Reading along with the Lord of the Rings: A Knife in the Dark

Chapter 11 of The Fellowship of the Ring

In this chapter, Strider leads the hobbits into the wilderness in a failed attempt to evade the Black Riders. The chase culminates on Weathertop hill, where Frodo and the Chief of the Ringwraiths stab at each other, with perilous results for the hobbit.

This is an exciting and terrifying chapter -- but it's also important for a more subtle reason: it's the first chapter where Tolkien begins to fragment his narrative: he gives various characters different perspectives on the same events, and delays reconciling these perspectives for the reader until much later in his story. Although this fracturing starts out small, like all cracks, it grows and grows -- until it eventually will divide his story into two separate but devilishly interrelated portions: Frodo's journey on one hand and the war in Rohan and Gondor on the other. 

My argument is that this fragmenting of the story creates increasing tension for the reader -- and when Tolkien finally resolves this tension by giving us the full picture, it provides a great measure of the satisfaction we feel when we read The Lord of the Rings.

In "A Knife in the Dark" the fracture begins right away: Tolkien switches perspective to a brief vignette of the the Black Riders invading Buckland and storming Crickhollow. The Shire hobbits blow horns in alarm and the Ringwraiths ride off in search of Frodo. Immediately after this, Tolkien pivots back to Frodo in Bree, whose sleep is troubled by dreams of "galloping hoofs... and far off he heard a horn blowing wildly." This is just a tiny crack: two different perspectives on the onrushing wrath of Mordor.

But the crack will widen. The next break occurs a few days after the heroes strike out into the wilderness and before they've reached Weathertop. One evening, they notice something strange:

As Frodo lay, tired but unable to close his eyes, it seemed to him that far away there came a light in the eastern sky: it flashed and faded many times. It was not the dawn, for that was still some hours off. 

‘What is the light?' he said to Strider, who had risen, and was standing, gazing ahead into the night. 

'I do not know,' Strider answered. 'It is too distant to make out. It is like lightning that leaps up from the hill-tops.' 

Frodo lay down again, but for a long while he could still see the white flashes, and against them the tall dark figure of Strider, standing silent and watchful. At last he passed into uneasy sleep.

(FotR, Book I, Chapter 11)

Tolkien gives us no more information about this lightning until the Council of Elrond, when the reader (and Frodo) both learn that they were caused by Gandalf and his fire magic as he strove to fight off the Black Riders on Weathertop. Gandalf will tell them in Rivendell:

"I galloped to Weathertop like a gale, and I reached it before sundown on my second day from Bree-and they were there before me. They drew away from me, for they felt the coming of my anger and they dared not face it while the Sun was in the sky. But they closed round at night, and I was besieged on the hill-top, in the old ring of Amon Sûl. I was hard put to it indeed: such light and flame cannot have been seen on Weathertop since the war-beacons of old.

"At sunrise I escaped and fled towards the north. I could not hope to do more. It was impossible to find you, Frodo, in the wilderness, and it would have been folly to try with all the Nine at my heels." 

(FotR, Book II, Chapter 2)

It's also at this time that we learn that all the while that Strider and Frodo were venturing through the wild hoping to find Gandalf, Gandalf was also looking for them, sometimes just behind them and sometimes just ahead. Although Tolkien largely keeps us in the dark about Gandalf's half of this dance of miscues, he does tantalize us (and Frodo) with hints, like the strange sigil that Gandalf left on Weathertop or Glorfindel's tokens on the Bridge of Mitheithel.

Weathertop Hill (courtesy of LOTRO Wiki)

The drama of this fracture is tremendous. All that Frodo (and the reader) want is to know what happened to Gandalf. And indeed, what reader doesn't crave a description of exactly how Gandalf fought off the Witchking with his magic when they met on Weathertop. And yet this is precisely the information that Tolkien withholds. He teases us, and then ultimately leaves it to our own imagination to tell us what Gandalf's conjuring looked like up close. This is masterful restraint on Tolkien's part.

But my favourite disunion of perspectives comes at the end of this chapter, when Frodo and the Witch King fight each other. This one is easy to miss because in the entire Lord of the Rings, Tolkien only gives us Frodo's perspective on this encounter. But in his personal papers, Tolkien also wrote about the Witch King's understanding of what happened. Go figure... the Witch King was just as scared of Frodo as Frodo was of the Witch King:

He [the Lord of the Nazgul] had been shaken by the fire of Gandalf, and began to perceive that the mission on which Sauron had sent him was one of great peril to himself... the timid and terrified Bearer [Frodo] had resisted him, had dared to strike at him with an enchanted sword made... long ago for his destruction. Narrowly it missed him. How he had come by it -- save in the Barrows of Cardolan. Then he was in some way mightier than the B[arrow]-wight; and he called on Elbereth, a name of terror to the Nazgul...

Escaping a wound that would have been deadly to him as the Mordor-knife to Frodo (as was proved in the end), he withdrew and hid for a while, out of doubt and fear both of Aragorn and especially of Frodo.  

[Marquette MSS 4/2/36, "The Hunt for the Ring". The italics in the quote are Tolkien's.]

In these papers, Tolkien also makes it clear that the Witch King was confused and scared by the fact that it wasn't Aragorn who was bearing the Ring. If this strange creature Baggins had the Ring instead of the mighty Aragorn, it meant that in some way Baggins was even more powerful than the lord of the Dunedain. How's a Nazgul supposed to cope? 

How's a Nazgul to cope?

Well, to return to my main point: the fracturing of the narrative starts out small, but it will grow to be one of the defining elements of the book. And just like in this chapter, some of the most interesting perplexing incidents in the trilogy will come when two or more separate narratives intersect: to give a later example, consider when Frodo struggles to remove the Ring on the summit of Amon Hen. The passage is obscure, until much later when we learn that Gandalf the White was striving with Sauron over control of Frodo's will (compare Book II, Chapter 10 for Frodo's perspective on this, and Book III, Chapter 5 for Gandalf's view).

Tolkien's willingness to fragment and overlap his characters' perspectives is a daring and modern approach to structuring a novel, and I'm not sure he gets enough appreciation for it. So, props Professor T. 

(Before I leave you, I'll just add that if you enjoy this sort of multiplicity, do yourself a grand favour and read or listen to The Seventh Voyage by the great sci-fi author Stanislas Lem. It's my favourite short story, and is an elegant fugue of conflicting perspectives.)

You can find my commentary on Chapter 10 here.
[Image credit: The Brothers Hildebrandt "The Black Riders" Giclee on Canvas.]

Jewish Characters by Citadel Miniatures: good, bad and ugly

To celebrate Passover 2016, I want to examine an obscure corner of the hobby: the way Citadel miniatures portrayed Jewish characters during its Golden Age in the 1980's. Although this topic may be a little arcane, it opens the door to a larger and more interesting question: how Judaism, Jewish folklore and Jewish magic fit into fantasy worlds like Warhammer, D&D or Call of Cthulhu.

As far as I know, there are only 3 Citadel miniatures from the 1980's that clearly portray Jews... they are pictured above. One is a pretty good portrait, one is a little troubling (although it's hard to blame that on Citadel) and one is downright ugly. 

Let's look at each...

The "good" portrayal is The Kabbalist, a 1986 sculpt for Citadel's Gothic Horror Range, which provided characters and NPCs for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. I like this miniature because it mixes elements that are directly evoke an Orthodox Jew (a yarmulke, a prayer shawl, and a long beard) with some generic fantasy accouterments (a potion and a scroll). As a result of this mix, the miniature is recognizably Jewish without being a mere caricature.

Rabbi Cohen from White Dwarf #69

It's nifty that Citadel attempted to portray a Kabbalist at all. A Kabbalist is a practitioner of Jewish mysticism -- traditionally, the study of the Kabbalah was limited to Orthodox Rabbis, who believed that it could be dangerous to minds untrained in all the complexities of the Jewish law. In this sense, a Kabbalist fits in nicely into the world of Call of Cthulhu, since Kabbalah also involves arcane tomes, ancient knowledge, and the risk of insanity. 

Indeed, I believe this miniature is based on Rabbi Joshua Cohen, a non-player character from "The Surrey Enigma", a Call of Cthulhu adventure written by Marcus Rowland and published in White Dwarf #69 (Sept. 1985). 

This adventure requires the characters to seek the assistance of a group of Orthodox Jews who are hunting a Cthuloid menace lurking in an ancient barrow. Part of the drama in the adventure arises from the fact that the characters might mistake the mysterious Rabbi Cohen and his associates for cultists. Thus the success of the adventures hinges upon the characters learning a little about Kabbalah so that they can trust and be trusted by Cohen (who, as it happens, is a total badass).

Well, as my Passover present to the world, here's a link to the complete text of the Surrey Enigma.

The second miniature I want to look at is Phaygin (1984) from the preslotta C04 Thieves range. Originally, this miniature was called a "Cut Purse" in Citadel's October 1984 Flyer. However, in the Third Citadel Compendium (1985) he was renamed Phaygin. This is a clear reference to Faygin, the Jewish villain from Dickens' Oliver Twist (1839). And indeed, the miniature closely resembles Ron Moody's iconic portrayal of Fagin in the film version of Oliver! (1968).

Ron Moody as Fagin

Dickens described Fagin as a "a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair." Dickens hammered home the association between Fagin's depravity and his Jewishness by referring to him constantly as "the Jew" or "the old Jew" throughout the original version of the novel. Indeed, by my count, he called Fagin "the Jew" 319 times. Ugg. 

On the upside, when it was pointed out to Dickens that he had strayed into anti-Semitic waters, he did his best to make amends -- for example by re-editing Oliver Twist and later by creating the steadfast Jewish character of Mr. Riah in Our Mutual Friend (1865).

Although Fagin is an ugly character, he's one of the great thieves of literature, so I'm glad that Citadel created this portrait of him.

And that brings us to the last miniature: the Money Lender FS64 (1980). This preslotta miniature is from the earliest days of Citadel and was part of their "Fantasy Specials" Villagers range. This is one stone-cold racist miniature.

With his grotesque nose, slouch, heavy eyes and bag of gold, the Money Lender bears an uncanny resemblance to Nazi propaganda. Even his pose evokes one of the most famous of the Nazi's anti-Semitic posters, "The Eternal Jew". In both this poster and the miniature, the hunched figure holds coins in his outstretched right hand.


 























The image on the left is from an anti-semitic colouring book (if you look closely enough at the image, you can see that the colour was applied with a child's crayon.) The image on the right is the poster for the "Eternal Jew" art exhibition that we discussed above.

How did such a hideous miniature ever get released? I don't know. I very much doubt that anyone at Citadel in the early 1980's was intentionally hateful. However, it is evident that when they went to sculpt a "money lender" for their range of fantasy villagers, some depressing stereotypes dominated the work. And no one up the line of management caught this boner. No Matzah Ball Soup for you!

Ultimately, what surprises me about these three miniatures is that they exist at all -- and this gets to my larger point about the role of Jews in fantasy worlds. Jewish ideas of magic were extremely influential on Medieval and especially Renaissance occultists. Such ideas include: letters being intrinsically magical shapes/sounds (gemmatria) -- or that the living can be possessed by the spirit of the dead (a dybbuk) -- or that a sage can use true names to gain control over demons and angels -- or that a clay man can be animated by magic spells and come to life (the golem). From Western occultism, these tropes entered fantasy novels, role-playing games and even science fiction.

And yet Jewish people themselves are usually absent from these works. This can be usefully contrasted with some other groups, such as Arabs or Roma/Gypsies, both of whom are so common in fantasy worlds that they are almost stock characters. (And certainly Citadel produced lots of Arabs and Roma miniatures during the 1980's, like the Gypsy and the Saracen for the game Talisman.) Why are Jewish characters so rare? Is it a fear of falling into stereotypes?

What do you think?

Rebel Smuggler and Bantha Rider for Imperial Assault

The latest miniatures for Star Wars Imperial Assault are the Rebel Smuggler and the Bantha Rider. It took me a long time to paint these miniatures: the Bantha because it's such a huge miniature, and the Rebel Smuggler because he's filled with so much detail. Apparently smuggling requires a great deal of buckling, cabling, tubing, padding, quilting and layering.

I continue to have a love/hate relationship with Fantasy Flight Games' approach to rendering the Star Wars universe in miniature. The love part is easy: Imperial Assault is a fun game and the quality of the miniature sculpting is generally excellent. To take just one example, the Rebel Smuggler is in a dynamic pose, with lots of tension and energy. Although he's not an established character, he still has a recognizable Star Wars feeling to him.

But on the other hand, as a miniature painter and collector, Imperial Assault provides a somewhat unsatisfying experience. As I've noted before, the miniatures are rendered in a soft plastic that bends -- especially lightsabers, rifle barrels and large bases. I also find their pace of releasing miniatures to be maddening: after a year and a half on the market, the game has only 47 different sculptures. None of the major characters have alternative poses. And because of the time frame of the game (between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back) we may never see certain iconic characters like Obiwan or Grand Moff Tarkin. By way of contrast, when Games Workshop had the license for The Lord of the Rings for just one year between 1985 and 1986, they produced 190 individual sculpts, including dozens of variants.

The result is that I feel like I've got a great boardgame with excellent components -- but still no proper Star Wars wargame that let's the hobbyist in me get truly creative.

Well, I continue to try to expand the range of Star Wars miniatures in my own way -- by cutting off the heads of existing sculptures and substituting new ones. Here we see my tri-ocular Gran Rebel Scout. 

Speaking of conversions, thanks to everyone who helped to bid up the charity auction for Darth Vader. Congratulations to Mr. P.D. of Austria who won the auction!

And if you're a fan of Imperial Assault, don't forget to check out boardwars.eu, who do an excellent podcast about the game every two weeks.

Force for Change - Star Wars Charity Auction

I've auctioning off one of my favourite miniatures for charity: my conversion of Darth Vader without his helmet for Star Wars Imperial Assault. I've never tried to sell one of my miniatures on eBay before... and indeed, I find the process of selling one of my babies nerve-wracking... but I was inspired by the most recent announcement video of the Force for Change charitable campaign. If you haven't watched it, it's quite funny:

EBay makes it easy to sell things for charity, so I hope to encourage other painters to to also get involved. There's a history of some great miniature-game-based charitable campaigns (The GoblinAid Cash for Kevin campaign springs to mind). In this case, I'm taking my cue from Force for Change and donating 100% of the proceeds of my auction to Unicef. My girlfriend and I read a terrifying article about child malnutrition in Yemen, and we were both sickened by some of the stories and images. Hopefully Unicef can help.

So if you have any inclination to own a unique Darth Vader miniature -- and to help Unicef -- I hope you'll check out the eBay listing. The auction ends April 16, 2016. Bidding starts at $1 big fat Canadian dollar. 

Here are more pictures:

And my favourite, a close-up of the back of his head wound:

You can also read about how I did the conversion in this post from last August. And if you're not yet sufficiently excited about Star Wars, then I suggest you check out the new trailer for Rogue One:

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you bid early and often!

Hot Lead 2016: Fear and Loathing in Stratford, Ontario

Last Sunday I got home from a weekend at Hot Lead, Canada's Finest Miniature Gaming Event (patent pending) in Stratford, Ontario. Unfortunately, the first thing I unpacked was a flu virus. I was immobilized for a week and now even typing leaves me wheezing.

Hot Lead started off large with an opulent urban brawl in a 1924 Chinese port city. The GM, Patrick Mooney, based the scenario off of the Steve McQueen movie, "The Sand Pebbles". Striving to release hostages, French and American marines storm the docks and battle the local Tong warlords. What made this game so exceptional was the scenery, including huge, scratch built cargo ships; trilingual graffiti; and hand-painted Chinese banners. The whole effect was grandiose and cinematic.

On Saturday morning, I played another pulp game, this one set in the 1960's in the Belgian Congo. Presented by veteran Game Master Dan Hutter, this game was also based on a movie: the ultraviolent "Dark of the Sun" starring Rod Taylor and Jim Brown. In this set up, Captain Curry (Taylor) must break into a vault and escape with a bag full of diamonds as hordes of African militias close in. Curry must then run to catch a slow moving train which will take him and his men to safety.

I think this is the way to create a truly successful wargame scenario: steal your plot from the movies. This way, it comes with all sorts of action and drama baked right into the pie. And certainly Dark of the Sun was the most dramatic game I've played in years, with the excitement of running for the train, fighting from the train and finally busting through an improvised barricade.

My final game of the weekend was Festung Kolberg -- a Bolt Action WWII game set in March 18th 1945. The Soviets have taken the port city of Kolberg. But a rear guard from the German 3rd Panzer Division is trying to keep them off the docks for long enough to allow for the rest of the German forces to escape by boat. With his dreary, destroyed cityscape and well painted miniatures, the Game Master Ross Cossar really conjured up the sense of the Nazi's Götterdämmerung.

A couple other games that I couldn't play really caught my eye, including this modern Afghanistan action, complete with beautifully rendered canals and orchards. This game was presented by Mr. Rabbits-in-my-Basement, who's responsible for putting all of Hot Lead together. And his website has some superb instructions on how to put this sort of table together.

I fell in love with "The Battle for Dorkshire" presented by Mike Martin and Gary Schofield. This was a battle right out of HG Wells, using home made, glossy painted 19th century 48mm bleisoldaten (solid lead German toy soldier) reproductions. I love how the houses look like they've been re-purposed from a Christmas store... it gives the whole table a dreamlike quality.

AMAZING.

And finally, the most attractive game of the weekend was Graham Wilkinson's Westridge Farm set in Massachusetts, 1675. My opening picture of this post is from his game, as is the one below. The lush, detailed and layered scenery made this game seem more like a museum diorama rather than a gaming table. As I turn my mind this year to creating some of my own terrain, Graham's work will be front of mind.

As always, a big thanks to Mr. Rabbit-in-my-Basement, Mrs. R-i-my-B, and the rest of the Hot Lead crew for putting on another great show. It is the highlight of my gaming year.

Painted Miniatures for Dead Man's Hand

We see pictured below Ma Pounder, also known as the Ole Widder Pounder. Ma is not originally from Cremation -- she was actually born into a family of Yankee farmers in Massachusetts. Her husband and many brothers owned a string of prosperous farms along the shores of the mighty Miskatonic River, not far from where the Aylesbury Pike branches off into the uplands of Dunwich.

Tragically, one by one, each of her siblings (and their families) died. Some went missing; some wasted away as lunatics in Arkham Asylum; others were butchered in the wilderness with strange, ritualistic wounds; and a few were found as liquescent corpses, almost as if they had been half-digested. Her husband, Melchizedek Pounder, passed after eating a cabbage irradiated by a strange meteor that had landed in their vegetable garden. No one knows for sure how Ma Pounder survived all these calamities, but her proficiency with a double-barreled 12-gauge may not be a coincidence. In any case, she retired to Cremation "fer some peace and tranquility."

Dr. Schadenfreude

In the 1880's, Felix Schadenfreude was the toast of Vienna. A talented doctor and an early proponent of psycho-analysis, he had many rich and noble clients. His career took a turn when he pioneered "laughing therapy". His technique was to encourage a patient to disclose his deepest insecurities and desires, at which point Dr. Schadenfreude would laugh uproariously in his face. 

In 1889, this course of treatment led directly to the double suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf (the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne) and Rudolf's mistress. Hounded by the wrath of the Hapsburgs, every hospital in the civilized world was closed to the good doctor. He has come to Arizona and opened a medical clinic with the goal of rehabilitating the reputation of laughing therapy. If it can work on mental illness, surely it can also cure gunshot wounds.

Eustace Bledge

Eustace Bledge is the closest thing that Cremation has to a leading citizen. He began as the local coffin seller and undertaker. The rich returns of this business allowed him to open the Cremation Bank & Deposit, the Cremation Hostelry, and then the Firearm Emporium. His business dealings are so Machiavellian, it is rumoured that he hires outlaws to rob his own bank.

Ennio Leone

Ennio Leone moved his family from New York to Arizona because the landscape reminded him on the countryside in his native Sardinia. Although he runs the general store, he dreams of opening an restaurant. "I will make-a pasta the American way... how your say? Spaghetti Western!"

Albert Prince

No one knows why Albert Prince always appears to be wincing in pain. Apparently, he once consulted with Dr. Schadenfreude, but the good doctor laughed so hard that he fell out of a window.

Caleb Cain

The outlaw Caleb Cain attempts to intimidate his enemies by shouting out long passages from the Bible before, during and after every gunfight. Caleb views this as a trademark move. Unfortunately, Caleb's appears to select his verses at random, resulting in some perplexing choices: "While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts. Muthafukka!"

I leave you with one last shot: Ma Pounder defending Cremation from Pinky and his bandits...

Thanks for looking!

Dead Man's Hand: Denizens of Cremation

Welcome back to Cremation, the dusty hole that I constructed for the Wild West skirmish game, Dead Man's Hand. This week, I want to introduce you to some of the unlucky residents of my town.

Since the incommodious death of Sheriff MacGrudy (see last week's post), the chief lawman of Cremation is "Gentleman" Jack Maubrey (pictured above). A well-mannered native of Atlanta, Jack began life as a dentist, switched to selling health tonics and then to gambling on the river boats of the Mississippi. Paternity suits and bad debts kept pushing him toward the frontier, and he finally took up law enforcement rather than resume a dental practice. As the only man in town with clean fingernails, Maubrey is widely seen as a natural authority figure. 

Pinchus "Pinky" Schorr

The desperado known only as "Pinky" was born Pinchus Schorr of Red Hook Brooklyn, the youngest child in a large Jewish family. Rather than follow his father in the schmatta trade, Pinky drifted west into the Arizona Territory, leaving a trail of plundered trains, broken banks and busted jaws. Regarded as one of the best shots this side of Laredo, Pinky is also renowned for his thorough understanding of menswear and fine ladies' undergarments.

Roger "El Maestro" Delgado (left) and Big Dirty Dan Slocum (right)

Roger "El Maestro" Delgado and his enforcer, Big Dirty Dan Slocum, are the most feared outlaws in Cremation and its environs. El Maestro is heartless killer with a penchant for uttering mysterious threats like "To do my will shall be the whole of the law!" or "I only need two things. Your submission and your obedience to my will!". Stranger still, he claims to sleep inside a grandfather clock.

Dirty Dan is a rich man, thanks to his stranglehold on the local cock fighting ring, dog fighting ring, and mixed cock-dog ring. Yet he cannot afford soap.

Melvin Friendly

Melvin Friendly is a professional bounty hunter and amateur psychopath. His favourite activities include challenging his shaving mirror to a staring contest, compulsive shoe-shining and killing all the witnesses.

Baltasar María Inmaculada de Jesus

Baltasar María Inmaculada de Jesus led a bandit company in the California region during the years following the Mexican-American War. De Jesus was valorized by some Californios as a patriot who opposed the American annexation of their land. The US government thought otherwise. With many federal bounties on his head, De Jesus fled inland to Cremation in hopes of recapturing the simple joy of non-political murder and rapine.

Deputy Waylon Kristofferson

Deputy Sheriff Waylon Kristofferson had promised his mother that he wouldn't grow up to be a cowboy. But the ladies love outlaws, and he became a ramblin man. However, he changed his ways after he went riding out one dark and windy day. He rarely speaks of what he saw that night. But sometimes he mutters in his sleep "Yippie I aye ye ye...Ghost riders in the sky!"