Author: Purple Wyrm

With Apologies to Leon Payne…

Can you fry me up some slab, Mamma?
‘Cause I’m as hungry as can be
Life in this hive is just so drab, Mamma
You know that everyone hates me

Like the Gangers with their hair, Mamma
Down by the manufactory arch
There was some lightning from the air, Mamma
And now they’re turning them to starch

Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
The warp into my mind it drips
Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
They’re gonna take me to the ships

You won’t believe the things I’ve seen, Mamma
When I lay me down to rest
I’ve been having crazy dreams, Mamma
About this lady named ‘Slaanesh’

She has all these wild plans, Mamma
And they all seem really great
But I just don’t understand, Mama
Why she keeps calling me ‘The Gate’?

Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
You think I’m gonna lose control
Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
They’ll put those bindings on my soul

You know the Temple by the shore, Mamma?
Well I was feeling kind of lost
So I walked in through the door, Mamma
But everything got rimed with frost

An Ecclesiarchy Clerk, Mamma
Offered me the Emperor’s Grace
Well I kind of went berserk, Mamma
And somehow melted off his face

Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
Please Mamma hide me here at home
Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
Don’t let them feed me to the Throne

Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
The Inquisition’s drawing near
Think I’m a Psyker, don’t you Mamma?
But Mamma…
Didn’t you die last year?

(And some versions of the original, in case you’re not familiar…)

Wasp

The shape of the Australian continent and its position on the globe means that Perth summers are plagued by hot winds from the east.

A high pressure system halts its drift eastwards over the shallow waters of the vast bight that cuts into the continent’s southern edge. Its anti-clockwise winds sweep out across the Tasman Sea, swing north, then west, crossing the Queensland coast laden down with heat and moisture from the tropical waters of the Coral Sea.

Continuing west they encounter the ancient line of the Great Dividing Range, whose complex ridges and plateaus wring out the moisture like a fist squeezing a sponge. The warm, dry air rolls down the far side of the range into the vast plains of the interior. As the wind continues westwards the land becomes dryer and drier until it transitions into the red-dirt deserts of the continent’s dead heart.

The wind races across the Tanami desert of the Northern Territory and crosses the Western Australian border into the Gibson, soaking up heat from the burning land and blazing sun. It starts to swing southwards, passing out of the deserts and across the Wheatbelt, rattling the kernels on their stalks, and ascending the gentle rear slope of the Darling Escarpment before finally cresting the ridge and falling upon the city, bringing all the heat of the central deserts with it.

As long at the high pressure system remains in the bight the easterly wind grows stronger, hotter and more northerly until the city – buffeted by scorching gales – bakes in temperatures in excess of 40 centigrade. But eventually the pressure behind the high grows too great and it grinds back into motion, resuming its eastwards course. The winds shift dead north, fading away to nothing, then return from the south, cooler but laden down with moisture from the Southern Ocean, and the city perspires until the humidity fades, a new high moves into the bight, and the cycle begins again.

My primary school (elementary school for Americans and other aliens) stood on top of a hill with the parish church at one end of the block, separated from the years one to three classrooms by a narrow gap, leading to the grotty old toilet block and the long grassy slope down to the school oval. A concrete pathway hugged the school side of this gap, the rest was theoretically grassed, but the baking summer sun and the regular passage of hundreds of juvenile feet meant that it was usually a morass of hard baked sand and stone shards. The gap was oriented south east and when the summer easterlies got going it formed a perfect wind tunnel, scouring the bitumen assembly yard at the school’s front with gale force furnace blasts, laden with grit from the exposed ground.

So it happened that one baking summer day my best friend Gerald (stress on the second syllable please) and I were perched on the low wall surrounding the church, just in front of the gap. We were about nine years old and the easterly was howling through, pelting us with sand – but sitting in the wind felt slightly cooler than sitting in the still, baked air of the verandah or lunch area. We were discussing whatever it was that nine year old boys discussed in the mid 1980s when I felt a sudden, intense, stinging pain in my left foot.

Looking down I beheld a tiny wasp – no more than five millimeters long, pinned by the wind against one of the leather straps of my school uniform mandated sandal. As it struggled to free itself it raised its abdomen and plunged its stinger into my foot for a second time.

I swatted it away and – not being a particularly robust child – immediately burst into tears, crying and wailing at both the pain in my foot and the brutality of the universe in general.

Gerald helped me limp across the assembly yard to the school office where we expected to find Mrs Marsh – the school secretary – who could always be relied on for a sympathetic ear no matter how ridiculous our problems. Instead we found Mrs Billington the school principal, who on being informed of my dilemma immediately lowered herself somewhat in my opinion by asking if I’d got the sting out, despite my clearly stating that I had been stung by a wasp.

Entomological ignorance aside I was soon furnished with a cold drink, some anti-inflamatory cream and a bandaid and was allowed to lie down in the sick room for a while, which is really all a healthy nine year old requires when stung by a microscopic insect.

So that is the story of the only time I have ever been stung by a wasp.

The Sons of Pavlach

This post is part of the Skereig Subsector project

NAME: Sons of Pavlach
CHAPTER MASTER: Matteus Vyev
HOMEWORLD: Freo Prime, Insignus Cluster, Skerieg Subsector, Chiros Sector, Segmentum Tempestus
FORTRESS MONASTERY: The Anchor
RECRUITING WORLDS: Freo Prime, Saversnake III
PROGENITOR CHAPTER: Unknown. Raven Guard Presumed.
FOUNDING: Unknown. Earliest Known Reference 300.M36
GENESEED DEFECTS: Defective Melanchromic Organ and Betcher’s Gland. Missing Mucranoid.
CODEX COMPLIANCE: High Compliance
BATTLE CRY: Spectant Tenebris – “Look to the Darkness”
TACTICAL SPECIALTIES: Stealth, Infiltration
STRENGTH: Estimated at 847 Battle Brothers as of 985.M41

The Sons of Pavlach Astartes Chapter is based on the ocean world of Freo Prime in the Skerieg Subsector of the Chiros Sector of the Segmentum Tempestus. Established since at least 300.M36 the Chapter’s Fortress Monastery is constructed within the planet’s highest mountain – the Anchor – which is located near the centre of the world’s only continent.

Aspirants are recruited from the fishing people of the planet’s main archipelago, and expeditions are made approximately every 20 years to the feral world of Saversnake III to supervise the ‘Games of Ayefel’ – a tournament held to select the strongest and most athletic youths for induction into the Chapter.

Similarly to their presumed progenitors in the Raven Guard, the defective Melanchromic Organs of the Sons of Pavlach result in pale white skin and coal black hair and eyes. Unlike the Raven Guard however they possess semi-functional Betcher’s glands capable of generating a dilute form of the acidic venom produced by other marines. They completely lack the Mucranoid system.

Non-Astartes personal interacting with the Sons of Pavlach have reported unusually high levels of unease – occasionally approaching outright panic – in their presence, beyond that typically categorised as “transhuman dread”. It is theorised that this is the result of a low-level or subconscious psyker ability inherent in the Chapter’s geneseed. The Subsector authorities prefer to communicate with the Chapter via vox and viewscreen over which this effect does not manifest – a preference that does not appear to concern the Chapter in the slightest.

The current Chapter Master is Matteus Vyev, a native of Freo Prime who was promoted from Captain of the Second Company in 878.M41 after the death of Chapter Master Kristoss Mann and First Company Captain Lang during the Purge of Adderstone.

In case you were wondering, the Sons of Pavlach – originally the Freo Marines – began as a joke based around creating Space Marine chapters out of AFL teams. But then I decided to incorporate them into my Skerieg Subsector project and had to clean them up some. They are now slightly less ridiculous, although it is sadly unavoidable that any AFL fan would recognise their origin immediately.

Anthemic

Well, we made it. The horror year of 2020 is behind us, and we can now look forward to fresh, new horrors in this year of our lord 2021 (I suspect they will involve bees).

I broke my usual habit of going to bed early to express my contempt for a calendar that assigns the turn of the year to a completely arbitrary point, and stayed up ’til midnight – partially to make sure that 2020 actually ended, and partially because they were playing a repeat of the latest Red Dwarf special which I missed when it was on the other week. It was actually not bad, not as good as the original series of course, but a lot better than their last effort. Watching this one was fun, whereas Back to Earth was just painful.

Hang on, there’ve been three entire series between Back to Earth and The Promised Land?! And I was not informed!?

Anyway, not here to talk about that. Here to talk about the national anthem.

It was announced today that the line of Advance Australia Fair reading “For we are young and free” is being changed to “For we are one and free”. Doing something about this line has been on the left wing agenda (an agenda that – lest anyone get the wrong idea – I am fully in favour of) for the last few years, after it was pointed out that our nation is home to the oldest living culture on Earth, and hence any description of our country as ‘young’ is appallingly exclusionary to indigenous Australians. The replacement of ‘young’ with ‘one’ was suggested – or at least bought to the attention of the mainstream – by Gladys Berejiklian last year, and here we suddenly are.

(The fact that the change was publicised by an embattled Liberal – which is to say conservative, Australian politics can be very confusing – state Premier probably has a lot to do with Scumo’s mob of reactionary neocons actually doing something for Indigenous Australians. Can you imagine them changing the national anthem at the behest of Dan Andrews?)

My feelings on this change are mildly mixed. I fully support changing the word, but I’m not super keen on the way the new line scans. That said however I have for many years been firmly of the opinion that Advance Australia Fair is a terrible song anyway, so screwing up a single line is a small price to pay to address – no matter how minutely – some historical injustices.

So, why is Advance Australia Fair such an awful song? Well, to start with the tune is a goddamn dirge. Get a military band with trumpets and things to play it and it can sound somewhat regal, but it hardly lends itself to spontaneous outbreaks of national pride. As a song for the common citizen to whip out at, say, a sporting event, it’s a complete non-starter. It’s slow, it’s dull, and attempting to speed it up to give it a bit of kick just makes it sound like the theme to The Beverly Hillbillies.

Then we come to the lyrics. They were written in 1878 by Peter Dodds McCormick who wrote under the pen name “Amicus”, which probably tells you 90% of what you need to know about him. The original words as written by this faithful son of the Empire are notable for being composed in the second-rate faux-classical mode so beloved by Victorians with literary pretensions, and are very, very, very pro-British, pro-Empire and anti-anyone or anything else…

Australia’s sons, let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil,
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains let us sing,
Advance, Australia fair.

When gallant Cook from Albion sail’d,
To trace wide oceans o’er,
True British courage bore him on,
Til he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England’s flag,
The standard of the brave;
“With all her faults we love her still”
“Britannia rules the wave.”
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance, Australia fair.

While other nations of the globe
Behold us from afar,
We’ll rise to high renown and shine
Like our glorious southern star;
From England soil and Fatherland,
Scotia and Erin fair,
Let all combine with heart and hand
To advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance, Australia fair.

Should foreign foe e’er sight our coast,
Or dare a foot to land,
We’ll rouse to arms like sires of yore,
To guard our native strand;
Britannia then shall surely know,
Though oceans roll between,
Her sons in fair Australia’s land
Still keep their courage green.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair.

Out of four verses, three of them are all about how great Britain is, which is kind of weird for a song that claims to be about Australia. It’s riddled with pretentious ’tils and o’ers and e’ers and even with those it can’t manage to properly fit the words to the tune. There are half rhymes, far too many uses of “fair” – including an instance of rhyming “fair” with “fair” – and the inclusion of the word “girt”, which – while a fine word of noble pedigree – in a song sounds like the vocalist swallowed their tongue halfway through the line. The words are repetitive, lugubrious, and let’s not even get started on the overwrought syntax of the phrase “Advance Australia Fair” itself.

In 1901 the third verse was replaced with the following…

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross,
We’ll toil with hearts and hands;
To make our youthful Commonwealth,
Renowned of all the lands;
For loyal sons beyond the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair!

Now this contains the one decent line in the entire song – Beneath our radiant Southern Cross. This line is so good in fact that it could lead one to presume that McCormick had nothing to do with the new verse, but he soon regains his stride by invoking “loyal sons” and jamming 15 syllables into 14 notes forcing the singer to break rhythm and gabble out “combine-to” in a desperate attempt to keep pace.

The song replaced God Save the Queen as our official national anthem in 1984 with the following revised set of two verses…

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil;
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.

Which, with the change from “young” to “one” in the second line, is the version sung today. McCormick’s “Australia’s sons” has been replaced with “Australians all” which is a bit awkward but fully justified (providing a precedent for trading scansion for inclusivity) and the pro-Empire “loyal sons beyond the seas” has been cleaned up. They still left “girt” in their though.

So, this is the anthem we are stuck with. Personally I’d prefer to salvage the line about the Southern Cross, throw the rest in the bin and then come up with some suitable versus fitted to the jaunty march bit of the Space Battleship Yamato theme, but that’s probably just me.

Happy new year!

The Skereig Subsector

This post is part of the Skereig Subsector project

Click to Enlarge. It’s really big and impressive!

Overview

The Skereig Subsector is located in the Chiros Sector on the western side of the Segmentum Tempestus, close to the border of the Segmentum Pacificus, around 22,500 light years from Holy Terra. It has remained loyal to the Emperor for several thousand years, despite occasional isolation by warp storms and Xenos incursions.

The subsector extends for 15 light years around the Skereig system, although the furthest inhabited world is just over 8 light years from the capital. There are numerous uninhabited worlds further out, some of which are scheduled for colonisation over the next few centuries.

As of 991.M41 the subsector is dealing with the aftermath of an invasion by the Orks of Waaagh! Krumpfist, who attacked from the galactic south-west in 923.M41. Invasions of several systems – including Cnossath and St Cuthbert’s Slumber were repelled, but two systems remain under Ork control. The Subsystem Governor has been appealing to Imperial authorities for support in retaking these systems for over 7 decades, particularly the agriworld of Feargal, the loss of which has caused food shortages across the subsector.

Saints

The two most popular Saints in the Skereig Subsector are Saint Guinefort and Saint Beinagrind.

Saint Guinefort was the pet canid of High Ecclesiarch Zosimus CXXXVII of the Orphean Conclave. During an official visit to the Basilica of Saint Hermon on Skereig Prime in 885.M39 the Ecclesiarch was informed that he could not bring the animal inside. He reacted to this by immediately canonising the creature. Unable to bar entry to a confirmed Imperial Saint the door wardens reluctantly acquiesced and the canid accompanied the Ecclesiarch to all religious services for the duration of his stay in the subsector.

The general unpopularity of the Ecclesiarch – who was notable for his more worldly appetites – appears to have encouraged adulation of his saintly canid instead, although it is certainly possible that such worship was initially tongue in cheek, only transitioning to a genuine cult in later centuries.

Saint Guinefort is invoked as a protector of children and a defender of the Emperor’s realm against Xenos infiltration. He is typically depicted as a noble hunting hound with yellow or golden fur. This is despite accounts from the period describing the animal as resembling a stumpy-legged, overstuffed sausage with thinning fur and a jowly, scowling face.

Typical Icon of Saint Beinagrind

Saint Beinagrind, also know as the Holy Skeleton or Saint Bones is said to have been martyred on Ragnar’s World some time in M36. During a time of religious schism he remained true to the Imperial Creed and was executed by having his flesh scraped from his bones with sharpened scallop shells. Afterwards his bare skeleton arose and took holy vengeance by killing his persecutors. Attempts to correlate the legend with historical records have failed, nonetheless the Holy Skeleton remains popular on all worlds in the subsector, invoked against heresy and loss of faith.

Saint Beinagrind is typically depicted as a human skeleton bearing a scallop shell in its left hand and a fishing harpoon in its right – this being the tool he is said to have used to slay his murderers.

Notable Worlds

Cnossath: Cnossath is a Knight World allied to the Adeptus Mechanicus Forgeworld of Volund 27. It is home to three Knight Houses, Ventris, Cashel and Krater and with the assistance of the Valhallan 294th “Toecutters” Astra Militarum Regiment repelled the Orks of Waaagh! Krumpfist in 925.M41. More on Cnossath…

Dullrock 431: Apparently named by an extremely bored Explorator this lifeless body was later found to be rich in numerous rare minerals, with mining colonies established in the early 300s.M41. The highly corrosive atmosphere requires all colonies to be heavily shielded, with the majority of facilities placed deep underground adjacent to the ore deposits. Some Ork landings were reported in the 920s.M41, but the hostile conditions appear to have made short work of the would-be invaders.

Feargal: A highly fertile agriworld, Feargal supplied much of the subsector’s grain before being occupied by the Orks of Waaagh! Krumpfist in 923.M41. An expedition to reclaim the world has been waiting for Astra Militarum support for close on 75 years.

Gruts: An agriworld famous for a variety of wild truffle traditionally prepared by frying in butter. Several forested areas of the planet have been left undeveloped solely for the production of these rare delicacies.

La Salle: An arid, sun-blasted, desert world, La Salle is rich in rare mineral salts which are extracted by convicted criminals from across the subsector. Being condemned to the salt mines of La Salle is as good as a death sentence for all but the strongest convicts, with very few surviving the 20 years of servitude required for a preliminary parole hearing.

Mandrenke: The ocean world of Mandrenke teems with life, almost all of it inimical to humanity.

Ragnar’s World: An ocean world chiefly notable for the subsector’s main Naval facility, the orbital shipyards of Port Ragnar. It is also the reputed site of the martyrdom of Saint Beinagrind and many pilgrims make the journey to worship at the Grand Basilica on the island of Saint Skeleton, or the smaller, rival, Shrine of Bones on Beinagrind’s Strand.

Ravenser: The subsector’s only significant hive world, Ravenser has six major hive cities and around four-dozen smaller dependent hive conglomerations with a total estimated population of around 120 billion. The majority of the subsector’s manufactured goods are produced on Ravenser with raw materials sourced from the system’s three massive asteroid belts.

Keeping the population of Ravenser fed has always presented a challenge, but has been particularly problematic since the occupation of agriworld Feargal by the Orks in 923.M41. Food related riots and uprisings have become a permanent feature of the planet with three entire regiments of Skereig Varyags seconded to the planetary Arbites to enforce the peace.

San Guinefort: Named after the Saintly Hound, San Guinefort is home to the Battle Sisters of the Order of the Argent Veil – a minor order believed to have split off from the Order of the Sacred Rose in the early M40s.

St Cuthbert’s Slumber: An unremarkable agriworld, St Cuthbert’s Slumber was invaded by the Orks of Waaagh! Krumpfist in 924.M41. The attackers were successfully confined to the northern continent, but the Xenos scourge was not completely eliminated until 932.M41. Advice on proper cleansing of contaminated areas from Valhallan units in the relief force has kept feral Ork outbreaks to a minimum.

Werinos: Werinos is a mostly oceanic world with highly acidic oceans. The major native form of life are gigantic bacterial colonies established around deep geothermal vents and extending into the planetary crust. These colonies produce massive amounts of volatile gas which diffuses into the oceanic water column, from which it is extracted by thousands of floating platforms and piped to refineries on the single, middle sized continent on the planet’s equator for conversion into promethium. Promethium exports from Werinos provide upwards of 80% of the subsector’s fuel requirements.

Much technology on Werinos and on the nearby Forgeworld of Volund 27 has been adapted to use the gas in its raw form, with both planets’ manufactoria greatly skilled in the production of highly efficient gas turbines. The experimental Werinos Pattern Gatling Cannon uses two such miniature turbines for power, providing the same rate of fire as a standard Punisher Cannon with a simpler mechanism and fewer moving parts. Deployment of Werinos Pattern cannons on the battlefield is currently limited by the difficulty of keeping them supplied with gas – they are common on both Werinos and Volund 27, but are rare elsewhere.

Hottest 100 2020

It’s that time of year again! Well, to be truly accurate it was that time of year again some weeks back when I put my votes in, but it’s that time of year when I get around to posting them on the Wyrmlog, so there!

Anyway, what I mean is that I’m posting my votes in the Triple J hottest 100 – the objectively (by which I mean subjectively) best 10 songs of the year, plus a few extras that didn’t quite make the cut. Here we go!

Alex the Astronaut – Lost: Alex has been kicking it out of the park this year, I probably could have filled up half my list with her songs. But I try to limit myself to one track per artist, so went with my fave. It covers the same ground as Ben Fold’s classic Brick but more thoughtfully and with a hopeful ending.

Come & Go [with Marshmello] – Juice WRLD: As a grumpy old contrarian I really didn’t rate Juice WRLD, and I have a deep seated puritan streak that limits my sympathy for anyone who kills themselves with recreational drug abuse. But this track really has something. Those guitar and drum loops are outstanding!

Walk my Way – Harper Bloom: A sweet little love song with a dorky but cute made-in-lockdown video.

Word of the Day – RAT!hammock: “Lately it seems everyone’s dreams are in half-time” is one of the best descriptions of the pandemic I’ve heard to date. There’s plenty of other good lyrics and an equally good tune, but it’s the trumpets cutting in towards the end that make this one really work for me. Another great lockdown video, this time tapping green screen technology for everything it’s got.

Flying – Last Dinosaurs: A upbeat yet mellow club track with a great baseline. Not a lot else to be said!

nostalgic (luvsick) – renforshort: renforshort has no truck with capital letters! That build to the chorus and the drop with the guitars make this one simply irresistible.

Bagi-la-m Bargan [Ft. Fred Leone] – Birdz: As with most white Australians I was bought up to idolize James Cook. This song is a much needed kick up the arse to remind us that his ‘voyage of discovery’ was the harbinger of genocide and dispossession that we’ve only barely started acknowledging and taking responsibility for.

Breathe Me – Stace Cadet & KLP: This cover of Sia’s original is simply incandescent. I don’t have words to describe it. Song of the year!

Fresh out of Love – E^ST: Lush and romantic but with modern hip-hop sensibilities. Or something like that. Damn good, anyway! A fine follow up to Talk Deep which I definitely would have voted for last year had it come to my attention in time.

WAXIT – Dennis Cometti: If you’re West Australian and you’re not voting for this call for succession then what the hell is wrong with you? A tongue in cheek celebration of everything great about WA and how the eastern states can take their NRL and Daylight Saving and plundering of our GST revenue and shove it!

The song that feels particularly appropriate this year, what with Clive Palmer trying to force open our hard border and the federal government backing him right up until the moment they realised they were courting statewide electoral annihilation for a generation in doing so, and ran for the hills. Also I could hardly not vote for a song whose clip features the beloved Bayswater subway – just down my street – in its natural state of having a truck stuck under it.

So there we have my ten picks. Songs that almost made it include Dance by Julia Stone, and Caught in the Middle by Alex the Astronaut.

Stay tuned for an update on how many of these even make it in to the countdown!

EDIT: And only about an hour after I posted this the Bayswater subway claimed another victim!

Don’t Say Suicide

NOTE: This post discusses issues of suicide and self harm. If this may be triggering or upsetting for you, please feel free not to read any further. If you feel like you need help in this area then please contact a crisis line for assistance

OTHER NOTE: I AM FINE! This post is about stuff that happened at high school many (far too many!) years ago. While I am certainly no paragon of mental health, I am not in any kind of distress and am not contemplating any kind of self harm. I just feel like discussing some high school memories in my usual irreverent manner. Thank you for any concern, it is appreciated but I assure you quite unwarranted!

One particular year back in high school everyone suddenly seemed very concerned about suicide. I don’t know if there was a particular event that triggered this concern, I certainly can’t recall any of my fellow students attempting self harm, although to be fair it was not the kind of thing that would be openly discussed in the early 90s and I was not sufficiently connected to the school’s gossip network to pick up any rumours. Possibly it came down as a dictate from the Catholic Education Department, perhaps triggered by an incident at another school or as some kind of reaction to the rising popularity of Grunge music. In any case, without warning all our Religious Education classes suddenly switched to telling us why trying to kill ourselves would be considered a very bad move, both personally and spiritually.

Now, this in itself was no bad thing. No one could seriously suggest that trying to prevent teenagers from harming themselves is problematic. What puzzled my friends and I at the time however – and continues to puzzle me to this day – was the very strange way the anti-suicide message was presented. Whether this was due to the powers that be having to quickly come up with materials, some odd strictures of the Catholic church, or simply someone in an important position suffering from a chronic case of Dunning–Kruger is a mystery that will probably never be solved.

According to the information presented to us, teenagers attempted suicide for one of two reasons…

1: As an attention seeking strategy

2: As a means of revenge against people who (they feel) are mean to them

…and as such all the anti-suicide material we received was aimed at showing us how self-harm was an ineffective method for dealing with either problem.

For instance, in the first case, we could end up dead! Think about that! Our attempts at drawing attention to ourselves by taking a bottle full of pills, or cutting our wrists, or jumping in front of a train ran a very real risk of killing us! We didn’t want to end up DEAD did we? Of course not!

The second case was best illustrated by an anti-suicide video apparently obtained from the United States. It started with an angsty looking teen standing in a black void angrily making statements like “That’ll show them! They never appreciated me! Well now I’ve got the last laugh! Hah! They’re going to feel so bad now!” And then a deep voice, trying to sound – I seem to remember – like James Earl Jones but not quite succeeding, came out of the void and asked “Well what now?”. The teen, still seething with self-righteous anger, asked “What?”. The voice asked again “What will you do now?”. The teen looked shocked and stuttered “I… I don’t know…”.

While we considered the metaphysics of this, the video continued into a documentary about a second rank hair-metal-band who felt they had to do something about the ‘suicide problem’ among teens, so recorded a song called Don’t Say Suicide. They talked at length about how important the song was and how it would help prevent kids from self-harm – they even went into detail about how a teenager rang up a radio station and asked them to play his favourite song because he wanted to hear it before he killed himself, and the DJ played Don’t Say Suicide instead and the teen called up afterwards to say the song had changed his mind, and the band felt really great about that!

The tone of the piece was very strange. It seemed to veer between suicide prevention, a band-promo and a whole bunch of humble-bragging. At the end it cut back to the teenager in the black void, realising that he’d made a mistake and was now stuck in the black void forever. Whoops!

All of this education about why killing yourself was not a good way to get either attention or revenge was capped off with a reminder that suicide was a mortal sin, so if you did it you’d go to hell for all eternity – which is presumably that black void where not-James-Earl-Jones would question your choices until the end of time. So don’t do it kids!

The inanity of all this was best summed up by a friend of mine who sitting in art class after one of these R.E. sessions posed the question “What if you want to die just because you’re really tired?”. Our carefully administered regime of suicide-proofing provided no answer to this at all.

I guess out teachers did their best to address a difficult subject with the materials presented to them, but even at the time we students could see the inadequacies of the program. I sincerely hope that no student across the education system suffered because of them – although it’s almost certain that they did. And I presume that today’s schools recognise that self-harm and suicide are complex issues requiring more than sitting students down in front of a video of a hair metal band and threatening them with eternal damnation to solve.

(The friend who posed the question in art class is still with us, and turned out fine, just in case you were worried.)

When writing these kinds of posts I generally make it a practice to write down what I remember first, then check the actual historical details. As such I have now determined that contrary to my recollections, it was not an obscure hair-metal band that recorded Don’t Say Suicide but (apparently) well known Christian rock musician Rick Cua.

The song is simultaneously catchier and more religious that I remember, neither of which is surprising considering I only heard it once almost 30 years ago.

Vinegar Tom

Well, it’s been a while.

The world continues to burn down around our ears, but WA is (for now) COVID free, vaccines are being rolled out and the orange dingus in the White House is on the way out – assuming he doesn’t manage to get a coup up and running. There’s also a nice planetary alignment tonight, which will be great as long as I remember to go out and take a look at it.

I have been busy for the last couple of months producing a couple of expansions for the classic board game Arkham Horror. As is usual with me I decided to wait until the worst possible time to do this – Arkham Horror 3rd edition is out and has been out for quite some time, but I’ve been building my expansions for 2nd edition not only because 2nd edition is clearly far superior, but is also (more importantly) the only version I have access to.

The first expansion – Hyperborea – is based around the Hyperborean cycle of stories by the wonderful Clark Ashton Smith. I actually started work on this about five years ago, but the project popped back into my head a few months back so I jumped back in and finished it. It has not been play tested, but should be a bit of fun.

When I get myself a bit better organised I’ll host it here on the Wyrmlog. Until then it can be downloaded from the following dropbox links…

The other, much larger expansion is based on Ramsey Campbell’s Severn Valley setting. I got the card creation part of this sorted over the weekend – which involved learning how to create plugins for Strange Eons, ow my poor brain! – and just need to write up the rules, so hopefully it will be ready to go by new year.

In the course of this project I was reminded of the strange case of the familiar spirits allegedly uncovered by Witch-Finder General and all round psychopath Mathew Hopkins in 1644. The story – as with all stories of ‘witch’ finding – is tragic, with a number of harmless old women tortured and murdered, but did produce some wonderful weirdness in the supposed names of the familiars the witches are said to have provided. Here, take a look…

Here we see a number of the creatures the witches supposedly summoned along with the deliriously delightful names they attributed to them. “Sacke and Sugar”, “”Pyewackett”, “Griezzel Greddigutt”, “Peeke in the Crowne” and best of all “Vinegar Tom”. In my opinion – almost four centuries on – Vinegar Tom is a simply brilliant name for anything. I wouldn’t mind being called Vinegar Tom, would you?

Thoughts of this nature led to me coming up with the following ridiculous novelty. Yes, you can now find out what your name would be were you a familiar spirit from the 17th century! If of course that’s your idea of a morally acceptable good time…

As is the way of these things I created this silliness in a white heat of creativity with the result that my own familiar name is the somewhat dull Newes Elme Tree. I could have gone back and rejigged the options to create something more exciting, but that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, enjoy! And keep an eye out for the upcoming release of Severn Horror, where you can summon up all the imps mentioned by Hopkins, should you be willing to risk your strength and sanity to do so!

Volcanoes and Sulphur and Geysers oh my!

As is my way, rather than deal with the various important things that should be occupying my attention I’ve instead been thinking about Minecraft and how it needs a volcanic biome.

The Volcanic Biome would be a rare, warm biome and consist of stone, gravel and terracotta. Plants would be limited to dead bushes, tree stumps and occasional mushrooms and berry bushes. There would be extensive lava lakes and scattered lava source blocks – the latter especially underground so mining would be problematic.

There would be no villages, although perhaps ruined villages (nothing but stone walls left) could be a feature. There would be occasional lakes, mostly floored with magma blocks.

Open topped ravines would be common. Also common would be long, linear caves – lava tubes – just under the surface. Some of them would be roofed by gravel, so having the ground collapse beneath your feet would be a constant risk, which would be particularly unfortunate over one that’s still full of lava.

Volcanoes – conical hills with deep, lava filled shafts at their crests- would of course be common.

The real attraction in the Lava Biome however is geysers!

A geyser block only occurs in a Volcanic Biome. It is extremely hard and if broken is destroyed – unless broken with a Silk Touch pick. It naturally generates on the surface layer with between 1 and 5 lava blocks in a line below it. A water block generates on at least one side.

As long as a geyser block has a lava block below it and is touching a water block on at least one side it will randomly erupt. An eruption is preceded by an increasing rumbling sound for a few seconds (giving players time to run away). It then shoots a stream of particles upwards 5 metres for every lava block below it, to a maximum of 25 metres. Blocks above the geyser will suffer damage and may be destroyed – as per an explosion.

The particles fall to the ground like snow, but inflict fire damage on any mob they hit. They build up in layers, again like snow, and can be harvested with a shovel – although they are tougher than snow and each layer removed only has a 20% change of producing a drop. Particles falling on a geyser block are destroyed and do not create layers – thus keeping the geyser clear.

There are at least two types of geysers, white and yellow. White geyser layers drop bone meal, making them an excellent source of fertilizer. Yellow geyser layers drop sulphur, which is a new resource that can be used in dyeing and potion making. Most importantly it can be combined with charcoal and bone meal to produce gunpowder!

So that’s the idea. I expect my cheque from Mojang directly!

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