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A PHUULISH FELLOW

Daniel Stride's Blog


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 * Wise Phuul


THE SONG OF SAQUA: VOLUME VIII

Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but
in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing,
namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been
productive. But in order to reassure everyone that A Phuulish Fellow is not in
hibernation, I thought I’d get around to posting another update about the
adventures of my D&D character: Saqua the underwater Dhampir Sorcerer.



Session XVII

The misadventures of jumping off a cliff had now been sorted, and everyone was
healed up and now wandering off to the next town. In fact, the afternoon was so
pleasant that Millie the Human Ranger decided to do a spot of rabbit hunting,
while everyone else took a nice rest.

Alas, Millie got more than she bargained for, finding herself trapped in a
rabbit warren. And since Millie could talk to animals, she was on the wrong side
of copious leporine abuse. Those rabbits were mean. Luckily, Saqua was along
soon enough, to see what had happened… whereupon Saqua thought the logical thing
was to dig down into the warren. But since he utterly failed a perception check,
the entire berry* of the little bastards escaped during his dig, without him
noticing.

*A collective noun for rabbits. You’re welcome.

Millie and Saqua soon discovered that Goatslayer (Goliath Monk) had gotten his
uncouth hands on a pair of rabbit kittens. And because this was Goatslayer, he
gleefully turned them into rabbit kebabs. Delicious.

To commemorate the occasion, Saqua used Minor Illusion to give Goatslayer a pair
of illusory rabbit ears. Big and floppy. Goatslayer’s response was to intimidate
Saqua, and as the latter rolled a natural 1 against it, one can conclude that
Saqua was truly intimidated.

The next town was presided over by an affable bearded Jarl, notable for his
thorough distaste for the King on the island, King Bloodaxe. Saqua found the
fellow so affable that he suggested the party could help install the Jarl in the
King’s place… which the Jarl found a tad offensive. Which says a fair amount
about the Jarl. It’s easy to be loyal to someone you like. Much harder to be
loyal to someone you despise.

But the Jarl mentioned a strange ship upon the beach, so the party decided to
investigate.

Sure enough, we found an alien and mysterious thing. Saqua definitely wanted to
hang back as the others took a look inside. Though none of the party in-game
would know this, this was a spell-jamming space-ship.

Then a green-skinned Elf burst out, and tried to attack us. We made a point of
trying to capture the damned thing alive, but it kept evading our efforts. It
turned out the Elf was under the control of an Intellect Devourer, and it
finally vanished off onto another plane, leaving the party alone with the ship.

One end of the ship was occupied by a strange brine pool. Droxl the Lizardfolk
Warlock made the mistake of touching it, and then failing a Wisdom save. Droxl
became absolutely convinced that the pool was the only safe place for him, to
the extent that he would fight other party members to stay there.

(Saqua tried a cunning solution. Convince Droxl via Illusion Magic that he is
always within the pool, even when he isn’t. Alas, Droxl has stellar
intelligence, so that did not work. But I think it deserves points for
creativity).

At last, we dragged Droxl away from the pool, and headed back to the Jarl to
make a report.



Session XVIII

Back on the road again. The party stumbled across a mysterious old
slaughterhouse. Saqua claimed it reminded him of home – not in the least bit
creepy, of course, though a wee reminder that Saqua’s people do actually drink
human blood in order to survive. Millie and Khan (Goliath Barbarian) wanted to
knock the slaughterhouse down, which confused the hell out of Saqua.

But the dispute was put on hold by the arrival of Ghost Cows. Because of course
this slaughterhouse was home to Ghost Cows. And for Saqua, this posed a real
headache. They’re immune to necrotic or cold damage, you can’t hit them with
ordinary weapons… so both his standard spells were out, together with his sword.
He was reduced to his wand of magic missile, though forgot Hex inflicted
necrotic damage, so he managed to heal the undead cow he had just destroyed.
Bugger.

But Millie won the day… by talking to the Ghost Cows. Because recall that she
can do that. And next thing we knew, Millie had vanished off into another Plane
with them.

Saqua was genuinely worried about the safety of Millie – and though A
Disembodied Voice reassured him Millie was fine, Saqua was not exactly believing
it. Oh well.

From there, we were wandering up towards the mountains. Which meant snow.

And halflings.



You see, we found a pair of sturdy halflings sitting beside a campfire, getting
drunk and smoking… substances. The party joined in, and got thoroughly
inebriated. And stoned. Saqua deliberately failed constitution saves, to get
himself more drunk – out of game, because it’s easier to roleplay someone
utterly sloshed than someone mildly tipsy – and the halflings themselves
ventured to try… cheese.

Apparently cheese is like heroin to halflings, though no-one else. Once the pair
had passed out, Saqua stuck his fangs in for a non-lethal snack, in the hope
he’d get second-hand drug-effects. It didn’t. But he was throwing up anyway.

Goatslayer – not exactly a pleasant chap – decided to get revenge for the
rabbit-ears illusion via body-slamming poor Saqua into the ground. But poor
Saqua was so drunk, he can’t remember any of this. It’s just another pain to
start the day, along with a monster hang-over.

Further into the mountains, we stumbled across an NPC who strongly resembled a
certain character from another campaign (as played by the person playing
Goatslayer). They were most kind and intelligent, answered Saqua’s question
about other Planes, and accepted our gift of a certain Eldritch Tome, which had
been lugged around since Melchior’s Island.

Then we ran into a horde of Orcs. Not a hostile horde of Orcs, but rather the
sort willing to share a campsite, if Goatslayer can avoid antagonising them. It
turned out that their Chief was also half-vampire, though he regards it as a
weakness, rather than a strength. Saqua, of course, regards both sides of his
family – human father and vampiric mother – with fondness.


 * May 9, 2024
 * Random silliness, RPG
 * Leave a comment


2024 READING SUMMARY: APRIL (+ WRITING UPDATE)

Completed reads for April:

 * The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
 * Carnival of Saints, by George Herman
 * The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo
 * Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo
 * The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo
 * Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie
 * Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
 * The Most Dangerous Game, by Richard Connell
 * The Origin of the Lombard Nation
 * Prometheus (poem), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 * Ganymed (poem), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 * The Code of Hammurabi
 * Kings of the Night, by Robert E. Howard
 * The Orphic Poem of the Derveni Papyrus (fragments)
 * They Came to Baghdad, by Agatha Christie
 * The Adventure of the German Student, by Washington Irving
 * Letter to Sura [On Ghosts], by Pliny the Younger
 * The Spectre Bridegroom: A Traveller’s Tale, by Washington Irving
 * Kidd the Pirate, by Washington Irving
 * The Devil and Tom Walker, by Washington Irving
 * The Devil and Daniel Webster, by Stephen Vincent Benet
 * Cain (play), by Lord Byron
 * The Wild Huntsman (poem), by Gottfried August Bürger
 * The Apparition of Mrs Veal, by Daniel Defoe
 * The Ring (poem), by Thomas Moore
 * The Venus of Ille, by Prosper Mérimée
 * Lokis, by Prosper Mérimée
 * Markheim, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * Thrawn Janet, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * Olalla, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Body-Snatcher, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * Will o’ the Mill, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Sire de Malétroit’s Door, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Pavilion on the Links, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Merry Men, by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * Alciphron (poem), by Thomas Moore
 * The Haunted and the Haunters; or The House and the Brain, by Edward
   Bulwer-Lytton
 * Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by Thomas de Quincey
 * Hallowe’en Party, by Agatha Christie
 * At Bertram’s Hotel, by Agatha Christie

Hammurabi is Harper’s translation. The Orphic Poem of the Derveni Papyrus is
Sider’s.

A solid time for reading, albeit we are dealing with copious shorter texts,
often followed up from H.P. Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature essay.
Lovecraft’s essay is an excellent starting-off point for investigating the
Horror genre prior to the 1930s.



Also a decent amount of writing this month:

 * At the Bottom of the Garden earned itself a name-change, becoming The One Who
   Saw Too Much. It ended up complete at 3,600 words, and has now been sent-off.
 * Meanwhile, I also completed a 2,700-word piece, The Sweetest Flower of
   Nuulath, which is based on the Sweet Roland fairy-tale from the Brothers
   Grimm.
 * Just before the end of the month, I managed a 3,000-word piece, Dangerous
   Antiques, about a British steel magnate and the dreaded Mortensen Cabinet.
 * And I dusted off my old necrophiliac Christmas porn story, A Christmas in
   Bohemia, polished it up, and sent it off to another hapless market. It really
   is amazing how coming back to old stories with fresh eyes makes a difference
   from an editorial perspective.


 * April 30, 2024
 * 2024 Reading Summary, Horror Genre, Reading, Writing
 * 1 Comment


OF THE GOODNESS OF TOLKIEN’S ERU

April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally
good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original
fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article.
It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. Damn it, I need more Tolkienian
controversies to blow up – I can’t just wait until the next season of Rings of
Power for some material to work with.

Well, as luck would have it, a Discord contact has pointed me at the direction
of a certain article about the Goodness of Tolkien’s Eru – or the lack thereof:

https://lalaithmesp.blogspot.com/p/is-eru-good-god-epithets-and-actions-of.html

Oh yes. There is material here.



Now, first off, I think the essay is somewhat at fault for not properly defining
what Good is, within the context of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. We actually run into
a variation of the old Euthyphro Dilemma from Plato here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma, whereby we are unsure whether
something is Good because Eru wills it, or Eru wills it because it is Good. My
own instinct is that the second horn of the dilemma is the more satisfactory, as
it stops the Goodness of Tolkien’s Eru becoming a mere tautology – though your
mileage may vary. For its part, the article essentially tries to judge Eru
through the lens of human moral understanding, which strikes me as mistake. Even
if one disagrees with the standard approaches to Theodicy, it is at least
worthwhile to consider them. The Book of Job and Boethius were exploring these
matters centuries ago.

(That said, I do think there is a decent argument to be made that Tolkien’s Eru
is primarily concerned with the Beauty of Creation, and less with conventional
notions of Goodness. Tolkien would insist that Beauty and Goodness are really
the same, of course, but the Eru of the Ainulindalë does very much come across
as an artist. Aesthetic Theodicy, perhaps, though it is worth noting that the
Ainulindalë is the product of the Elves writing down what they had heard from
the Ainur… and the artistically-driven Elves might be putting their own
subjective understandings into this metaphysical soup).

The essay then goes on to list three charges against Eru – oddly enough, none of
them involving Túrin Turambar. Odd because if there was ever a Tolkien story
that sought to wrestle with Theodicy, it is The Children of Húrin.

The first charge is that Eru allows Melkor to mar Creation, and abuse Eru’s own
Children. The essay rejects the famous Shall Prove But Mine Instrument
justification:

Iluvátar’s notorious statement, popularly known as
the But-mine-instrument-Clause, has indeed met much criticism because it is
belittling, if not outright justifying evil. Manwë would one day interpret the
Clause like this: „Even as Eru spoke to us shall beauty not before conceived be
brought into Eä, and evil yet be good to have been.“ One should not think that
such a word was possible in a world like Eä. Just try to be more specific about
„evil“ and tell for yourself whether it does not ring tremendously false to your
ears: „9/11 will be good to have been.“ – „Auschwitz will be good to have been.“
– „Stalinism will be good to have been.“ No, it is absolutely impossible to say
something so naive and get away with it, even if you are a Vala.
Manwë deservedly gets rebuked by Mandos: „And yet remain evil.“ Well said,
Mandos! Now, if only Eru was that wise…

In response to which, one might invoke one of the most famous speeches in
science-fiction television. Tom Baker’s Doctor musing on exterminating the
Daleks in the old Doctor Who serial, Genesis of the Daleks (1975):





Now, in fairness, Tolkien’s Eru does have the right to intervene in this way. It
is, after all, His Creation, and He could no doubt remove Melkor from existence
as easily as He created him. But to intervene would involve a violation of Free
Will – not just Melkor’s, but those of all Arda’s creatures – and undermine the
innate dignity that springs from Free Will.

Moreover, as the Doctor notes, “some things might be better because of the
Daleks.” Some things might be better because terrible things have happened –
because, as The Book of Job (and then later Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy)
points out, we mere mortals have no point of comparison. We cannot see the
entire picture – the future if 9/11 had never happened, to take the essay’s
example – whereas Eru can see. He can see an Arda without Melkor’s tampering,
and an Arda with Melkor’s tampering. And this is where the Shall Prove But Mine
Instrument comes into its own. Melkor (as Mandos points out) is Evil because of
his actions and choices… but that falls on him. Wider Creation itself, so far as
Eru is concerned, is a better place, at least artistically.

In that respect, there is a reason Tolkien went with the concept of a Symphony
of Creation, rather than the essay’s analogy of building a house and allowing
someone to deliberately introduce faults. The Great Symphony arises organically,
and incorporates notes (even from Melkor) in pursuit of Beauty. Eru is not
designing a building to fill with little automatons.



The second charge against Eru is the Problem of the Orcs. Now, it must be
admitted that the redeemability of the Orcs is a question that fundamentally
breaks Tolkien’s internal metaphysics. Story wars with philosophy.

But the essay very much blames Eru for this predicament:

The issue has once been addressed like this: „Would Eru provide feär for such
creatures? For the Eagles etc. perhaps. But not for Orcs.“ That spawned the
hypothesis that Orcs were irrational animals, driven only by the dispersed
spirit of their masters (Morgoth or Sauron). But this assumption is clearly in
conflict with numerous evidence for Orcs behaving as if indeed they had a soul,
arguing rationally (to their profit), acting consciously in the absence of any
puppeteering masters and, if they could, even against them. But if Orcs have a
soul, who gives it to them? It is the uncontested belief by all the Wise that
„the new feä … come[s] direct from Eru and from beyond Eä.“ Which can only mean
this: Eru equips evil Orcs with evil feär!

There is an easy out here: we simply do not know enough about the metaphysical
situation of the Orcs. It is one of the mysteries of Middle-earth, a Gordian
Knot that Tolkien himself could not untangle. All we have are his various
competing ideas and theories. The essay plays fast and loose with that, treating
shaky authorial uncertainty as solid ground.

But to meet the essay on its own turf – Eru does not equip the Orcs with evil
feär, because feär are not innately evil. Orcs are evil because they act evilly,
and make evil choices, and while one might question how much Free Will the
average Orc has in practice, one cannot blame their evil inclinations on
something beyond the world. Their evil inclinations are very much of this world.



The third and final charge against Eru involves the destruction of Númenor, and
more specifically, the deaths of innocents arising from that.

For to Iluvátar, granting help means inflicting genocides. Not as if he, supreme
and almighty god, did not have more subtle means! We should assume be might just
halt Ar-Pharazôn’s heart – and while we are at that, those of his senior
officers, too – and with all their tyrants dropping dead on the afterdeck, the
survivors would fall onto their knees, praise God for delivering them from Evil,
and rejoicingly return to freedom. Oh no, not that! Iluvátar resorts to divine
displays of the most coercing kind: „And all the fleets of the Númenóreans were
drawn down into the abyss, and they were drowned and swallowed up for ever.

Giving the King a convenient heart-attack would not fix Númenor. The islanders
have become utterly obsessed with their Fear of Death, and Sauron is sitting
back home, smugly anticipating what he will do next. Númenor has not merely
stopped acknowledging Eru, it has literally become the home of
Devil-worshippers, and practitioners of human sacrifice. Can the essay-writer
not see that this is a recipe for continued repeats of Pharazôn’s misadventures,
until Something Must Be Done? The Númenoreans were also given the island under
the clear condition that they must not sail West to Aman – one would imagine
that removal of said island actually makes sense, given what these people have
just done.

Now, there is a decent argument that Eru’s actions here took the lives of
innocents – Tar-Miriel, for example, assuming she was not the Partner in Crime
from Tolkien’s alternative version of her story. But I think one needs to take a
step back, and consider the oddity of the Akallabêth, as it applies to Tolkien’s
invented world. This is a story where the underlying ethics are different from
normal, and not merely because Tolkien wanted to write a Deluge story.

The Akallabêth is is easily the most Old Testament-flavoured story Tolkien ever
wrote. And the thing about the Old Testament God is that He does not play by a
modern mindset. He sets down His rules, and expects those rules to be followed.
Breaking those rules has consequences.

As such, the survivors of the Downfall would not curse Eru for destroying their
home. Rather, the Old Testament view would be along the lines of “we sacrificed
innocents to a false god, and invaded Aman in violation of the Ban. He let some
of us live. Truly, He is merciful.”

(There is a New Testament element to the story too, in the form of Amandil.
Putting the principle of Forgiveness above adherence to Rules. It earns Elendil
that fortunate wind).

Can we convict Eru of being a Bad God here? Certainly, if we apply moral
standards external to the spirit of the story. The Akallabêth is an in-universe
Mythic Lesson, as expressed through an in-universe narrator with a worldview
utterly alien to that of the twenty-first century West. Bringing in
anachronistic considerations does not strike me as a useful approach to
analysing the story. Can we fit this eccentricity within the spirit of the wider
legendarium? That in itself replicates the matter of the Old Testament versus
the New Testament, though one can construct artificial work-arounds – the
possibility that the Downfall was merely a volcanic eruption, and that the
episode was mythologised by in-universe people after the fact. But really, one
ought not to see Tolkien’s legendarium as completely consistent with itself, and
that extends to his treatment of Eru.

**

So is Tolkien’s Eru then a ‘Good or Bad God’? Frankly, I do not think the text
invites us to ask that question. The character is a hands-off deity, and with
only some notable exceptions, stays out of the narrative. To charge Him, as the
linked essay does, with responsibility for Melkor or the Orcs or the Downfall is
really to neglect the underlying spirit of Tolkien’s stories. Fun as it might be
to criticise the Valar’s missteps, judging Eru is rather something beyond the
reader’s pay-grade in any serious serious sense, as we are not given enough
evidence, nor does Tolkien ever mean for us to make such a judgement.


 * April 28, 2024
 * Philosophy, Reading, Tolkien essays, Youtube
 * 2 Comments


THE SONG OF SAQUA: VOLUME VII

In order to catch up to the actual progress of the D&D campaign, I present you
with another couple of sessions. These were actually held back to back, on a
Monday and Tuesday evening.

Session XV

Alas, Goatslayer had another lycanthropic transformation… though this time, he
ran off into the forest. Unable to find him for now, the party continued
onwards… right into the middle of a giant Bandit Ambush. Which was represented
on the table by a number of Mackintosh’s Toffees, and in our imaginations by a
fierce skirmish within some closely-packed trees.



It turned out that these Bandits were both extremely numerous and extremely
well-prepared. So well-prepared that it later became clear that they had been
scrying on us from a distance. Saqua threw an obligatory Fog Cloud in their
midst, but soon found himself afflicted within a zone of Silence in return. A
Bandit Bard (with a lute) had magical spells at his disposal – and knew of
Saqua’s own magical abilities.

Unfortunately for the Bandits, however, Saqua is no slouch at mundane combat –
with his vampiric side, he is essentially a Combat Sorcerer. Cue, climbing a
tree to take out a pair of crossbow-wielding pests. One of them thought to give
the fingers as he fled down an escape-rope… but via opportunity attack, Saqua
dealt with the Bandit first by sword, then by Fury Point-powered bite. Enough to
kill, and thereby gain both health and another Fury Point. Our dear little
Dhampir can very much keep going when surrounded by low-level enemies.

Droxl, Millie, and Khan were no slouches either. The Bandits were starting to
flee en-masse into the forest now, but little did the party know, the villains
had actually succeeded in their aim, specifically of making away with an item
hitherto in the party’s possession. But Saqua did not know this. He had his own
goal. He wanted that blasted Bard.

Now, the forest was treated as Difficult Terrain for the party (but not for the
Bandits), so on paper, the Bard really should have got away. But Saqua’s
accumulated Fury Points enabled him to turn into a mist and relocate 30 feet a
turn… essentially teleporting his way through the trees. The Bard cast
Invisibility on himself, only to then make the fatal mistake of casting an
additional spell, which negated the Invisibility. Saqua wanted to take the
fellow for questioning, and wheeled out Command – alas, a failure. And then the
Bandit Bard’s head exploded, because it turned out the poor guy suffered under
the effects of an external Geas, and these Bandits had been working for someone
else the entire time.

Bugger. But Saqua wound up with the Bard’s lute as a souvenir, and the DM
described the party as “Bloodthirsty.” And then Goatslayer turned up, back in
his normal form.



The party was taking stock of the situation when an Owl then turned up. This Owl
worked for the Forest Druid, and told Millie that some idiot had cut down the
giant protective Snow Oak, thereby weakening the forest’s power. Yes, it turned
out that that Druid we had met in a previous session was really a hag pretending
to be a Druid, and we had done a terrible thing. Worse, the hag had imprisoned
the real Druid. Millie then went and explained to the party what we had done.

Droxl’s response was to kill the Owl. But it was a Familiar, so it merely went
back to its appropriate plane of existence. But there was the issue of what the
party ought to do now. Saqua took the viewpoint that we really should correct
our mistake, and help free the poor Druid. Goatslayer, however, insisted that
his oath to King Bloodaxe took precedence.

In the end, the party agreed with Goatslayer. The Druid matter will have to
wait.



Session XVI

So rather than more forest stuff, it was back to civilisation. The nearest town
sported a very fancy inn (somewhat pricey, but Saqua has little conception of
land-money), and a Church of Sune. Which served as both entertainment and
religious sex-cult. Saqua purchased a nice bottle of wine at the inn, and a room
for the night. But he actually wanted someone who could teach him how to play
this lute he’d acquired… the innkeeper pointed him at the Church. All roads led
to the Church of Sune, it seemed.

After making further enquiries, Saqua wound up finding an elaborate swimming
pool. Inside were a single woman at one end, and two men at the other (one
elderly and obese, the other a bit younger). Saqua went to the woman first, but
she redirected him. So Saqua approached the elderly man, and asked about
lute-playing. It turned out the fellow was a very accomplished musician… and
Saqua got both useful pointers and a night’s fun. In fact, Saqua tried to add in
some surreptitious blood-drinking, but (as per Constitution rolls) it took ages
for the old man to fall asleep first.

Saqua was so impressed by the old gentleman’s stamina, that he made a later
point of recommending him to the rest of the party. Especially to Goatslayer.
But the party was generally less enthusiastic, and indeed the next morning,
Millie found Saqua sitting with his legs in the swimming pool, an empty bottle
of wine beside him, singing to himself. He was stark-naked too. Oh well. It’d
been a fun night for our Dhampir. He even had a tune to practise on his lute.

(Millie had her own adventure, involving talking with mafia cats).

On leaving the town, we heard strange rumours of a monster attacking farm
livestock (out of game, this was lycanthropic Goatslayer), and then ran into a
pair of furriers. Alas, they wanted nothing we had, and their prices were too
stiff for us. They weren’t remotely interested in the remains of a certain
squirrel.

And then came what could have been very… problematic. You see, Droxl had
wandered off, and the party – from atop some high seaside cliffs – noticed that
he was fighting a killer whale down in the sea. Saqua thought it seemed
excellent fun. He’s lived underwater, and has got experience fighting such
beasties. So he went and jumped off the cliff, rolling a 2 on the dice for his
Dexterity save.

Now, in fairness to Saqua, he’s jumped from 30 feet cliffs into seawater before.
Of course he has. He finds it great fun. The problem is that he wasn’t aware
that (at a certain height) water actually becomes nasty to jump into. Very nasty
indeed. And these cliffs? 200 feet. Which mechanically translated into 20d6
damage. Saqua was knocked unconscious from full health, and needed Droxl to get
him up again. In theory, the damage could have killed him outright. But since
Saqua can breathe underwater, and can easily heal in combat, he was soon able to
get his bearings. In fact, he wound up killing the killer whale himself, so
there was a happy ending there.

More problematic is that Goatslayer also decided to make the jump. He was also
knocked unconscious from full health, and unlike Saqua cannot breathe
underwater. And he wears heavy armour. Getting the poor guy back to land was a
tricky business. And there the session ended.


 * April 13, 2024
 * Random silliness, RPG
 * Leave a comment


SILMARILLION FAN POETRY: A COLLECTION (2022-2024)

It’s been some time since I properly exercised my poetic muscles. Prose-writing
has been where it’s at for me, these past few years. Well, to get back into
practice, I thought I’d write the occasional bit of jocular fan poetry, based
off Tolkien’s Silmarillion… with this post being a collection of the results,
dating back over the past year and a half. Note that, as befits the form of the
limerick, some of these efforts are a tad risqué. I also intend to update the
collection as necessary.

For the Westerosi equivalent:
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2020/01/27/collected-a-song-of-ice-and-fire-limericks-2006-2012/



Sonnets:

The gods of Valinor betray their word
They swore our people safe from Melkor’s coil
And yet we see a bloody crime occurred
Their Trees were slain upon their very soil.
O Noldor great, a folk both strong and brave,
Your King lies dead, the mighty Finwe slain,
Mere vengeance for my father now I crave
So Finwe’s Heir shall serve as Melkor’s bane.
I dream of lands the Elves have left behind
Of mountains rich and forests fair with game
Lest Men usurp the role of Elvenkind
Let us return at once to whence we came.
No law nor love nor league of swords shall part
This Elf and dearest treasures of his heart.

*

“We greet the Lord of Doriath with glee
Our twilight-dwelling kin ere current strife…
We hear you base your throne on sorcery
Perhaps we ought to write this to your wife?
We found the Orcs of Morgoth at your throat
Hard-pressed the Sindar’s legions were before
You hid behind your wifeling’s skirts and moat –
Such cowardice is sticking in our craw.”
Thus speak my brothers, sons of Noldor’s King
They take the lands that suiteth their desire
Myself I say your Daeron cannot sing
Beside this mighty Son of Noldor Fire.
(And Turko’s heard that Lúthien is hot
He wants to know if that is true or not).

(This is a hypothetical communication from Maglor to King Thingol of Doriath
during the period of Maedhros’ imprisonment on Thangorodrim).

*





Limericks:

There once was a princess named Idril
Whose parts were constructed from mithril
Her boyfriend did dread
At sharing their bed
With six Dwarves with a fetish urethral.

*

There once was a laddie named Túrin
Whose life was a long stream of urine
His sister he’d fuck
Out of sheer stupid luck
And that is the Narn i Hîn Húrin.

*

Maedhros and Maglor looked ghoulish
And Dior incredibly foolish
When those carolers slaughtered
Dior’s wife (not his daughter!)
In a forgettable Menegroth Yule-squish.

*

The servants of Celegorm Fair
Made the twin sons of Dior aware
In this forest they’d linger
Till they chewed off a finger
Of the war crime? They just didn’t care.

*

The Tolkienian fandom will binge
On fanfictional tales of a ginge
Plus there’s Amrod’s excursion
Which depends on the version
But at least one poor ginge was, well, singed.

*

The Teleri did not have a fun day
During the burning of poor Alqualondë
(Though the Noldorin mob
Were framed – inside job! –
For Fëanor will do nothing wrong, eh?).

*



Bredliks:

(Note: conventional Bredliks only rhyme on even-numbered lines. I gratuitously
rhyme the odd-numbered lines too).

Ilúvatar
I sit alone
And gazing far
The world I hone.
A might arose
He sung off-key
It’s like he chose
To mess with me.

*

An angry Elf
Misunderstood
Who screws himself
So well and good
His hapless sons
A curse acquire
Till family shuns
The Kin of Fire.

*

My name admires
I forged a Ring
In hottest fires
To make me King.
I structure all
Consort with ghosts
But with my fall
I lost my hosts.

*



Alliterative verse

I thank you, kind sir, for the gift of an ale – of all the artifices of Man, the
yeast’s flood is one not even my father would have despised. My name, you ask?
Call me Daegmund Swinsere. Yes, a nice ring there, though I have known other
names in my time, and I daresay your most attentive scop would nod at his bench
if I told the full tale. But the stars shine tonight, in a sky crystal-clear,
and though Earendel has set beyond the sea, bearing that which yet stirs the
embers of my heart, I am minded of one journey. Yes, it is time for that story,
I deem.

Many nights I’ve known, beneath the fair heavens
Leagues I have loped, the longest of ways
Yet closer I came than any King of Men
To touching that treasure, the true western light.
Upon the icy peak of proud Caradhras
The hardest of horns, from home farthest
Barren and bitter, in bone-chilling gales
I stood and stared at the stars uncounted.
I mourned my memory of Middle-earth’s past
Forgotten by good folk, a ghost I was
Yet my heart still hid the hope of pardon
And this beauty so bright, it blazed through my soul.
Eyes may be old, and ancient in years
Though gazing like gimlets from the greatest of heights
My courage I kept, and with keenness looked west
Over dale and down, and dreary-dark forest
Across the cruel sea, whose curse I endure,
To the westernmost wanderer in a world now bent
To the vessel that ventures along Varda’s own path
To the sailor who shines with the silmaril light
His brow now burning with the brightest of gems
One forged by my father in the furnace of time.
My sorrow was simple, for snow I cared not
And I wept midst the winds at the world’s very roof.
Though long I had laboured to this lonely place
Cruelly I claimed not the crystalline jewel.
Higher than heaven that helmsman did sail
And I stood but on stone, on the strangest of peaks
While the winds from the west brought their wailings to me
Moaning over Middle-earth, my mockery complete.


 * April 10, 2024
 * Poetry, Random silliness, Tolkien essays, Writing
 * Leave a comment


THE SONG OF SAQUA: VOLUME VI

Time for another D&D update, concerning my Dhampir Sorceror.



Session XIII

The party departed the tavern, somewhat hungover. Thence we travelled into a
forest – home, apparently, of both a fortune-teller and various formidable
creatures. Saqua’s experience with forests is of the kelp-variety, so this was
all new to him.

Then a manticore turned up. Demanding a toll to let us pass. The thing wound up
making off with Goatslayer’s armour as its fee… which did not exactly endear it
to our Goliath Monk. It became a matter of hunting it down to its cavern lair.

And there we found the puppets. Yes, animated puppets. A cleric, a soldier, and
a hag – dressed up as each other. One of these, apparently, had the key to what
lay beyond.

You see, this was a logic puzzle. We had to find out who was whom, with the
knowledge that the cleric always tells the truth, the hag always lies, and the
soldier can do either. The puppet dressed as the cleric said that the hag had
the key. The puppet dressed as the soldier said the puppet dressed as the hag
was the hag. The puppet dressed as the hag said “I’m the hag… kill me.”

Now, Saqua does not necessarily strike me as a logical sort of character, but
this is one of those occasions where out-of-game reasoning becomes part of the
game. So let’s run with it.

The hag always lies, so the puppet dressed as the hag cannot be the hag. But the
puppet dressed as the hag is not telling the truth, so cannot be the cleric.
Therefore the puppet dressed as the hag must be the soldier (currently in
lying-mode). The puppet dressed as the soldier is lying too, therefore cannot be
the cleric either. Therefore that puppet must be the hag. Which means the puppet
dressed as the cleric must be the cleric. Problem solved – nice one, Saqua.

The hag was not amused by this, so attacked us. With the assistance of
additional puppets, we were able to defeat her and gain the key.

Cue encounter with the manticore, unamused at our following it into its lair.

Here Saqua decided to experiment. His modus operandi had been to use Inflict
Wounds, with sorcerous Distance Spell. But now, he dusted off a Wand of Magic
Missile, with Bonus Action Hex. The result was appropriately spectacular, and
while Saqua did not quite one-shot the manticore, he did sufficient damage that
the party was able to make mince-meat of the critter very quickly.



After verifying that manticores were solitary critters, the party took advantage
of its victory to do some minor looting. Goatslayer got his armour back.

Further on, we encounter a large and mysterious door, with the following written
in the giantish tongue:

“A castle made of bricks and stone/takes twenty years to make/the bricks I need
to finish it/how many does it take?”

Saqua might have a decent grasp of logic, but he isn’t the best with riddles.
Luckily Goatslayer has a NPC Elven Squire – not Oryk, another one, called Pervin
– who is more riddle-friendly.

 * SAQUA: *Command on Pervin*: “Solve!”
 * DM: *rolls.* “That’s a failure from Pervin.”
 * GOATSLAYER: “What are you doing to my squire?”
 * PERVIN: “It takes one brick to finish it.”

In fairness to Saqua, there are comparatively few situations where Command can
actually be used in a non-combat situation, and this was arguably one of those.
Getting the DM (via an NPC) to cough up the answer to their own riddle is a bit
cruel though, and Goatslayer was not happy.

Goatslayer became a good deal happier when we wandered through the doors, to
find a giantish crafting area.

But there was one on-going problem. Goatslayer was still afflicted with
lycanthropic tendencies. Sure enough, that night some moonlight crept into the
cavern… and Goatslayer transformed. Whereupon Saqua pulled out his Wand of Magic
Missiles, and with Hex, let loose the nuke. That changed Goatslayer back into
his familiar form.

The party was now making damned sure to keep Goatslayer chained up. But then we
had the fortune to run into a mysterious forest Druid. This Druid offered us a
deal – she would tell our fortunes, if we cut down a giant Snow Oak that was
acting as a parasite on the forest. Which the party agreed (and wasn’t this the
eventful session?).

Cue each party member getting a cryptic fortune told for them. Saqua is sure his
fortune will make sense when the stuff starts to happen.

But the Snow Oak? That was a truly insane tree. The plan was to cut it so it
fell in a direction towards a river. And with much time and effort, we
eventually got it down. Saqua’s magically summoned goat helped a bit, at least
prior to getting utterly vapourised.

The party then debated what to do with the stump and roots. Saqua pointed out
that we only agreed to cut it down – nothing more. Which was the position the
party eventually went with. None of the party rolled particularly well in terms
of counting the tree-rings (the only conclusion? The tree was old).

Then, as the party camped beside the giant stump… a dragon flyby took a direct
hit on Goatslayer. But not any direct hit. Our poor lycanthropic Goliath Monk
was literally buried in a pile of dragon poo. And was suffocating at the end of
the session.



Session XIV

After a truly monster session last time, this one was a bit lighter. Saqua
resolved the cliffhanger – and the poo covering Goatslayer – via pulling out a
Scroll of Tidal Wave. He is only third Level, so doesn’t have the spell slots to
do it himself, but a Scroll worked just fine.

But really, the party had earned itself a break… and a hunting competition.

The party divided itself into three teams:

 * Millie (Human Ranger) and Goatslayer (Goliath Monk).
 * Khan (Goliath Barbarian) and Droxl (Lizardfolk Warlock)
 * Saqua (Dhampir Sorcerer) and Oryk (NPC squire)

Millie ran across a Brontosaurus, and talked to it, even as Goatslayer was
trying to figure out how to kill it. But in a bizarre twist for a hunting trip,
our Ranger successfully befriended it. The Brontosaurus calls itself Biscuit,
apparently. It agreed to meet the party down by the sea.

Saqua went chasing a giant lobster. But he needed bait to lure the lobster out.
So rather than risk himself, he decided to literally throw a pig he’d brought
along into the river.

It worked like a charm. Out came the lobster, and Saqua nailed it with his
Inflict Wounds/Distance Spell combination. It rather affected the quality of the
meat, but the party already has more meat than it knows what to do with. And
Saqua and Oryk killed a Displacer Beast on the way back to camp, which more than
made up for the lobster problem. And Oryk is now riding a Blink Dog.

(Meanwhile, the pig escaped, and ran off into the forest. It wasn’t ever coming
back. Oh well. Saqua had only bought it for blood-feeding purposes).


 * April 5, 2024
 * Random silliness, RPG
 * Leave a comment


DAUGHTERS OF DERBYSHIRE: PUBLISHED

My 4300-word historical fiction piece, Daughters of Derbyshire, is now out, via
The Lesbian Historical Motif Podcast.

Print format:
https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-283-daughters-derbyshire-daniel-stride

Audio format (just under 29 minutes):
https://lesbianhistoricmotif.podbean.com/e/daughters-of-derbyshire-by-daniel-stride-the-lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-283/

It concerns seventeenth century English Puritans – at once alien to modernity,
and yet also a story written in the grim shadow of 2020.


 * April 1, 2024
 * Coronavirus, Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Writing
 * Leave a comment


2024 READING SUMMARY: MARCH (+ WRITING UPDATE)

Completed reads for March:

 * Lamia (poem), by John Keats
 * The Moon Pool, by Abraham Merritt
 * A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking
 * Inverted World, by Christopher Priest
 * Fugue for a Darkening Island, by Christopher Priest
 * The Secrets of Dr John Taverner (collection), by Dion Fortune
 * St Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries, by St Benedict of Nursia
 * Venus in Furs, by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch
 * Island Nights’ Entertainments (collection), by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Secret Book of John (The Apocryphon of John)

St Benedict’s Rule is Doyle’s translation. Venus in Furs is the Savage
translation. The Apocryphon of John is Davies’.



Very little writing done this month, due to real-life getting in the way. I have
managed some minor progress on my ornamental hermit story, At the Bottom of the
Garden. I can also report that my polished up stories from February have both
suffered rejections.


 * March 31, 2024
 * 2024 Reading Summary, Reading, Writing
 * 3 Comments


GETTING LAID WITH LAMIAE: THE ORIGINS OF SEXY VAMPIRES

I ran across a recent essay from The Brothers Krynn, which attempts to map
common horror monsters onto the Seven Deadly Sins:

https://canadianculturecorner.substack.com/p/horror-monsters-and-vice

My interest, however, is not in the meat of the piece, but rather the opening
paragraph:

It is an interesting fact that in recent decades, Vampires have become
romanticized, quite why is a mystery. Likely it began with film where they were
perceived to be sexy, when the truth is that they were never fully intended to
be considered as such. In the greatest of Vampire tales, Dracula, the eponymous
character is not presented in that light but rather as a monster.

The Brothers Krynn raise an interesting point – the phenomenon of the Sexy
Vampire – but do not seriously attempt to explore its underlying rationale or
origin. They dismiss it as a product of the cinema-age, and then move on. Well,
today I am not moving on. Today I am looking at how popular culture has arrived
at such an apparently counter-intuitive result – the sexualisation of walking
corpses. And no, Bela Lugosi’s 1931 portrayal of Dracula aside, this
romanticisation is not actually a product of the cinematic age, but rather
something much, much older.



You see, what we consider the modern vampire is really a merging-together of two
separate strains of story. The first is the blood-sucking revenant corpses from
south-eastern Europe – a phenomenon that fascinated respectable mid-eighteenth
century society, and led to Calmet’s famous 1751 compilation of vampire reports:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_sur_les_apparitions_des_esprits_et_sur_les_vampires_ou_les_revenans_de_Hongrie,_de_Moravie,_%26c.

Suffice to say, there is nothing remotely sexy about this variety of vampire (no
more than the undead Draugr are in Norse sagas). To find the sexy component, one
must instead venture back to the lamiae of Ancient Greece:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia

Here we aren’t dealing with the undead as such, but rather monstrous
seductresses. Book IV section 25 of Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius
(https://www.livius.org/sources/content/philostratus-life-of-apollonius/philostratus-life-of-apollonius-4.21-25/)
gives an account of such a creature ensnaring one of Apollonius’ students, which
she achieves via illusion – and all for the supposed blood of a nice young man:

But Apollonius insisted and would not let her off, and then she admitted that
she was a vampire, and was fattening up Menippus with pleasures before devouring
his body, for it was her habit to feed upon young and beautiful bodies, because
their blood is pure and strong.

Delving around further in the material of Ancient Greece yields Phlegon of
Tralles’ On Marvels. Here we have a story of a young woman rising from the grave
to spend the night with another young man:

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/763/an-ancient-ghost-story-philinnion–machates/

This nocturnal visitor is not evil, nor is she ensnaring her victim for food –
but she is most certainly undead, and not in the hideous rotting abomination
sense. Between this and the Life of Apollonius, one can see a fair number of the
elements that would later become part and parcel of the Sexy Vampire trope. The
key would be to merge this story tradition with the corpse-tales of
south-eastern Europe.



Fast forward to the mid-eighteenth century – the very time Calmet’s compilation
of Walking Corpse Lore is causing such a stir – and one runs into Ossenfelder’s
short 1748 poem, Der Vampir:

https://www.roleplaygateway.com/der-vampir-heinrich-august-ossenfelder-t105176.html

This is the first self-consciously fictional depiction of a vampire in the
modern era. It is also erotically-charged, what with the kissing, the holding,
the bodily fluids. Ossenfelder is not giving us a hideous revenant, but rather a
nocturnal blood-drinking visitor from beyond the grave… who preys on an innocent
maiden in her sleep. As such, The Brothers Krynn mistake Sexy Vampirism as a
purely recent invention, when it has actually been present since modern writers
began to tackle the topic. Also notable is that Ossenfelder’s vampire, unlike
those from the old Greek sources, is male.

Later, one runs into a series of other Gothic and Romantic poems that tread upon
similar ground:

 * Lenore (1774): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenore_(ballad). Not strictly
   vampiric, but meshes romance and undead themes, and Bram Stoker even quotes
   it in Dracula.
 * The Bride of Corinth (1797):
   https://vampires.fandom.com/wiki/The_Bride_of_Corinth. Goethe’s poetic
   re-telling of Phlegon’s ancient story, this time with religious themes added.
 * Christabel (1800): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christabel_(poem). Coleridge
   gives us a taste of vampiric-adjacent material in English literature, one
   that influenced E.A. Poe.
 * Lamia (1820): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamia_(poem). Keats gives us a
   poetic re-telling of Philostratus’ ancient story.

And then one hits John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) – the vampire arrives in
English prose. Lord Ruthven is a sexy, charismatic, blood-drinking aristocratic
fiend, and, yes, is commonly considered to be Polidori having a go at Lord
Byron. All the modern Sexy Vampiric tropes are now in place, albeit with the
point that even the sexiest of vampires can only ever be villains or
antagonists. Vampires as sympathetic protagonists is something that would have
to wait until the 1970s and Anne Rice.

Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) takes the general ideas behind Christabel, and not
only makes the vampirism explicit, but also adds much more overt lesbian themes.
Why, yes, the lesbian vampire trope is older than Dracula – something that
should again reinforce how sexualised these creatures were, well before the age
of cinema.

And only then does one finally reach Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Stoker’s
achievement was to tie all these previously-expressed ideas together, with an
additional attempt to ground the vampire back in a south-eastern European
setting – he is meshing Calmet’s Walking Corpse tradition with the
Greeks-to-Polidori Sexy Seducer tradition. Stoker is also the one to tie all
this vampire material in with Vlad the Impaler – though it is worth noting that
the name Dracula (little dragon) merely appears as a footnote in Stoker’s
source-material on Transylvania. Specifically, An Account of the Principalities
of Wallachia and Moldavia, by William Wilkinson (1820).

But wait… surely Dracula the character is not the least sexy himself? The
Brothers Krynn (correctly) see him first and foremost as a monster. Well, one
might also note that Dracula has hairy palms, which in combination with the
transfer-of-bodily-fluids would certainly imply something thematically. But
Stoker most closely follows the pre-existing Sexy Vampire conventions with his
female vampires – the beautiful brides in Dracula’s castle, and then later with
Lucy. Seriously, the narrative spends much time and energy describing how
attractive Lucy’s corpse is. One could definitely read Victorian sexual mores
into this, and countless people have.

**

So yeah. From this survey, one can definitely see that the romanticisation of
vampires is not merely a product of recent decades, nor even of cinema – which,
in fairness, is responsible for certain vampiric conventions, such as the Death
By Sunlight thing. Rather, Sexy Vampires belong to a very old storytelling
tradition indeed, at least insofar as one is making a connection between
life-drinking, death, and sex. The problem, perhaps, is that (via Stoker’s
influence) people generally consider the south-eastern European/Calmet version
as the Traditional Vampire. It’s where the name vampire comes from, after all.
True, but one really ought to see the revenant monster as merely one part of the
puzzle, and remember that even when Calmet’s book was coming out, eighteenth
century fiction still felt the need to express the vampire in noticeably
romantic and erotic terms.


 * March 29, 2024
 * Classics Stuff, Horror Genre, Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Poetry,
   Reading
 * Leave a comment


OF CHRIS TROTTER, EMPEROR JUSTINIAN, AND HISTORICAL PEDANTRY

Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter
(https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of
the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter
seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is
not for me to categorise what he has become, though I would note he still has
this on his home page, as if in memory of better times:

If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I
reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that
way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their
collective spleen.

Trotter now has his comments section regularly overrun with Far-Right conspiracy
theorists, of all flavours. And he does nothing about it. Oh dear.

But that is neither here nor there. No, my issue with Trotter today is a certain
recent piece, whereby he laments the historical illiteracy of contemporary New
Zealand politicians:

https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2024/03/misremembering-justinians-taxes.html

(I actually submitted a corrective comment over there myself, but that seems to
have been filtered out. Hence writing my own corrective blog post on A Phuulish
Fellow).

Trotter cites Barbara Edmonds, Labour’s Finance Spokesman, as saying the
following during a television interview:

When I was going through Law School, I was also doing some ancient history
papers. And, basically, Emperor Justinian. It was the fall of the Roman Empire
because, basically, they had to over-tax people to pay for the war and for
the [indistinct]. So, the lesson I learned from that was that if you over-tax
people, well, in Justinian’s case, it broke down an empire.

Edmonds is clearly misremembering – we shall get to that – but Trotter offers
his own commentary, as follows:

The Emperor Justinian ruled over the Eastern Roman Empire – better known to
history as the Byzantine Empire – from 527-565 AD. Far from presiding over the
fall of the Roman Empire, Justinian and his generals recovered many of the
Western Empire’s lost provinces – an achievement which dramatically boosted
Byzantine tax revenues. Justinian used this surplus income to construct the
extraordinary Christian basilica of Hagia Sophia. This, the Emperor’s most
tangible legacy, still stands in the heart of Istanbul (converted, now, to a
mosque). Justinian’s other great legacy, known as the Justinian Code, still
serves as the foundation of Europe’s legal system. The Byzantine Empire did fall
– but not for almost another thousand years. Its mighty walled capital,
Constantinople, was besieged and conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

To my mind, it is one thing for a politician on television to misremember her
university History classes. It is another for a well-read commentator like
Trotter to pillory said politician, while managing to get his own version of
historical events wrong – or at least misleading – in the process.



You see, Justinian inherited a treasury flowing with gold. Old Anastasius I had
seen to that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_Dicorus). Justinian’s
attempted Roman Reconquest did not bring in surplus cash to fund the Hagia
Sophia – rather, his subsequent wars proved hideously expensive in terms of both
blood and treasure, and Justinian was not the sort to wait to reincorporate
North Africa before rushing onto his Italian adventure. Justinian inherited cash
and he spent cash. Hand over fist – the man was a mad visionary.

Justinian could not control the gutting of the tax base from the terrible Plague
(a pandemic to which he gave the name), but he could control his war-decisions.
Territorial and military obligations arising from the Reconquest left
Justinian’s successors juggling incredibly tight finances. Which ultimately
sparked Phocas’ revolt, a disastrous civil war, and then the seventh century
near-collapse of the Empire at the hands of the Persians and then the Arabs.
Justinian’s taxes didn’t destroy Rome, but his dreams nearly did.

Nor have I even ventured into Procopius’ Secret History, that bizarre little
invective from Justinian’s own era
(https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp). Procopius’ portrait of
the Emperor here may be dubious – I think we can conclude that Justinian was
neither a demon nor killed a trillion people – but the taxation picture during
Justinian’s era, especially during the Plague Years, is pretty damned bleak.
Certainly far bleaker than the impression Trotter gives as he sticks knives into
Barbara Edmonds.

But what was Edmonds misremembering? Rather than Justinian in the sixth century,
I think she might be recalling the fifth century collapse of the Western Roman
Empire instead – the very portion of the old Roman world Justinian was trying to
revive via his reconquest. The Western Roman Empire in its later years saw an
Imperial regime starved of tax revenue, whereby ultra-rich landowners evaded
paying their share. As such, a crushing tax burden fell on those further down
the food-chain. The result was the hollowing out of the state, and an increasing
inability for it to do, well, anything. Those wealthy landowners were simply
opting out of wider Roman society, back to the secure comfort of their Estates,
and taking their resources with them.

So whereas Trotter lambasts Edmonds for erroneously encouraging New Zealanders
in 2024 to fear general over-taxation, I would suggest that the historical
warning of “over-taxation for the poor, under-taxation for the rich” is indeed
an accusation that could be fairly applied to our new Government. The one that
has just delivered a giant retrospective tax cut to landlords while increasing
costs for everyone else. And the one that Chris Trotter (via New Zealand First)
helped install, all because he has become so utterly fixated on culture war
nonsense.




 * March 21, 2024
 * Classics Stuff, Politics
 * Leave a comment

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