Lock Block

Ever see a scene so clearly it's like you were there and be utterly unable to phrase it even crayon sketch level in text?

I am there with a scene from my Sabers story.

Some dates have changed from the original outline, the triggering event happens later and the expedition through the spook hole happens more immediately after.  I am thinking of it being just before the events that triggered the Wounded Knee massacre.

The scene in question is the opening of the story.

Indians are shuffling in a big circle doing a ghost dance and are being watched by the local agent, who is worried about the Army coming to force them to stop.

He is relieved that it appears to be breaking up on its own over the course of the night as he is hearing fewer and fewer voices, so he goes to bed.

In the morning, there are no Indians.  Just a worn circle in the dirt and snow.

Dissonance

The Real History of the American Indian, with Matt Walsh.

I have not checked anything he says, but I've seen excerpts that agree with stuff I've already found for Sabers and...

Rosebud Massacre

Since I've made him a character in my scribbles, I've been reading about George Crook.

In particular the battle of the Rosebud.

This is where General Crook learned that the northern plains Indians fought a little differently from the Apache and Northwest Indians he'd been accustomed to.

But part of that difference was from a change in how the Sioux and Cheyenne were dealing with Whites.

They'd gotten new leaders who were aggressive, take-the-fight-to-the-enemy types.

And they took the fight to Crook at Rosebud creek.

I've read several accounts of that fight and the worst I can call it for Crook is a draw.

The outcome of the battle was not decisive for either side, but it did fix Crook in one spot for  

Both sides apparently fought until ammunition levels were getting critical and the Sioux withdrew.  Crook then sent riders to his supply dump and withdrew to a better position until fresh supplies arrived.

Those supplies did not arrive until after Col. Custer had met his fate.

Something I've not seen mentioned is I think the Indians had something of an after action review of the Rosebud battle and did a "this worked, this didn't" kind of analysis and applied it to the Battle of the Greasy Grass.

I think some historians forget that Indians are people too and capable of learning and changing their approaches to problems.

I also think a lot of historians keep missing that Rosebud and Little Big Horn are separated by about a week and how long it takes to move a supplies when it's carried by wagon or mule (or how far a wagon or mule can go in a day).

Someone mentioned that the pros study logistics, some obscure general I think. 

I have also noticed that George Crook was an unpopular officer with his contemporaries who really only kept his job by being relentlessly successful...  Until Rosebud.

There's a lot to unpack about the man, but history is written from what people wrote about someone and those someones hate you... 

Matches My Research

Thanksgiving post at ¡No Pasarán!

My research has led to some awkward conversations with my Blackfoot wife, Harvey.

Nobody wants their ancestors to be the baddies.

This research has made it exceedingly difficult to make progress with my little Sabers and Sorcerers story because all the bad shit I'd planned for the Googoo to do to show how baddie they are...  The Sioux did in real history!

Never mind the Sioux crossing to the alternate Earth, Maka Tanka, and doing unto the Googoo what white gold prospectors and the US government did to the Sioux in the Black Hills.  For the Sioux it's kind of a repeat because they'd already done it to the Cheyenne and Pawnee.

SIGH

Boot Hill RPG

I've long loved the Old West (though oddly didn't normally like westerns) and the existence of a Old West role playing game always appealed to me.

Boot Hill from TSR was such a game.

The first time I tried to play it, though, was just using the conversions listed in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.

I was such an ignorant waif.

".38-40" meant a gun that could use rounds that were .38 to .40 in caliber.  Same same .44-40...  It didn't make sense, but I didn't know enough to know why my spidey sense was telling me I'd gotten that wrong.

I got that from looking at the pictures in the Time Life Old West series of books.

I did NOT get that from the DMG or the Boot Hill rules.

Boot Hill 2e doesn't list a make or model, or even caliber.  Single Action Revolver, 6-shot is an example.

It was a very simple game.

Too simple for our wants at the time.

By the time I returned to wanting to run an Old West game, I had GURPS: Old West.

I had no player interest.

So I made it weird.  I simply added magery.

In a lot of ways, the typical Western runs the same beats as the typical Fantasy RPG adventure, so I figured it'd be a good combination.  Deadlands: Weird West is an entire game with this idea in mind, it even got a GURPS 3e version.

I don't think I failed, but the players were not familiar with the technology and some of them seemed to think that a Peacemaker was either a sniper rifle or belt-fed gun.

This is despite being familiar with GURPS and what the stats meant.

I got a near party kill in an early version with a single Indian with a bow and arrow when I'd restricted the technology to 1866.  They ran their cap and ball revolvers dry and the realistic reload times really came into play.

"That's why they carried more than one pistol back then!" they all said.

It didn't get a lot better when we moved to 1877 and they got to use cartridges.

This time it was my fault and I sent a monster at them that was way tougher than I thought it was.  Total party kill.

Their next attempt went better for everyone but Anglave.  He, being unfamiliar with the historical background, had made a tenderfoot from Back East™.  He hired the rest of the party as guides to steer him through the exciting world of the frontier.

Being proper murder-hobo desperadoes, they murdered his character and looted the body.  They made this decision after spending a good portion of character creation talking about making law abiding characters this time around too!

Liars!

Still, it's a fertile playground for RPGs.

Sabers and Sorcery is a GURPS Old West world with magic, in fact. 

Still World Building

A wrinkle that's getting hard to deal with is Homo Neanderthalensis never developing ranged weapons past the occasional thrown spear.  From the pattern of bone breaks in several skeletons, "stab and hang on," appears to be the main tactic with a spear.

A developing hypothesis to their disappearance is from a rapid cooling period where the forests they dominated disappeared and their normal ambush hunting wasn't viable due to the lack of suitable cover.

Homo Sapiens thrived because of ranged weapons like the bow and arrow and atlatl.  They didn't need as much cover because we could shoot from outside the prey's alert distances.

The Homo Sapiens hunting style was also more wolf-like.  Persistence hunting is also better suited to open terrain.

But how does this affect Sabers and Sorcerers?

I've set it in an alternate Great Plains.  The very terrain that might have killed off historical Goo Goo!

I might have to do some rethinking of my bad-guys.

Branch Color

According to this page, purple is fair game for the magic branch in 1899.

I had planned to have the magic branch be purple with silver piping.  But reconsidered.

The piping color is the color of the branch they're assigned to.

Purple with yellow (yellow orange if you wanna get technical) for cavalry.

Purple with white for infantry.

Purple with red for artillery.

Purple with cadet gray for commissary.

Purple with emerald green for hospital/medical.

Purple with crimson for ordnance.

Purple with buff for quartermaster.

Purple with black for signal corps.

Branch insignia are a lightning bolt crossed with a star tipped wand.

There are a bewildering array of non-commissioned officer ranks that appear to be outside the chain of command, like specialist or tech ranks.

Commissary sergeant is a thing.

There were still color sergeants in the US Army in 1899.

Knowing Exactly What I Want To Do

Making a Sergeant of Mages for Sabers and Sorcerers...

Christopher Harrington.

He's a movement college only mage.

I have to decide if I want to keep going with requiring a soul-jar athame to be a mage or not.

It makes the character a lot more complex using GURPS to keep track of my characters.

In many ways making a complete new system for "Old Magic" was easier than doing what I have in my head.

I have a clear vision.

Just writing it is easy, I want it to work in GURPS too.

I'll figure it out.

A mistake I made with the athame is it might require you to have on your person to keep your magery.  Need to double check and fix that, if so.

Woof!

Were doggies the killer app of cro-magnon man?

It's strange to think of dogs as a technological development, but domestication is a technology.

There's evidence that suggests that a neanderthal did about 10% more calorie burn than we do.

If we're burning fewer calories doing the same things and dogs make it easier for us to get more calories...

Neanderthal gets out competed.

Then there's the interbreeding...

I've sometimes wondered if hybrid vigor is going on and the cro-magnon appearance is a REALLY dominate gene leaving us with a magnathal who looks a lot like a cro-magnon but out competed them all.

Sabers And... Snippet 18

The truth be told, Fowler thought, not all of the Indians had disappeared twenty years ago.

The Commanche were still where they'd, finally, been corralled and disarmed.

The Blackfoots, Crow and Pawnee were living comfortably on their reservations; having once been aligned with the US against their... fellow wasn't the right word... neighboring tribes.

There was old blood there.

It was Crow shamans who'd helped the scholars from Yale figure out what spells had been used to make the spook-holes.

The Commanche had been especially restive and it was clear that the secret of the spell had been deliberately withheld from them by their neighbors.

It seemed that nobody wanted to live next door to them if they could help it.

Indian Territory problem, not a 77th Expeditionary problem...

And this expedition.

Fowler was feeling a little bitter about it.

His Army had been well starved by a Congress that didn't have an enemy to the North and felt that it was large enough to handle a foe to the South.

If the invasion of Cuba, last year, had not been such a near thing, funding would probably still be strangling.

But now we're needed again, he thought.

Urgently now that some members of Congress were noticing that only the Commanche needed active management and all of the other native tribes had absconded.  They were chipping away hard at the monies promised to a Bureau of Indian Affairs that kept watch on a rather small population of Indians.

He had to admit, the lack of Indians had allowed the Army to do its job and kept Indian Territory from being overrun by white settlers a decade ago and the BIA had realized that without an Indian Territory they'd have been wiped out completely by, then, President Harrison.  So they backed the Army in keeping the settlers out.

But there used to be reservations all over the nation, not just Indian Territory.

The Bureau was interested in keep the money taps open and their nests well feathered.

So it was up to The Army, Colonel Fowler and the 77th to prove there were still Indians out there, somewhere.

Which brought up a problem.

The scouts that were integral to his expedition were inexperienced.  In the past, he'd have simply enlisted the aid of a Crow or Blackfoot scout.

But he was ordered to make peaceful contact with the Sioux or Cheyenne, if possible.  He doubted in his bones if that were possible if he brought even one of their eternal foes with him.

General Crook agreed that it was going to be more likely to be found by the Sioux than to find them himself, especially if he didn't do any sneaking about.  As if a formation of this size could do any sneaking.

Well Said

I might have posted a link to this vid before, but it's worth repeating.

Sabers And... Snippet 17

There were, maybe eight of the oddly ugly... people?  surrounding Allen.

Not short, but looking like they should be, with blonde hair and blue eyes; but skin as dark as a snake charmer.

"Wood, does everyone have a shot?"

"Yessir."

"Then let's introduce these heathen to how The 77th does war," Lt Fowler announced as he drew the green sword.

It throbbed in his grip.  Eager.

It was the most startling thing...

Today wasn't a day for blades, rifles would suffice.

"FIRE!"

Twenty shots cracked and nine Goo Goo fell dead.  Allen fell as well, losing his captor's support.

The leader of the native band still stirred, looking shocked.  Almost as if he expected Fowler to negotiate or something.

Well, he wasn't going to live long enough to forget that George Crook, and by extension, his men didn't ask for permission to rescue a comrade.

Sabers And... Snippet 16

"They know we're here, Major," magery sergeant Harrington reported when he came back from his aerial scout.

"What did you see?" asked Major Beasley, worrying about just how hostile a reception the Sioux might offer.

"Two things, Sir:  First, there's three of them just over that rise laying so they can see us, but we can't see them.  Second, they didn't even try to hide the wizard eye they sent up to look at me."

Well, thought the major, at least we're not sneaking around.

"Fowler!"  We set up camp here until the Sioux deign to come and say hello.

Thank providence that Sheridan and Custer had long since left the service...

Subverted?

After the Civil War, lots of officers were demoted if they remained in service.

George A Custer is a famous example going from Major General to Lieutenant Colonel.

To prevent losing too much face, they retained their higher rank as a brevet rank.

The losses in rank was not applied evenly across the Army.

There was more than a little resentment over whom retained their original ranks and who got breveted down.

Something I've noticed more than once is a brevet who should never have had the higher rank in the first place on account of The Incompetence™.

Custer is, again, a famous example.  The man was famously and fabulously lucky; but he was rarely accused of being good at being a commander.

Surely, though, there must be people breveted who were solidly competent, but didn't have the favor of the people making the decision.

I don't recall any stories about them.

I am thinking of making a 1st Lieutenant brevet Colonel who's a good commander, just unlikable.  Nothing but competence.  No social graces.

The kind of guy who shines when the bullets are flying, but is a disaster at the officer's cotillion.

Zoom?

With Zoom meetings being a thing, I wonder if I can reconnect with the gaming group in Ames without the attendant trip to Iowa.

Sabers and Sorcery needs some playtesting.

Stone Age

Something of an update.

Sabers and... is still progressing.

I'm just so dang buried in world building that I'm not to the point of outlines or plotting, though I do have some good characters.

Trying to get Sioux culture right is vexing, because there's been some sanitizing over the years.

They've got some skeletons in their closets and some activists should really stop casting aspersions at the evol whyte mahn.

Slavery, misogyny and (possibly) cannibalism.

But no matter, my Sioux don't have to be the real, historical, Sioux any more than my 77th Cavalry is a real, historical, unit.  (Hint, it's not)

But what hit home in my research is the American Indian is a TL0 culture.

They have access to TL5 technology, but they cannot make any of it.

The Googoo are also a TL0 culture without that access to high-tech.

I think the distinction I'm going to hang on the GooGoo is they're going to be, effectively, at TL0+1 society because they don't have a myth-parallel hanging over their heads forcing their society from changing thanks to ready access to magic.

Magic SHOULD change society markedly, but the myth-parallel keeps history on track without significant changes to the outcomes.

Like Kennedy still getting killed despite having an active missile-shield in place.

For the Sabers and... universe, the myth-parallel is intact until the mass emigration through the gates to Maka Tanka.

One Two Punch

There's increasing evidence that the population of The Americas was heading for a massive reduction even if Columbus had lost all three ships mid-Atlantic.

Probably not the 90-95% reduction they got from exposure to the endemic diseases from Europe, but...

In about 1200 something wiped out Cahokia so hard they didn't recover.  Poor sanitation doesn't account for the sudden, and complete, disappearance.  It doesn't appear to be from war either.

The place was abandoned, and deserted like it was cursed.

Fear of disease by people who don't know what diseases are does that.

There's no clear consensus on what wiped out Cahokia, we're just getting to agreement about when.

But the populations in South America were going gangbusters compared the plains Indians.

Then...

The diseases imported from Europe really hit hard, but some are thinking too hard.

What if another plague was working its wonders on the indigenous population and making them more vulnerable to outside diseases.

It's an interesting theory.

It also speculates that the population loss would be more like 50% without a native plague, so it's not like they would have been hunky dory with European diseases.

However, it also looks like about 35% were going to be dying even if Europe never met them.  That's nothing to sneeze at...

Fits The Facts

 

The more history I read about the Indians, the less believable the "noble savage" narrative becomes.

Don't Fuck With Nantan Lupan

The Severed Heads Campaign.

General Crook was taken from us too soon. 

I keep reading about his methods and I am reminded of a quote:

"Sirs, I am not here to dispense Justice.  I am here to keep the peace, and peace is what we will have.  I don't care which side has to be hanged to get it, but I will have it."

That might even be a Willard quote.

Let's Take A Knap

Will Lord, making an obsidian dagger in real time.

I'm not sure the Googoo can do such advanced stone work, but it's neat to watch.