[This morning, discussing bee bee gun use and technology, Dan admitted to an extremely cool form of juvenile delinquency… Dan took me to this location and took the photo of his punkhood island which serves now as my phone’s wallpaper.]

This probably started in eighth grade. We would go down to the DuPage River and there were woods around it, pretty substantial wooded area, wasn’t a forest preserve or anything. We hardly ever ran into people unless they were on the river canoeing or snowmobiling. There, down a little ways from where houses were, there was an island where the river split and went around it on both sides. It was pretty big, you couldn’t just see across it. It would take a few minutes to walk across it and it was heavily wooded.

We walked right across the water in the summer. At the deepest it was only like thirty inches. There was a current. In the summer we would wade. In the fall we would take, Dwayne’s two-man inflatable boat with paddles. When it froze over we would walk across the ice and sometimes you could hear the ice cracking and we were like, ‘Oh shit,” and run across.

We set about building a fort and brought whatever hand tools from home: mainly a bow saw and a hand ax for notching wood like Lincoln logs. We didn’t want to cut down trees anywhere near the fort and we didn’t want people to see it. So we would cut down trees near the water and bundled them together and towed them down the river to the spot where we put the fort up. It was probably eight-by-eight. Maybe four feet high—we never put a roof on it. We spent hours and hours building that thing.

In the winter we used to grab whatever food we could, like hot dogs and baloney, and have a fire and cook hot dogs on a stick and have a whole day there until it got dark. We shot a lot of birds just for target practice. It didn’t matter what kind of birds, whatever was around. One time we went out there and all of our fuckin’ logs were lying there in a pile—someone had taken our fort apart. When we put it together, each thing we did custom and the logs were different, it was like putting a puzzle back together and we had to figure out the exact combination. That kind of sucked.

Jimmy helped us build it two—those were the only three people that were ever out there. We never brought anyone else out there. They built houses all around there, all the woods that were around there is all houses now. We can drive by there—there’s a frontage road. We used to play a game we’d call Rambo, and one of us would hide with a spear and the other two would go and try to find him and you would ambush your friend. One time I walked right into a fuckin’ buck, and I ended up face—to-face with this fucking buck, and I was like, ‘Holy shit’ and it just took off. I was surprised at how big it was. I didn’t see it as I was being quiet and trying to sneak into the heavier brush with my spear. When we did Rambo, we all had spears. We didn’t sharpen the points or anything stupid like that.

We had been reading Conan, I had seen Conan, the greatest movie ever made, to this day, unsurpassed, unarguably, when it is clearly something subjective. All three of us would read those books. And Rambo was big.

[We watched Conan the barbarian last night and reconnected with the inner barbarian.]

By Dwayne’s house they had built a new subdivision and all the dirt from excavating the basements was piled up in mounds and the roads were in for future houses. We had been to Missouri with Dwayne’s parents and bought a bunch of fireworks and took them home with us. We were by the dirt mounds shooting off fire works and our bee bee guns and two squad cars pull up. I took off running and made it to the treeline, just down from where our fort was, knew those woods at the back of my hand and knew they wouldn’t find me. But I looked back at the treeline and Dwayne stood there and I didn’t want him to have to be interrogated as to my identity, so I just walked back.

The cops said that somebody called and we were shooting automatic weapons, which we both laughed at, the rediculousness of it. There were two cops, Shorewood Police. [They were thick as flees as we drove there before writing this.] We showed them that we had some left over fire works from the 4th of July and we were just shooting our bee bee guns and the guy was a total dick and said that any type of toy gun was illegal in Shorewood. I had this very cool, fully automatic bee bee gun that looked like a Mach 10, that I ordered out of the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine that ran on a can of compressed air. [a Christmas present fo the PIG’s son no doubt.] It would shoot a shitload of bee bees, but they only really had anything on them for like fifty feet. Didn’t get any birds with it—just shot my friends with it in our bee bee gun wars.

So when the cop grabbed it from me I tried to show him how to unscrew the compressed air can so it wouldn’t fire and he’s looking at it like its and extremely deadly weapon and the can of compressed air with ACE Hardware on it should clue you in that it’s pretty harmless. A cop should have some basic firearms knowledge. He said that I could get a lawyer and try to get it back after ninety days and I laughed and said, “I’ll just order another one for forty bucks.”

I was reading my usual Soldier of Fortune, as one does in eighth grade. I couldn’t order it to my parent’s house. It’s not like I could write a check for it. I mowed lawns for five bucks a pop and saved up that way. I bought a money order and had it sent to Dwayne’s house—whose parents were way cooler than mine. I never did get another one.

We had a one pump rule for our battles. I honestly don’t remember what kind of bee bee gun Dwayne had—am I honestly that self-centered that I only cared for my own losses and have no idea what kind of gun Dwayne had taken from him?

[Laughter]

I seriously don’t remember. There might have been a chance that he didn’t bring his and we were playing with the fully auto bee bee gun. You would put a “half pint” milk cartoon of bee bees at one time.

We didn’t get arrested. They just took our shit and left. Fireworks had been illegal in Illinois for along time, you had to go to Wisconsin, Indiana or Missouri.

We would shot at each other with bottle rockets by lighting the fuse burn down and throw them up in the air and we called them niցցer chasers. [1] When we were way older we had a roman candle war and Scott got shot in the chest with one and he got a burn mark in the center of his sternum. It’s kind of funny that when guys get together they are always shooting each other and throwing shit at each other.

We used to shoot at snowmobilers. We climbed up a hill on the opposite side, uphill maybe fifty feet and we made a snow blind and set up there and shot at snowmobilers going down the river. They had helmets and snow suits on so that’s how we justified it. Sometimes they stopped, knowing something had happened, but didn’t know what.

We just got older and when everyone was able to drive, and working, and partying and chasing women, we didn’t go back to playing in the woods—so probably sixteen. I went out there with my friend Robby one time to show him. He had a blowgun and I had a pump style bee bee gun and we’d turn the darts around backwards and shoot each other with the blow gun.

When paintball came out this same group, we used to go paint balling, with the single shot guns and the science class googles. Not enough of us showed up, so they put us in the general group, and there were these biker dude that were dressed in camo and had fancy guns, so we were getting destroyed and they would cheat. Bruce, the smallest guy in our group, threw his gun down and went and tackled this big fat Vietnam guy and broke his gun and there was a lot of pushing between us. We got banned and had to come up with money to pay for Bruce’s broken gun. The place was called Doc’s, in Wilmington.

Notes

-1. New York friends have told stories of hunting blacks with bottle rockets and other fireworks in NYC and calling them by the same racially ballistic term.

“… the pot of my native country is coming to the boil.”

-7, Death in the Dark, page 108

Disclaimer

[The evil biographer cannot let go of his violence obsession, and has bullied, lured and inveigled Dan into discussing some childhood and youthful heroics.]

I don’t want to toot my own horn. Most of this sounds self-agrandizing because I come off looking good in most of them. I come off bragging and none of my stories come off as anything compared to a guy like Big Ron. It wasn’t real violence persay. Back when kids were like, “Oh, let’s have a square go,” no one was going to end up dead.

[The writer informs the subject that rating the importance of violent encounters is above his pay grade.]

The First Real Schoolyard Fight, 3rd grade.

I remember this kid George was a really tall kid and we got in a playground fight towards the end of my third grade year. I recall doing well, not the specifics, but it really emboldened me as to fighting is no big deal and it was cool because the word spread around and helped my street cred as it were. Every year after that I got into multiple fights for every grade of school.

When We Moved

We moved to Shorewood. Didn’t know anybody and I was going into sixth grade. It was in the summer before school started. I got in a fight with a kid on the other block. My Sister and the neighbor that we had met, this girl Audrey, came to get me and they were both crying. They had been over on the other block and some kid was swinging a stick and hit them. I went over there and this kid was probably around the same age and grade as me and he got in my face and was posturing up like he was a tough guy. I punched him in the nose as hard as I could—didn’t say a word. He started crying and his nose was bleeding. He slunk off home crying like a little bitch. I felt great, because he was a dick and he was fucking with my sister and her friend.

[VIOLENCE IS GOOD]

My very first day of sixth grade I got a bus detention. The only kids I met in my neighborhood were in 8th grade and I was in sixth. On the way home from school they were teasing some kid and playing keep away; Greg, the paper boy, in 8th grade, and Scott, my neighbor—the only kids I knew and who I hung out with. For lack of anything to do I would ride down to his house and help him sort papers and ride his route with him on our BMX bikes.

There was a radio station that had a little credit card, a membership code and they would give out prizes on the radio based on the number of the card. It was called Fantastic Plastic. He must of had it out and one of those guys had it and was throwing it back and forth and I got involved in this triangle keep away game from this dude. The bus driver came back and wrote us up and got our names. That was the end of my first day of 6th grade.

An Eighth Grade Bully

I was in sixth grade. The kid, Scott who was my neighbor was an eighth grader and we were at the bus stop. This other eighth grade kid that was like a full adult size in eighth grade—he was big—he used to bully Scot. When I started goin’ there I wouldn’t accept it and would fight this dude. I remember on one occasion I took him down with a double leg and tried to mount him and was punching him. It just got broke up because we got on the bus and went to school. Another time he was bullying Scot, who was this really skinny kid, so I took the bully’s lunch. Next to the bus stop this guy used to back out of work and back up and I took this douchebag’s lunch and put it behind the back tire and this guy comes out and backs over his lunch.

Then, so his dad walked the kid over to my house to address the fighting problem. He was talking to my mom first and they pulled me out and said, “What is the problem between you two?”

I told the guy that the kid is constantly bullying and pushing around Scott and Scott did not defend himself and that his kid was the jerk in this situation. His dad made him walk down the block to another bus stop. They did make us shake hands and apologize to one another.

Bullshit Fights

His name was Scott also. He was best friends with this kid I became friends with and he would fuck with me. We would eat lunch together. Before school began we would go hang out in the cafeteria. We would sit together. The other kid’s name was Mark. That was his best friend and lived next to him. And Mark and I became friends and it bothered Scott. I remember one day he threw his milk cartoon at me, splashed milk on me from across the way. I went after him and it got broken up, because there was a lot of teachers in the area.

Later in that same day we passed each other in the hallway and we started going at it. We were throwing punches, almost like hockey fights and we would grab each other and start swinging, because he was a hockey player and that was his move. That got broken up. Each time we got sent to the Vice Principal’s office. Later in the day, it might have been in the hallway, for the third time that day, we get stopped by teachers and brought to the office. The Vice Principal said, “If I catch you guys fighting again I’m kicking you out of school.” We kind of cooled it after that. But we still sat together at the same table.

Just kid’s stuff.

“… but a flawed instrument is all the more dispensable should it need to be discarded after use.”

-6, The Chamber of Sphinxes, page 107

…

The year I started high school, they shut down Joliet East, and Joliet Central was crowded as it was, so they bussed all the Eastsiders to Joliet West. They [the Eastsiders] realized that the white kids were scared of them so they terrorized them. It was definitely a culture shock for me. The junior high I went to I think had two black kids. I didn’t think of them any differently than anybody else—they were fine.

The Eastsiders were loud and obnoxious for sure. The girls would get in fights in the hallway and there would be hair all over the floor from them pulling each other’s hair out. I went to a basketball game and this guy Brice I knew pointed out people that had guns on them.

A couple years into it, my best friend Dwayne, his sister and my sister were the same age and they both had blonde hair and blue eyes and they were both harassed and told that they were racist if they didn’t go out with black guys. I remember one time that someone was harassing Dawn, Dwayn’e sister, and I went running to go help out on the other side of the school. By the time I got there nothing was happening. Some guy was grabbing her and harassing her. My sister was harassed at times in a similar fashion and we went looking for the guys that did it. She didn’t point out who it was. Maybe she couldn’t tell the difference?

One time in gym class during hockey Dwayne checked this guy who was a total asshole. He was full adult size in high school, way bigger than everybody and would bully people. Dwayne got his revenge in hockey because he was a good skater and checked him and said, “Fuck you niցցer.”

We were walking before school started and that guy came up and jumped Dwayne from behind even though here were three of us walking together. I grabbed the guy from behind, and right as I did I looked to my left and there was a security guard running towards. They weren’t armed security guards, not cops.

This kid I was almost friendly with, he was a black kid, he was the only one I actually got in fights with in school. But we were friends. His name was Demetrius.

So Dwayne and a couple kids that I knew took a bus to Joliet Central for their advanced autoshop class because they didn’t have the facilities at West. They would take a bus to and from Central. Dwayne was tall, like six two and weighed about a hundred and forty five pounds. So Dwayne and another white kid were on the bus and all the other kids on the bus were black and they started fucking with them, taking their backpacks, smacking them around. These were full-on regular school buses, not like a transit bus. It was the traditional yellow school bus and our busses were disgusting because it was the jerry curl era and the black kids would lean thier heads against the windows and they would be covered with slime—it was like trying to look out of a jar of Vasilene.

Dwayne was saying that they took a book or two and he didn’t know how he was going to replace them. He told us what happened: me and some friends, Rich, was one of them. The class that Dwayne was in there were other kids from the auto shop who were allowed to drive an didn’t take the bus. The next day, a bunch of us, who didn’t even belong on that bus got on that bus and waited for the black kids to get on. They would not board the bus. They saw that we were waiting for them and they wouldn’t get on the bus and security came and brought us all to the dean’s office. Dwayne was there.

We said what happened and I don’t recall getting in trouble or anything. Dwayne went right back on that bus the next day and they [black kids] didn’t do anything after that. They did not fuck with him. I was enraged that day.

My friend Donnie had a party on the west side at his parents. We were, I think the senior year of high school, towards the end, towards the summer. All of us were hanging out before the party a couple car loads of my friends. One of my friends had afake I.D. so we went to get served and buy beer for the party. We used to drink old Style, because my friend’s dad always had old Style. Our slogan was “Oh yes, O.S.” My friend’s dad always had a case behind the seat of his truck and he said, “I don’t care if you guys take it, just leave the money so I can buy another one.”

Dwayne went straight to Don’s house. When we pulled up, Dwayne was in his truck and I thought maybe he couldn’t find a place to park. I went up to talk to him and he said, “Look,” and he showed his front tooth was out, one of them. He said, “That fuckin’ niցցer is here and he sucker punched me.”

I asked him what happened and he said that he was walking up the driveway to don’s house and the guy tapped him on the back of the shoulder and he turned around as one does and he got punched right in the face. The black guy was probably 6’ 3” and two-fifteen, two-twenty. So Dwayne is like 145—that is close to eighty pounds. I was five-ten and close to two-hundred pounds. I made up to two hundred by the end of my senior year in high school.

He said they started wrestling and Dwayne had got him rolled over and on top and Dwayne was grabbing his head and slamming it on the asphalt driveway. Then people that I thought were our friends dragged him off of the guy and the guy and his crew went in the house.

[For the legion of guilty ghosts of a political and socially scientific mind who have declared endlessly that men of West African ancestry are unbeatable physical combatants while ignoring all combat sports and military after action evidence, I recall here that it took the 2,400 strong Baltimore City Police Force to prevent myself and a handful of other crackers from defending ourselves against 200,000 hoodrats. Above, a 145 pound man is ambushed by a heavyweight who must be rescued form the defensive action by a mob. Can we stop worshiping Ye Hi Gawds yet?]

So, when I heard this, I fucking ran into the house and opened the door and there was a lot of people in the house and I yelled, “Where is that fucking niցցer?!”

They told me that he went out the back door. Then, a bunch of people got in my face and tried yelling at me about it—white people. [The N-word more of a crime than the N-sword.] I remember shoving them and telling them to fuck off and if they wanted to fight lets do it. Afterwards people told me that him and his crew, who I never saw, ran out the back while I was arguing with these people. These were all people who lived in our neighborhood. Donnie was my friend. These were people that lived around him and in my grade that thought it was smart to get in my face. They didn’t do shit, just yelling for me to calm down. I was shaking with rage.

I don’t know the story of how they went in, how they ran out. I just know I went off the handle. I never saw him [the black guy] again, not in school or anything. After that I remember riding the bus and some freshman I didn’t know came up to me and start asking me about the party, saying, “You’re the guy.” It was weird, that other people I didn’t know would ask me this.

[Can we understand now how hundreds have in the past conquered and ruled millions before the Financial Police State cloaked us all in its folded wings of night?]

Dwayne was best man at my wedding. We are still in touch. He became a diesel mechanic and moved to Florida.

Composition Note

This is the 2nd draft of this game, in which my inclination in the design has drifted towards the complex in some areas. My sense is that dueling, chases and hunts should take some time to play out and that the disasters of brawls and battles should run quickly at small scale. Agility should, absolutely be the primary damage reduction mechanic in body. Hence, it should be the corollary Esoteric ability that helps preserve the sanity of the combatant.

Some other nerd should be writing this section—but I’m the only nerd I have. So here it goes…

Spirit

Spirit, and its three components, Animism, Social and Esoteric, are the ability to deal emotionally with the world, or control your emotions within that soul-bending matrix. The stuff that other meatheads try to do to you on the battlefield is child’s play compared to what philosophers, politicians, priests, merchants and userers—not to mention their yummy analogues, women who have manlike intelligence—will do to your once bright, flickering soul!

Spirit skills deal with, or dispense, since the world is iniquitous, blessings and curses upon the spirit of a person. The spirit is its own field of play. A person’s Overall Spirit points equal his sanity, with a score of 3 to 18. Establish spirit hit points, for sanity determination, just as one does with Overall Body points being used for Hit Points. These will represent the emotional resilience of the character. In horror settings, Sanity Points, or SPs might be more important than HPs. Even Herakles went insane and cremated himself. First, let’s review Spirit as presented thus far:

Step 7

Spirit 3-18

Animistic: 1-6

In play, Animistic spirit serves as bravery, and also as empathy with animals, and is the key ability of the mounted warrior. The down side of a high animistic score is its sets you up to be manipulated by men with higher social scores or terrorized or befuddled by bad guys with high esoteric scores, basically the fate of the bugman who has been mesmerized by philosophers.

0 = The postmodern bugman out of touch with nature and afraid of his very shadow.

1 = Modern home owner

2 = Liar, Zombie whisperer

3 = Criminal/Military Leader, Mob Whisperer

4 = Empath, Horse/Dog/Grunt Whisperer

5 = Heroic Leader, Warrior Whisperer

6 = Primal Leader, Wolf Whisperer

Social: 1-6

Social ability is used to convince peers, negotiate with allies, make treaties with enemies, etc.

0 = Modern Voter/Sports Fan

1 = Church Lady, “There Should Be A Law!”

2 = Functionary, lower management

3 = Manager, Sergeant

4 = Politician, Captain

5 = Cunning Politician, Commander

6 = Master Politician, General

Esoteric: 1-6

0 = Atheist with Promethean aspirations to becoming a node of the collective Eater God.

1 = Secular Humanist, denying Eternity

2 = Agnostic, vaguely aware that greater powers than man menaces his steps.

3 = Deist.

4 = Poet, keenly aware of the Other Side, able to conduct rites of sacrifice and oath binding from an honest heart.

5 = Seers, Yogi’s, Oracles, soothsayers, etc.

Having reviewed this, after having forgotten it, one can plainly see:

… that Animism is the Honorable, Honest, barbaric, virtuous aspect of the warrior, with those who have low animism inspired by those with high animism, to follow where they go, for this reason, characters from heroic cultures: Greek, Germanic, Celtic, Nordic, Amerindian, American frontiersmen, Confederate soldiers, should, after their first adventure experience, get to re-roll their animism score, keeping the old score if it is better. More on this later. High Animism, honorable characters tend to follow their ken and to reject social and esoteric leadership. Therefore, politicians and philosophers, who naturally manipulate or indoctrinate their lesser ken, must learn arcane skills to undermine the honor and trick the hero to be mislead through his own better nature!

… that Social is the duplicitous, civilized, managerial, slavish aspect, with those with low social enslaved by those with high social, which encourages manipulation, strict class division, and being driven by the lash or fear into battle, such as Persian, Roman, Conscript soldiers, British Empire and Union Army soldiers. Once a private in such an army is inducted or trained, his social score is reduced by 1. Social skill includes the talent for hurling insults between battle lines, for being a camp crier and herding reluctant men into battle.

Conversely, an officer in such an army, after his first battle may re-roll his animism score, potentially becoming a pariah among his class like Burton, Forest, Custer, Gordon, Patton & Hackworth, now becoming a better leader but less likely to climb the political rank ladder.

Or, player’s choice, he might bend the knee in his heart and re-roll his Social score, keeping the better of the two and develop a taste, indeed a thirst for, BOOT POLISH!

… Esoteric is the quality of penetrating, understanding, and articulating [communicating to other big-brained nimbi] the human condition. Expression is a function of Animism. The ability to convince the less enlightened is a function of Social. Composing songs and poems, these are esoteric things. But performing them are social exercises. So, very often, the most brilliant insight is acquired by one without the talent of a painter or musician to express higher values or deeper truths and is rarely paired with a high Social skill permitting the enlightened one to convince others and gain disciples.

After the God of Battle has made his pitiless will known on the field, a soldier that has not been positively active and has suffered or who has seen suffering, must make a Spirit check. If he succeeds, he should gain a Pathos and a Rout. If he fails, he shall lose a Social point and have it randomly reassigned, on a 1d6 to: 1-2 Animism, 3-6 Esoteric.

Much of the use of Spirit scores is focused on improving those scores. Spirit is the motivating force of a person and a group they lead. Also, the extreme imbalance of the 3 specific abilities, with a separation largely in kind at 3 and 4, with increasingly materialistic [low Animism], slavish [low Social] or Atheistic [low Esoteric], makes high scores on behalf of leaders important, and when combined with low follower scores, potentially world bending. This is the entirety of Postmodern Social Media influence mechanics: politics and sorcery writ in ether, exactly what Robert E. Howard presented as sorcery in his various Conan yarns. A GM will find that the rules of Grunt are perfect for converting any Robert E. Howard story into an adventure.

Example: if Moses came to the Crow tribe in their migration from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, he would just be a chief that did his job. But, among a slave population in Egypt, he became The Deliverer. [I’m not placing the big man as an example, out of respect to his residence on the Cross.] Apollonius of Tyanna and Epictetus were so effective as teachers, to count emperors among their students, in large part because they lived in a world whose people had become slavish from bottom to top, with even leaders now behaved as slaves and emperors cowered before their guards who moved them like puppets and slew them at will.

Likewise, Sidartha, Zoroaster and Gandhi would have been just another wise counselor among the tribal peoples of North America. But, in a slave society, their humanity, which would simply be above the average in a heroic society, shone like a beacon, like a very sun.

The general idea of Spirit is that the user of a spirit power makes 2 checks:

… 1. Overall Spirit check [1d20] to determine if he has the current power to use his specific ability: Animism, Social, Esoteric. Failure is not penalized, unless the petitioner of the unseen powers rolls a 20, in which case he has a crisis and must make sanity check. If he succeeds he gains 1 Spirit Mania. If he fails he now makes a Pathos check. If he fails this he secludes himself for a number of days equal to the die difference and gains a Pathos. If he succeeds he gains a Pathos without seclusion. The careers of Alexander, Burton, Forest, Gordon and Patton are thick with these regenerative seclusions. Conversely, a 1 on such a check gains a Mania, or a Pathos, or a re-roll of Esoteric, at the player’s preference.

… 2. Specific ability check [1d6]

If this is a personal, individual action, it is done, and success or failure is ranked by the die difference with the score, with the GM positing some graduated intensity of experience. Perhaps a 6 roll over a 4 ability smites the confidence of the Philosopher in his attempt to formulate a theory on the afterlife, or a doctrine for Christian observance, and he must seclude himself to regain it. A 1 should be treated as a great epiphany, with the cosmically-inclined character gaining some boon.

In the case of human interaction, like a hero using his mesmerism to inspire his men to charge a vast army or to stand against Grendel in fight, then the followers need only make an Animism check. Conversely, mesmerism, using animism to manipulate a person or persons, requires the object of this attention to fail his check!

So, when Thulsa Doom attempts to mesmerize Conan in the “unarguably greatest movie of all time,” the sorcerer has made his spirit check, and his Animism check as per his Mesmerism skill, forcing Conan to make an Animism check. A moneylender trying to deceive the barbarian would use his Social ability to force the barbarian to make a Social check or be cheated. As will be noted under Spirit skills, these are tied to abilities and sometimes target the same ability in another, or a different ability, as described below.

In social, a counsel of war, in which a rival character controlled by the GM is opposing the honestly thought out plan of the hero [like Parmenio objecting to Alexander before the Granicus] Alexander must make his Social roll and his companions must make their Animism roll, as he is appealing to that quality, to their sense of honor, for Animsim is the seat of honor.

However, in the case of Alcibiades giving a speech to the Athenians he seeks to manipulate for HIS own good and to their collective demise, he must make his social and they must fail their social!

If, on the other hand, a pirate captain is suggesting a dastardly deed in order to get rich, in violation of the Pirate Code the crew is operating under [these were drawn up and signed], he must make his Social check and most of them must fail their Animism [honor] check to go along with the evil act.

Oh my, the section that I almost subtitled Brainy Bullshit, has grown overlong. I will break here and return with the actual Skill, Action and Mania portions of Spirit for Grunt, the RPG that should be hidden from your wife and played in a bunker in New Zealand while the Orks rise from the defecation zones of Western Civilization to do their unseen masters’ bidding.

“The instruments that served his will were weak and flawed, he knew…”

-6, The Chamber of Sphinxes, page 107

…

The First Time I Met My Dean

I got in trouble for heckling a black history presentation in the school auditorium. It was English Class. My buddy Robby was in the same class. They marched us to the auditorium. It was part of the class to attend this production. It was about twenty-four kids and I would say it was almost half black. Robby was my friend from Taekwondo. We were sitting in there towards the back of the auditorium, as ne’er-do-wells do. The presentation was got to the part where the black race will over come their white oppressors and make them feel like slaves. These were kids, other students, from the Black Student Union.

We were looking at each other and Robby starts with a cough and yelling, “Bullshit” under his breath. So I joined him. That turned into, “Fuck you, niցցers!” My English teacher was the same black teacher who I did the Robert E. Howard report for. All I remember was the look of horror on her face. I had never been in trouble, so I had never met my dean up until that point, and when I saw it was a black guy I was like, “Oh, fuck.”

I was thirteen, a freshman. Because of my birthday I was on the young side, sixteen at the beginning of my senior year. This was the fall of the freshman year.

[Writer’s note: and Dan said with some pride that he had never been in trouble up to this point? Not viable extra credit. He does admit to having seen the dean a lot in junior high.]

Robby had the same dean, because it was alphabetical. There were maybe five deans in the school. We had a Principal, Vice Principal and then the deans did the other bullshit. Robby and I went in together. I had a lot of compartments for friends. I knew Robby from Taekwondo when we were in sixth grade. We said that we shouldn’t be forced to listen to that because it wasn’t just a history presentation, that they started about how they were going to get revenge on whitey. He wanted to punish us for what we were saying but we denied it. [laughter] We didn’t get in trouble and it became optional in the following year. If you were in your English class and they had that same black history presentation, it was optional to attend or stay in your English class—which I did.

The Karate Demonstration

That was senior year. Everytime there was an assembly it would be towards the end of the day, the last period. And my friends and I would always go out the nearest exit, walk around the school, meet in the parking lot, and leave. They had security posted up around the doors. I was the only one who didn’t fucking escape!

[laughter]

So I was one of the last people into the gymnasium, where the assembly was. I had to sit right up front on the lower bleacher. My dean was in a karate gi, nd giving a presentation. He represented the local YMCA and Park District Karate program. He pointed at me and said, “Come on up and help me.” He announced that he was going to demonstrate by proper breathing, how when you got punched it didn’t hurt, that when you kiaid and tensed up you wouldn’t get hurt. He showed me how to do your classic revere punch, which I had done thousands of times from sixth grade to my senior year of high school.

I was five-ten and close to two-hundred pounds.

He was at least in his forties. He was probably around six-foot tall and maybe around two-hundred pounds.

He showed me where to punch him, right in the solar plexus. I got in my stance, like a bo stance, and I let rip the hardest fucking reverse punch I could muster. He dropped straight down, right to the floor. I don’t remember laughter or anything.

I did not help him up.

I just stood over him, looking at him.

So he got up and grabbed the microphone and asked me my height and weight and how long I had been doing karate.

I said I was in Taekwondo since I was in sixth grade.

He says something like I punched like a much larger man and it was from my training and see what that can do for you, you become dangerous or something to that effect.

The people I hung out with were not there. So I didn’t get the accolades or praise from dropping the dean or anything lie that. He put his hand on my shoulder while he was talking and I just went and sat down.

Ditching Class

I had all the credits I needed to graduate when I was a junior. But I needed my parents signature to graduate early because I wasn’t eighteen. I liked my electrical class in the morning and I usually went to that. A lot of times I would just leave. I remember I got called into the dean’s office and I told him I had all my credits to graduate and the way I saw it I would get my diploma wether I got in trouble for ditching class or not.

He told me that he was going to give me an after school detention. I said I wouldn’t go to it, and wait until it became a suspension, and it would be the same result.

I ditched six days in a row. I think he just told me to finish out the year, didn’t get in trouble for it.

Dwayne and I did not go to our graduation ceremony. It was on a Friday night. I went to work at Brown’s Chicken and my mom and dad went to graduation because they thought I wasn’t serious when I said I wasn’t going to graduation. Our reasoning was there are people who can’t read getting diplomas. That diploma wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. We weren’t about to go there and pretend it meant something to us. I was working the very next morning at Brown’s Chicken again and Dwayne came and brought me my diploma. He went to the school to get his and they just gave him mine to give to me. It may sound strange to some people, but that’s what happened.

Hi James,

the last time we talked, I'd mentioned the old Woolworths building in my town and you'd asked me to write a few notes about what we discussed, Jeth:

Woolworths (which I know was a thing in the States too - do you guys still have that over there?) used to be a staple of the British high street. Most reasonably sized towns would have them - a large department store that sold you pretty much everything from housewares to sweets (candy) to music and even furniture, a retail jack of all trades. If you needed something last minute, you could pop in there and probably get it.

Woolworths was a shared experience across the UK – most major towns had one and it was a unifier of sorts between people. If you told someone that you bought something at "Woolies", they knew exactly where they could buy it too, no matter where they lived.

As a small kid, I stood in line and met the boxer Henry Cooper in a Woolies in another nearby town – signing Brut 33 aftershave merch at some kind of promotion – though I was about 5 years old and had no idea who he was - a giant!

I could bookend this early memory with a more recent, later life one: In our town, the lane down the side of Woolies was where “Fiddy Cent” (or should that be fifty pence in local currency?) a hopeful street tax agent followed me one night back in ‘20 no doubt sure that the old bearded hippy in the dark ahead would hand over the goods without incident but 50p turned and fled when I stopped and pretended to aggressively go for a non-existent knife in my waistband – I guess I read that one right…

The store in our town was built in the early 1900's and was pretty large with an escalator that went upstairs to two further floors. It kind of had a bit of everything, which ultimately I think was it’s undoing as it didn’t do any of those things quite good enough any more by the end.

After it closed in '08, idiots on Ebay were paying stupid money for a portion of pick and mix sweets they could have bought for pennies a few weeks earlier when it was open , just nuts.

The building then became a generic 99p store, and then a Poundland (hey that’s inflation for you…).

Its location in the centre of the town meant it was the first thing you see when you drive in . It lay empty for a while, and you could wonder what would fill it and add to what was a pretty dead town? Several floors, central location, it’d have to be another national chain, something to draw people in from outside town and perhaps some jobs? Perhaps something for young people that tend to go elsewhere rather than their own town if they can afford it?

No, after the great reality inversion (or perhaps “unveiling” of true reality would be a more accurate way to look at it) of 2020, the choice was a medical centre – the first thing that was to be seen when driving into the town would be the spectre of ill health and a private concern making money from it - our new medical gods.

All three floors are allocated different ailments - a bit like a twisted version of the Bruce Lee movie "Game of death". With physiotherapy on the top floor as Kareem Abdul Jabbar - Yep, two flights of stairs for you and your raspberry ripple legs!

Either side of the front entrance to the "Medical Pagoda" is now:

An office for a local politician or “local manager” to keep on a retail theme (the same political “brand” as the area managers at the time in government). This place looks shady as hell with cameras monitoring you if you stand in front of the opaque glass window hiding the goings on within safely behind a buzzer security system.

And the other side, a corporate coffee shop . The final confirmation of national identity replaced by transnational uniformity in the form of Starbucks.

The front space of this part of the building on the street – once an open public space where people would wait to meet up with friends, is now closed by ominous steel boxes to contain an area for seating. Looking more like an anti - insurgent barrier in a green zone, the dark metal blocks are filled inside with dirt and some feeble weeds struggle to soften the view of a taxi rank a few feet away where the zombies from methadone day at the nearby chemist, cram themselves into cabs excitedly for the journey back to flat land. Just enough space is left on the pavement for the obese to trundle past in mobility scooters.

I remember saying to a couple of trusted people at the time – "You want to see the future? Because it's here right now".

Everything you will need in one place (and you will be happy!).

The centre of the town is now the perfect example of the endgame reality: state, consumption and pharma combined.

You can passively sit like a grazing cow at the trough with a corporate coffee while the other two fuck you.

“…the sorcerer silenced him with lifted hand and a bland, uncaring smile.”

-6, The Chamber of Sphinxes, page105

Circles of Friends

I had a group of friends growing up in Shorewood, and I knew Robby from Taekwondo class in sixth grade. Then when we got together in high school I hung out with him and his friends, so I had that group of friends. One of his buddies was this guy named Quan. He got me my job at Cub Foods doing security and at Builder’s Square. We were pretty close until he moved to Michigan. One time he got bit by a girl with AIDS working security and he had to go get tested every six months. Sean was a neighbor of Dwayne, part of the Shorewood Crew, had a reputation for being a brawler, an Irish kid.

When I started working at Brown’s Chicken, there was an eclectic group there from five different high schools. At one time or another I hung out with all of there different friends groups.

Tony was the manager, ten years older than me. He was into lifting weights. I started working out with him in his basement. His best friend, was Scott, who was eleven years older than me. We used to work out at least three days, sometimes five days a week. We’d go for a run around Tony’s subdivision afterwards and go back to Tony’s house and slug protein drinks. I went to a lot of parties and ended up hanging out with these guys. That’s who I did the vast majority of my fishing with, Tony and Scot and their friends. Mike was from Brown’s and Rick was his brother.

All of these groups intersected with the others because I would invite my other friends to various parties.

Muscleheads

From the Taekwondo basement gym and Tony’s basement, we expanded our training. A gym opened close to my house in Shorewood and I joined that and became friends with this kid Jason who won every teenage bodybuilding contest in Illinois. Then we went to college together and were in the same classes so we would go to the gym with each other around our schedule. Our schedules were pretty much the same in Junior College. He introduced me to his friends. Because he knew everybody who was anybody in body building in Illinois, I made a lot of connections. One gym we went and started training at a lot, this guy named Bill, who won the Mister America, it was twenty minutes away, we started going there and hanging out with him. It was quite a ways to drive but it was the best gym around. The atmosphere was really good.

A couple of the guys I met in that era I ended up working with, who happened to be electricians working in my own local, which was fun. Nick, I met first with Jason and I worked with him later on. He was 5’ 11” and 295 at his biggest, with no gut, when I first met him. Later on when I worked with him he was probably still 260 and lean. He had a lot of trouble with his feet because he was so big for so long the arches were shot and he had to wear orthotics. He could only handle working an eight hour day. He had to turn down over time because he couldn’t stand for that long.

Back at Kwon’s, when I was working out there with Mike, his older brother Rick and his friends were the main crew at that gym. They were really hard core. You were a pussy if you weren’t squatting. Mike and Rick had really big upper bodies. Rick could use a lot of weight squatting and leg pressing but didn’t have very big legs himself and said he kept them small so that something else looked bigger. On the back of his leather lifting belt was written “French Fries” in marker and he would say those ain’t fries those are french fries. They started me out squatting with just the bar at 135. Within a couple months I was doing my reps and sets with 315.

I wanted to be a big muscle head but I didn’t want to do the steroids. The injections I always associated with hard core drugs and it seemed too much. I knew people who spent all there money on steroids. I always wanted to bulk up and get bigger so I never wanted to diet. Besides dieting is no fun, bulking up is a lot more fun!

I got more into power lifting because I knew I was never going to be a body builder. I used to go to APF meets [American Powerlifting Federation, because they were based out of Aurora, Illinois.] I did the lift off for my friend Stan who did a 507 pounds bench press in the 242 pound drug-tested class. Every time I was consistently squatting or dead lifting 500 pounds I would fuck up my back. My best bench press was 375. I wanted to do 400 so bad because my buddy Scott could bench 405 and Stan was benching 500.

So, my shoulders are bugging me and I just kept grinding away at it. I stopped because my shoulders were sore all the time and I started regressing. I started Olympic lifting just for fun and to work out. I noticed that in my class the top ten in the nationals at the time did around a 100 kilo snatch and a 150 kilo clean and jerk. So I focused my efforts on that. I could power clean and jerk 315. But didn’t have the good form to do a squat clean, which lets you use more weight. I could snatch 185, and so 220, is a 100 kilos, so I was trying to get up to that. The 150 clean and jerk is like 330 pounds, so I had those as my goal weights. I was pushing the front squat trying to get strong in that position so I would be able to squat clean. I fucked up my back, lost a front squat forward with 275 and I couldn’t even tie my shoes after I did that. I pretty much quit trying to do a lot of weight in the Olympic lifts. I did those exercises but didn’t push it.

I never stopped, really, using weights. I would do dips because I could and it helped me keep strong. In the weight rooms at hotels, I could still do the max on the machines because of the work I did with the dips.

Sean’s Plight

[Back to the venn diagram of friends, and the enigmatic Sean.]

Sean was just a guy in the neighborhood and we were the same age and ended up in the same places, casual friends. One night we were playing darts together, I like to play cricket. He throws a dark that sticks in the back of another dart like a fucking Robin Hood! I never saw that before. The next day we were all going to meet at Dwayne’s house and help his mother move. His stepdad had passed away and it was just his mom and she was moving. I was maybe 21. Sean didn’t show up for the moving.

Sean wasn’t there, at his house, the next day and everything was quiet at his house. No one was answering the door. We found out later from his little brother that some cop that they knew called the family and warned them that they were on to Sean for the murder at the beer distributor.

Sean had gotten fired from his job and he went in to get his last check and got in an argument with the guy that fired him and he stabbed him to death. That was two weeks before we were playing darts together! He was on the run for like seven months with family, hiding out. They gave him like a life sentence.

Good morning

Hope all is well

Loved your recent interview

I was asking Lynn if you got compensation for interviews.

There's a black guy named Charleston White whom you may be familiar with who goes around giving interviews for money because he has a lot of knowledge and a good ability to speak but nothing in comparison your caliber.

Your reference to the jack black book was very interesting because rose wilder lane probably did ghost write it , as she also ghostwrote the little house on the prairie books

I recently went to watch an MMA card promoted by a Dana White wannabe. The reason why I went was to see the MMA fighter, who is like a mini Sean, and has been using me for a heavy bag in sparring at the boxing gym. He's been knocking all his opponents out and was headlining the card, face of the promotion kind of deal.

Anyway he and the best fighters weren't on the card because of money issues with the promoter so it was a terrible card full of very amateur fighters with no boxing and very limited wrestling or grappling.

Anyway the point is that the crowd was almost fifty percent female.

Best

PB

Paul, i will ask Incognegro if I can adopt him and perhaps become black in that way. I see no other means by which I could be paid for my bad ideas.

How about James Black?

In the unrecorded discussion after the call Nick Mason asked if "The Red Indian Paul Bingham" would write another book, as he quite liked your first by Nine Banded Books collection.

PS:

(from PB]

I'm reading Banjo-Timejacker to My Woman this evening

I have another book available on Amazon which Ann Sterzinger published in 2014 .

Would be happy to communicate with the Myth guys anytime.

'Twas awesome.

-Adam

This cracker ran his mouth way too much and was so spent after 5 hours that he slept for a cооn's age—daz right!

I can barely recall what we spoke of. For a special ed retard to get to speak to four men who are college smart, who want to know what he thinks of something, is kind of mind bungling.

i really don't recall what we spoke of. i went to bed and woke to the Brickmouse saying, "Are you sure you want the Chosen Sons coming down on you?"

Well, whatever they find as my government address is bogus, so have at it denim hags.

I hope that Adam, Nick, Hans and Lance made something sensible of the weird ramble I was barely capable of.

On Saturday the ninth I was standing outside the temple of the eaters, at a bull & oyster roast in Rosedale, Baltimore, hoping I would not freeze to death in 45 degrees, returning Sean’s call. My young leader, who calls me “Boss” wanted to know If I had recovered from the Fight Brain Clinic on the 26th, and in particular the beautiful long sword thrust from young James Anderson that dented my saber mask, blackened my eye, and squashed all hopes of the Irish dirt farmers against the Danes in our miniature replay of Clontarf. I was only mildly concussed. It seems that my torn hips, by giving out whenever I am hit by a big man, or walk into his waster sword point, save the brain by failing under the strain.

Sean, satisfied that his old heathen thrall might survive the winter to continue serving as a substandard cornerman in May, then said, “I need to know how to up my boxing game. Kickboxing and MMA are too dangerous after having the knee rebuilt. So boxing is going to have to be my thing. What is the next step?”

I had spent the first hour watching the boxing, and coached James for his three two-minute rounds against Sean. When I sparred Sean, I planned on eating a double jab and slipping in, knowing he was going light, but ate, I think 7 in a row. So having seen only his glove and shoulder for 6 minutes, I hope this serves.

Sean is 6’ 1” 215 lbs, and very strong, with most of it in the legs. He is, unfortunately “On Weights!” I hated seeing him suck weight to 165 and 175 for MMA. Now he’s on that iron dope. Oh well. In Boxing, the best fighters from 160 to 195 are 6 feet to 6’ 1”. Staying at heavy, above 200 pounds, as the small man, is the best course here, better than being the lumbering meatshield for devil hands. In boxing, Sean is bottom heavy with wide hips, calves thicker than my thighs and freakish thighs. This can be translated to punching power.

Sean is a southpaw, who comes from kicking, so likes to switch leads.

Stylistically, partly for the lack of tall sparring partners, Sean boxes in a wide Philly shell, a kind of lateral peek-a-boo with a shoulder roll and a good hook pitched into the body off the hip. The double jab is good, the blind jab high enough for MMA.

#1: Elevate the Jab

You will be boxing giants. Your blind jab must be elevated. In sparring with six footers shoot your blind jab over their head, into the eyes of the 6 and a half to 7 footers you will be dealing with. Your wrist still blinds them. Your forearm protects against the cross. The glove can then be dropped down on their head, shoulder, arm or glove to stop, check or measure [that last being a foul]. Do not use this dropped lead to stall, but to right away punch with that or the other hand as you step off or steal the angle. USA boxing refs will call measuring in a hurry.

#2: Train As a Southpaw

Stop switching guard! You must own being a lefty by forcing your self to stay there. Do not switch guard for defense, ever. You should only switch guard to a left hand lead to exploit an advantage and prevent him from escaping. Watch Haggler versus Hearns for this.

#3: Increase Your Power

Do this by bringing your feet in under your hips. Your feet are too wide. Having them closer together makes your punch harder.

You can also increase your power from this taller, more narrow posture in three other ways. a) Use a knee drop when throwing the rear hand, and alternately, b) stand high on the foot under the punching hand by straightening the leg and raising the heel just before impact. So a slight knee bend translates to either a deep knee drop to sink weight in or to a straight flexed lower leg to deploy those cracker calves into the punch. c) From a knee drop, punch up from a half leg and put the thigh muscle into the punch.

#4: New Balance

Return to post or doorway drills, the rock slide and push off drills to begin testing your narrow foot position. Then take those drills to the heavy bag and experiment with your new balance equation, beginning with non punching balance drills.

#5: New Punches

Lunge punches are some thing you have trained in knife. Boxers have few defense against this. Your blind jabs from southpaw can set of a lunging rear hand, a sneaky thumbs up straight left between the gloves.

The safety hook, a shovel with the thumb up can be used out of a quick full step, to drive over his shoulder as you pivot off weakly on the lead heel and let your left rear leg swing around almost in line to an oblique. [as in the knife defense drill] This is done to set you up away from his right rear hand to mug him. Mugging is to step behind him, with your lead foot behind his lead foot and throw hooks to his back—yes—hit him in the spine. Joe Lewis used it to beat Max Schmeling, breaking a back bone.

As he drifts left to cut you off from worrying him with this, probably in the second round, side step left with rear foot, out of range of his right, and then launch a lunging power jab down the middle and spear his face, then transfer out left with a pass hook. For the lunging jab and many other tips, see Hagler versus Mugabi. Haggler fought Mugabi and Hearns, both bigger men of opposite builds. Return to those two, with Mugabi the best clinic on dealing with a bigger man. Haggler switched leads to exploit advantage.

A pass hook, on a shift step left diagonal, if done with your rear hand in high guard against his right, can set you up for muggings on his right side.

To facilitate you not getting knocked the fawk out by this giant, practice throwing blind jabs with the rear hand. Kosta Tzue—I’m killing this Asiatic Roosky name here, jabbed with the rear hand. Throw that high rear hand lead up at his eyes to draw a blind rear hand or a jab, and then weave to the outside of that drawn punch. Be careful.

Practice side lunge punches, not just pass hooks, but straight punches for him to run in to. This is important as low-skill high-size heavy’s sometimes bum rush. You don’t want to be caught holding his weight up with those Odysseus thighs. Note in ancient Greece, the man with thick thighs was regarded as the harder puncher. This had to do with the high traction of their combat surface.

Make sure the non-punching hand is held high in shield.

Practice the U-hustle to his right side to really piss him off. When he figures it out, go right behind a blind jab and pitch the lunging rear down the middle.

Our next evolution will be fighting other lefties. First, work on becoming the bane of right handers. Thanks to the need for major league baseball switch hitters, ambidextrous big men are mostly in baseball.

Take care of your shoulders.

Your peek-a-boo shoulder rolls are for when you get caught on the ropes and need to get the hell out. Then return to the high handed hunt. You need to be the one dropping the stop hand on his gloves. Do not catch punches from a big man with the glove, but drop your hand on his in a downward parry to juice his shoulders and drop his guard. Drop parries can be dangerous if over done, drawn, or if he has quick hands and knows how to roll the jab back over the parry.

For when you get in trouble against some big mug, watch Duran versus Barkley and Duran versus Haggler.

“Upon the black iron throne brooded Thulandra…The bones of his narrow face seemed molded by a sculpture.”

-page 13

…

The Summer We Were Working Together

We became pretty close because we would talk everyday and hangout. I met a lot of his friends that would swing by when we were on a job. He would tell me about his life outside the job. We hung out a lot and playing softball and drinking a few nights a week and then on the weekends. I can’t think of much except for him talking about his dad.

Dave’s Family House

His dad was the one that taught him how to do concrete work and layout forms. His dad did have an accent so probably did come from Poland. His mom and dad both had Polish accents. He fought in WWII for the United States. When he came home he worked full time and built their house by hand while still having a full time job. There was this detached garage and his dad put in a pit so you could walk down in this walkway like five feet in the concrete and walk under there and change your oil and work on the car from a standing position without having to put the car up on a hoist or jacks. It was a two story, pretty standard, 2,000 or 2,500 square foot house with a basement. They had a good size lot.

The house was in Joliet on the East Side. The neighborhood turned to shit around them and most of their neighbors were Negroes. This was the part of town where they had bussed in people to our high school from, which led to a lot of violence. He lived there with his parents until he bought the house in Wilmington.

Shootouts with Negroes

Dave’s dog had a fenced area parallel to the gravel alley, in and the dog stayed outside with a dog house. His dog looked like a lion. He should have trimmed his hair to look like a mane. He was a chow, a big one. His dog was basically the Negro alarm.

The main thing is that people would try to break into his garage and the dog would be barking and Dave would jump up and grab his 3.57 revolver and head out the back door and confront them. Sometimes he was shot at, sometimes he shot back. This all happened when we were working together over a summer. There was also random shootings in the neighborhood and he would get his gun and go check it out.

I know he was shot at and returned fire and hit the deck in his own back yard coming out the back door to see who was breaking into his garage. I don’t know if anybody got hit on the other side. We used to go to his garage, because we stored material for his concrete business in his garage, stakes, expansion joints. Even when I was in high school it was known that his neighborhood was one of the worst around. There were no encounters when I was there when we pulled up and loaded up. I don’t know what happened to his house or parents. I didn’t get to talk with Dave’s family after he moved to Wilmington, but to our friends. He had a brother and a sister that I know of.

The Last Drink with Dave

He had bought a house in this tiny little town, Wilmington. The house cost less than his truck did. I remember he bought the house for $17,000. I went there a couple times to hang out and visit. I might have been closer to thirty, so he would have been closer to thirty-seven. He had bought the house ten years previously, and I went there a few times when I was in the neighborhood. Interestingly enough, when he moved in, there had not been a murder in Wilmington in 118 years. Then, right after he moves in, there was a double murder two houses over!

Dave’s Fate & Funeral

Dave died of kidney failure, congestive heart failure as a result of the kidneys not functioning. Since he lived by himself they put him into an assisted living place. I was saddened that I didn’t know he was sick, otherwise I would have come to visit him. We went to a little luncheon after the funeral and none of us knew that he was sick. He deserved better. He was a very good friend to everybody else, would come over and work on people’s houses all the time. That summer I did concrete for him we poured a big patio in the back of my mom and dad’s house. It is still in excellent shape. Nobody can get over that it is still in such excellent shape since 1987.

The funeral was very touching. He would have loved it. I could imagine him smiling down. It was summer and the cemetery is in the side of a hill and we had the windows down and were driving up from the service and there was a bag piper up on the hill towards the entrance. When you were pulling in you could hear the bagpipes playing, I know Amazing Grace was one. It gave me goosebumps. The bagpiper was in a kilt, full Scottish gear. Dave was never married. I don’t know that he had girlfriends. There was probably sixty people there, mostly relatives. There was a dozen of us friends who went to a lunch afterwards and reminisced.

He was a good, hard-working guy and a lot of fun to be around.

Skill & Mastery

Before we get to mind actions, it is important to understand that this Umbrella Ability and it’s components afford skill development, to include Body and Spirit Skills.

What skill gets the character in action is an advantage re-roll when performing an action governed by that skill, like a swordsman using a sword. It also averts unskilled Disadvantage rerolls. Unless noted in a scenario, the heroes all start play with weapons and tools they are skilled with.

In some very specific actions, skill will be acquired by a 1d6 specific ability check. Most actions are learned in a more general way. The swordsman, needs body mechanics [Knit], understanding of the tool [Kit] and a framing of the weapon in the context of a battle, brawl, rout or duel [Wit]. So learning the sword is a general 1d20 pursuit.

Skills in Grunt are semi-generalized and loosely applied, based on my experience in combat sports, to include over 650 stick fights and over 220 [dull] machete duels. A man who can fight in any context: kenpo, boxing, wrestling, MMA, is almost always a blade man or stick fighter you can’t trifle with after a single sparring session. Men were designed to wield weapons.

In the case of specific skills, these will be enumerated below.

Basically, sports without equipment, like running are pure Knit. In the case of such a skill like climbing, considered a knit skill in free climbing, if the climb is so hard, like the Sogdian Rock, as to require equipment, have the hero make a Kit check for disadvantage. If he makes it, give him a climbing rig skill, so that this check is no longer required. Grunt is designed to put heroes under pressure that requires improvement in action.

Mastery is a concept that implies the ability to teach a warrior skill to one with no skill or with or without related experience. To instruct a person, in lets’ say swordsmanship, the swordsman must make a Wit [teaching] check and the student must make a Knit [physical learning] check.

The GM should set the training cycles. I recommend a week.

To instruct a gunman, the master gunfighter would make the Wit check and the gunman must then make a Kit check, since, the gun is a machine, a complex tool, where the sword is a simple tool, more of an extension of the body.

Skill

Whether instructed by a master or learning in action the use of the fist, the sword, spear, handgun, etc., once a skill is acquired it is used for three things.

-1. A lack of skill in an action requires a Disadvantage check. If this fails and the hero survives the action, he may make a Wit check to determine if he has acquired the skill. If he was successful, he has learned enough to get the deed done and has the skill.

-2. A skilled hero may declares that he is using his skill to seek Advantage. He must make a 1d6 Knit, Kit or Wit check, depending on the action and the situation. If he makes his Advantage check he gains a re roll.

-3. A skilled character, may acquire mastery, the ability to teach as described above, by declaring his intent, then making rolling 1d20 and 1d6 together, for a simultaneous Mind and Wit Check. If both are successful, he has mastered the salient point of the art and may attempt to pass it on, as described above.

Knit

The ability to coordinate body actions: balance, time & measure, eye-hand coordination, etc.

Running, Jumping [a pole vault would require a Kit check for Advantage or Disadvantage], swimming, diving [unless an air reservoir helmet is used, in which case a Kit check is required], lifting [unless a lever or other tool is used, in which case its an overall action], wrestling, pankration, boxing [except if gloves or gauntlets are used, in which case a Kit check must be made to gain an advantage], riding, making love with vampire queen to stave off death…

Kit

Equipment repair and operation, such as gun smithing, artillery operation, lock picking, operating vehicles, flying planes balloons or gliders, etc. Navigation, unlike wilderness guiding, is a function of Kit instead of Wit because tools are used, such as load stone, plumb bob depth readings, compass, sextant, journal. The difference between Kit and Wit can be very slim and in certain cases, such as navigating without equipment like William Bligh steering that open boat for 3,000 miles, then Navigation would switch to Wit.

If the GM cannot make up his mind between two governing specific skills, like Kit and Wit in wayfinding at sea, then combine the two and have him make a 2-12 check.

Note that many pirate captains were forced into their post by sailors who did not have the brains or knowledge to navigate. The fact that some captains were the only person of the crew who could navigate sometimes saved them. This was the case with Fletcher Christian, captaining the ship he and the crew took from Bligh in the mutiny on the Bounty, and especially with Black Bart Roberts.

Wit

Perceiving conditions or unfolding actions, planning, guiding, wayfinding. For instance, where the shipwright builds the ship and the carpenter prepares it, the pilot guides it through treacherous waters and the navigator charts the course with devices [exceptions noted above], the wilderness guide is engaged in something more akin to the cavalry troop’s captain, framing mind’s eye view of the situation and adapting a course of action.

Where the gunsmith uses Kit, and the rifleman uses his entire being in a Body Check deploying his weapon, it is the Wit of the squad leader that prevents the riflemen under his command from being caught in a cross fire or placed in enfilade, while seeking to place the enemy at such a Disadvantage. Whether or not the troop of Texas Rangers or the band of Comanches they are hunting meet in battle will have to do with the duel of Wits between the guides. Once the foes have encountered each other, the Wits of the battle commanders will determine Advantage and Disadvantage. In the case of the tribal band leader, the guide and leader are typically one in the same.

Archery

The potential draw of a bow is rated from 1 [child’s bow] to 6 [the bow of Odysseus]. If one has a strength of 3 and seeks to use a 4 bow, then his arrow only travels a 3 range and does 3 damage. Strength is not added to an arrow, so much as Strength is required to use the bow to its potential. So, a bow of 5, drawn by an archer with a 5 strength will do a base 5 damage.

Damage with all mechanical weapons has a base [Of course, with guns, there is no strength requirement to use the base.] Also, disadvantage for lack of skill is potentially terrible: a check is made against Knit, and then against Kit, and Wit to see if the use of the weapon is even understood, with a possible 3 Disadvantages for the unskilled archer or gunman.

Example of Archery

The unskilled archer, Joe peasant picking up a bow, which he is strong enough to draw, having a 3 and the bow being a 3 draw, must make a Disadvantage check against Knit, Kit and Wit, failing none, one, two, or in this cruel case all 3.

In the meantime, his foe, the Cretan Mercenary Archer Eurybolos, who is a master archer, with a strength of 4 and a bow that draws 4, makes an Overall body Advantage check.

Eurybolos has a 12 pathos and rolls a 9, for a 3 difference.

Joe has a 6 pathos and rolls a 4, for a difference of 2.

The difference is 1 in favor of Eurybolos. This means he may do 1 action before Joe, the section action being simultaneous, then Joe goes at the same time as Eurybolos. If the peasant had rolled a 3, all actions would be simultaneous. If Joe had rolled over his 6 pathos the enemy would commit all actions first. More on this under War.

Joe, on the other hand, has to make 4 successful rolls to hit. Joe is screwed. So let’s see what happens to him.

Eurybolos rolls a 10 against his 12 Body, striking Joe with an arrow. The arrow does a 4 damage [Strength/Bow Draw] and the Knit of 4, for 8 +…

But Joe’s home spun tunic, helps, right?

Sorry, Joe, there is more shit sliding down Reality Mountain.

Joe’s Agility of 2 does reduce damage by 2, from 8 to 6, placing Joe at 1 HP and disabled.

Unused Advantage!

Yes, you gamers though you had me—and I thought you did, wondering how better fighters would get multiple attacks—but Joe’s wondering on the armor quality of his bundled up homespun tunic, well that pissed off War.

Eurybolos [who will be speared at Thebes, Joe] has an unused Advantage. That means he gets another shot.

Adding to the 6 points Joe is eating, Eurybolus rolls a 3 against his 12 Body, meaning that he hit Joe with another arrow. Joe takes 4 [strength/bow draw]+4 [for knit] to = 8, less his 2 agility, for 6, which wipes out his last remaining hit point and kills him at -5.

Hit Points Note

0 = KO’d

-1 to -3 various levels of maimed

4 and lower through Death’s door.

More on this later.

In the hands of a skilled archer or shooter, the base damage of the weapon is added to Knit. A 1 shot, is numerically miraculous and probably kills without GM intervention.

Mobility Skills

Skills 1 & 3 are possessed by all warriors.

-1. March, trek, hike, pack, etc.

-2. “Run, on the double”

-3. Climb

The following skills are not so common.

-4. Swimming

-5. Riding

-6. Droving, herding and leading pack animals, often performed by non combatants]

-7. Driving

-8. Stalking, a skill of light troops, tribal warriors, etc

-9. Sailing

Anyone can row with a whip to their back! Automatic skill acquisition was never so easy!

Weapon Skills

All warriors are regarded as skilled in 1-5, with heroes and officers also masters, able to train these skills to non combatants.

-1. Striking: punching, elbowing, butting, kicking, kneeing

-2. Wrestling: to include the use of slings and arrow cords to strangle sentries

-3. Basic: Sticks, staff, stones, clubs, axes, tomahawk, maces, mauls, hammers, including throwing of such

-4. Throw & Thrust: lance, spear, javelin, dart, harpoon

-5. Blade: knife, sword, machete, falchion, saber, cutlass

Specialized Skills

-6. Slings, including stone throwing machines

-7. Archery

-8. Bolt weapons, including crossbow and engines

-9. Firearms: Greek fire, naptha, rockets, magic bullshit, to include rockets, flame throwers [which seem to have been ancient siege engines]

-10. Shoulder fired weapons: muskets, rifles, shotguns: note that a rifle with bayonet also serves as a basic and a throw and thrust weapon.

-11. Handguns: pistols, a pistol may also serve, when empty, as a rock or club

-12. Guns: from culverns & carriage canon to howitzers, mortars and machine guns

“… an alchemist seeking to transmute iron into gold or to concoct a universal panacea.”

-page 11

Sausage Fingers

The origin story for Dave as the heavy gravity planet guy was when we were working construction and I said something about his hand, like a catcher’s mitt of a hand, okay and I said something about his sausage fingers. That’s when he said someone had described him as looking like he was born on a high gravity planet. When I was in junior college I think he just worked for another concrete company.

Jobs I had during Junior College

The security job, one time we had a guy—there was two of us on the weekends—I think I had come in in the afternoon and the guy before me had just gotten this dude for shoplifting and had him in the office. He was in the back where we had a little thing set up to take his picture. We were blocking the door and he made a break for it and we get in this scuffle at the door. The cops had told him that if someone resists we are free to fight back. So the guy was trying to wrestle with us so we were pounding on him, smaller and older then us, disshevelled looking. We beat the crap out of this guy and handcuffed him to the chair. Later on, after the cops got there, we were laughing because we looked at the linoleum floor and it was crazy with scuff marks.

Another time, with that same gut, I don’t remember his name, but he was the main guy, not a manager or anything. We were working on the weekend during the day and the girl from seafood department calls us and says there were two suspicious guys looked like homeless dudes that were ordering hundreds of dollars of seafood. I went o the entrance, because a lot of times they would sneak out the entrance. The store was set up like a rightward maze. He [the main guy] went to the exit. We had radios, got in position. The manger went to the exit with him. The two guys tried coming out the entrance and I grab the cart and one guy by the wrist and the other guy takes off the other way and I radio. The guy goes running out the exit and the other security guy clotheslines him and his feet went up and his head hit the floor and busted and he was bleeding everywhere, because he split his head open. We had to call an ambulance—the cops and everybody show up. It was either really exciting or really boring, working security.

Junior College

My first year was general shit because I had no idea what I wanted to do and I didn’t like it. I ended up getting chronic tonsilitus. So I didn’t finish that semester. The only classes I liked in high school was my electrical class. I had done some work with my dad on side jobs and hooking up lights for people. Mike was the same age as Dave and he was taking the electronic program and he told me not to waste my time, but to take automated systems technology, about motors and programmable controls. So I did that the next two years and finished the program. My teacher wrote the textbook, not just for the class, but later on when I got into the IBEW apprenticeship, the textbook we used was written by him. That teacher, we had a final that was pass or fail, and he would give us a conveyor built and we had to design it and put all the components together for a practical test and it was pass or fail because it either worked or it didn’t work. He had night classes for guys that worked at the Caterpillar factory. We’d go back into class after taking the test and he asked me how I thought I did and he said, “What if I told you that only one person in all of my classes got it correct.”

And I said, “It must have been me.” The he started laughing and he gave me my paper and I was the only one that got the problem right.

I did good in those classes. It was something I enjoyed. After that it was you either become a plant maintenance guy or you go on to engineering school. I didn’t want to be a plant maintenance guy, so I went to a chemical plant and worked on their line with the idea of becoming their electrician or maintenance guy—I really didn’t want to, but didn’t know what else to do. I worked there for six or seven months.

In between there for a while I got a job working as a summer helper at a beer distributor near my parents house. All the beer guys were drinking back then, even the drivers. We used to go into this biker bar that was a full on Nazi biker bar and they had pictures on the wall of black guys as targets! They had this big Hungarian dog, the dogs name was Huzar. The dog came up to me while we were wheeling beer around and he put his nose right up to my crouch and started growling. I was like holy shit how do I get out of this situation? Then the person came around the corner and called the dog.

You would go with drivers who had certain amount of volume for a helper, I was a summer helper. I went with this one driver I didn’t know to a bar, I think it was named Joey’s Place, the owner, Joyy, behind the bar and the driver and I and they were joking around and it seemed friendly and Joey motions for me to come over to him like he’s going to tell me a secret, and he reaches up and he kisses me on the cheek and I recoil, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck,”

And he’s like, “Oh, you don’t like me,” and he pulls out a gun, looks like a .45 APC, and he’s pointing the fucking gun at me and I’m ten feet away of so, and the surrealness of the situation got to me and I look at the driver and the other guy and they’re not doing or saying anything. I said, “I don’t know if this is a prank or what so I’ll wait for you in the truck,” and I walked out and got in the truck.”

I thought about going back there with a bat and breaking Joey’s legs for a while! Then I heard from other people that he was a big coke head and a lot of drugs were dealt out of that bar. The driver acted like nothing happened! It was so weird.

Drinking with Dave

We had mutual friends still. A lot of times we went to a bar named Garnseys. One time we were drunk and outside in the back of the bar one of my friends is smoking, so it was probably weed, because at that time you could still smoke in a bar. We were rough housing and Dave pushed me and I went through the fence, a six-foot wood panel fence between the posts. Then I pushed him and he went through another fence, and we figured we better stop, we had a good four sections of the fence knocked down. This was a neighborhood bar where the fence was separating it from houses.

Jim’s Farmhouse

So Jim was running a big farm house and he use to have these awesome parties because we would have bonfires and we could crank music and be as loud as we wanted to and didn’t have to worry about neighbors or cops. Jim met a local girl and got married and had a couple kids and he works as some kind of engineer at a chemical factory and his wife is a pharmacist.

Inspirational Note

At the head of each entry, this pulp biographer, thought it weird, cool and proper, to include a chapter heading and quote from the book that propelled Electric Dan and his keystone companion, Heavy-Gravity Dave, into barbaric action. All quotes are from Dan’s childhood paperback treasure, Conan the Liberator, by L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter, Bantam, 1978.

“This castled capitol crouched upon its hill like some fantastic monster out of ages past, glaring at the Outer City walls, whose great stones held it captive.”

-1, When Madness Wears a Crown, page 9

…

I met him working at Brown’s Chicken when I was sixteen. He was the day breader and I think he was like twenty-three. So like that whole place was more than just a place you worked out. Everybody hung out and went to parties outside of work. It was an instant friends group. Dave was the guy who I used to have call in sick for me at school and pretend he was my dad. I worked up front doing the register and packing up the orders when I first started. The reason I worked there was that a friend of our family ended up owning a couple of those stores. Between him and my dad they had it worked out that I would starts right when I turned sixteen.

Right after I graduated high school is when Dave started his concrete business. He worked for another company and then he went out on his own. Doing residential flat work, mainly patios and sidewalks. So I worked for him that whole summer. So, Dave was this Polish guy who was probably five seven and maybe two-sixty, he had really thick joints, and you saw the picture, he definitely has a bucket head. He could work nonstop all day. I would get out of breath and get tired and take a break from shoveling or breaking up concrete, whether it was with a shovel or a jack hammer. He would tell me to pace myself and work at a steady rate. He would go at a steady pace and just work like a machine.

He didn’t like to stop for lunch. We would just work until we got whatever the goal for the day was achieved and the we would go to one of the many neighborhood bars that he knew of and we would eat lunch and drink beer when the day was over. I never got carded even though I was only 17 because he knew everybody and I was hangin’ out with him. I worked with him every day. He had a couple of friends that would come help us out from time to time on certain projects. I worked with him five or six days a week.

One time we were working all day and it was really hot out and I was sweating buckets and we went to this Mexican place he liked and they both poured a beer out of the pitcher and it was Old Style beer. When we sat down at the table there was jalapeno peppers on the table and we started eating them. So when the beer came out they poured a beer each and I down the pitcher, and when the next beer comes out I down the pitcher, because I was thirsty as hell and my mouth was on fire, and I’m in the bathroom pissing and I’m thinking where the hell am I, I was like wasted in ten minutes.

At that same time his concrete company sponsored a softball league that was all guys his age or my age. After we played softball in our uniforms we’d go to the bars in a group. A couple other guys, like Joe and Wally, were my age and nobody would card us because they knew the whole team would leave and we’d drink and not get carded. Going to these bars at day for lunch with Dave and with the team, I could go in and get served. I thought I was pretty cool at age 17 to go into these bars and get served. I didn’t look 21. People just assumed I was because of my associations. It was just that summer, working for Dave.

We were at a party at this guy Jim’s apartment and my friend Joe was dating this girl who he ended up marrying. Not to far from the thing there was a street with the same name as his fiance, so Joe wanted to steal the street sign and put it up in her room. So Jim, who helped us with concrete and was also on our softball team, he had lost his prescription glasses and was wearing his sun glasses. You could take alleys from Jim’s apartment and the street and back and not go on a major road. In the process the whole concrete base came out and someone picked up the base and threw it in the back of the truck and the sign part was sticking out of the pickup truck. Someone must have called the cops that we were taking this sign. I’m in the back with Joe and this other kid Dave, and Jim and Dave—high gravity planet Dave—is in the passenger seat and a squad car shows up right behind us and pulls us over. He tells us to take the sign back, which was cool, and we’re driving back and Jim takes the corner kind of fast and the sign slides across the bed and slams into the side of this parked van.

When Jim pulls over again the cop comes up and says, “You hit that van.” Fortunately the van is a busted up, rusted out, piece of shit, and Jim is slurring his words, telling the cop, “You show me, where I hit the van.” The other guy Dave that was in the back with us, when the cop turns his lights on he had jumped out and ran off and the cop didn’t ask about him.

Joe, me and Dave are in the back of a squad car listening to drunken ass Jim argue with this cop. We thought we were in big trouble. Basically the cop just said, “Someone else drive and you idiots just go home.”

Jim had moved back home to live with his parents from Flordia. Jim was literally a rocket scientist who worked for NASA. He was married and while he was down their working his wife was going to college and soon after she graduated she told him that she had been fucking all kinds of other dudes and she wanted a divorce. He had paid for her college in full. So Jim started drinking to the point where he lost his job at NASA. So what do you do for a career when your degrees are in space travel and effects of satellites on geo-synchronous orbits and shit like that?

I don’t now how long he continued it. I think he ended up going to work for someone else. I worked security for Cub Foods and I was going to junior college and worked security at night from like 3 to 11 and on the weekends I’d work a day or two.

Dave to be continued in, ‘Shootouts with Negroes’: From a Heavy Gravity Planet 2.C

My Sister and I

My sister and I were adopted from different parents. I was born in Chicago, at what hospital I don’t know. They signed up, got the call, and came and got me. My sister, Dana, was born two years later in Peoria. My mother tells the story. I have no recollection of this stuff. We looked so much alike that people thought we were biological and even would not believe us when we said we were adopted from different parents. My father, from smoking and working HVAC had gotten lung cancer at an early age.

Chicago Heights

Chicago Heights—I suppose this is where it all started, my hatred, and my reading, my general disagreement with society. While my dad was sick we went to live with my Uncle Mike in Chicago Heights. This was a kind of poor, Irish section on the South Side. It’s entirely black now. There was six of us, my sister and I and four cousins. The oldest was Heather, same age as me. I was in 4th Grade.

One time, we are at this public park, on the playground, just being kids, and this big black kid came up behind me and bear hugged me [across the upper arms] lifts me and this other black kid tries to punch me in the front. I move aside and he misses and I kick him and he falls. I then do this kid-like shoulder throw and the big kid goes tumbling down in front of me and they get up and run. I was like, I didn’t do nothing, didn’t even know these kids were there, and this happens. So I get confronted with this previously unknown reality that these people are going to attack me on impulse.

Then, there is another time and the wooden play set, the jungle gym if you will, is being used as a hangout for these older hoodlums at night. We are there during the day and there is this loose board with nails sticking out of it. This large retarded kid, a white kid, is being tormented by these other [white, indicated with hand shrug] kids and he reaches out in anger, picks up that board, a two-by-four with nails sticking out, and charges for my little cousin, Kevin, four years younger than me. There was his older sister Michelle, who was two years older and the same age as my sister. There was also Muareen, also my sister’s age. That is why we hung out so much together. That is my Uncle Mike’s and Aunt Lorie’s kids. There was no reason, who was just the closest kid. I see this and tackle the retard, a football tackle to the legs from the side, climb up him, take the board away, and the kid runs off. We went home, the six of us, and they said I saved their lives, which put quite an impression on me. I didn’t take away from this some view that the world was a dangerous place, or out to get me, like I did later. But I did now know where I placed in the world, that I could protect people. I read comic books, which is probably why I lifted weights and did martial arts. [1]

Uncle Mike’s Book Den

Uncle Mike’s house was a condo, in a development, not like the kind of free standing house we grew up. It was small. There was this small room with books in it. Other than reading novels assigned in school, I had never read a book, just comics: Spiderman, Superman, the Green Lantern. What really drew me to the books were the Conan posters on the walls by Frank Frazetta, who is still my favorite artist. [2] I ask my Uncle Mike if I could read the books and he said, “Of course.” I could not get enough of the Conan book. [Passes hand over three stacks of old mass market paperbacks,] I didn’t realize at the time that it was not just Robert E. Howard that wrote these, that most of these were other authors taking up the character. [3] This was the first book I read, probably because of the naked chick on the cover. [Points to Conan the liberator by L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter.]

I think, maybe, the stuff at the playground, for which I was prepared to react through comic books and me trying to live up to that image in a kid way, combined with reading the Conan books to kind of set a weird course in life. I would get into more trouble then necessary to defend myself. My friends and I swapped these.

The Book Report

A lot of my favorites were established at a young age, established a lot of how I think. For instance, Conan the barbarian was my favorite movie and still is, has never been surpassed. [Laughs hoarsely, at self, then chuckles.]

This was the sophomore year of high school. I don’t remember her name, but it was a black lady. The English teacher, she was in charge of the Black Honor Society and the Black Student Council. She instructed us to write about an American author and she said that the black kids should write about a black author to honor their heritage and the white kids should write about a black author to expand their horizons.

So I wasn’t about to pick a black author. I knew she would never look up to see who Robert E. Howard was. And, I knew I would never be busted for plagiarism, so I just copied the biography in the back of one of his paperbacks word-for-word. I think it was three pages. I got a good, grade, must of got an A or a B, probably an A.

In 8th Grade in my home room it was study hall for the most part, my shop teacher Mister Perry, they had a spelling B coming up and he would have the winners go on to compete. So I used to spell the first word wrong so I could stay and study.. One time, my first word was dumb and I misspelled it dum and he said, “You must be dumb?”

One day I had no homework so I figured I would show that I was obviously throwing the spelling B contest so I could sit down. I won for my home room class, then we had my whole junior high and I was the last 8th grader left, and a 7th grader won the whole thing. I don’t even remember what word I didn’t get right. I remember this one girl and all the kids that thought they were smart, and I beat them.

…

Notes

-1. Dan’s childhood comic book hobby is also addressed in #11, Growing Up On a Prison Farm.

-2. In Autumn 2016, while touring the Frank Frazetta Museum in Strausburgh, Pennsylvania, the famous artist’s daughter in law, informed me that he moved his family from NYC, to extract his son and later her husband, Mike from a city where older children preyed upon him.

-3. The additional authors of these Conan paperbacks on Dan’s dining room table included, Robert Jordan, Karl Edward Wagner, Andrew J. Offiut, Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp.

Below are resolution methods for the types of tasks that ancient warriors would face. Some more modern or fantastical tasks will be covered under Mind and Spirit. Any task that is not here, that the players or GM regard as physical, like flying a plane, driving a car or riding a motorcycle or mountain bike, I encourage those people to make up rules based on these models. At the bottom of this section under strongman stunts and diving, I have suggested an alternative use of the 1d6, that, it is hoped, will suggest another tool for some development innovations on the part of the players.

Body Actions

The 3 Body Abilities combine to 3-18 points for 1d20 action attempts. They are also used for specific 1d6 checks

Strength: factoring damage, checking for injury, determining load limit

Stamina: vigorous actions per day, rounds of un-impeded action, exhaustion

Agility: limiting blunders, avoiding/reducing damage

Marching: The distance one can cover on foot per day ranges up to 30 miles. To arrive at a maximum distance on a given day, add the Body & Spirit scores, including mania factors, subtract a roll 1d20, then divide the distance marched by 1 for level road, round it down for easy track, divide by 2 for rough track, divide by 3 for trackless & broken terrain and divide by 4 for trackless rugged terrain.

Running

Simple

A messenger is sent to run for a day. This is a function almost exclusively of stamina. Rate his daily base run ability at 3XStamina, for a range of 3-18 miles. Have him check for additional miles by doing a Strength and Agility check, with the margin over the score subtracting form the mileage and the 1d6 difference under the 1-6 scores adding that much to the mile distance. If the runner makes both of these checks, then permit him to attempt an heroic run by doing an Animism check, and applying the die difference in the same way.

[An example of running skill use will be given under Mind, or, might have been, had not Fate averted my eyes when I woke to write and rolled a 20. I believe I was thinking of the Athenian runner who died after delivering his message concerning the battle of Marathon. It was said he spoke with a god upon the way from Sparta in a previous run.]

Interactive

A race is simple, with an even start. But for pursuit of foes, establish a lead for the fleeing foe. For instance, if Achilles is running down some doomed Trojan hero, who has a 9 Body, with his 18 body, and they both roll a 9, then Achilles has gained 9 [of whatever measure the GM sees fit, be it strides, stades, days if it is a long hunt, etc.] and the poor Trojan improves not a wit. If the Trojan rolled a 3, gaining 6 against his potential of 9, and Achilles rolled an 18, then that lucky fellow has made some distance.

Climbing

Establish a difficulty from 1 to 6.

For every number of difficulty the climber must make a specific ability check.

1st point of difficulty requires an overall Body Check, a 1d20 against the 3-18 score. You are now climbing.

Next, by stages, you must make the following 1d6 checks. If you fail 1, you must now re-roll your successful Body Check, or fall.

2nd point of difficulty, also requires a Wit check to determine if the climber picked the right path/method.

3rd point of difficulty, also requires an Agility check.

4th point of assent peril, also requires a Strength check.

5th point of assent peril, also requires a Stamina check.

6th point of assent peril, an icy cliff at night, requires an Animism check.

Falls damage the character like so, 1 point per every level of difficulty, plus a check against his best body ability, Strength, Stamina or Agility, with 1d20, with him also sustaining the difference between a roll higher than that ability—Yikes! If he rolls lower, then he has caught himself somehow and the difficulty damage is reduced by whatever the lower die difference is, and the monkey can keep climbing. Any fall that does not kill the character increases his Body Mania [Discord] and Pathos by 1.

Jumping

The distance to be jumped is determined.

20s fail no matter how easy, and 1s succeed against all odds.

A standing jump is done by a Body check, with a successful check indicating the covering of a distance equal to the Body score, plus any negative difference in the roll and score, or minus any positive difference between roll and score.

A Running Jump is done in the same fashion, except, the Overall Body ability is added. So, if Achilles rolls a 2, for a 16 die difference, it is added to his 18, for a new world record by a foot of 34 feet.

Stalking

Hunting a man or beast, by day or night, by sound, sight and scent, requires full body integration, intelligence and instinct. This ability includes hiding and ambushing and sentry removal. To get close enough to strike or shoot, or be able to avoid the enemy’s stroke or shot, a stalking score is determined:

Stalking score: Body + Discord [Body Mania] + Wit + Animism = STALK

Skill Note

The stalk skill permits the addition of Wit and Animism, from outside the Body suite, to be added.

The stalk of both parties is compared, with the normal range around 10 but master stalkers such as Liver-eating Johnson, Body 14 + Discord 5 + Wit 5 + Animism 5 = 29 may approach or even exceed 30.

Let’s say Liver-eater is stalking a gunslinger with his same scores. The gunslinger, since he does not have the stalking skill, only uses his body score of 14 for the hunt.

Liver-eater rolls a 16, which would have failed if he was not an experienced tracker.

The gunslinger rolls a 13.

Liver-Eater’s die difference is13 to the gunslinger’s 1, for a difference of 12. The 1st point gives Liver-Eater an advantage. The 2nd point gives the gunslinger a disadvantage. The remaining 10 points are applied to damage against the gunslinger, IF Liver-eater strikes him on his first stroke or shot, of which he will get two chances, as he has an Advantage re-roll.

Pathos is not factored in stalking, yet may be affected.

A person who succeeds in a stalk, ambush, hunt, in this way, gains a Discord Body Mania point and a Pathos point, as this teaches a lot, as does climbing.

Riding

Riding a horse is physical.

You must have the horsemanship skill.

[Skills are discussed in more detail under Mind.]

A body check is made to determine if the beast will perform it’s best for you.

If you do not have the horsemanship skill, this is done at a disadvantage, re-rolling a success. One may learn to ride a horse in this way, becoming a horseman after succeeding in this trial by era 6 times minus your Knit ability score. That is right, a man with a 6 Knit will learn very quickly.

Once one is riding, how fast one goes is up to the horse, who has a body rating and is run like a man. In the case of a horseback fight, horse race, etc., the horsemen first make a Knit check to see if they get an advantage and then make a Body check to see if they incur a disadvantage.

Driving

A chariot team is handled in the same way. But rather then a Knit check for advantage, the driver makes a Kit check.

Skying

Using skies is done like handling a chariot, except the character’s own body, rather than a horse’s is used for the Body check.

Rowing

Working at the oars requires a Body Check with a Strength check to determine if there is an advantage and a Stamina check to determine a disadvantage.

Sailing

Sailing, that is handling the sails and operation of a sailing vessel, not piloting or navigating, calls for a Body Check with an Agility Check to determine Advantage and a Stamina check to determine disadvantage.

Advantage and Disadvantage

Both of the competing crews at the sails, at the oars, might generate advantages and disadvantages. In such cases, these numbers cancel each other out until only one player, or neither, has an advantage or disadvantage. Disadvantages cancel rival Disadvantages. Advantages cancel rival Advantages.

So, if Olaf at the oars has 3 advantages and 1 disadvantage in his pursuit of Loki working his oars across the Baltic, who has 2 advantages and 1 disadvantage, then neither player has a disadvantage and Olaf has 1 advantage. This is done to quicken play. In some special episodes, involving great peril, or which perhaps represent a terminal manhunt, the GM might want to have the characters retain all the Advantages and Disadvantages to increase play length and suspense.

Wielding

The characters are all regarded as fighting men, able to use hand weapons. Particular Kit based weapon skills are limited to dueling and shooting.

Using any weapon or tool or object in hand-to-hand combat requires a body check for success. If one has made a body check they have struck the foe.

The wielder must possess a strength score equal to the weapon strength requirement [WSR], or damage is reduced by the negative difference. If a scribe with a strength of 0 uses a war ax which requires a 3, then his damage is reduced by 3, which happens to be the WD of the war ax.

Damage is factored like so: Strength + Knit + Weapon Damage [WD] = Damage. Example: Achilles Strength +6, Knit +6, + 3 spear = 15.

From this, Sarpedon’s armor of 3 and agility of 3, reduced the stroke to 9 damage. Sarpendon had a 4 Strength, 3 Stamina and 3 Agility, for 10 points, so that unhappy hero stands at Death’s door, with 1HP, where he may keenly appreciate the attention of the starving stray dogs that will come out at night to feast upon his barely living body. An indulgent GM might have some wench drag him off to the camp follower’s tents to repair him.

I got ahead here: all this damage stuff will be covered with proper nuance in Chapter 5. In combat Achilles will have a chance to knock Sarpendon over and deliver a stroke. I have gotten ahead of the design here and have given a partially accurate example of combat, that is also incomplete. This paragraph above is retained as a developmental example. As I am unable to develop these rules, I am retaining some “muddy” superseded mechanics, for the player/developer.

The damage equation is:

Damage: Strength+Weapon+Knit

Minus: Armor+ Agility

Equals damage sustained, placing offense in the assent where it should be and leaving open a Knit-based damage reduction option for a fighter who focuses on defensive weapon use.

Agility/Knit Note

There was an option, in the first draft, suggested above for agility being withheld from combat to be used for defense. Agility should remain as a basic ability to evade damage. The option should, and will, under specific rules for combat instead use the Knit ability, being withheld from potential damage, to guard against potential damage, achieving play balance, it being the odd factor in the 3 to 2 damage verse protection equation.

Upon review of these rules, it seems important to use agility as a standard damage reduction against the strength damage, with armor against weapon, which still grants the knit advantage to offense over defense. This Knit factor may be countered, as described later under Combat, by using the weapon for defense, as a kind of armor.

The context in which a weapon is wielded, varies from duel, battle, brawl, stalk, skirmish, rout and capital punishment. In some cases both do damage, in others one or the other.

Lifting, Bending & Breaking

Rolling high with 1d6 is the method here used.

These are strict strength tasks, with a task rating of 1-13 against the strength score of the hero. If Achilles, with a 6 strength wishes to move a boulder rated at 9, he must roll a 3 or better. Note that a 13 object is immovable or unbreakable by a man, unless one rolls a 1. Miracles will be covered in more detail in Chapter 5.

Throwing

A body check is made to strike the target. An evasively moving or cover-using target must be hit at a Disadvantage. A target moving forward or away is done without advantage or disadvantage. A still target in the open is targeted at an Advantage. Damage is factored by adding strength, weapon & knit and reduced by armor and agility. Weapons that are thrown are thrown directly by hand, without rotating: spears, lances, javelins, darts, rocks.

Hurling

Hurled weapons rotate, or are thrown in rotation: like, axes, hatchets, hammers, knives, bolos, etc. These weapons, to be thrown without damage reduction, require a Knit check. If this check is failed, the damage is reduced by the positive die difference.

Slings require possession of a specific skill. The damage of this weapon is a flat expression of the slinger’s strength, like a bow.

Swimming

Requires a Knit check to learn and is accomplished with a Body Check. Swimming while encumbered, like Beowulf, or in averse situations, like Alexander’s men swimming the Danube by night in armor with inflated and stuffed tent canvas, may be replicated according to the climbing or strength method, whichever the GM thinks most closely simulates the action.

Diving

Diving is the opposite of climbing and is simulated in the very same way, by assigning a difficulty rating to the dive. Succeeding in operating under water, requires a successful body check, then the graduated difficulty checks as in climbing. Success of a new crisis diver brings skill.

Notes

Some of the mechanics from this section will be expanded to play out chases, battle routs and posse pursuits in Chapter 5. Likewise, leadership and inspiration, effecting more than a single hero, will be covered under Mind and Spirit. Skill development and use will be fully covered under Mind.

Writing From a Heavy Gravity Planet.

As I detrained far above the Joliet streets, I could tell that the backpack and cane were not ergonomic, that I was close to a back sprain and that my left hip was in distress. Gingerly down the long concrete stairs, I moved so slow that Dan and I missed each other. Returning inside as he returned outside, meeting under the boxy brick arch, we shook hands and he relieved the gimp of the tiny burden wrecking the wan frame with one bear paw of a hand.

Dan no longer lives in Joliet, where he spent his first ten years or so. Nor does he live where the family moved to, but part way between Joliet and Plainfield. He expressed a driven desire to drive me by the place where he grew into a youth, where he had lived a wonder-filled life as a boy: now Statesville Prison. This ominous early 20th century dungeon is surrounded by a rectangular road grid and overlooked by two water towers, with “Statesville” stamped ominously upon them.

We take two circuits around the Statesville State Prison with Dan giving the tour with all of the eye for extant and extinct detail common to the man who introduces a friend to his boyhood haunts, noting what is the same, what has changed, and pointing solidly at those aspects which remain only in memory. His narration is a mix of socio-political deadpan, such as the fact that corrections officials from countries as far off as Sweden toured the prison in its former incarnation as Joliet Federal Penitentiary, as “a model prison” to be replicated around the nation and around the world.

These fascinating details will be reserved for Dan’s recollections had at his dining room table some day later this week, in one of two chapters, earmarked for this, the one on growing up on a federal prison farm or the one about his father’s term as Chief Engineer at that facility. The ancient institution of resident functionaries, whose family also reside on the property is, I think, is now limited to a small number of cemetery caretakers. Even this is almost gone in America. Dan’s experience as a prison farm tyke ended in 1980 perhaps a decade or two ahead of that practice. One supposes that children living upon a federal job site is now clearly against various federal laws, except perhaps on military base housing, or wherever the Puppet-in-chief is stored off stage.

At a crucial point in Dan’s automotive retrospective, he turned his white work truck around at the mouth of the very driveway to his childhood house, a house yet lived in, with one metallic painted minivan in the driveway. A great spreading tree, an oak or a maple—I forgot to check the leaves and can’t identify any other type of leaf other than an aspen—shaded an idyllic grass yard. The center piece of this perfectly flat play space is a well. I asked Dan, “Is that an actual functioning well?”

“Oh, no,” he smiles, “Decorative. Good thing it’s not, because I fell into it and got busted up!”

The spreading smile, overshadowed by sad commemorative eyes, split Dan’s thick bristle beard of crimson-tinted brown as he said, “It was a good place to grow up. I was friends with the sons of the other prison officials—there was a huge house on the other side of this lot. There was a building over there where the horses were stabled on the ground floor and the guards were stationed on the second floor. We would go feed the horses sugar cubes… Most of the farmland has been sold off… those subdivisions over there, was crop land, the prison was entirely self sufficient. The trustees, guys with six months or less left, who hadn’t killed anybody, would come cut the grass. My Mom would find me playing catch with these criminals out in the yard and call me in…”

And Dan reluctantly turned the wheels of his work truck and took us away from his yesterday.

Various byways were taken out of Joliet, even along Route 66, where he pointed to a “Kicks” ice cream shop, with statues of painted blues singers in black suits and hats posed in stop motion above a white painted block building of tiny proportions. Dan pointed right, “We went to that ice cream place when we were kids and still take our kids there.”

Pointing left, “Those houses are all fuckin’ Mexicans now—you have the occasional shooting here. Down to the left is the only boxing gym outside of Chicago. I checked it out. It’s just for Mexican kids. Some African Olympic boxer from some country opened a gym a few years back, I think right before Covid, and it didn’t last a year.”

As we drove towards his home along the broad, easy streets, surrounded by cornfields and subdivisions that used to be farmland, Dan points to a pond with a fountain between the boulevard and a postmodern condo subdivision, “State Natural Resources stocks this with fish. There is a guy in a wheelchair who fishes here. You’re allowed to fish these ponds. I always loved fishing, had some fantastic experiences up in Wisconsin. I just can’t get excited about fishing in a retention pond. Unless you are fishing in Southern Illinois were it is hilly and the glaciers didn’t flatten it out, down by the Shawnee National Forest, you wouldn’t even want to keep any fish you caught in Illinois. The rivers are low and slow and filled with truegreen and chemlawn runoff. There is a cool chain of lakes up by the Wisconsin border, which is a lot more like Wisconsin. But other than that and the south, Illinois is so suburban, even in the agricultural areas, with farmland being sold off for subdivisions, that sports fishing is not a thing.”

We return past many an automotive repair shop or garage, with Dan informing me that I will be meeting the owner of one of these shops on Saturday, at a house party he is holding. Entering the driveway where we so spry-like trained and sparred 14 months ago, before my misstep into bio-mechanical oblivion, Dan again hefted my 30 pound world in his heavy hand and led me through his garage, up into the kitchen, down into the 2nd of the 4 split levels of his nice “lived in” house, to this tiny guest room. This room is often used for his visiting twin granddaughters, who lived here during my 2020 visit. Appointed for girls now about six, I suppose, the princess and fairy bed sheets on the cozy cot, the pink basket on this vanity desk, help the old gimp feel at home. Honored with a window air conditioner, I smile as Dan points out the tiny imitation polar bear rug [with no head, of course] placed over the threshold. Kicking up the throw, Dan points with his toe at a lifting threshold and says, “My granddaughters said they put this here so that Pawpaw’s friend doesn’t trip!”

Squared away beyond the tiny darling threshold, I went above, where Dan sat at his dining room table and enjoyed a good 8 hours of streaming conversation. This convinced me to abandon my three-part chronological outline. Instead, I shall embrace Robert E. Howard’s dictum that a man who has experienced adventures naturally relates events at random and out of chronological order. Dan has no desire to relate his adventures, but to honor six men: Dad, Demetrius and Dave, now dead, Sean, locked away for life, and Scott and Frankie, both of whom Dan has lost all contact with.

From a Heavy Gravity Planet is mostly an ode to these leaders and fellows who accompanied Electric Dan on some portion of his journey to being a thoughtful Man.