Clan of the Cave Bear

I was raised American Baptist. My church was part of the Northwest Convention. These words didn't mean much to me back then. In fact I spent a lot of the time wondering just what Baptist meant, and I gathered that a good deal of my fellow church members did as well. In fact the first time I really recall it meaning _anything_ was when a kid I was going to school with emphatically insisted that I had been baptized wrong and was going to go to Hell.

I remember having harsh words with this kid, and offering to baptize him in the hotel pool (we were on a band trip). Yeah, it wasn't a very forgiving thing to say, but if I'm being honest I was trying to save his immortal soul. And have a fight.

Sometimes I wish I could tell that me to actually read the damned Bible, see the shit in it for what it is, and realize that we were all picking and choosing whatever made us feel good.

Maybe a few years before this I was really getting into reading. I read a lot of books as a child and moving into middle school that number increased dramatically, and pretty soon I ran into the first real conflicts (that I noticed) between my parents' religion and the world I was growing up in. Now we were getting into radio stations I couldn't listen to (Hard Rock, the station was 99.9 which was 666 upside down), certain school friends I probably shouldn't hang out with as much (Mormons), and of course books I couldn't read.

The one I remember right now was Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear." This one had all the bad stuff. It had a serious treatment of cave men that existed well before the Bible, and we all knew Adam was the first man, so how could Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons actually have existed? It had graphic violence and a struggle between cultures. It had very graphic sex, and sex out of wedlock. Worst of all, the God of Abraham did not exist in this book, at all. (I remember my mom, whom I miss dearly, being upset, just a little, that I had a 'lord' in a piece of middle school creative fiction and it wasn't Jesus, Our Lord and Savior.) Later I would discover that Ms. Auel had angered scholars as well as preachers, especially when her book achieved the renown it did. But, there I was, thirteen or fourteen, and here was this popular book that was on the news and in discussion and REALLY disliked by the likes of the 700 club blowhards, so definitely I was not going to read this book. Nope. No siree.

Heh.

Come on. I was thirteen.

I had to.

But, I never managed to find a way to do that, not for a long time. It was always checked out. I didn't have money to go to a book store, especially one that didn't say "Christian" on the placard, and it certainly wasn't at school. And then we went on a retreat. For those of you who weren't raised in a church, a retreat is kind of like a big group camping experience. It usually has several chances to take Bible classes, and church services every day, but it's also a chance to unwind, have fun activities, and because we were Baptists, eat a lot of good food. I forgot to put that above. Baptists know how to cook. Just... wow. If you ever get invited to a Baptist cook out or pot luck, it's probably worth putting up with the proselytizing and swallowing your confrontational nature, because food. I miss that. That and the camaraderie.

Retreats... right. I think this was at a place called Rainbow Lodge. I don't remember a whole lot about it, except for the library in the lodge itself. There was a big fireplace and an atrium-like area with stairs running along one wall, I think. What's germane to the story I'm telling, though, is that in the middle of this retreat there was a copy of Clan of the Cave Bear in the middle of the library. Well now. When Mom said that I should find something to read, I know she didn't mean that, and didn't expect that I'd find this heathen tome there, but find it I did, and I sure did spend a lot of time reading on that retreat. I can't remember if I finished it there (I'm pretty sure not), and I can't remember how I did finish it, but I know I did.

As I got older I pushed more and more against those restrictions, and I think I make my Mom especially sound more "gasp! demons!" than she ever was, but in all honesty she was the one that convinced me that playing Dungeons and Dragons was searching out the Devil, and made my Dad take back the D&D Basic Set that he'd bought me for some event. Before I'd graduated my father and I had both devoured Dune and other similar books that were challenging to a certain fundamentalism.

I remember this event mostly because I just picked up Ms. Auel's 'Earth's Children' sequence of books on Audible. I had previously read 'The Mammoth Hunters' and I may have go to 'The Plains of Passage', but I don't remember much except the atlatl. They had a great sale going on, and I love me some good audiobooks. So far the performance is great, and the story is, by now, all new to me once more. But, there it is, as I listen I recall more and more.

Above all, what I recall is that I miss my mom. A lot. It's been over a year now. Still hurts. Screw telling the younger me about religion, I wish I could tell him to appreciate his mom a little more, pull his head out of his ass, pay more attention to the world around him and his relationships. We never appreciate what we have, in many ways, until it really is gone. Maybe that's part of the grieving process.

In other reading, "The Pyramids of London" by Andrea K. Höst was suggested to me. To be honest, the author was suggested emphatically, and this was the book I settled on to get to know her. So far it's quite good too. The world building is phenomenal, just enough information without overdoing it. I am also really enjoying this book. It really transcends its vampire and steampunk genres quite neatly, and I can't wait to learn more.

This may be a spoiler, but there is so much detail in the early part of "Pyramids..." it seems a shame that the rest of it doesn't take place where the narrative starts, but I consider that now to be Höst subverting expectations. You are given X, therefore this story must be Y, but no, guess what, it's Z. I do dig that a lot.

Currently Reading: "The Pyramids of London" by Andrea K. Höst (ebook), "The Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean M. Auel (audiobook).

Writing?

This blog is supposed to be about my writing, though that hasn't been where I've gone with it these last few days, so it's time for a writing post.

The last few nights I have been rereading my "King of the Emerald Isle" book, noting places it needs to change, familiarizing myself with the story again, etc.

After a discussion with my dad this last weekend, I think what's been hanging me up is some stupid plotting. A few chapters are going to be scrapped at the farthest point in the story, and I am likely to crush a few scenes early on and rewrite them.

I've struggled for a long time with character motivation. It never feels right to me. I'm trying to fix that, and I need to if I am to have a heroic arc for Lorcan. Right now, it's isn't really gelling.

I wonder how much of the first part in Eireland I can smash? Can it start in Castile? Hm.

The Pharaoh's Ark?

Today I ran into an encounter of my own with the latest project by the "Answers In Genesis" foundation run by the dominionist Ken Ham. It's called the Ark Encounter. This group is building a "life-size ark" from the Genesis story of Noah. (Notably not the Book of Jubilees version of Noah, I guess since it's apocryphal to Ham's tradition that's a no-no. Besides, that Noah is commanded by God to not consume the flesh of animals.)

I just have one question, specifically about the art direction. In the "big" and "little" Genesis stories, Noah only takes his immediate family with him, and it isn't that many people. And yet here's this picture:

I count over twenty individuals... Even in the apocryphal version there aren't that many people on the ark. See, this looks to me like an Egyptian pharaoh's use of slaves to build his tomb. I think that's a little bit of not paying attention to the source material, and since that's the rallying cry of this group, it's just a tad disingenuous.

Color me shocked. Humans lie with images and words, trying to make their view appealing to others? Huh.

Daren Aronofsky caught a lot of shit about "Noah", especially from fundamentalists. I'm willing to bet that most of them (in addition to many on the faith/anti-faith spectrum) don't even know about the Book of Jubilees, or that it's actually part of ongoing Christian belief systems (namely the Ethiopian Orthodox). The giant rock angels were a surprise at first, but that was just the confirmation for me that this wasn't the Genesis Noah story.

For my part, as a work of fiction, it was fairly entertaining. My brother asked me the other day if I thought that maybe Tubal-Cain ate the dodos. Heh.

Return to the Blog, RP, etc.

I'm going to try returning to this, maybe not for fiction-a-day, though that is probably a good thing to do. No, rather I'm moved by a simple comment from a friend that ignited a fire in my brain.

Lure of the Liche Lord.

My god, what a book.

First, I pine for WFRP2E, or Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, 2nd Edition. This game was what any OSR, balls-to-the-wall RPG should be, and its parent company collapsed and sold it to Fantasy Flight. Alas.

But LotLL... I've played D&D for years; for so long I've got gray in my beard legitimately. There's a whole ton of really good dungeon crawls, but they're all, one way or another, silly. From magic morphing fungi to crashed alien space ships, there's always something, somewhere, that breaks credulity. There's a moment where you sit back and snicker, or self-consciously tell your players "Don't laugh."

And lets be honest. S2: The Tomb of Horrors is amazing, but it is markedly silly. Awesome, but you have to suspend at hefty portion of disbelief.

This one isn't like that. Every trap makes sense. Every monster is a phenomenally scary as the next. Every wicked thing that will blast your character's sanity to ashes feels utterly within the scope of the world. Warhammer's a bad world. So bad there's often no redeeming qualities to anything going on. Wahammer doesn't give a fuck if you live, which makes surviving an adventure thrilling in a way I've never felt in other games.

These days, when I run games, I run variations on FATE Core. Using the inimitable Brennan Taylor's "Tower of the Serpents" as a model, I can create the sword and sorcery I want, the worlds of Fritz Leiber and Robert Howard and tales where magic isn't copied into banal lists.

LotLL lands firmly there. An imposing trek to a distant land, a struggle against a foe too nasty for death to take, and a race against mortal enemies that might actually be worse than the evil of bygone ages.

To any GM, my advice is to take this book, read it, and use it to make the best damn dungeon crawl you've ever run.

Find it here:
http://drivethrurpg.com/product/64293/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay-2nd-Edition-Lure-of-the-Liche-Lord