Uncovering Oldhammer Fantasy Role-Play

Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 1985 | John Blanche*

One of the things I like about 2nd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle, is that it keeps bringing up new items - the range of inserts and additional sheets that went in at different times during its production means there always seems to be something new, although that's probably just because nobody has bothered to catalogue all the ephemera.

Rab of the Geekly Digest (Thank you!)

This yellow flyer, which I certainly didn't get when I bought Warhammer 2nd Edition back in the day, nor did I get it when I bought another copy of eBay some years later (although I did get some bendy D&D toys with it!) Anyway, this arcane scroll  mentions two Warhammer posters. One of the posters is the Joe Dever and Gary Chalk one that Goblin Lee did an epic job of identifying the miniatures of in his post on Warhammer Posters .

Warhammer Poster via Goblin Lee

Both posters were also mentioned in Chalk and Devers Tabletop Heroes column in White Dwarf 62 - February 1985, so that puts a possible date on the insertion of the flyer, as Warhammer 2nd Edition came out late 84, there may have been a few months when WFB2 was distributed without yellow flyer advertising the posters.

The second poster, which I've never seen in the flesh, but probably now I mention it a million will fly out of the basements of the worlds grognards like so many blood-thirsty Stirges from the Caves of Chaos, is described thusly:

"This poster features the cover art from the new Warhammer box, extended to include the forthcoming Warhammer Role-Play cover too! A magnificent picture poster, and a fine example of John's widely acclaimed fantasy work." 

So the Warhammer 2nd Edition, cover by John Blanche, looks like this:

Warhammer 2nd Edition box via Tenkars Tavern

And the poster, which intriguingly had the proposed artwork for the cover of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play added to it, must have looked something like this:

Warhammer Poster Mock-up

The above image was reproduced in Warhammer 3rd Edition, on p. 116 / 117. I've stitched together two low-res scans. The image goes into the spine, which makes it hard to scan, and isn't well printed in the first place, all the colours are washed out in comparison with the original box art, it's really small (less than half size)  - there is show-through from the text from the page behind (thin paper) - there are 'shine' areas where the original image has been photographed prior to reproduction - most noticeable on the fighter on the right and the orc he is cleaving. These reproduction artefacts are weird, perhaps it was taken from a print of the poster and not the original artwork...

TL:DR the image would need to be completely redrawn to get it anywhere near fit for human consumption. I need not have bothered as VeronaKid pointed out the poster was up for sale on US eBay at the time of writing, for the very reasonable price of $75 (that's not a reasonable price):

The Poster!

Some further observations - the 3rd Edition reprint has airbrushed clouds going in the opposite direction to the poster, the pole-arms of the orcs on the left and the bats (or Stirges) have been removed or replaced. Visually it feels like there is  more image missing on the right-hand side - otherwise it wouldn't have had the same proportions as the WFB2 box art - the composition of the skull-face is also weirdly off-centre, and the cropping of the monolith to the right of the stairs very cloes and. Looking at the poster there is a lot of 'air' in the design - obviously for the logos and publishers blurb, and in fact it looks very much like a 2-in-1 image one that would have made for a wrap-around cover, rather than a box front.

But, perhaps more importantly than these visual details is the additional content on the right-hand side, that the flyer says was intended to be the cover of Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  This isn't a Grim World of Perilous Adventure, nor the gritty fantasy, gothic adventure of rat-catchers in Medieval Cthulhu sewers getting bitten by syphellitic dogs, nor  The Enemy Within that we know from Warhammer Fantasy Role-play. No. It's heroic blood and gore outside Castle Greyskull.

THIS IS WARHAMMER!

Not only that but it has a wizard who looks like Archmage of Mampang, with an explosion coming out of his backside, standing a top of said Castle Greyskull.

THIS IS WARHAMMER!

view from the other side of the skull
John Blanche (1985)

Not only that but it's got what looks like a woman on it, running out of the mouth of Castle Greyskull. In the front middle. The colouration makes me think maybe she's a Dark Elf or similar - tho' the costume is exactly the same as the  Runequest 1st Edition (and 2nd) illustrating what I believe to be the incalculable debt that Warhammer owes Runequest, whilst also continuing Warhammer 2nd Editions all too  brief attempt at gender equality.

THIS IS WARHAMMER!

There you have it a weird, half-baked reconstruction of what might have been.

So what if Warhammer Fantasy Role Play had been published in 1985? We know what the cover may have looked like, but what of the game itself? There are hints in the Winter, 1985 Good Games Guides WFRP adventure Web of Eldaw by Rick Priestly, and we know from interviews that Fellowship and the change to 2-digit stats were late changes, so it likely would have mechncially hewn closer to Warhammer Battle Second Edition. The Careers system may well have been in place, but as published it lacks any focus outside of the Empire (that Dark Elf warrior maiden, must surely have had options)? Would the Enemy Within and all the Renaissance Call of Cthulhu have been sidelined for the Doomstones Campaign and replaced with funky sci-fantasy South American Runequest or the myriad loosely defined realms of Fighting Fantasy?

Rez and the Blue Bird

Compare and contrast, 1980s Gamebook illustration and 1890s Fairytale illustration:

The waistcoat (even the trim), the sash, the shoes, the beard the hair, the pantaloons, the crooked hat the outstretched arms. John adds a wealth of detail and pattern to the figure, as well as a grizly murderized victim and 'fixes' the slightly overlong arms.

The Green Fairy Book collected by Andrew Lang and illustrated by Henry Justice Ford was published by in 1892.  Many early fantasy games illustrators seem to have taken cues from fairy tale illustration as Trampiers  homage to HJF of the Cloud Giant in the AD&D Monster Manual, clearly shows. Langs Fairy books were also instrumental in J.R.R. Tolkiens conception of the fairy-story and, perhaps, in moving the ring from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. The wizard illustration is intended to accompany story The Blue Bird.

The Sorcery Spellbook written by Steve Jackson, and illustrated by John Blanche  was published by Puffin in 1983. The spell REZ is used to resurrect the dead, somewhat appropriate to resurrect an old wizard image to illustrate it. Ah, makes me want to visit Mampang again, although I need to find some Khukuri or perhaps some Chhaang or Raski for the journey.

I will fully admit that this remarkable observation wasn't made by me, but by an erudite and long-time reader of this blog, they must have made their spot-hidden roll again, many thanks for this and other tip-offs - may the Gods of Chaos always smile upon your dice!

AMH.VS.JB

▲ Anne Marie Hurst ▲

Koka Kalim ▲ John Blanche ▲

▲ Anne Marie Hurst ▲

 Amazona Gothique ▲ John Blanche

▲Anne Marie Hurst ▲

 Adeptus Sororitas▲ John Blanche

BURNING THE OIL ▲ ANNE MARIE HURST ▲ JOHN BLANCHE ▲ FEMME MILITANT ▲ SKELETAL FAMILY ▲ AMAZONA GOTHIQUE ▲ GHOST DANCE ▲ SISTERS of BATTLE ▲ KOLA KALIM ▲ PROMISED LAND ▲ DUNGEONPUNK ▲ LUSTRIA ▲ LAURENCE THE ELDER▲ RIVER OF NO RETURN ▲ ADAPTUS SORORITAS▲ BOY LONDON CLOTHING▲ WHITE DWARF 79 ▲ DOMINATOR ▲AMAZONS▲ IMPERIAL MARINES of SPACE ▲ SHE CRIES ALONE ▲ TREES

Addendum historium obscurata: 1 + 2 JB predates AMH. 3 AMH predates JB.

+++ THEE TRANCEMISSION THVS ENDETH+++ 

McDeath and the Miners Strike 1984-85

McDeath | John Blanche

The Miners Strike was a  long running industrial dispute that took place in the Mining communities of Britain 1984-86), seeing the effective end of the Coal Mining industry in the UK. McDeath is a Fantasy wargame scenario for Warhammer, written by Richard "Hal" Halliwell and released in March 1986. I do like soundtracks to blog-posts, and if you want something to listen to, Which Side Are You On – Miners Strike Album (1985). Or seeing as the Industrial Archive website is down, alternatively "Panic" by the Smiths (1986) might suffice, but Billy Bragg doing "Which Side are You On?"
is possibly nearer the mark.

Apologies in advance for any offence or inaccuracies, all opinions and corrections are more than welcome in the comments.

Arthur Scargil - Leader of the National Union of Mineworkers
Arka Zargul - Miners Leader

Arka Zargul isn't a straight homophone like most Warhammer puns (Eeza Ugezod for example) a slight shift in phonemes, but nontheless it's clear enough pun on Arthur Scargil, the leader of the NUM. Perhaps coincidentally Zar Gul is a name  in Urdu meaning Shining; Brilliant, whether this is a reference to Scargils leadership qualities or the silver in the Dungal mines is anyones guess. A look at the Banner (Tony Ackland?)...

Arka Zargul's Dwarf Miners

'I Ho! I Ho! Go Slow' obviously a reference to 'Hi-Ho hi-Ho it's of to work we go' of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but with 'off to work' replaced by "go slow" - a reference to a form of industrial action commonly used as a protest prior to calling out a full strike. In a "Go Slow" workers purposefully reduce output in order to economically damage the bosses until their conditions (such as pay) were met. And of course, Arka leads a force of seven dwarves.

The dwarves diminutive nature, their association with Snow White and that dwarf miners are 'the good guys' in Tolkien and fairytales in general (although not Norse myth) generally makes them sympathetic characters. They are also a people oppressed by a foreign overlord, their wealth stolen from them, and almost forced into slavery by the villain of the piece, Een McWrecker...

 

Een McWrecker - McDeaths Lieutenant

Ian McGregor Head of the National Coal Board

A pun on Ian McGregor, the Head of the National Coal Board - Een McWrecker - is intalled at Dungal Hill by McDeath to control the mine, much as Ian McGregor was installed by Thatcher to run the National Coal Board and shut down the mining industry.  McWrecker promptly steals the dwarves gold, casing the dwarves go on strike refusing to work for him. At the battle of Dungal Hill he leads 40 Orcs. His banner is one of oppression:

Stunties shall be slaves, while we rule I could be wrong but it does seem to have echoes of  Rule, Britannia! rule the waves: Britons never will be slaves. British nationalism, a strange thing in todays atmosphere of devolution, but the word-soup is similar enough.

The portrayal of Een is entirely unsympathetic, with his halfling man-servant Raybees ready and waiting to stab him in the back at the first opportunity. Even the naming pun, McWrecker positions the character as ner-do-well, a wrecker. Orcs are symbols of evil aggression, from Tolkien and beyond, they are filthy disgusting creatures, that the AD&D Orcs are Pig-headed makes them all the more castable as a vision of an oppressive law and order.

Dungal Hill - the Field of Battle

There is a place, Dungoil Hill in Scotland which was the site of a silver mine. I'm not aware of it being part of the Miners Strike, as the vein was apparently mined out some 184 years previously, still the name is a pun. Also this seems to be very, very, obscure. Silver mines in Scotland seems odd enough, but digging out this sort of nugget of information in the pre Internet 1980s would have needed a lot of spadework, or an foreknowledge and background reading in such archaeological  geological matters.

The Battle of Dungal Hill pitches Arka Zarguls Dwarf Miners against Een McWreckers Orc Army. It's not a not a straight forward historical staging of a specific conflict in the Miners strike such as the Battle of Orgreave (Battle of Orcgrave methinks) but rather an expession of the ideological conflict.  Police and Government are cast as evil oppressors, orcs and wicked magicians, whilst the miners are the stalwart dwarves.

For a historical reenactment (if it's good enough for Turner Prize Winning Artists on Channel 4 it's good enough for wargamers) Offensive Miniatures produce police in riot gear and rioters, although their dress-code is perhaps a little more more Battle of the Beanfield, eco-protest or Occupy than mid-80s South Yorkshire, which I assume was all flat-caps, whippets, bubbleperms, denim jackets and mullets, and the police are in riot gear - some standard uniform coppers wouldn't go amiss. 

But why not? Why didn't Games Workshop just repackage the miners strike straight out? Why disguise the conflict as anything than what it was, which is a complex contemporary socio-political, thing which to this day still causes division. Perhaps it's just too political, offensive, even today historical and modern wargaming make some people uncomfortable. Certainly Citadels self-image was  that of a fantasy games company and riding the wave of the D&D boom was their raison d'être.

Fantasy as satire allows us to cut a straight moral line without the complexity of real life, the scenario gives the Miners an uncontestable moral high-ground, the Dwarfs are clearly in the right and oppressed by the evil McWrecker. The messy ideological conflict of the Socialism vs. Capitalism, Middle Class vs. Working Class, Shopkeepers vs. Manual Laborers, the viability of long term socio-economic reliance on fossil-fuels, all these difficult aspects can be put aside in favour of a "simple" battle of Orcs vs. Dwarves, Good vs. Evil. Yet in doing so perhaps Hal shows us his own sympathies,  many in Nottingham would have been aware the plight of other miners in other towns, as well as their own.

The distancing of Fantasy may also mitigate the emotional connotations of the real events. These events were recent, people had been killed, lives had been ruined. The game deals not with the individuals, but with ideas and figureheads. In the literary genre we can think of Swift or even Pratchett where the social and political moires of the day are projected in fantasy.

But on July 19th 1984, Thatcher (the great Empress Margaritha - a rather toothless, throwaway and uncritical pun) made her infamous speech demonising the Miners as "The Enemy Within" - a phrase used by McGregor as the title of his 1986 book on the conflict  and then late 1987, Games Workshop turned it's own obsidian warpstone mirror of Warhammer away from the world of picket lines and Militant tendency, to a world of Cold War paranoia, of insidious influence, conspiracy theory and corruption.

L▽STRI▲: PYGMIΣS

"I do not come to you as a reality; I come to you as a myth."

- Sun Ra 

"We do not really mean that what we are about to say is true.
A story, a story; let it come, let it go"

- Traditional African folktale beginning.

The history of the Warhammer Pygmy is a short one. Forgive the pun, it won't be the last. Their history begins in 1984 and ends in 1988, and represent the only Warhammer race of explicitly African origin.

Warhammer is (was) a Fantasy Battle game, a tabletop wargame heavily influenced by the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock,  and Dungeons and Dragons - regurgitations of well worn northern european fantasy tropes. Warhammer also drew on alternative history, the geography and many of the peoples obvious caricatures of real-world historical people, and also began to eschew the purely Eurocentric setting of generic fantasy for the further-reaching land of Lustria.

Pygmy | Warhammer 2nd Edition | 1984

Introduced in 2nd Edition Warhammer Battle Bestiary, alphabetically sandwiched inbetween Tolkienesque Orcs and Von Danikenesque Slann, sit the little cannibal Pygmies.

 A quick statistical comparison against the human baseline shows us:

Attribute		M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP	PV
Pygmy		4	3	3	2	2	1	3	1	7	7	7	7	3
Human		4	3	3	3	3	1	3	1	7	7	7	7	5

Strength and Toughness lower than the standard human. Pygmies are the cheapest troops available in the whole game. Having such a low profile, arming and armouring them becomes cheaper than larger and more powerful troops. They do have access to blow-pipes and poisons which might give them some chance at defeating their enemies, and of course, point-by-point they'll outnumber anyone.

2nd Edition is also packaged with an introductory scenario, The Maginficent Sven which also brings us a tale of Pygmies having a feast to celebrate the release of a Norse captive (they'd killed 120 of his fellow adventurers)  and roasting the said prisoners leg as center-piece to the feast, while plying him with beer. Of course this is meant as dark humour, but things like this are actually being reported as real events, although with real-world Pygmies of the Congo as the victims, and neighbouring tribes as the oppressors, so it's not really all that funny. Nonetheless,  the story shows the Warhammer Cannibal Pygmies having the upper hand both morally, with a warrior code of honour, and physically over their dirty thieving murder-hobo (white) Nordic aggressor.

Cannibal Pygmies in the Jungle of Doom 2004

Still, the Cannibal Pygmy myth seems to have some entertainment value. Sure "other things exist" isn't really an excuse. Some tribes of Pygmies are reported to have practised cannibalism, and whether true or not it does inform contemporary notions of what 'pygmies' is meant to signify. It's worth noting that Pygmy itself is an ancient greek word for a mythical race of crane-fighting dwarfs - the term being applied by white imperialists to various tribes of the Congo.

Around a year after the rulebook was published, Citadel Miniatures released figures sculpted by Alan and Michael Perry. the C27 range consisting of 10 different designs.

Citadel Journal Spring 1985

The Spring 1985 Citadel Journal gives us some line artwork, from the pen of Dave Andrews or John Blanche I think, and neither of their finest hours. There is also a change in design direction of the figures themselves from the initial illustration as the original drawing definitely has hair (and furry ankles - amaShoba like the photo of traditional Zulu costume below) and the blowpipes no longer need a stand, and are of a fluted end design, rather than the thick, striped didgeridoo type affair seen in the Warhammer 2nd Edition Bestiary.

Zulu Warrior Angus McBride

The spear, shield designs, feather head-dresses are evidentially taken from Zulu material culture (see above). The 3rd Citadel Compendium gives us some grainy black and white photographs to peer at.

3rd Citadel Compendium 1985.

Pygmies White Dwarf #70 | October 1985 | Painted by Tim Olsen

The miniatures are undoubtedly rather grotesque caricatures. It's often argued that features have to be exaggerated on the tabletop to make things identifiable, and certainly looking at many of the other ranges they are not really any more cartoonish than say, the average Dwarf or Halfling. They are somewhat problematical in that in their exaggerations conform to long-standing derogatory stereotypes of people of African decent.

cannibal capers Disney 1930

Also see the British Pathe film from 1929 Borneo And The Pygmy Cannibals


The problem isn't so much the caricature itself, Games Workshop aren't inventing here, just perpetuating it, but when it is the only creature of Black Origin, the whole thing starts to look a little bit like institutionally racist stereotyping.  

The Citadel Miniatures are reasonably hard to track down on eBay, but usually fetch around £4-5 each. Meanwhile Kalistra make some similar looking ones, I don't know if they fit scale wise but their proportions are more naturalistic...

similar designs by Kallistra

Then, after 1985... nothing. No new models  or scenarios or rules, like the Feminist Lesbian Punk Amazons, and the Von Daniken Slann and the rest of the Lost Continent of Lustria the Pygmies just faded away into deep tropical mists. Warhammer Fantasy Role Play is released with no Lustrian content, instead extending Albion and the Old World with its Fimir and Zoats and Germanic Empire. Until...

Note: the White Dwarf is a black guy.

To celebrate it's 100th issue, White Dwarf published a scenario for the Warhammer Fantasy Role Play game a competition scenario entitled the Hanging Gardens of Bab-Elonn written by Basil Barrett (known for the Doomstones campaign) for the 1987 Games Day convention. It takes the traditional timed dungeon crawl and re-dresses it as a Pygmy reconnaissance mission into a floating pyramid, which unbeknownst to them is set to self-destruct, in T-minus 2 hours.

How much of the background is taken from Richard Halliwells unpublished notes for his Lustria campaign and how much is Basils creation is anyones guess - there are hints of new spells in a forthcoming Lustrian supplement, which never surfaced.  The background narrative of the scenario places the race of Pygmies as accidental inter-stellar settlers of the Lustrian continent, after their spaceship malfunctioned and crashed into the tropical jungle. In the wider mythos, the majority of the Warhammer Known World races (elves, dwarves, orcs, men) are considered to be the results of genetic experiments by the alien frog-demons called the Slann, with only Amazons, Lizardmen and perhaps Dragons, being the only truly native races on the planet. So like the Slann, the pygmies have extraterrestrial origins as an advanced, spacefaring culture, who have subsequently lost their knowledge and technology, and after being stranded have devolved into a primitive way of life.

S▽N:R▲ | THE NUBIANS OF PLUTONIA

It is tempting to focus a post-imperialist, post-industrial, post-space-age, anti-modern lens onto the Pygmies. The golden age of high technology has passed and all we have to look forward to is the subsistance charms of neo-primitivism, and such a criticism could be fruitful (shamanism, ancestor spirits all ripe for developing those themes),  but as we established above, the characters are clearly based on colonialist caricatures of African people, which combined with their extra-terrestrial origins opens them up to be read in an Afro-futurist context. 

Need an introduction to afro-futurism? Watch the 1974 Sun-Ra movie "Space is the Place", it's OK, we'll still be here blathering about Warhammer when you get back, the Floating Pyramid won't really blow up (T-minus 1.5 hours). Bonus points for references to Ingmar Bergmans The Seventh Seal.

 Space is the Place - Sun Ra (1974)

Sun Ras  "I do not come to you as a reality; I come to you as a myth." is a great expression, and the reaction of the kids is brilliant.  Myths of racial identity, ideological formations and cultural norms. We can call these ideas stereotypes or memes or caricatures, but Sun Ra reaches into his Barthesian semiotic toolbox, and uses the word myth. Quite purposefully too - not only does the word myth popularly connote falsehood or lie, but also a thing of power, a story we tell about ourselves to explain our place in the universe. If you watch Sun Ra's film, you'll see he uses multiple negative, derogatory sterotypes of African Americans and purposefully contrasts them with his new, positive Afrofuturist myth.

Apparently within our (globalised, internet-based) culture there is a derogatory myth of the African American who is lazy and eats watermelon, which originated in early American discourses on slavery, and have come to represent an aggressive mythologising of ignorance and stupidity within American culture - and it is a peculiarly American myth, watermelon isn't a great signifier of anything except fruit in these parts. However, we are introduced to the Negro Pygmy hero of the scenario as he is relaxing,  sitting under a tree and eating a watermelon, illustrated by Paul Bonner. 

Banga Gong

It might be enlightening to contrast this image with that of a 19th C. engraving. (lots of others here which when seen en-masse give a good impression of the overall myth and its relation to its subject in visual culture)

19th C. engraving

In Bonners image, and Barretts supporting text, the pygmy Banga Gong sits in a village idyll, not a plantation,  Banga is a free man, not a slave, and has obtained the watermelon through his own work, not through the 'charity' of his masters (or by theft). He's having a rest, enjoying the sunshine and eating fruit, not rabid and drooling with glee. The melon isn't a giant-sized ridiculous slabering thing, and in fact, looking at the colouration and lack of seeds, it's more like a honeydew melon than a watermelon.   We may frown upon the use of the watermelon as a  symbol, because of its repeated use within a negative mythology, but in the context it being placed here it is not demonaic, it is not a symbol of oppression nor of denying Banga's socio-economic position.

Picaninny

Another stereotype we can clearly read in the diminutive image of Warhammer Pygmy is the Picaninny - a word applied to black children, and to infantilise black adults. The pygmies are short, slightly comical, have a great love of food and buffoon-esque. Of course, in fantasy, the image of a child-like, child proportioned, ravenous pot-bellied fool  is a common myth which is more often applied to a certain class of whitefolk - Hobbits are, after all, Pygmys in rural Edwardian English white-face - can we not see in Sam Gamgee a lighter shade of Tom?  Perhaps these mythemes stem not from racial tensions but rather rural vs. urban and class concerns... can you make cider from Watermelons Mr Baggins? Hmm. Pass da pipweweed Sam. I digress...

Citadel Halflings (2nd Citadel Journal)

Stupid. Fat. Hobbitses.
Is it 'cos I is a faaaaarrrmeeer?
A minor digression. Oo-ar. Oo-ar.

We are also introduced to the Pygmies twin gods, the god of Work (who nobody likes) and the god of Food (who everybody likes) their followers carry a motif - said to be a crecent moon or a mouth with the smile facing up, or down. An alternative reading of the sign may be of a large slice of watermelon.

Brobat and Beesbok
The Pygmy Gods of Warhammer

Floating Gardens of Bahb-Elonn employs these myths quite blatently, and then recontextualises the cannibalistic watermelon-eating picaninny as a descendant of a race of advanced alien astronauts, who have lost their great, spacefaring past and have subsequently descended into primitive cannibalism. Similarly in  Sun Ra's movie Space is the Place, negative stereotypes of black americans as pimps, workshy layabouts and gangsters, are contrasted against Ra himself as an enlightened 'angelic being' from Saturn, in touch with both his ancient Egyptian ancestry and futurist astroblackness. What Ra teaches us is that all these ideas are myths, they are all vaguely ridiculous and we do not have to accept them as truths. Indeed a major part of the proselyting strategy of Afrofuturism is to directly contrast the old, accepted social mythology with the new - with the "alter-destiny" as Ra puts it, so that the present no longer has to define the future.

However, the transcendent, redemptive messenger that Ra represents is absent from the game scenario itself, and this is problematical in terms of representation. The Afro-Futurist as central agent is missing, the whole scenario would be thematically stronger if it were actually portrayed in some form, rather than alluded to in the back-story. Yet if the players manage to win the scenario (which is no walk in the park) our heroes reclaim their historical birthright and become masters of the spacecraft-pyramid, they effectively become Ra. and in this game as signs-system - it is the active,  primary role that must be fulfilled by the player.

SUN RA

As such we can see the central theme being one of transcendence and reclamation, of moving from one (derogatory) mythical form - the picaninny watermelon stereotype, to a new (transcendent) form - the spaceship-pyramid flying Afrofuturist. And more significantly, this doesn't occur through an external agency of a Prophet or Pharaoh as Sun Ra would have it (with himself as phaero-prophet), but through the agency of the individual hero.

If we turn our attention to these heroes, we can see a pattern emerge in the naming strategy:

Brudda Bobb
Probably a reference to Bob Marley. the song One A We by Culture:

Man like brother Bob Marley a one a we.
But most of all to stand by our side,
As the King of Kings, Lord of Lords,
Emperor Haile Selassie I and I, ey-ey.

I and I keep fighting for our rights.

Rubba Dub
A reference to the Rub-a-dub style of reggae, a prcursor to the modern Dancehall style.

Magga Dog
Jamaican patois, translates as "meagre dog" or mangey dog.  Peter Tosh guitarist with The Wailers and successful solo artist wrote a song with this title.

Banga Gong
Possiby a refrence to Get it on (Bang a Gong) by T.Rex, otherwise a pun on the words Bang a Gong.

Billa Bong
an Australian (Wiradjuri) word for an isolated pond.

To-ka Bong,
Probably a pun on slang for smoking cannabis through a water pipe, should be noted that cannabis is a Rastafarian sacrament and central to Rastafari religious practice.

Shama Beesbok
Possibly from Africaans 'bees', 'bok' = cattle, goat. Shamans of Beesbok are responsible for food.

Shama Brobat,
Possibly a reference to chemical hygene company Brobat - Shamans of Brobat are charged with making poison for blow-darts.

The names are not racist slurs, and only one or two silly onomatapias (such as other names from Warhammer, such as Slann names, Gottalottabotl - gotta lotta bottle - a milk advertising slogan in the 80s, or the ogre Ezza Ugezod - He's a huge sod)  Instead the majority seem to be affectionate monikers stemming from Black British culture, Jamaica and Australia being Commonwealth countries - names like Magga Dog and Brudda Bob seem to signify someone with a more than casual acquaintance with Reggae, although we shouldn't discount a cheap compilation LP being picked up simply for research purposes. Nontheless takes an informed position, and makes the same kind of irevverent jokes that litter the ground of Warharmmers other imaginary peoples.

The name Bahb-Elonn (the villain) is a classic Warhammer pun. Obviously the pun is on the name of city of Babylon, and the Floating Gardens on its famous Hanging Gardens, one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient World. However, Babylon has a deeper resonance within Rasterfari culture, illustrated nicely by the song By the Rivers of Babylon,  popularised in the mid 1970s by German disco group Boney M (themselves no strangers to Afrofuturism, their first album being entitled Nightflight to Venus )  based on  Psalm 137 about the plight of the Isrealites taken as slaves into Babylon. Feel free to press play and carry on reading, there's nothing of particularly Afrofuturist note in the imagery here.

In Rasterfari the word Babylon is synonymous with the forces of oppression and is used to denote the State, Police or other anti-rasta authority that stands against the Rule of Jah (God). As we've already seen in the Good character names, Reggae & Rastafarianism is established as part of the  myth. It is precisely in this role of the 'downpressor man' that the Old Worlder magician Bahb-Elonn is cast. The only white man in the scenario, set up as  a colonialist slave-taker, an evil, powerful magic user, who is worshipped as a false-god by his slaves on his stolen, floating island, and trapped by his own wickedness and lust for power.

There is another mythological slant to this, Bahb-Elonn is a magic user, and his theft of the ancient pyramid-craft is more than a simple reference to european colonialist aggression. One only needs to look at the headline act in 19th C. Occultism - Aliester Crowley to see the appropriated Egyptian symbolism and imagery within the Western Esoteric Tradition, and Crowley can be seen to be culturally (or perhaps even psychically) inhabiting the pyramids themselves, robbing them from their African heritage and re contextualising them within a predominately white, Eurocentric mytheme. Bhab-Elon then can be read as representing the Masonic / Golden Dawns appropriating, claiming for themselves the history and mythologies of African culture for their own selfish magickal gain.

Aleister Crowley in Egyptian garb

In this light, rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West recent appropriation of Crowley-esque occultic and masonic imagery is less about a lost pop-stars flirting with a hipster / gothy / witchhouse pseudo-satanism, or conspiracy-driven Illuminati mind control, but rather a radical cultural tactic to wrestle the imaginative image of Magickal Egypt from the Masons, New-Agers and Occultists and into the hands of Afro-Americans - 'we have returned to reclaim the pyramids' as Parliament sang back in 1975. Besides, Rihanna looks fantastic as a bladerunneresque Koka Kalim ganger, in Run the Town give the girl a bolt pistol.

Big contracts, big contractors
built pyramids, period
We Masters

Jay Z - Free Mason

But unless the multi-platinum darlings of Hip-Hop are funding the Egyptian uprising or attempting to stem the systematic wiping out of the Mbuti in the Congo, just like Mr. Crowleys psychic attack on Hitler in WWII, it lacks any real-world clout, and is ultimately empty narcissistic entertainment glorifying capital and celebrity with themselves as the new overlords - the new Celebritarian Antichrist Ssuperstars to borrow Maryin Mansons extended critique of celebrity obsessed pop-culture.

Enough of that! Back to the Warhammer...

Bahb-Elonns arrogant use of evil magic, his Faustian lust for power and abuse of power eventually traps him into eternal conflict with a daemon, which subsequently causes the immanent destruction of the floating pyramid. The ur-narrative of rebellion and uprising would be more elegantly satisfied by the pygmies confronting Bahb-Elonn head on. Yet perhaps this denial of vengance is a subtle restatement that colonialist masters are still untouchable by their 'lessers' and a final re-assertment of the conservative, white, european balance of power.

An Afrofuturist reading of the Floating Gardens shows it to be actively engaging in transforming myths, subverting negative sterotypes of Africans rather than simply reproducing them and creating an role-playing-game worthy of Ra's 'alter-destiny' whilst also respecting the history of slavery and portraying it as a universally bad thing, without overburdening it with guilt messages.  One could level the charge of simply perpetuating certain negative stereotypes against the Floating Gardens, and not portraying the positive ones, but nontheless the negative myth is usurped - not only are the watermelon eating pickaninnies free men, but heroes whose history and future is far greater than they know and it is by their own hands that they will reclaim both...

 

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P.S. Pushed "publish" instead of "save". This wasn't quite cooled, and probably needed breaking into smaller posts. Oh well, it's done now!

Amazonia: Archeoideology

Heading back to the Lustrian jungle, for another look at the Amazons, who are of course the all-female warrior tribe, loosely based on Greek myth intermixed with a heap of contemporary 1980s influences.

C30 Citadel Amazons | 2nd Citadel Compendium

"Second wave" feminism in the 1970s created an entirely new mythology founded on completely dodgy archaeological grounds. The central story goes something like this: once upon a time in Neolithic Europe women were dominant and as women are all naturally "peaceful, nurturing and in tune with nature" they worshiped the Great Mother Goddess and humanity all lived together in universal peace and harmony. And then, boo-hiss evil patriarchal male dominated society invaded and destroyed them all, with their evil man-idea of The Wheel and enslaving horses and being male-chauvinist pigs and stuff.

Amazon Branchwalker | David Sims / Daria Werbowy | Vogue US 2010

Of course, such scenarios can only be constructed by cherry picking archeological evidence, generally making stuff up, falsifying dates, projecting folklore onto a much earlier time period than that which produced it and overly free interpretation of evidence etc. This kind of nonsense was spouted by crackpot hippy archeologist Maria Gimbutas, and is no doubt still in vogue in some happy-clappy alternative history quarters.

Fortunately someone has put an amateur documentary up on Youtube about Gimbutas so you can watch it rather than wade through her texts, it is a relentlessly pro-feminist prehistory, and provides less critical substance as the average History Channel piece (i.e. not much). Like Erich von Danikens Chariots of the Gods before it, the rhetoric is rather barefaced - notice how the the connective tissue of argument is dsicarded in favor of parading images of artifacts in front of the viewer with assertion after assertion, with no explanation of how the objects are actually related across great oceans of time. Best example putting Willendorf Venus (24,000BC) in a sequence with a piece of Greek sculpture (3,500BC) with no mention of how these artifacts could be related, they just are :

This central myth of "matriachal prehistory" as it is known, requires women to be seen as 'peaceful and nurturing' and men as 'violent and dominating' which, rather than being based on actual historical evidence, is just projecting the negative stereotyped gender-roles of contemporary society onto prehistory. As this actually does nothing to improve the social standing of women (or men for that matter), it's no wonder contemporary feminists reject it wholeheartedly as a useful mythology, but in the late 1970s, early 1980s, much of this discource' was actively taking place within archaeology - and unlike Von Dankiens  "the aliens did it" which is alternately scoffed at and ignored by academia, Gimbutas curried some favour with proper historians and archeologists of the time (typically ones promoting a feminist agenda, and those wanting to just point out how ideologically constucted our notions of pre-history are).

The slightly less imaginative bits of Gimbutas writings (largely about migrations of people in the neolithic period) do still have some currency, although in the decidedly dodgy area of Aryan racial origins, the beloved field of many a right-wing extremist. Amusingly it's centered around invasion of eastern europe by the Kurgans. Which is totally hilarious, as any fule kno the Kurgan look exactly like some 1980s Chaos Warriors sculpted by by Aly Morrisson:

Prehistoric Male Chauvanist Kurgan of Khaos
Highlander (1986)

In her later book "The Language of the Goddess" Gimbutas does some quite frankly maddeningly bad semiolgical analysis of symbols created by stone-age people, such as claiming Ox heads represents the female uterus, (the very identification of which would require medical knowledge and surgical skill not otherwise in evidence with the neolithic people she's dicussing)  and that images of double-headed axes are not axes at all but actually butterflys and therefore symbols of regeneration (rather than obvious instruments of war), and well, that any triangle represents the female generative anatomy. One is reminded of Sigmund Freud's, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". Obviously I disagree with Gimbutas  interpretations as being anything other than a personal delusion and their applicability to actual history to be nonsensical, but such notions are potentially interesting fodder for fantasy gaming and world creation.

WH40k: Waaaargh the Orks Goff Banner
according to Gimbutas, this is a uterus and a butterfly

Riggs shrine

But returning to our Lustrians and  the Second Citadel Journal. If we skim over the Shrine of Rigg,  we see that the scenario centers on the conflict between greedy violent male Norse raiders seeking treasure, and primitivist eco-feminist Amazons, who are scientifically (they have high technology), spiritually (they can physically manifest their Goddess) and morally superior, defending their home and prehistoric cultural heritage.

The scenario essentially reproduces the core discources of feminist archeology: On the one hand we can read the Norse as a portrayal of the male archeologist as  looter and defiler of ancient acred space (the Shrine), and the female as a  preserver of history and culture (ancient technology and its manuals), and on the other hand this is also a reproduction of the central Gimbutasian myth of invading male aggressors (Kurgans) on an otherwise peaceful and indigenous matriarchal society ( indigenous Proto-Indo-Europeans).

Men are from Norsca, Wymmin are from Amazonia | John Blanche | 1984

Punks, Old Market Square, Nottingham, 1983.| via Nottingham in the 80s

Whether engaging with these academic, archeological dialogues was part of Richard Halliwells intention, I do not know. I know Rick Priestly studied archeology. The chances are it is nothing so deliberate, but rather a just a melange of cultural influences of the time. And that's one of the advantages of approaching these texts in 2013, rather than 1984, having enough distance to look at the patterns and see it as part of a wider cultural dialogue.

Putting matters of intentionality to one side, I would argue  the myth of matriachal prehistory is exactly the kind of ideologically constructed pseudohistory that is ripe for developing fantasy (Tolkiens conceptual and discarded Mythology for England project by way of example, or Nazi UFOs for another). So rather than playing out the Napoleonic Wars on Mars or Space:1945 Warhammers Lustria could be seen to be gaming with the text of 1980s Gender Wars and the myth of matriarchal prehistory.

Amazon Tracker | Daria Werbowy | Vogue US 2010

Gimbutas bronze-age feminists were completely peaceful with no weapons - while the same cannot be said of Halliwells Amazons, who are most certainly armed. However, they do not seem to have a formal, standing army. The "warriors" are either priestesses, with ceremonial weapons, tribal hunters -with bows and arrows and hunting knives or bodyguards with spears. We are informed that the Amazons lived peacefully alongside the Old Slann (the only other faction existing in Warhammer prehistory), although that peace has now ended since the collapse of the Old Slann empire. Also, like Gimbuas' imaginary prehistoric Goddess, the Amazons are mysteriously self-generating, having no males to produce their offspring.  If we are to take our radical-feminist reading of the Amazons back in time from the fantasies of the "second wave" we can see in the Suffragette movement a potential parallel of the Amazons access to advanced technological weapons as the militant members of the Women's Social and Political Union being known for arming themeselves with hand guns... but I'll save that for another post. 



OK, so that;s the narrative, but what does that mean in gamist terms? I hear you ask. Well, I've updated the Tribeswomens stats from 1E to be compatible with 2nd/3rd edition (that's the 2E S+T kicker and numerical T), and points value calculated as per the Oldhammer Points Value calculator so we can make some numerical comparisons.

 

Attribute		M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP	PV
Man		4	3	3	3	3	1	3	1	7	7	7	7	5
Amazon		5	3	3	3	3	1	5	1	7	7	7	7	6

So the 1E Amazons are faster than men, both in that they can move further and will attack first. So while not exactly representing gender equality, nor going over the top to make them overcompensated fetishised super heroines as in the dominatrix mould that plagues current representations of the female in current Warhammer imagery either. although the bonuses to speed and agility are within the gender-role norms (i.e. why not excessive Strength or Toughness?). Again a useful comparison to  Dungeons & Dragons may be made, where feminine characters Strength is capped at a lower than the masculine, wheras in Warhammer these are equal.

| John Paul Gautier 2010

It should also be pointed out that while Amazons are female, they are not strictly human. Whether this itself is a distancing of the feminine from the center of the Warhammer mythology, or even a product of the literal dehumanising of the feminine can only be seen in how the individual relates to the 'otherness' of the faction. In Riggs Shrine, for example the Norse are largely unsympathetic gold-hungry raiders, albeit cast very much in the murderer-hobo vein of the D&D adventurer which gamers of the time were reasonably familiar and comfortable with. In this context, the usurping of the milieu from the expected Orc / Bugbear / Evil Cultist infested dungeon  (c.f. the Caves of Chaos in Keep on the Borderland) to a holy place run by tribal women goes some way to show how radical a departure from traditional fantasy adventure gaming Rigg is.*


In this kind of reading, fantasy gaming becomes more of a socially aware text than pure escapism and can even be seen to have a socio-political dimension. And of course, the idea of radicalised female tribal warrior still has currency today, as I hope the photos of Daria Werbowy and the 80s Nottingham punk scene illustrate...


*unless of course, the Orks are Goddess worshipping Orks with diagrams of a uterus on their banners, and the cave itself a symbol of deep feninine reproductive ability, into which the adventurers must delve... anyone done a freudian analysis of Gygaxan gaming? 

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Again, let's finish this trip to Lustria with  a look at every ones favourite 1980s Franco-Japanese Greek-myth in space cartoon series, Ulysees 31. In this episode (#23: Calypso) Ulysees lands on a planet entirely inhabited by a race of alien women. There has been some discussion about the emotional weight of this series in the comments, and I feel it only justified to warn you that not only do we see clearly adulterous intent on the part of Ulysses,  several people die - on camera, and we also see our hero cry.

"Melancholia Factor 10, Captain".