of having one of the male characters drive it. Again, perhaps the film was just staying true to the original source material, but in that case, good on them for not changing it.
Also, as mentioned in the episode, my interpretation of the film’s ending differed from most of thoughts found in the reviews I read at the time or since. As much as the game was depicted as an experience potentially blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, I thought they also seemed to be saying that this was a way, separate from the world of distant adults, where four lonely young adults could connect with each other. Such is the power of make believe (normally relegated to the word of children), even, in the end, cutting through psychosis. When I saw it, the ending seemed to be saying that while aspects of day to day adult reality can be drab, disconnected, and limiting, it doesn’t have to be that way as long as there is still a human connection that binds people together.
Check out Jeremy‘s work over at Pixel Grotto, CBR.com, and Classic Batman Panels on IG. You can support his work on Ko-fi and get access to in-depth, exclusive Batman content here. If you are of the DnD persuasion, his articles on DnD Beyond may be right up your alley. Thanks, Jeremy, for coming on the show! We will be back with another look at another fine piece of cinema!
This week, my brother, Jeremy, rejoins the show to talk about the 1985 Disney film, The Black Cauldron. The film is loosely based on the first two books in the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander, a series I was sort of introduced to as a kid when I bought The Black Cauldron book in a school book fair since it had the cover of the movie, like this one:
The film poster usage for the cover of the novel is a bit misleading since the majority of the plot to the film is actually from the first book in the series, The Book of Three, which I was unaware of at the time. So, it’s not surprising it didn’t make much sense. However, we did have this Scholastic comic adaptation of the film which we found at a yard sale and read many times in childhood:
You can find copies on eBay periodically (click on the picture above to search):
Here’s the theatrical trailer and some screencaps:
The film had to be cut for length and content. Here is the first in a series of videos that has deleted scenes from the film:
Check out Jeremy‘s work over at Pixel Grotto, CBR.com, and Classic Batman Panels on IG. You can support his work on Ko-fi and get access to in-depth, exclusive Batman content here. If you are of the DnD persuasion, his articles on DnD Beyond may be right up your alley. Thanks, Jeremy, for coming on the show!
This week, my brother, Jeremy, rejoins the show to talk about movie we watched a fair amount as a kid, 1985’s Red Sonja. Neither of us had seen it in decades and we honestly weren’t expecting much, but I asked Jeremy if he’d want to join me in rewatching it given all the experience he’s had the last few years with tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. From what I had recalled, it seemed like an example of those games in live action, and I was curious to see what he thought. Suffice to say, Jeremy did a deep dive and more than delivered, which you can hear if you check out the episode. I had always operated under the assumption that 1986’s Howard the Duck was the first real Marvel comic book movie, but you could make a case for Red Sonja, which was under license by Marvel at the time, though there’s no mention of it in the credits from what I recall. Click on the picture below to watch:
If watching the whole film is not your bag, check out this 8 min compilation of some great lines plus the trailer. You’ll get the basic gist of the film and perhaps learn a thing or two, like why it’s important to not grip your hilt too tight (important life skill courtesy of Red Sonja that is generalizable beyond sword play, though I’m not exactly sure how).
Check out Jeremy‘s work over at Pixel Grotto, CBR.com, and Classic Batman Panels on IG. You can support his work on Ko-fi and get access to in-depth, exclusive Batman content here. If you are of the DnD persuasion, his articles on DnD Beyond may be right up your alley.
In toymaking news, I’ve been working on all these Beverlys! There is also a connection to our 1985 film above. A year after, we would, of course, see the film version of Beverly Switzler, another lead heroine, but one of a considerably less violent nature, the one depicted in the figurine above. Her costume in the film was equally impractical as Red Sonja’s but a lot less revealing than that of Red Sonja’s. There’s another connection, though. The very first issue of Howard the Duck featured a vaguely Red Sonja like character (it’s Beverly, though it’s presented kind of as a dream) in a parody of a Conan / DnD story. There’s even an appearance of everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood webslinger for some off-the-wall reason (the original comics were pretty bonkers).
This week, I’m reading a short excerpt from the martial arts novella, Empty Hands, as a follow up to last week’s episode on the Dungeons and Dragons influences. This section touches on the five elements in nature (more back in episode 151) and how they fit the characters:
Jake and Aurora both fell into a character class Wally the wizard had called the “earth type.” As the guys had mentioned, we’d done a little presentation detailing our strengths and weaknesses early in our training (I had to do mine twice since I didn’t understand the assignment the first time and had instead talked about Aurora). Wally used that assignment to go into something he called “The Elemental School of Personality Assessment,” which he said was an important part of not only our magical studies but our training in general. There were five main personality types corresponding to the five divisions of elemental forces in nature – earth, water, wind, fire, and space, as well as an infinite combination of blends.
Pure earth types were grounded, practical people who, like strongly rooted trees, were good at weathering the vicissitudes of life but could be a bit stubborn at times. Dependable, practical, and steady types like Jake and Ben fell into that category. Pure water types were kind of the opposite – adaptable and fluid, like water conforming to whatever container it finds itself in, though they could be a bit all over the place. Phil, an easy-going sort who tended to go with the flow, fit this category. He was not, however, a fickle person, prompting Wally to categorize him as an earth-water blend.
“You mean like mud?” Phil had said when Wally passed him the sheet of paper containing his alignment and its characteristics.
We’d laughed, but then Wally shrugged. “Water is flexible, but it can be hard, if the force is right. Earth is not fluid but mixed with a little water, it moves easily from one place to the next until it dries. Too much, though, and it just becomes dirty water. Do you get my drift?”
“Um … no,” Phil had said after a long pause.
“You will. For now, it basically means you have the best of both worlds.” Then to all of us, he said, “Keep in mind these are just predictions. It’s up to you to figure out if they’re accurate and how to apply the knowledge to your training.”
Like Phil, Aron also ended up a blend – part water and part wind. Pure wind types, like Allan, were open-minded and peaceful. Like birds soaring above the clouds, the day-to-day troubles of the earth-bound held little meaning for them. They craved freedom, which fit Aron, but could be a bit impractical and out of touch with reality (definitely Aron and sometimes Allan, who preferred to think everything through prior to acting on anything). Pure fire types, like Lance and Blake, were no-nonsense folk who believed the best defense was a good offense. It was pretty clear that dynamic, straight-forward weapons like the bow and sword fit guys like that. The downside of fire, of course, was that not all problems could be solved in direct ways.
That left the last category, which Wally had initially called “empty space.” Aron had burst out laughing at this, muttering something about it being the one that fit me best, and the others had joined in. Wally silenced them, then paused and said that, actually, Aron might have been right for once. This caused me to redden in anger and disappointment as Aron went bug-eyed and laughed hard enough to fall out of his chair.
It wasn’t like I was especially taken with any of the previous categories, but as the youngest and physically smallest of the Rangers, it would have been nice to not be different at something – anything – for once. I didn’t really care about not being able to run, swim, climb, fight, navigate, or use magic as well as the others. Unlike some, I couldn’t imagine myself “a career man,” so excelling at soldiering skills (assuming I lived long enough), seemed a bit irrelevant for me and my life in the long run. Frankly, I couldn’t have cared less whether I fit earth, wind, water, fire, or some blend of the four – but “empty space?” Come on!
As if reading my thoughts, Wally frowned and said, “Empty space is perhaps not the right term. The magic books sometimes use the word void (which produced a burst of hoots from Aron), but that, too, has always seemed a poor choice. It’s …” he frowned, sighed, then continued. “At some point in the future, science will catch up to what we wizards have known for eons – that all matter is composed of tiny particles too small to see. They are the essence, the anima, that gives substance and life to all things in the natural world. And, as such, particles from the void can become any of the four. Add enough of them packed together, and they become earth. Space them out far enough, they become wind. Push them a bit closer together, they reform as water. Add a bolt of lightning or some other energy source, and they become fire.”
Allan nodded, saying, “Most interesting. So this is the essence we harness when we generate magic.”
“Exactly! You are pulling directly from the void,” Wally said.
There was silence for a time as we mulled this over. Finally, Jake turned around in his seat and looked at me with his steady, cool brown eyes. “I’m sorry we laughed, Logan. It was wrong of us.”
I reddened further and stared down at my notebook, doodling with my piece of charcoal. “It’s okay,” I finally said, still avoiding Jake’s eyes. When I look back on that experience, I wish I had met and held the man’s gaze to let him know I appreciated his apology. But … there are some things I suppose that only come with age.
After a moment, Aron asked quietly, “So … do you think there’s maybe a little void somewhere in me?”
Wally rolled his eyes and said “Aron, be grateful for what you have.” After the lesson finished, Wally handed me the piece of paper containing information on my alignment. On the side, he had written:
Read this over, and see if you think it fits. Find me if you have any questions.
~Wally
P.S. The woman you told us about from your town – the one you grew up with – sounds like more of an earth type, though at least from your description, she sounds like an earth – void blend. I can see why you would enjoy her company. Hope that gives you some more information about yourself that will be helpful in the coming months.
To be honest, it wasn’t then, but looking back years later, it sure has been.
Here’s a little character sketch I did about a year ago (a little different from their final iteration) when I was coming up with the ideas presented above:
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This page formerly had what I affectionately dubbed a “starving artist” section on little side hustles you could do (mostly on the internet, often with a phone) to make a few bucks here and there, often in gift cards. Well, now you can listen to this show (as well as other podcasts) and get paid to do so! Check out https://www.podcoin.com/ to listen to the show and start earning points that you can redeem for gift cards (Amazon, Target, Starbucks, etc) or donations to a number of charities. Use the code “Thirteen” when you sign up to get 300 extra points. The Thirteen Hour Podcast is now on BONUS this week, so you can earn more than normal (1.5x).
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week, we’re discussing Empty Hands behind the scenes, specifically the influence of Dungeons and Dragons and the character creation process. Just like the D and D alignments, the eight Rangers in Empty Hands have their own specific alignment that informs which sidearm they are assigned. (If the idea of D and D morality alignments are as mysterious to you as they were to me before my brother explained them to me, check out the graphic I found on the internet below).
The rest of the episode focuses on two new synth tracks. I add a second track to finish up “A Place of our Own” (see episodes 202 – 204 and the pixelart animation below).
I also start a new track that IG musician @nikeboyocta approached me about inspired by Van Halen’s “Dreams” (video above). Look for more on IG and in coming weeks!
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In the meantime, this page formerly had what I affectionately dubbed a “starving artist” section on little side hustles you could do (mostly on the internet, often with a phone) to make a few bucks here and there, often in gift cards. Well, now you can listen to this show (as well as other podcasts) and get paid to do so! Check out https://www.podcoin.com/ to listen to the show and start earning points that you can redeem for gift cards (Amazon, Target, Starbucks, etc) or donations to a number of charities. Use the code “Thirteen” when you sign up to get 300 extra points. The Thirteen Hour Podcast is now on BONUS this week, so you can earn more than normal (1.5x).
Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Not long ago, my brother and I wrapped up the last installment in our second homebrew D and D roll20 campaign that my brother created based on The Thirteenth Hour. This one was quite different from our first – more traditional, I suppose, in that it took place in the wilderness, had monsters, and more fantasy elements, like barbarians, magic spells, faerie circles, and dragons. Unlike our first adventure, where our adventurers remained in the confines of a city and the enemies were more of the 2 legged human variety, this adventure also had a number of traditional D and D “monsters” (for lack of a better term). Our heroes even got to adopt one (a griffon), and it will be interesting to see what that means in the future. There was still a human element, though perhaps Stephen King described it best in writing about all the horror in just human nature that can exist below the surface in your typical small town (in this case, Aquaria, the sleepy hamlet that the heroes of The Thirteenth Hour, Logan and Aurora, come from).
Check out this blog post Jeremy wrote about this adventure to get a more behind the scenes look at what he was aiming for when writing it.
Click on the links below to watch all the episodes on youtube or just listen to the audio podcast style (most episodes run about 1.5-3 hrs).
Some of the creatures encountered on this mission – owlbears and griffons!
A scene from the final battle – sea serpent vs. mechanic dragon! (Basically like a Godzilla movie)
The town of Aquaria gets to know their barbarian neighbors in the Wild Lands and try to settle their differences.
Stay tuned for the next adventure in the land of Neva! There will undoubtedly be some throwbacks to the foes seen in our first adventure, which can be found here.
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Catch the latest updates of the homebrew roll20 campaign my brother created based on The Thirteenth Hour. In this episodes, our heroes replenish their supplies and get some new gear while not only avoiding getting taken prisoner by a group of barbarians but then forming a kind of friendship with them. In addition, there is the taming of wild horses found in the Wild Lands, a barbaric part of the world filled with savage humans and wilder beasts.
You can watch episode 8 by clicking on the title picture above.
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Catch the latest updates of the homebrew roll20 campaign my brother created based on The Thirteenth Hour. In these two episodes, our heroes chase a group of men who kidnapped orphans and may just be selling them and have to jump into a fairy circle that transports them to the Wild Lands, a barbaric part of the world filled with savage humans and wilder beasts. Lester and Claudia both almost die in combat several times – good thing they thought to bring emergency rations!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Catch the latest update of the homebrew roll20 campaign my brother created based on The Thirteenth Hour. In this episode, Lester and his crew infiltrate the now creepy Aquarian orphanage and do battle with otherworldly shapeshifters!
Jeremy based the shapeshifters on this passage in The Thirteenth Hour:
You can watch the entire campaign here:
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Catch the latest update of the home brew roll20 campaign my brother created based on The Thirteenth Hour. In this episode, Lester pulls an all nighter with two wizards to try to get to the bottom of the ghostly business baiting Aquaria. He ends up being able to communicate with the dead! Bet he didn’t bet on that when he took on this case.
In the course of the episode, there were choices about whether to go to sleep or stay up to investigate (involving sneaking around in and out of peoples’ rooms like a total creeper, kind of like in the game The Last Express, discussed here.
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week continues the recording (part 1 and part 2) I did of my first real foray into Dungeons and Dragons with a campaign my brother created using a backstory for the next installment in The Thirteenth Hour. The Wayfarer finds a Rocketeer style jet pack this episode that may feature in a future installment.
After the campaign ends, my brother and reflect on the experience, and we talk about a few what ifs.
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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Awayis now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
This week continues the recording (part 1 here) I did of my first real foray into Dungeons and Dragons with a campaign my brother created using a backstory for the next installment in The Thirteenth Hour. Here are some photos from this week:
Breaking out of the cell.
The party of four about to break out of the can.
… and into the fire …
Getting singed by a dragon …
Stay tuned for part 3 next week!
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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Awayis now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Despite having grown during the 80s, I never got into the whole Dungeons and Dragons fad. I think I might have liked it had I had a group of like-minded friends to play it with, like in Stranger Things, but I didn’t know anyone like that. It was also a lot harder to find out information in those days, so if it wasn’t in the public library or the Yellow Pages, it might as well not have existed. I did discover bits and pieces that were related, like D and D game books, but really had no conception of what an actual role playing game was until much later, and when I actually found out it was like acting in a play, I was woefully disappointed. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but it surely wasn’t a big game of make believe – that was for kids, wasn’t it?
So, although I had to admit, the little figures and the game books always held a certain curiosity, my interest never really went any further than that. In addition, it all looked needlessly complicated, and in the day and age of computers, what appeal could imaginary landscapes, dice, and turn based battles have?
A lot, actually.
Like a lot of things, your perception and experience of them depends on whether you are at a point in life to be receptive to them. At this stage of my life, while I still enjoy playing a handful of video games (generally limited to times when I run on a treadmill), I often find the idea of them more appealing than actually playing. While video games have the capacity of awakening the senses and transporting you to a virtual world and an immersive story, more often than not, I find myself getting frustrated with how much like work they seem. If I’m lucky enough to have a few minutes free, the last thing I want to do it spend it on some mindlessly repetitive fetch quest or filler that game developers stuck in to add bloat to their game. And as someone with young children, I find it increasingly frustrating to combat the inevitability of all the screen time in the average child’s life these days (and that’s to say nothing for the average adult, who might spend much of the day in front of a computer screen tapping out TPS reports or something similar). There’s something appealing about slower paced, more analog forms of entertainment.
Enter Dungeons and Dragons – as an adult. If it weren’t for my brother, who also discovered D and D later in life, none of this would have happened. But after he got into it, played a few campaigns, and began functioning as a dungeon master (the person who organizes and coordinates the whole campaign for the other players and serves as narrator and referee), he offered to create a 1:1 campaign to allow me to experience this little piece of the 1980s that I missed.
And that’s what the next few weeks will be – a showcase into a little, self-contained campaign that Jeremy created based on a little segment for the next Thirteenth Hour book. I gave him only a few lines and character sketches to go by, but from those humble beginnings generated several hours of play that opened my eyes and changed my mind as to what this slower paced gameplay could be like. And I finally understood not only how much fun an actual role playing game could me (and not just a digital representation), but how people could spend all day on a D and D campaign, forget to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom 🙂
The main character is this little adventure, who features heavily in the next two Thirteenth Hour books, is called the Wayfarer, a half-elf freedom fighter who has been captured and locked up in a makeshift dungeon. While the method of his escape wasn’t something that I was planing to go into in the actual book, it made for a great backstory and gave Jeremy room to add and modify it as he wished to make the campaign more interesting.
In this episode, I talk a little about the backstory to set up the gameplay. Since I audio-recorded a few parts, there will be a part the includes the first battle, which actually went on a little longer than anticipated and made me think of “turn based combat” in a while new way.
Here are some pictures from the campaign. We didn’t go entirely analog, though. Jeremy used a program called Tabletop Simulator to create visuals to simulate the little figurines, maps, and gameboards that can add depth to a game a help a D and D Luddite like me understand what’s going on.
I finally learned what all the funny shaped dice were for. It was also a great exercise as a writer to create my character, the Wayfarer (since I had to do that anyway). There’s something about the D and D character creation process, though, that helps to make more fully fleshed out, 3D fantasy characters.
Below are a few Hero Forge digital figurines Jeremy created to represent the Wayfarer (the jetpack comes in part 3).
This fellow (not sure where he came from) provided Jeremy the inspiration for Abram, the Wayfarer’s prison break accomplice.
So in summary, I’d have to say that as a parent, I’d much rather have my kids get together with actual, live, in-the-flesh human beings and use their imaginations and problem solving skills to go through a Dungeons and Dragons campaign than play the equivalent in digital form with virtual players. Stay tuned for part 2 next week!
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Between Two Worlds, the synth EP follow up to Long Ago Not So Far Awayis now out for streaming on Bandcamp.
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
As always, thanks for listening! Thanks for coming on the show, Brent! It was a pleasure!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Today’s episode is a discussion on rewatching the animated film, Fire and Ice, directed by Ralph Bakshi and produced by him and Frank Frazetta, who provided many of the character designs. My brother, Jeremy, and author Chad Derdowski came on the show after watching the film to give our reflections (click on the movie poster below, painted by Frank Frazetta, to get a copy of your own):
-Not that it needs one, but Fire and Ice may get a remake (allegedly … supposedly … possibly … you know how these things go). Some concept art here.
-Dark Wolf later inspired a similarly clad comic hero called Jaguar God … the first issue cover was a borrowed Frazetta painting.
-Despite different directors and different studios/animation styles, you can buy the whole (well, kind of) animated Lord of the Rings saga:
And a bit on the Dark Wolf character from the film, which we touched on during previous episodes Chad featured in (hear parts 1 and 2 here) – a combo of a “sword and sorcery” Batman (as Jeremy put it) crossed with the Death Dealer character Frazetta created and painted numerous times:
Lastly, I leave you this image of Blackstar, a similarly clad figure that went with a sword and sorcery cartoon of the same era about an astronaut that lands on an alien planet. He has a tagline that reads “Astronaut defender of freedom with glow in the dark star sword.” Does it get any more 80s than that? 🙂 (You can watch the series on youtube.)
And if you like sword and sorcery, check out Chad’s books! The following tracks were inspired by them:
I’ll end with more info on where you can find the book that inspired these tracks:
The bonus track, called “Flight of the Cloudrider” has a 80s movie mashup music video (see if you can identify all the movies!) which is available on youtube. This app was largely created with the iphone app Auxy.
Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.
Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.
Today’s episode is #3 in a three part telling of a fantasy short story by Ed Greenwood about Elminster the mage from the TSR Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of Valor. In this episode, Elminster meets his match and is helped by a friend. There’s also an afterword that talks about how Ed Greenwood and many others created the Forgotten Realms universe – essentially an open source multisite project spanning decades.
Found this funny picture with a quote from our man of the hour. I guess when you have lived 5 centuries, it’s easy to be zen about such things.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
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Today’s episode is #2 in a three part telling of a fantasy short story by Ed Greenwood about Elminster the mage from the TSR Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of Valor. In this episode, we find out why his going to the mage Con creates such havoc. My daughter refers to him as a “trouble maker.” But he’s sufficiently well known, trouble maker or not, to have his own wikipedia entry, where you can learn about him and his creator, Ed Grrenwood:
This illustration is from the cover of a companion to Realms of Valor, called Realms of Magic.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
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Today’s episode is a three part telling of a fantasy short story by Ed Greenwood about Elminster the mage from the TSR Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of Valor. He’s apparently a kind of Gandalf -like figure in the Forgotten Realms D and D world. In this episode, he goes to a wizards’ convention, and trouble finds him.
This picture by Ned Dameron shows Elminster and his travelling companion and bodyguard, Storm Silverhand.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and@the13thhr.ost for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
Today’s episode is part 2 of the fantasy short story from the TSR Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of Valor, “The Bargain” by Elaine Cunningham. It centers around a half elf character called Arilyn Moonblade and her companion, Danilo Thann, and in the episode, we learn why the story is called as it is. If you missed the previous episode, here it is.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and@the13thhr.ost for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
Today’s episode continues the theme of the last two weeks – reading aloud a fantasy short story from the TSR Forgotten Realms anthology Realms of Valor. This one is called “The Bargain” by Elaine Cunningham and centers around a half elf character called Arilyn Moonblade and her companion, Danilo Thann. Here a pic of the two striking heroic poses, painting by Fred Fields:
So, like the last two weeks, listen along as I continue to butcher the names left and right and try to avoid putting in running commentary when I don’t understand something. I’m getting a bit better. I think if I had started with stories like these when I was a kid instead of books that just had cool covers, I might have made out better with fantasy in general.
To be continued next week!
The first page of the story had this title illustration by Ned Dameron. He did a number of illustrations for the Dark Tower books if that name rings a bell.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Today’s episode continues where we left off last week (in the reading of “Dark Mirror” by R.A Salvatore from the anthology Realms of Valor) as Drizzt, the dark elf, and his magic panther with the unpronounceable name continue their travails to free a band of prisoners from some bad, bad creatures.
So, like last week, listen along as I continue to butcher the names left and right and try to avoid putting in running commentary when I don’t understand something. But, the great thing about this story is that although it starts off simple enough, like a traditional fantasy story with the bad guys (orcs) and the good guys (human farmers), it becomes less and less clear as the tale progress who the good and bad creatures actually are. I feel like if I had read more of this breed of fantasy story when I was a kid, I might have had a better time with the genre in general. Oh well.
Apologies for the audio quality on this episode. I had a lot of trouble recording for some reason. The only way to get rid of the weird buzzing in the background was to try to clean up the audio enough it softens parts a bit too much.
I finally found the artist, Todd Lockwood, who did the great picture, entitled “Orc King,” from last week’s show notes. Click on the full picture below to go to his website:
The first page of the story had this title illustration by Ned Dameron, which makes a little more sense this week than it did last week. He did a number of illustrations for the Dark Tower books if that name rings a bell.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Today’s episode starts a two part reading of a short story called “Dark Mirror” by fantasy author R.A. Salvatore from the D and D Forgotten Realms world. It comes from a compilation of short stories in the book Realms of Valor. Listen along as I butcher the names left and right and try to avoid putting in running commentary (everything probably would make more sense if I were more familiar with the world or Dungeons and Dragons). I enjoyed it, though – I feel that since I write in this genre, I should at least try to educate myself a little … This story, which we’ll finish next week, has the popular dark elf character, Drizzt. (I mangle his name, too, and holy smokes, forget about his cat’s name. I tried.)
The first page had this title illustration by Ned Dameron.
To be continued next week!
As always, thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
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Today, Joshua Robertson, whose work has been featured a number of times here, comes back on the show to catch up and talk about exciting new developments. He was last on the show on Episode #32 over a year ago, so a lot has happened since then! His fan base has grown considerably, and he’s made the leap to being a full time author.
This year, he completed this trilogy of novels:
The last volume of the series, Maharia, just came out. Click on the picture of the book below to read a preview! Stay tuned in the near future as this series is becoming an audiobook trilogy.
He will also be a regular contributor to the fantasy site Fantasy Faction with a column on writing, cover design, and many other tips for aspiring and current authors. (By the way, he recommends the book, The Fantasy Fiction Formula, as a great guide for writing in this genre.) As with the last time he came on the show, there are lots of great writing tips for aspiring authors, so check out the episode for a listen. If you are and were a Dungeons and Dragons player at any point, you may also find his take on how D and D has helped his writing.
Here’s how to reach him and find more of his work:
Youtube Goblin Horde – Josh and his partner have an unbelievable 9 kids together, and they run a Youtube channel about some of the things they do with their can as well as parenting tips
Lastly, he has a novelette available for free on Amazon, which you can download to checkout his writing and get a taste of his Thrice Nine Legends fantasy series (click on the cover to go to the page).
It was great having Josh again on the show. Look forward to hearing about the exciting things in store for Josh in the next year.
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The ending track, called “Between Two Worlds” was inspired by some of the introspective parts (like this one) from the soundtrack The Crow by Graeme Revell. Watch for it on bandcamp in the next few weeks.
As always, thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and@the13thhr.ost for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
We talk more sci-fi and fantasy movies from the 80s this episode … like this one:
My brother, who you may remember as my first phone guest in Episode #30, recently visited for the holidays. We did an in studio recording while trying to paint little plastic miniatures for the sequel to The Thirteenth Hour while discussing 80s movies and games we’d both enjoyed as kids. This is part 2. You can find part 1 here. We continue reflecting on 80s films in this episode and touch on a few favorite video games from the 8 bit era as well.
Here are some of the movies and games we talk about:
-Highlander: The Animated Series (you can watch the series on youtube)
-E.T.
-Earth to Echo (a modern homage to E.T.)
-The Iron Giant (80s in nature)
-The Back to the Future trilogy
-Howard the Duck (here are some clips set to music from the movie with vocals by Lea Thompson and appearances by Jeffrey Jones and Tim Robbins – Don’t Turn Away and the ending song where Howard pulls some Marty McFly guitar riffs onstage).
As I mentioned last week, while were having this conversation, we were trying to paint little miniatures from Hero Forge, a site that allows you to create more or less custom miniatures (I made Logan and Aurora for the sequel to The Thirteenth Hour). We had no idea what we were doing, really, though I got a lot of good tips from Mhawkinsart and Knives_mcdougal on Instagram. Here are some pics of the process:
It was messy …
My first attempt at painting Aurora … She kind of reminds me of an amphibian here.
Doing the faces was really hard …
Yup … none of these guys are going to win beauty awards … not that appearances are everything …
My second attempt at doing Logan – now he looks like a burn victim.
The final attempt – now Logan looks like Mickey Mouse! But I’ve lost patience to it again …
…but Aurora I think looks a bit better … the whole process of painting these little guys reminds me of soldering electronics (never was great at that) or trying to pipet things in a lab (bad memories from college), but it was cool to see the final effect. There’s one more figured to go … you’ll see periodic updates on Instagram.
You can follow Jeremy on Twitter and Instagram as well to get real-time updates and his unique insights into games and how we play them. He’s written a number of insightful articles on his Tumblr blog. Here are some representative articles on the Lone Wolf game books and Quest for Glory (also here).
Happy New Year, and thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and@the13thhr.ost for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
We talk sci-fi and fantasy movies from the 80s this episode …
My brother, who you may remember as my first phone guest in Episode #30, recently visited for the holidays. We did an in studio recording while trying to paint little plastic miniatures for the sequel to The Thirteenth Hour while discussing 80s movies and games we’d both enjoyed as kids. We took the opportunity to rewatch a few, including Willow and The Last Starfighter, and I recently rewatched E.T., so those adult reflections on beloved children’s impressions formed a core of this episode. Here are some of the films we touch on:
-E.T.
-Willow
-The Last Starfighter
-Labyrinth
-The Dark Crystal
-War Games
-Flight of the Navigator …
Since it’s quite long, I’ve broken the talk into two segments. The last segment, which also talks a little on video games, will come out next week.
While we are having this conversation, We were trying to paint little miniatures from Hero Forge, a site that allows you to create more or less custom miniatures (I made Logan and Aurora for the sequel to The Thirteenth Hour). We had no idea what we were doing, really, though I got a lot of good tips from Mhawkinsart and Knives_mcdougal on Instagram. We did our best, but since it was basically our first time doing, some parts were pretty shite, and the faces came out pretty dysmorphic. So I’ll post those later. But Jeremy made this picture of our initial attempt:
Happy New Year, and thanks for listening!
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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!
Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s instagram pages: @the13thhr and@the13thhr.ost for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art, 80s music, movies, and pictures or songs from The Thirteenth Hour books.
Today, I’ve very pleased to welcome dark fantasy author Joshua Robertson to the show. It was a fun conversation and a chance to talk about all kinds of things related to fantasy, writing, and the like.
Turns out that we had very similar journeys in writing – he created a fantasy world as a kid (1999) and then re-edited the manuscript for a long time until recently publishing the stories he’d worked on since adolescence. In fact, his first novel released publicly, Melkorka, he re-wrote 7 times! Holy persistence, Batman!
He also discusses some of his most recent works, including Dyndaer, which was just released.
If you’re curious about some of the short stories that we read and discussed on the podcast, here are titles and links:
A Midwinter Sellsword – an ongoing short story series based on a table top game world.
Anaerfell – the short story that introduces readers to the Thrice Nine Legends series – Josh recommends that new readers to his works start here.
Josh’s ongoing story on Wattpad, The Eadfel: Game of Houses, is available here.
The story that I’m trying to turn into a novel, the modern retelling of the sleeping beauty fairy tale, is on Wattpad here.
If you’re an author or considering becoming one, Josh discusses a lot great information I wish I’d known years ago! To use a handy but one of those annoyingly overused catchphrases of internet marketing, he brings a lot of high value content to the conversation (as well as to the podcast)! Pay particular attention to his discussion on the importance of listening to your critics, making personal relationships with people on social media, starting the process of building your audience early (before publication – if you recall nothing else, remember this!!), the importance of a mailing list, and what he found most helpful as a young writer.
And … if you’re an author and are interested in publishing a short story through Josh’s publishing company, Crimson Edge, check out this anthology entitled “Maidens and Magic” – still taking submissions until 6/1/16. Check it out!
Joshua currently lives in Alaska with his wife and children. In 1999, he began crafting the world for Thrice Nine Legends, including Melkorka and Anaerfell. He is also the author of the A Midwinter Sellsword and Gladiators and Thieves in the Hawkhurst Saga. His short story,Grimsdalr, is inspired by the tale of Beowulf.
It was great having Josh on the show. Josh, if you’re seeing this, know you’re welcome back anytime!
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Before I go, I’ll leave you with a work in progress – as I mentioned, The Thirteenth Hour is getting an ending song. Since it’s a book inspired by 80s films, I figured it needed an 80s style ending song replete with synthesizers and electric guitars. It’s not done, since the vocals still need to be worked in, but I’ve finally finishing recording the instrumental parts, which you can listen to here, on The Thirteenth Hour soundtrack page on Bandcamp. Look for updates on the soundtrack page on Instagram (@the13thhr.ost).
Amazon giveaway for the children’s book, Your Star Will Glow Forever, is open until 3/22/16! Stop by to see if you can score a free copy. Mailing list subscribers find out about future giveaways and days when books go free early!
As always, thanks for listening!
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Here is a link on Goodreads to the historical gothic romance adventure books written by Madeline Brent, pseudonym for author and comic book written Peter O’Donnell. He was creating great independent female characters before it was as trendy to do so as it is now.
Although not mentioned in the podcast, another book that I remember enjoying in grade school that is somewhat similar to books like The Neverending Story (but written for a somewhat younger audience) is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
Episode 18 will talk more about comic books and illustrations.
Thanks for listening! Feel free to leave comments below!
The 3rd edition of The Thirteenth Hour will be officially launched on 1/13/16, on its one year anniversary. Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks!
This is a continuation of my previous post that looks at media influences behind The Thirteenth Hour. Previously, I talked about how novels, illustrated children’s books, and graphic novels played into the writing and art style of the book. Today, we’ll be looking at how movies and television programs did the same. I’ve tried to include links for each where you can find out more if curious; all pictures are linked to their source sites.
Movies/TV:
–ET– I was obsessed with this movie when I was eight years old. As much as I liked the idea of an alien visiting my backyard, I think I also wanted to Eliot, the main character, too. I mean, he got to drink Coke out of a can, had Star Wars action figures, and ate Reese’s pieces. In 1988, that seemed like the bees knees as far as I was concerned. And, he was a misunderstood youth who was picked on and bored at school – a sympathetic main character for an eight year old trying not to zone out while the teacher went on about long division. There was also a scene near beginning of the film where his brothers are playing a board game I thought was Dungeons and Dragons (more on this below … or maybe the game Tunnels and Trolls), with little men and a diorama-like set that (I guess) was supposed to by a dungeon (you can sort of see it below and in this clip).
That seemed awesome at the time, too. I created the character of Alfred, the boy who falls asleep in class and dreams the events in The Thirteenth Hour, with at least a little of Eliot in mind.
–The Neverending Story – another contribution to the Alfred character was one of the main characters from this 1984 film, Bastian, the boy who finds The Neverending Story book in an old bookstore while running away from bullies and gets transported inside its covers. I saw this movie before I read the book. They both have different merits, but I must admit that from the start, with the swirling, dreamscape clouds (see below) and 80s synthpop theme, I was hooked.
–The Last Starfighter – another 1984 film about a young man, Alex Rogan, from a trailer park who is recruited into an interstellar space war after acing The Last Starfighter arcade game implanted on Earth by an enterprising alien recruiter. Although I don’t think I realized it at time time, there are a lot of parallels in this story to how Logan from The Thirteenth Hour is recruited by Wally, a fast talking wizard, into becoming an Imperial Ranger. There’s even a part where Wally tries to convince Logan he should stay in the Imperial Rangers, just like how the film’s alien recruiter tries to convince Alex he’s destined to be a starfighter and not just a kid from a trailer park. (At least, that’s how I remembered it, I haven’t seen the movie in a long time.) And, now, as I write this, I’m just realizing that Logan and (Alex) Rogan sound … kind … of … alike. (I can’t remember if his last name is mentioned in the film, but it’s the one listed on imdb.com.) Hmm. I guess the things you consume do influence you in unconscious ways. But … that’s kind of the point of this site – to explore where all this came from as much as possible!
–Labyrinth – a film featuring a young Jennifer Connelly playing a girl that faces off against David Bowie (in tights and big hair) in a labyrinth filled with fantastical creatures to rescue her infant brother, who is kidnapped by David Bowie’s goblins. Why David Bowie has goblins and is wearing tights is anybody’s guess, but it might have something to do with it being 1986. Jim Henson and his team created the goblins for the film, and it’s a wonderful example of puppetry prior to films dominated by CGI. I recently rewatched the movie with my brother, and we felt to held up pretty well over the years. But one thing I was struck by this time was a scene where David Bowie is pointing at a clock with 13 hands:
Umm … 13 hands … 13 hours … uh … was I aware of this at the time when I wrote The Thirteenth Hour? I’d seen the movie for sure; it was one of my favorites since first seeing it at age nine or so, but I honestly can’t remember looking back 16 years. Who knows; like I said above, the unconscious works in weird ways.
–The Flight of Dragons – this early 80s animated film (which I think was done by Japanese animators since the characters have that vaguely early 80s anime look) is another story in which the protagonist is transported into a parallel world, this time into the world of a game.
In the game’s world, there is a (if I remember correctly) subtle romance between the main character (the guy in the bowtie) and the princess character (the piece on the right). Now, I haven’t watched this movie since I was in elementary school, but I seem to remember this part of it was, well … nice. Yeah, really nice. There was a kind of warm, fuzzy, wistful feel about the way the writers portrayed the growing attraction between these two characters. Not sure what was responsible for this – it have been could be the 80s Japanese influence or just two and a half decades of fuzzy memory at work, but that’s what I remember for whatever reason.
–Flight of the Navigator – another 80s film in which a boy meets an alien (in the form of a spaceship), though this time, he’s abducted and transported 8 years into the future. I think the scenes of the ship and its interior served as inspiration for some of The Thirteenth Hour‘s locations, like the Palace of the winds, with it’s floating chairs and staircases.
(the page this picture is from has lots of other great movies on it with clips and comments)
There are also some great scenes of the ship zooming through the clouds and over water, which was sort of what I was envisioning when Logan zooms around the sky on Lightning in The Thirteenth Hour. I wonder if this was something of an 80s movie staple – films like The Neverending Story, The Flight of the Navigator, and The Lost Boys come to mind as ones where there is aerial footage of flying through a sunset-lit clouded sky. I tried to do something similar in the book trailer. I guess it was my way of paying homage to these films.
Update (2/7/16): Old and new covers of Logan soaring and backflipping in the skies.
–The Sword in the Stone – This animated film from the 1960s had a great portrayal of Merlin the wizard. It was based on the first part of the book, The Once and Future King by T.H. White, but this was one of the few cases where I enjoyed the movie more than the book.
There’s one part where Merlin transports himself to Bermuda, and when young (future King) Arthur asks where that is, Archimedes, Merlin’s pet owl and requisite Disney animal sidekick, says, (roughly) “Oh, some place that hasn’t been discovered yet.” In the picture above, you can see Merlin is sporting shades and Bermuda shorts. And that gives you some idea of the humor they imbued in the film. I tried to give a nod to these kinds of anachronisms with the banter Logan has with Lightning, as well as with Wally, Wander, and William (these three wizards I envisioned looking something like the Merlin in this cartoon).
–Willow – unlike some of the other examples above, in this 80s fantasy film, there is no alternate world in which the protagonist is transported. You started off the movie in it, which, after all the parallel universe shifting in 80s movies, was a nice change of pace. (You can only stretch the fantasy thing so far – when fantasy characters pop up in the modern world and end running around in New York city or something, it gets a little weird.) Anyway, I saw this when it first came out, thought it was basically the second coming, and now am kind of afraid to rewatch it for fear it may not have aged well (that’s probably true of a lot of these films, by the way). However, I remember liking the epic score. And, the idea of an unlikely, somewhat naive hero going on a quest to save a world is a fantasy staple that never really gets old. Joseph Campbell has written about the archetypal tale of the hero’s journey and why it has appealed to us throughout the ages.
–Legend – like Willow, the world of Legend is self-contained. It also has Tim Curry in tons of makeup and a young Tom Cruise running around in armor but no pants (which, if you’re a straight dude, fail). The story in this one I remember being, how shall we say … a bit shite. I also saw it as a teenager, so I was probably a bit more critical than I would have had I seen it earlier. But I recall enjoying the scenes with the unicorns and liked the soundtrack, which if I remember correctly, was a more traditional score (by Jerry Goldsmith) in some versions and a synthesizer-based one by Tangerine Dream in others. I saw the synth one, and though I think fans of the film often knock it for being out of place, I thought it fit just fine for the 80s (The Neverending Story did something similar). And, what the hell did I know at the time – it made perfect sense for unicorns to be frolicking about with a pantless Tom Cruise doing roundoffs on a table in the fight with Tim Curry while electric guitars and synthesizers wailed in the background. I loved every bit of it, and that’s why I made a synth theme for The Thirteenth Hour.
As a total aside, in my opinion, the Tom Cruise character (like Noah Hathaway’s Atreyu character in The Neverending Story) had great hair. Maybe it was more fashionable in the 80s when big hair was a thing, but to my untrained eye, I thought the longish, somewhat unkempt look was the perfect ‘do for an unassuming hero, and gave Logan from The Thirteenth Hour something similar. Again, this may be just me looking back 16 years later and trying to make connections out of thin air, hey, if the shoe fits …
(Movies and book illustrations obviously don’t have to contend themselves with the obvious realities of trying to make hair like this look at least somewhat presentable. Having unfortunately dabbled in the longish hair for a time when trying to um … save some funds, I erroneously thought long hair would be less hassle than short hair since you had to cut it less and do less with it – you know, like combing it. Right? Nope.)
–The Black Cauldron – like Willow above, this Lloyd Alexander book spun into an unlikely children’s movie, which I remember being quite dark for Disney, was another example of the hero’s journey, where a reluctant hero (an assistant pig keeper, I think) goes on an epic journey because he believes in something bigger than himself. I haven’t seen the film in a long time, but if I remember right, there’s also a cute romance that develops between the main character and the female lead, that, like in The Flight of Dragons, portrays those awkward, tentative first steps young adults make on their way to figuring out what love is. In the future, perhaps I’ll write more about this aspect of writing Logan and Aurora’s relationship in The Thirteenth Hour, but for now, I’ll say that it look quite a few years to get their story right, as I suppose it took a number of years of life experience to be able to reflect and write about something that is so central to human existence, yet so mysterious and complex.
-“Wildfire” (cartoon) – a hard to find Hanna Barbera cartoon from 1986 about a girl who has another identity in a parallel universe and a magic horse called Wildfire that can transport her back and forth. I remember it most for its catchy theme song which stuck with me all these years. I can’t say this for sure, but I’m sure there was a reason why I thought it was important to have songs as a part of The Thirteenth Hour. Maybe this is one of them.
–“Dungeons and Dragons” (cartoon) – I had no idea what Dungeons and Dragons was as a kid. I mean, I knew it was some kind of game set in a fantasy world with the potential for quests and epic battles and creatures like dragons and elves, and I had a few choose-you-own-adventure style D&D books that made the whole things seem just … epic, like something out of a video game (but almost better, since the graphics sucked back then). Then, when I was older, I found out what a “role playing game” really was – you, well, played a role. Like in a play. You had to act. And you had little funny shaped dice that decided your fate. I never did figure out if you got to have those little action figures like in the ET scene and what, if anything, you did with them. I mean, I don’t know what I expected, but for some reason, I remember being incredibly disappointed. Looking back, I think what I really wanted was what video games now are capable of offering – an immersive fantasy world. But obviously, that didn’t really exist in 1987 (or if it did, I certainly didn’t know about it). But … there was this little cartoon which I watched sometimes on weekend mornings. I don’t think I really understood what was going on, either, but it had knights, wizards, and dragons, and that was good enough for a seven year old.
In the next post, I’ll continue the video game talk and how my stumbling attempts at playing them influenced the creation of The Thirteenth Hour.
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Breaking out of the cell.
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The Thirteenth Hour 