Geekery – Wyrmlog

The Haunted Elf’s House

In the middle of my shower this morning I suddenly realised that the Crone World sequence from Gav Thorpe’s Path of the Outcast (the third in his Path of the Eldar series) absolutely must have been influenced by M.R. James’ The Haunted Doll’s House.

The Haunted Doll’s House (written for the library of Queen Mary’s Doll’s House) concerns – unsurprisingly – a doll’s house that replays a ghostly vision of a murder and its consequences. You can read the whole thing here – which I strongly advise you to do as it’s one of my favourite of James’ works – but the important elements for our purposes are that a couple with two young children murder a frail old man in his bed before he can alter his will to cut them out…

It was time to look at that upper window. Through it was seen a four-post bed: a nurse or other servant in an arm-chair, evidently sound asleep; in the bed an old man lying: awake, and, one would say, anxious, from the way in which he shifted about and moved his fingers, beating tunes on the coverlet. Beyond the bed a door opened. Light was seen on the ceiling, and the lady came in: she set down her candle on a table, came to the fireside and roused the nurse. In her hand she had an old-fashioned wine bottle, ready uncorked. The nurse took it, poured some of the contents into a little silver saucepan, added some spice and sugar from casters on the table, and set it to warm on the fire. Meanwhile the old man in the bed beckoned feebly to the lady, who came to him, smiling, took his wrist as if to feel his pulse, and bit her lip as if in consternation. He looked at her anxiously, and then pointed to the window, and spoke. She nodded, and did as the man below had done; opened the casement and listened – perhaps rather ostentatiously: then drew in her head and shook it, looking at the old man, who seemed to sigh.

By this time the posset on the fire was steaming, and the nurse poured it into a small two-handled silver bowl and brought it to the bedside. The old man seemed disinclined for it and was waving it away, but the lady and the nurse together bent over him and evidently pressed it upon him. He must have yielded, for they supported him into a sitting position, and put it to his lips. He drank most of it, in several draughts, and they laid him down. The lady left the room, smiling good night to him, and took the bowl, the bottle and the silver saucepan with her. The nurse returned to the chair, and there was an interval of complete quiet.

Suddenly the old man started up in his bed – and he must have uttered some cry, for the nurse started out of her chair and made but one step of it to the bedside. He was a sad and terrible sight – flushed in the face, almost to blackness, the eyes glaring whitely, both hands clutching at his heart, foam at his lips. For a moment the nurse left him, ran to the door, flung it wide open, and, one supposes, screamed aloud for help, then darted back to the bed and seemed to try feverishly to soothe him – to lay him down – anything. But as the lady, her husband, and several servants, rushed into the room with horrified faces, the old man collapsed under the nurse’s hands and lay back, and his features, contorted with agony and rage, relaxed slowly into calm.

In Path of the Outcast the focus character – Aradryan – joins an expedition to an ancient, abandoned palace on a Crone World in the Eye of Terror. He soon finds himself beguiled by ghostly visions of the Eldar who once lived there…

Before he even realised what he was doing, Aradryan was beside the bed, stroking a hand across the silk-like covers. He did not need to sleep, he told himself as he turned and sat down on the edge of the bed. He would just sit here for a few moments, recharging his strength. He could see why such a place had been constructed; from the bed the sea seemed to come right up to the window, its wordless voice urging him to close his eyes and relax.

Aradryan most definitely did not sleep. He did not even close his eyes, and stayed sat on the edge of the bed staring out at the alien sea. Despite being very obviously awake, the ranger started to notice that things were becoming decidedly dream-like. For a start, his waystone was gleaming gold and hot to the touch when he lifted his fingers to it. On top of that, he was not alone on the bed. He did not dare turn around, but he could feel the presence of someone else behind him, their weight on the mattress.

Delicate music tinkled in the distance, soothing and quiet, echoing along the empty corridors and across abandoned rooms. Except the corridors and rooms were not empty and abandoned. The figures of eldar moved around the apartment, several of them gathering by the window in front of Aradryan, holding hands with each other as they looked out across the waves as darkness descended. They were a family, two small girls with their mother and father. The person behind Aradryan called out a series of names and the family turned with smiles, the children breaking free to run to the bed. One of them leapt onto the mattress, passing straight through Aradryan.

Bolting to his feet, Aradryan turned to look at the ghosts. The eldar from the portraits, eyes lined with greater age, lay beneath the covers, which were rucked back to reveal his thin shoulders and shallow chest.

The music had stopped, and the small girl who had leapt onto the bed was not smiling any more. Her tiny hands were at the old noble’s throat, and there were shouts and rings of metal from across the palace grounds. Old scores were being settled, the extended families dividing into factions, sectarian violence erupting between them to decide who should inherit the luxurious planet-manse.

[…]

Behind the aristocratic-looking eldar, the girl on the bed had finished strangling the old noble and was pulling the heavy rings from his fingers, while her sister had joined her and was using a knife to cut his hair, pulling free gemstones from the bindings thus freed.

So, in both stories we have a haunted building that produces visions of an old man being murdered in his bed by his heirs (including two children) over a disputed inheritance. Thorpe’s version is more shocking – which is only to be expected when dealing with pre-Fall Eldar who were downright horrid – but the story elements are exactly the same.

I am amazed it took me this long to notice the similarity, given my fondness for both the James story and the Crone World sequence. I guess if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best!

Early Morning Musings on a Portrait of Kermit the Frog as the God Emperor of Mankind

Why’d I make so many sons I called Primarchs?
And why aren’t half on my side?
Konrad has visions, and Magnus illusions,
And Corvus just likes to hide,
Guilliman’s anal, the Lion loves secrets, and Vulcan is really tall,
Someday I’ll finish my webway connection,
And then I can dump them all,

A Zurvár Miscellany

A storage place for a collection of Zurvár related info posted to Reddit…

The majority of Zurvár have a genetic intolerance to alcohol (a standardised mutation of the ALDH1 gene) resulting in nausea and flu-like symptoms after consuming it, so it is generally not a part of Zurvár culture. Instead they drink prozyá, a carefully brewed combination of specific land plant and seaweed components with herbs and fruits added for flavour.

A few glasses of prozyá have a similar mental stimulant effect to a really strong black coffee, combined with a boost in physical energy, enhanced balance and reflexes and mild euphoria. A mild hangover consisting of drowsiness and slowed reflexes can be expected a few hours later, but truly epic amounts must be consumed to cause actual illness.

Prozyunstá (translatable as ‘heavy prozyá‘) is a variety of prozyá tweaked to increase euphoric and intoxicating effects. It’s generally comparable to 5% alcohol beer in effect and has a similar hangover if over consumed. Many Zurvár consider prozyunstá to be the drink of the immature and degenerate, but it’s still just as popular as regular prozyá.

Most settlements will produce their own prozyá, and claim it to be far superior to that produced by their neighbours.

The Vratoi are a race of psychic predators from an alternate universe that are the inspiration behind many of Earth’s vampire legends. They feed by stimulating fear, using the emotion as a gateway into their victims’ minds from where they drain off the brain’s artonic energy – a process that can very easily kill if overdone. It’s not entirely clear if the Vratoi need to feed on artonic energy or if they simply do it because they enjoy it – sadistic narcissism appears to be a common Vratoi personality trait.

Many reports of vampire activity – both historical and modern – can be shown to be the result of Vratoi leaning into vampire lore to make feeding more effective. There are some however that cannot be explained this way, which suggests that there are other things going on.

The Zurvár believe that the soul is made of three components, each of which has a different fate after death.

The Iris or “Spirit” is an immortal life-force that is incarnated again and again, gaining knowledge and experience with each incarnation. In between incarnations it dwells in the spirit world of Tekáda.

The Nelat or “Self” is the conscious, individual spirit of a Zurvár that is created when the Iris enters the body during pregnancy. On death the Nelat accompanies the Iris to Tekáda and lives there eternally among the Ancestors, watching over the living.

The Selár or “Shadow” is created at the moment of conception and is linked to the Zurvár’s impact on the world. After death the Selár remains in the world and gradually dissipates, finally vanishing when the last person to have known the Zurvár dies.

Existence as an Ancestor in Tekáda is said to be impossible for the living to understand, but a common metaphor is a vast beach dotted with millions of campfires. Each fire is an Iris and the Nelat that hosted that Iris in life are seated around the fire. Someone who performed great evils in life will not be allowed to sit around their fire and will have to exist in the darkness and cold outside of its light. Whether this state is permanent or whether an exiled Nelat can be redeemed is a matter of long debate with no firm answer.

Whether any of this is true is unknown, it’s simply what the Zurvár – to a greater or lesser personal extent – believe.

My multiverse is an infinite number of alternate universes arranged linearly in a sixth dimension. If you know how you can open gates between them and just step on through – although it’s best to check that conditions on the other side are conducive to your staying alive first.

There’s also a minimum ‘distance’ that gates can be opened across. Yes, there’s a universe right next door where the only difference to this one is that a leaf fell off a tree in Poland half a second earlier, but the ‘distance’ between this universe and that one is so tiny that it’s almost impossible to open a gate to it.

Happily the minimum distance is a matter of physics, so ‘almost impossible’ should really be read as ‘impossible unless something super weird happens’. Cross universe identity theft is a genuine issue – and something the Metaphysicians’ Guild tries to control – but it’s a bit risky because the number of differences between adjacently-accessible universes is high enough that any documents or information obtained in one universe cannot be 100% relied on to be identical in the other. There are still people willing to give it a go though!

In my main setting any sapient being has the potential to learn Metaphysics (psionics) because the necessary energetic structures are what makes consciousness possible.

Whether they’ll be any good at it is another question entirely!

‘Magic’ in my main setting is actually psionics, or ‘psychic powers’. There is a genetic component to it in that some people have a natural talent for it, and that talent tends to be inheritable, but almost everyone can learn a few bits and pieces.

I think of it like playing the piano. Pretty much everyone can learn to play the piano adequately if they put the time and effort in, but some people have a gift that makes it much easier. And there are people who don’t have any such gift but can play brilliantly because they’re willing to put in a huge amount of practice and effort. And finally there’s a small amount of people who simply lack the coordination to ever do anything more than slowly pick out ‘my father’s socks’ with a single finger.

My setting is actually a multiverse that includes modern Earth (one of things ‘metaphysics’ – which is to say psionics – allows is opening gates between alternate universes). Worlds are defined as metaphysically-aware and non-metaphysically-aware based on whether they’ve uncovered the the science of psionics.

On aware worlds everyone can use psionics as long as they’re willing to put the time and effort of learning in, and they obey the law, which tends to look down on things such as non-consensual mind reading, rewriting of memories, teleporting valuables out of bank vaults and telekinetically throwing cars around. The fact that so much ‘fun’ stuff (for a certain value of ‘fun’) is illegal means that most people learn the basics of shielding their minds from intrusion and leave it at that – throwing cars (or even cardboard boxes) around takes a lot of practice and effort and simply isn’t worth it for most people.

On non-aware worlds (like Earth) most people are unaware that such things are even possible outside of comic books and History Channel documentaries. This of course means that people who do somehow figure it out have massive potential to be complete assholes to everyone around them.

A statement of shock or amazement among the Zurvár is minak sâ, which literally means “false/mistaken star”. As a seagoing people the stars are extremely important for navigation, and mistaking one star for another (or some other light for a star) can be extremely dangerous.

An expression of annoyance or anger is išká or išká ná which literally means “shark”. Išká by itself is considered fairly mild – few would bat an eyelid at a child saying it. Adding the intensifier ná transforms it into the equivalent of “fucking hell!” so should not be used in polite company.

The history of the Metaphysicians Guild is a bit complex, but on the basic level it’s creation was spurred by a group of occultists in Victorian London figuring out how to travel between universes and then screwing up badly enough to draw the attention of a more advanced culture (the Wyrms) who were already debating about setting up a body to try and protect non-metaphysically aware societies from paranatural threats.

The Guild was officially founded in 1908, and is based on an alternate Earth named Metaphysica (many of the Victorian occultists were foundation members and they weren’t very creative with names). It monitors around a dozen alternative Earths, but tends to have a bit of a focus (arguably an unfair one) on our own Earth (Earth-000001) since that’s where so many of the original members came from.

The de facto HQ of the Guild is the city of De Chirico on Metaphysica, which occupies the same spatial coordinates as Paris, France.

Over the years the Smithsonian has collected various artifacts too metaphysically active to be put on display. Most of these are merely inconvenient – like the pair of Abraham Lincoln’s shoes that shuffle around on their own at night – but some are actively dangerous. The Smithsonian stores all of them in a secure warehouse in Wesley Heights.

The Adams tunnel complex is a maze-like series of drainage and utility tunnels connected to the Potomac river and the old Washington City Canal. There are high levels of revenant activity, some of it actively hostile, and at least one gate which periodically opens to let creatures best described as ‘zombies’ through from a currently unidentified parallel universe. These beings are fast moving and violently hostile, happily they show no signs of intelligence and fear sunlight to the extent of never venturing above ground – even at night – and their condition is non-contagious.

The existence of the creatures was actually discovered by the United States Government during security crackdowns after the events of September 11. The Department of Homeland Security sealed up most access points to the tunnels and maintains armed patrols to keep the numbers of creatures down. The Guild monitors these but lets them get on with it – largely because it means Guild resources don’t have to be spent doing the same thing.

So you’re driving through rural North Dakota. You’ve been on the road for a couple of hours and you’re getting tired, but there’s a town about 20 miles down the road where you can pull over, get a coffee and stretch your legs, so you keep on driving. And driving. And driving. By now you absolutely should have reached the town, but there’s no sign of it. You grab your cell phone to check the map but there’s no signal. You pull over and get out of the car. The road stretches on straight in front of you and behind you – straight as a line – and to either side there’s flat, empty prairie with no fields, no farms, no nothing. You get back into the car and keep on driving. Maybe you even turn around and try to get back to that farm you passed half an hour ago. But you can’t find it. No matter how long you drive for there’s just the dead-straight, empty road and the Endless Prairie. Eventually you run out of gas. Do you wait for help? Do you get out and walk? You have a few snacks and a bottle of cola, but what happens when they run out…

Why or how this happens isn’t understood. Some very lucky people find that the prairie gives out and they find themselves driving into a town (which is how the Guild know that the phenomena exists in the first place) but what triggers it, how it can be prevented and how people stuck in it can be rescued are all unknown. The best the Guild can do is try and stop people from entering the affected area, but two or three people are lost to it every year.

The Guild monitors a number of highly active sites in Key West, but a quirk of the categorisation system places the entire Florida Keys in Region 000001-18 (the Caribbean). It’s claimed that this is for complicated administration reasons but according to rumour it’s because the current Regional Director loves the daiquiris at the Green Parrot.

An “Achilus” is a weak spot in reality that allows stuff to drift through from alternative realities. They’re useful if you want to save energy when travelling between worlds, but less useful if there’s one in your backyard that keeps letting through wasps the size of a buick.

(The wasps immediately die because there’s not enough oxygen in our air to support them and the bodies really stink up the place).

Zurvár Arèáná has a population of sapient dolphins that seem to be pathologically incapable of taking anything seriously. Numerous studies have been made of dolphin culture, but they’re all highly contradictory because dolphins consider outrageous lies to be polite conversation.

Strap in, this is a weird ride…

Back in the dark ages of the early 1990s the student-run radio station at my local university had a weekly ‘letter request’ show called Steregoround. The idea was that people would post actual, physical letters to the station asking for songs to be played, but pretty quickly the letters became more important that the songs. People would write all kinds of weird stuff (with a song request tacked onto the end) and the hosts would read out a selection of the letters they got each week. People would comment on the letters read out on the previous week’s show, send messages to other letter writers and to the hosts, pen bizarre screeds and poetry and request the weirdest music they could think of. It was kind of like a strange cross between a podcast, pen-pals, a web forum and a subreddit, with the proviso that your posts were a crapshoot – if the hosts didn’t read out your letter this week you just shrugged and sent a new one next week.

Once I became aware that this was a thing that existed I knew I had to get involved, so I started sending my own letters full of weird, nonsensical, mystical sounding crap, loosely based around my high school experiences. Some of these got read out, and over time I started building the silly, throwaway comments and references I penned into a consistent framework centered around alternative universes and a hidden world of powerful (although still rather tongue-in-cheek and silly) psychics running things behind the scenes.

Steregoround was suddenly cancelled about a year after I started taking part, but by then I’d laid the foundations for the setting I’m still working on 30 years later.

Wyrms can shapeshift between a snake-like form and a humanoid form at will, but any time they do it they end up with brand new skin and no hair. The phrase “tattooing a Wyrm” has more or less the same meaning as “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”.

Zurvár Arèáná is governed – to some extent – by the Konsortèum, which is a council made up of representatives from a number of powerful ancestral Zurvár houses, members of the Metaphysician’s Guild, a number of scientific and economic advisors, and a few private investors. It was set up in the 1960s to act as a settlement authority for the world and still acts in this capacity, but has expanded its remit over the decades and now acts (or at least tries to act) as a weak, central government.

Any given settlement on Zurvár Arèáná will tend to be pro-Konsortèum, seeing the transition to government as a natural progression, or anti-Konsortèum, believing it has overstepped the bounds of its original remit.

The Konsortèum governs by issuing ‘Settlement Advisories’ which are (theoretically) binding rulings for all settlers of the world. These tend to be treated as law in pro areas but are spottily respected in anti areas based on whether the locals regard them as fair, sensible, and actually pertaining to settlement issues.

Out of the Eight Cities, Bal is regarded as the pro capital and is the location of the Konsortèum headquarters. Kalif is regarded as the most anti city, which is a bit embarrassing for the Konsortèum as it’s the largest settlement on Zurvár Arèáná and is generally regarded as the world’s cultural capital.

I haven’t got around to mapping it in any detail. but the city of Gorat Sûlbarn Hì is constructed on the rim of a submerged meteorite crater about 15km across in the middle of the ocean. The rim is broken in a number of places making the interior of the crater a gigantic harbour and the impact damage resulted in numerous hot springs, which are harnessed for geothermal power generation. There is a central peak island which is protected as a nature reserve.

In Zurvár culture it’s expected that people grow at least some of their own food. A typical house with have an extensive garden with numerous varieties of fruits, vegetables and herbs that are harvested and preserved for the use of the occupants.

Common species include…

Dry-land rice
A type of magosteen that is also used to produce a bright red dye
A type of small, elongated tomato
Pomegranates
Mandarins and sweet lemons
Olives that are used almost exclusively for oil
Medlars, which are mostly used for tanning fabrics
A variety of melons and yams

An extremely important species is the Salt Berry plant, which absorbs salt from the ground and concentrates it into hard, nut-like fruits. These can be ground up for culinary use, but it’s mostly used to clean up saline soils to make them suitable for other, less salt-tolerant plants.

Most towns will have a communal Kelp Garden where a variety of seaweed species are grown for food, materials, dyes, spices and medicines. Most Zurvár fabric is made from specialised varieties of kelp.

Research has indicated that many plants used by the Zurvár show signs of genetic engineering. It is assumed that they were obtained from other species during the Zurvár’s centuries of migration between worlds.

Zurvár Arèáná is more or less a solarpunk version of Cottesloe and Fremantle in Western Australia. Blue skies, blue ocean, sandstone and pine trees!

Timeline

This will probably not make much sense – I’m posting it here so I can reference it easily…

July 1891: Foundation of the Guild of Metaphysics (GM) by ‘Azmael’ in London, England.

February 1896: The GM succeed in opening a gate to Otherworld One. They make several trips to Otherworld One through the rest of the year.

October 1896: The GM open a gate to Neandertan. Exploration of the world commences, resulting in occasionally violent interactions with the native ‘savages’.

January 1897: The GM open a gate to Gehenna.

1897-1899: The GM open gates to many worlds. The majority are uninhabitable and not revisited.

Late 1898: The GM start work on the ‘Luxembourg Experiment’, an experimental ritual intended to harness the power of a Ley node on Neandertan. Local inhabitants are bribed, bullied and occasionaly enslaved to assist with the preparations.

March 14th 1902: The Luxembourg Experiment is enacted. The power generated proves completely uncontrollable, instantly killing all mammals larger than a dog for a radius of close to 20km and carving out a crater 600m wide. Most of the Guild survive in ‘the eye of the storm’ but their Neandertal ‘assistants’ perish.

In the wake of the disaster the Guild fragmnents into warring factions with different opinions on how – or even whether – to continue their research.

After detecting ripples from the explosion the Wyrms investigate, and begin trying to track down those responsible. The incident strengthens the position of those in the Wyrymyan Parliament arguing for the establishment of a body to protect non-metaphysically aware civilisations.

Early 1904: The factions within the GM have solidified into three ‘parties’. The First Party believes Metaphysics should remain secret knowledge, shared with only a careful, select few. The Second Party believes Metaphysics should be shared with all ‘to create a Paradise on Earth’. The Third Party believes Metaphysics should be used to take control of society and reshape it as they see fit.

December 1906: The Wyrms establish contact with the GM. It takes some time to convince the members that they are not ‘ascended masters’ or ‘higher dimensional beings’.

~1907: The first bands of Zurvár start migrating into local probability.

August 12th 1908: After lengthy negotiations the Metaphysicians Guild is founded with the support of the Wyrymyan Parliament and members from numeous local worlds. The Majority of the Guild of Metaphysics join – with the exception of the Third Party who are officially expelled. The GM ceases to operate in any serious capacity soon afterwards.

1913: The Metaphysicians Guild takes posession of Metaphysica and starts constructing campuses on the sites of major cities. The largest and defacto capital is De Chirico/Paris.

April 7th 1919: The De Chirico campus is attacked by several thousand Neandertals via gates opened by ‘Iron Drum’ shamans. Hundreds are killed on both sides over the course of 6 hours. The battle is ended when the Neandertals are driven back by the arrival of forces from several Zurvár houses, summoned by representatives who were present negotiating with the Guild for settlement rights.

Later research indicates that the lingering effects of the Luxembourg disaster resulted in an increase in Metaphysical potential among the survivors, which combined with relics left from experiment allowed the attack.

1919-1926: A series of small battles and skirmishes take place on Neandertan, mostly instigated by vengeful Guild members. No further attacks are made on Metaphysica – oral histories attribute this to only eight shamans being capable of opening gates, five of whom were killed at De Chirico.

1926: A treaty is negotiated with the Neandertals, ending the Neandertan War. Tensions remain however.

Early 1950s: The number of Zurvár travelling through local probability increases notably.

1959: An uninhabited world is ceded to the Zurvár, being christened Zurvár Areana.

The Darkoat

Further Thoughts on Fallout

Having binged my entire way though Fallout, I have some further thoughts (spoilers ahead!).

WOW. Like, seriously. WOW.

They’ve done an amazing job. There are only three things that stood out to me as inaccurate, and two of those are fairly accurately explained.

The first is ghouls using a drug to avoid turning feral. To my knowledge there is no mention of this in any other Fallout media. Ghouls are tough, get healed (to some extent) by radiation, can live for centuries, and sometimes go irreversibly insane and turn into mindless, cannibalistic monsters. There seems to be some link between age and going feral, but it’s very vague – some ghouls remain sane for centuries, whole others lose their mind within a few years.

To my mind there’s no reason that ghouls in California couldn’t have stumbled over a pre-war drug that fends off going feral, or even developed such a drug. We know that Dr Barrows in D.C. is looking for treatments for the ghoul condition, there’s surely similar researchers in California. If it’s a comparatively recent development then it wouldn’t have had time to spread to the rest of the wasteland, which would explain why it doesn’t show up in any of the games

The second issue is Maximus getting stuck in his power armour after Thaddeus stole his fusion core. This should be impossible – from the games we know that you can easily get out of power amour even when your last core runs out, and you can move (albeit very slowly) in non-powered power armour.

This is easily explained by the fact that Maximus has never actually been trained! He’s using armour that he stole and has very little idea what he’s doing. There’s probably a release somewhere inside that opens the suit without power, and another one that allows the suit to articulate, but he has no idea where they are, or that they even exist. So when the power goes out, he’s screwed.

The final issue is the big one – the location of Shady Sands. Shady Sands is supposed to lie directly east of Vault 13, which is in the vicinity of Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada. It absolutely cannot be over 300km south west in the Angel’s Boneyard. I can’t think of a single way to deal with this – maybe it’ll be explained in Season 2 (we’re gonna get a Season 2, right?) or maybe it’s just something we’ll have to live with.

Anyway, spectacularly well done to everyone involved, and roll on New Vegas!

Initial Thoughts on Fallout

Some thoughts after watching the first two episodes of Amazon’s adaption of Fallout (includes spoilers)…

Spending 20 minutes rotating pictures of wheelbarrows is an oddly Vault-Tec method of accessing the Prime free trial.

Holy guacamole! I thought the trailers looked good, but didn’t dare hope they’d get everything this right!

Ella Purnel is adorable.

The tension in the wedding scene was nail biting.

I LOVE the fact that they’re playing stimpacks straight. Suffered a horrifying, likely fatal injury? Just grab a stimpack and you’re fine!

I’m pretty sure they did a bunch of shooting in Namibia.

They’ve managed to strike the perfect balance between realism and silliness with the violence. It’s ludicrous, but not so much that it takes you out of the story.

Knight Titus was a dick, even by the high dickery standards of the Brotherhood.

Putting all his points into sharpshooting definitely helped with the Yao Guai, but Maximus probably should have spared a few for the Power Armour Training perk.

The brahmin looked so good I didn’t even register them for a second. Cow with two heads? Yeah, that’s just background.

I was furious when the Ghoul killed Dogmeat! But then he fixed him up, so I shall forgive.

Copies of the Wasteland Survival Guide in the shop – perfect!

I am very much looking forward to continuing the series!

All Your Warhammer 40k Questions Answered

Q: What is that tube running into Horus’s nose?
A: Perturabo installed it so he can make the Warmaster smell burning toast whenever he’s being particularly annoying.

Q: Who did Dorn kill on Pluto? Was it Alpharius or was Omegon taking his place?
A: Neither. Alpharius killed Dorn, but then took his place. Theoretically you could tell Dorn-Dorn and Alpharius-Dorn apart because one of them had kickass sideburns and a moustache while the other was clean shaven, but which was which has been censored from Imperial records along with Malcador’s recipe for Chili Con Carne.

Q: Did Malcador really have an ancient toy rocket with С.С.С.Р. written on it?
A: No, but he did have an almost complete collection of Generation 1 Transformers. His notorious feud with Erda originated from her repeated refusal to sell him her Windcharger.

Q: Why does speaking Enuncia make your teeth explode?
A: It doesn’t. Everyone in the 41st millennium just has really bad dental hygiene.

Q: Were the Cabal correct about a victory for Horus resulting in the final defeat of Chaos?
A: The Cabal were all on crack.

Q: Even Eldrad?
A: Especially Eldrad!

Q: Why is Torias Telion still a sergeant despite over 300 years of service?
A: His wicked obscura habit makes him unsuitable for promotion.

Q: Is Elon Musk the Emperor?
A: The Emperor’s parenting skills are bad, but they’re not that bad.

Q: What’s the deal with Guilliman and Yvraine?
A: They’re loyal and devoted pen-pals, nothing more.

Q: Who would win in a volleyball match between Ravenor and Eisenhorn?
A: It depends on whether Eisenhorn is allowed to sub-in Cherubael.

Q: Is it true that you’re selling video tapes of Ciaphus Cain’s wedding night?
A: This interview is OVER!

CERVEZA CRISTAL!!

It’s absolutely wild to me that the best meme of 2024 so far was created by a Chilean TV station not wanting to interrupt Star Wars with ad breaks back in 2004.

On Cryptids

There is a time in every weirdo’s life that they feel compelled to come up with a categorisation system for those strange creatures that lurk on the boundary between science, folklore and small-town tourism campaigns – cryptids! And for me that time has come today.

So gentle reader, please behold the Purple Wyrm Cryptid Categorisation system – which I must admit owes more than a touch of inspiration to Alex Flanigan of the gone but always in our hearts Cryptid Keeper podcast.

(NOTE: By default this system uses ‘boys’ as a categorisation term. Users should feel free to substitute this with whatever term – gendered or non-gendered – they prefer. Cryptozoology is a wide brontosaurus with room on its back for all!)

CLASS ONE: SHADY BOYS
Shady Boys are perfectly normal beasts seen under unusual circumstances that make them look all cool and mysterious. As an example consider the ‘lioness’ filmed lurking around Berlin back in the June of 2023 that actually turned out to be a wild boar. That boar is a very shady boy.

CLASS TWO: WEIRD BOYS
Weird Boys are perfectly normal beasts with some kind of condition or deformity that makes them look unusual or act in an unexpected fashion. The coyotes with mange that people keep trotting out as chupucabras (American subspecies) for instance, or the tailless iguana laughably claimed to be the Loveland Frogman (the Loveland Frogman is real and he is a wizard!).

CLASS THREE: LOST BOYS
Lost Boys are (again) perfectly normal beasts that have somehow ended up in places that logic dictates they shouldn’t be. The phantom kangaroos of the American midwest, or the Alien Big Cats of Great Britain for example. Vampires are not lost boys no matter what Joel Schumacher may tell you.

CLASS FOUR: OLD BOYS
Old Boys are beasts that we know used to exist, but are/were considered extinct. The poster boy for the old boy is the happy coelacanth, merrily swishing its tail at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in defiance of paleontologists everywhere. Should the various mega-cryptids of the Congo basin turn out to be real and turn out to be dinosaurs then they would be very old boys indeed.

CLASS FIVE: NEW BOYS
New Boys are beasts never before described by science. Regularly hauled across the earthquake-riven boundary between the continents of Cryptozoology (disreputable) and Zoology (respected) they are the most common class of cryptid and the only one mentionable in polite scientific company. The Vu Quang Ox (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) of Vietnam is a fine example, only having been admitted to the halls of respectable science in 1992.

CLASS SIX: SPACE BOYS
Space Boys are life-forms from planets other than Earth. Y’know, aliens. Be they disgusting little Greys, buff blonde Nordics, sexy Venusians or the giant Liberace who descended from a UFO to perform a concert in Fyffe Alabama in 1989, they are all space boys.

CLASS SEVEN: SPOOKY BOYS
Spooky Boys are things from realms and dimensions other than ours. Ghosts, demons, machine-elves, vampires, mothmen, Indrid Cold style Men in Black, Indrid Cold himself – basically anything that defies logic and is probably best not meddled with. They are the spooky boys – although it’s probably best not to call them that to their faces (for the ones that have them…).

CLASS EIGHT: IMAGINARY BOYS
Finally we have the Imaginary Boys. These are creatures that are entirely made up for reasons of humour, profit, entertainment, fraud, or just good old-fashioned mischief. There are many classic cryptids that must sadly be placed in this category – the entire contents of Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods for a start (barring some major scientific discoveries). Of course, the fact that none of these are real does not in any way detract from their value and importance. They may not be real boys, but they are all good boys!

So there we have it! Eight clear and unambiguous categories for all your cryptid classification needs. Classify nice now!