WW2.1: Beachhead

Father Weston droned on in Latin. Barry Grant had never learned Latin, but the rhythm of Mass was comforting. He glanced around at the other soldiers here to take communion and receive the blessing of the church. They would need all the comfort and blessing they could get when they reached their objective. He saw a few heads up like his, not bowed in reverence or prayer, but restless in the knowledge of what they were tasked to do all too soon.

The soldier next to Barry jerked his head up to look incredulously at Father Weston. Rob Harris was the smartest person Barry knew and taught biology at a college in Vermont before elisting. And he knew Latin.

"What?" whispered Barry.

"He's not giving Mass anymore."

Barry returned his attention to the priest. He was still droning on in Latin, but it wasn't the familiar patterns he'd grown up with. If Rob hadn't said anything, he'd have chalked it up to differences between English and American Mass, or even accent. Brits spoke English funny, why not Latin?

He listened a little longer before whispering again to his increasingly wide-eyed friend.

"What's he saying then."

"It's weird. He's charging us with taking the enemy's position and, well, forbidding us to die until we're done."

"Forbidding us to die?"

"It's weirder than that. He's talking about our souls and a power that transcends the grave and a sacred quest."

"What do you think it means?"

"I have no idea."

Three days later, Barry was wet and cold, huddled in a landing boat with his rifle clutched to his chest. He'd been sick enough times that he had nothing left to give. He was so numb with misery that he didn't care enough to be scared. What would happen would happen, and it would be a relief just to get out of the boat, even if he died in the surf without even stepping onto the beach. He'd long since stopped flinching at the sounds of the guns. One direct hit, and his ordeal would be over.

"Ready, boys!" shouted their section sergeant. "We're almost there! Run for your fucking lives and kill anything that tries to stop you!"

Barry automatically checked his kit. Everything seemed right. He could feel the fear creep back into him as the minute approached. He and his company would jump out of this tub and straight into the German defenses on Omaha Beach in Northern France, a faraway land from his New Jersey home, a place where you heard stories of men visiting in their youth to fall in love with beautiful women.

He was here to kill and maybe die.

Ahead of him, the gate dropped into the surf and the lead rank of men jumped out into the waist deep water. The rest surged forward, and now Barry could hear the machineguns as well as the artillery. Then he was in the icy cold water, struggling against the waves, and no longer caring about incoming fire.

Men, dead and alive, were already on the beach. When the surf rolled out, bodies were left on the wet sand. Absurdly, it struck Barry to step carefully.

Soon, the water was shallow enough that he could break into a sprint. He could see cover ahead, where men were catching their breath and counting their blessings. With safety in sight, Barry and a cluster of men pounded the sand, seemingly untouched by the bullets flying around them.

It couldn't last, and the man directly in front of Barry jerked twice and lost his stride, falling and tripping Barry into a heap with him. Struggling to get up, it occurred to Barry for a second to check the man, but there was so much blood, he had no doubt the man was gone.

Coming to his feet and stepping out to run again, pain lanced up his right leg, and he fell again. Struggling up again, he found a crucifix dangling in front of his eyes and then a hand offered to help him up.

He looked up to see the man he'd just written off as dead gesturing impatiently for him to take his hand, blood and sand matted across his shirt. Barry took the proferred hand and was practically thrown to his feet, but again his right leg would not take his weight and he fell again.

This time, he felt himself lifted and carried across the other's shoulder.

"Leave me," he grunted against the jouncing as the man incredibly broke into a run.

"Shut up," came the oddly deadpan answer, impossibly not showing the exertion that it should have.

And before he knew it, he was among the men huddled under the cover of a jumble of rocks. Only two had watched them arrive, and they were clearly shocked at what they'd seen.

"How did you..." one began.

"I don't know," was all his rescuer said as he pulled at his shirt to look at his wounds. "Shit. This is bad. I don't have much time. I don't know why I'm not already dead. I can't believe I can't feel it."

Barry tested his leg again, but it was hopeless.

"I can't get any further like this, but maybe I can cover you guys," he said and checked his rifle.

"You can cover us better with this. I'll trade you."

Barry looked up to see another man unstrapping his Browning automatic rifle and pulling off extra ammunition belts and pouches.

"I hate carrying this thing anyway. We lost Johnson on the beach, but March there has more of my ammo."

Another man handed over two belts and a large pouch, as the B.A.R. gunner showed Barry how to use the big gun.

When everyone else was ready to move out, Barry braced himself up with one leg and settled the gun on the rocks on its bipod, taking aim at the closest visible defensive emplacement. He squeezed the trigger and unleashed an extended burst at the openings.

Whether his aim was true or not, it would keep the Germans' heads down, and the American soldiers began to swarm up the rocks and debris. Barry watched for any movement in the enemy's cover, and showered it with bullets whenever he saw any.

The tactic was working, and soon the lead men were close enough to throw several grenades. While the grenades were still flying, one of them, his shirt covered in his own blood, charged ahead, unbelievably leaping up the slope toward the Germans. As he reached the low wall, he ducked just in time for the grenades to land among the enemy and explode, and then he vaulted among them and the screams started.

While the screams of the German soldiers continued, the most gruesome smell Barry had ever encountered reached his nose. He turned his head to look upwind, toward the sea, and what he saw made his blood run cold.

They were gaunt and grey, uniforms and clothes in various states of repair hung from their forms. They walked clumsily but steadily toward him, swords, knives, clubs, chair legs, and claw-like hands lifted in menace.

Barry pulled the B.A.R. around as quickly as he could and pulled the trigger. His hand clenched in panic, he couldn't stop firing until the belt was expended, and still they came.

He was trying to get the next belt started when they were on him. He fell beneath blows and stabs and slashes, and yet found a peaceful detached contentment that he had enabled his friends and fellow soldiers to reach better cover and closer to their objective. He very nearly smiled as his vision faded to black.

The sense of purpose that filled him chased away all other considerations. He was not done here, and he stood to resume his duty, cadaverous attackers still clinging to his limbs and body. With almost casual disregard, he tore them from him and flung them away, kicking them back down again when they rose to attack again. He stepped to where the B.A.R. had fallen, vaguely curious that his leg no longer pained him as he retrieved it. The weapon seemed very light in his hands as he calmly fed the next belt of ammunition, turned to the regrouping lifeless horrors, and methodically dismembered them with extended bursts of bullets.

When his grisly task was done he looked back up the hill where the other soldiers were staring down at him and the scene around him. He walked up toward them as he again changed the gun's belt, stopping at last in front of the man who had carried him from the beach.

"Something has happened to us."

"I know."

He stuck out his hand, "Name's Grant."

"Cecil Williams. Go by Will."

"Barry," he answered as Will took his hand. "I think we're dead."

"Then let's make it count."

That day, D-Day, as American blood was spilled on Omaha and Normandy Beaches on the North coast of France, faithful Catholic men rose from where they fell dead, filled with the strength of purpose and duty, and lead their fellows through a harrowing defense of artillery, guns, and mindless walking corpses. When the last Nazi flag fell, and the field was theirs, they finally succumbed to their mortal wounds and fell dead again.

Their bodies were carefully boxed by medical corpsmen with specific instructions, and they were loaded back onto one of the assault ships. They were taken to an undisclosed location where they waited to serve their country one final time.

WW2.1: Gestaponomicon

For a period after America's entry into the war, the Office of Strategic Services struggled to even comprehend that the stories of monsters and other occult phenomena fielded against the Allies by Axis forces might be real rather than exagerations or outright imaginings. Their culture simply didn't allow for belief in such.

As a result, once it began to sink in that the threat was very real, the OSS was far behind the SS and the Gestapo in occult knowledge and experience and began to recruit and study at a fevered pace. This rush resulted in initial failures, as the organization was unable to properly vet references and authorities. Their early understanding of the occult mysteries was contaminated by charlatans and bad fiction.

One such failed operation was a disinformation campaign aimed at creating false intelligence for Axis spies to intercept. The aim was to create the impression that the OSS had discovered that the Gestapo had acquired a valuable tome and was keeping it from the other German factions, thus sewing distrust in the German ranks. Unfortunately, the team based most of its misinformation on an uninitiated interpretion of HP Lovecraft's description of the Necronomicon.

The material developed for the project hopelessly transparent to any experienced occult scholar. To make matters worse, the project members had taken to refering to the fictional tome as the Gestaponomicon, and a newly recruited and poorly briefed transcriptionist had dutifully included the derisive title in several the false documents to be intercepted.

If the Germans had been inclined to be taken in by the ruse, unlikely given Hitler's well known obsession with occult references and blind rage on discovery that any had been denied him, and the intercepted material had been given to intelligence analysts of insufficient experience to spot the obvious falsification, the ludicrous title of the fictional book was enough to alert even the dullest of German analysts.

Unknowingly, the organization's bumbling resulted in an unguessed victory. A group of conspirators within the Gestapo had actually been concealing several occult references from Hitler and the other German factions, and this false intelligence spooked them into destroying the books rather than using them to increase their personal power and influence.

WW2.1: Note to Self

The immediate danger apparently past, Reich Chancellor Hitler stood up from behind his heavy desk to survey the wreckage of his office and the sole standing combatant. His personal guards lay dead not far from the ruined door to the main hall, their bodies broken by mighty smashing blows from his unknown assailant. Most of the furniture was destroyed beyond recognition. Only a bookcase in the far corner from the wall where his unknown rescuer had come crashing into the melee and his armored desk remained only lightly damaged.

He looked warily at the ten foot... man? contraption? ...that remained standing, still but emitting mechanical noises, whirs and clicks and the occasional gurgle. It was like nothing he'd ever seen, a vaguely humanoid construct of brass and steel with flashes of gold in places, but he did recognize the proud Swastikas on its chest and shoulders. After seeing it fight in his defense, the Chancellor was confident that it presented no danger to him.

The remains of the other combatant, while likewise strange, had struck him as somehow familiar. When his door had splintered open, he'd looked up in alarm to see an impossibly massive man bound in iron that seemed to conjoin directly to his body. Gunshots from his bodyguard either ricocheted off the iron bindings or found their mark in the invader's flesh without apparent harm.

Although slow, the thing had been strong beyond comprehension. Only the time taken to crush the life from his guards had saved the Chancellor from its titanic fists. Just as it had turned to face him, the wall behind it very nearly exploded with the machine's entrance. What followed had been a fist fight the likes of which could not have been seen since giants walked the Earth.

His attacker had been the faster of the two, despite its ponderous pace, for the defender had paused between each maneuver as though in careful consideration. But when it had moved, it was with swift power, and in the end, the outcome had never been in doubt. Although it had lost some external features in the melee, each blow had hit like irresistible thunder. Entire parts of the attacker's body had been torn away, and an arm had landed in the Chancellor's view from his shelter under the desk. In front of his eyes, the flesh of the arm had transformed into unliving, crumbling clay, though the iron bands at the wrist and along the fingers had remained.

Hitler now saw that the fallen body had suffered the same fate, laying in a heap of iron and crumbling clay. Knowing what to look for, he bent to the remnants and sifted through the pieces. When he found what he was looking for, it puzzled him only more.

A sharp whistle quickly fading to a harsh hiss of escaping steam brought him up in alarm, a large chunk of clay clenched in his hand, breaking off a piece in his panicked grip. The torso of the mechanical warrior was opening like a clamshell. In the steaming mist, a young man, Aryan of cast and soldierly of mein, extricated himself from a harness of some sort. When his arms were free, he saluted with his right arm outstretched.

"Heil Hitler! Are you unharmed, mein Fuhrer?"

"I am unharmed, thanks to you," Hitler replied. "Why do you call me that? My title is Reich Chancellor."

"Forgive me, Chancellor," the soldier said with a cheerful grin. "But not for long."

To hide his confusion, Hitler returned his attention to the clay shard in his hand. On it were arrays of Hebrew letters, arranged in forms similar to those he'd learned in his studies of the Kabbalah, but in unheard of complexity.

He looked back to the strange soldier and said, "This was a golem you've saved me from, but like nothing I would have expected."

"No, Chancellor, this golem was from the future, in a way."

"The future?"

"Yes, Chancellor, 51 years."

"51 years?" He was beginning to feel a trifle ridiculous, parroting words back to the man. "You need to explain yourself."

"Yes, mein Fuhrer. In 1984, Jewish sorcerers in America will send the mind and soul of their most knowledgeable crafter of golems back in time to possess his grandfather and create the mightiest and most thoroughly instructed golem possible. Although our agents will capture his co-conspirators, they will be unable to stop his ritual slaying and banishment into the mists of time. But they will obtain copies of the golem formulae, including the instructions to be inscribed in the clay of its forging. They will be very specific about the day of the attack, so we will know when to prepare your defense."

Hitler thought about the orders on his desk that he'd been preparing to sign and knew why this day had been... would be chosen. How did the man speak so consistently about times in the future but his own past?

"You will order an unsuccessful research project funded and restarted to create a time machine," the soldier continued, only to be interrupted.

"I am alive in 1984?"

Clearly uncomfortable and suddenly hesitant, the man replied, "You will order me not to give you any details, mein Fuhrer, but I am allowed to tell you that you will be ruling all of Europe, Western Asia, Northern Africa, and the Atlantic Coast of South America in 1984."

"I will trust for now in the wisdom of my future self."

"Thank you, mein Fuhrer. May I continue?" And at Hitler's nod, he did so.

"We will race to break the time barrier, build the actual conveyance mechanism, and create this specialized fighting machine, but it will take us twelve years to create a working prototype, and in the meantime you will repeatedly inform us that changes in our world spontaneously appear, although we will not notice them as we will be products of the altered timeline. Only you know, with your powerful mind, and much of your concentration will be consumed keeping yourself in existence."

Seeing the obvious question in Hitler's eyes, the soldier turned to his fighting machine.

"I do not have the words to explain that last, mein Fuhrer, but I will be given something to give you that does."

Opening a panel inside the machine, behind the harness he'd occupied, he withdrew several large notebooks.

"These are for this era's engineers. They are detailed technical diagrams and instructions to create this machine and larger, mightier machines. Sending me back will destroy the time machine, and our physicists in 1996 will believe that each method of time travel can only work once. That's part of why it will take twelve years to complete the project. Experimental results will never replicate."

He reached back into the compartment, retrieved a book and handed it to Hitler. It was a leather bound copy of Mein Kampf, stamped in gold with the title and the German eagle seal atop the Swastika. Hitler opened it to find every margin filled with his own handwriting. Some pages had writing between the lines of the text.

"You will order me to give you this, mein Fuhrer, your most favored possession. I know of no one ever allowed to read your personal notes of your voyage to conquer nearly half the world."

Absently realizing he didn't even know the man's name, Hitler was already entirely focused on the book in his hands. He had some very important reading to do.

WW2.1: The Beginnings of an Obsession

In 1909, a homeless Austrian painter stumbled through a magical picture frame into the courtyard of the College of the Arts Arcane for Young Gentlemen. Since the College could only be found by sorcery, arriving at the gates was considered sufficient condition to enroll. It was many months before the Masters of the College discovered that the determined new student possessed no magical talent whatsoever and that his arrival was purely the doing of the artifact he had unknowingly acquired to pursue his art.

Before being expelled and returned to Vienna, the young man witnessed many wonders at the College, and developed a fascination with magical workings of any type. While he had access to library, he read as voraciously as he had not while enrolled in his technical education at Realschule. His curiosity was insatiable, and his fervor delighted some instructors while disturbing others.

His rejection by the Masters upon the discovery of his lack of ability to wield the forces of thaumaturgy was too much. Compounded with the lingering anger over his previous rejections by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, this perceived betrayal kindled a fire in his breast.

If Adolf Hitler could not legitimately possess the power of magic, then he would take it. Whether by force or by guile, this new obsession would not be denied.

A Running Start

Hi and welcome to my new blog home. New URL, new title, same old challenge to myself to write more often. The old blog will stay open as an archive. Go read some favorites.

I'm kicking off the new digs with my Nanowrimo project, World War 2.1. Imagine World War 2 upgraded with 5000% more occult, mad science, and atomicpunk weirdness. Now imagine it written by some whackjob with ADHD and too much caffeine. The structure will be text snippets, or lexia if you've read Landow's Hypertext 2.0, in no deliberate order, connected by hypertext links by topical cross-reference. The goal of the project is to experiment with the form while re-painting a well-traveled narrative in more garrish colors.

World War 2 is imprinted into the consciousness of Western civilization. Most people don't know most of the events or actors, but nearly everyone has a broad idea of time and settings, or at least a picture distorted by time, aided by history books, novels, movies, documentaries, TV shows... I'll be building on this common imagining by replacing pieces of the puzzle, one at a time to create something familiar but bizarre. Changing all, or even most, of the pieces would be counterproductive. The real events of the war will serve as a framework to build upon.

The result is intended to be yet another framework, something for the reader to build upon. World War 2.1 should re-imagine the 2nd World War as a dynamic setting with a built-in, broadly arcing narrative, in which there is plenty of room for smaller scenes and stories.

As I write each piece, I'll post it here. There won't be any hyperlinks at first. I consider linking to be part of editing, and editing is verbotten during Nanowrimo. I'll edit it up and add the links in December, then find a permanent online home for the finished product.

So for now, sit back and enjoy the war that never happened...

...but should have.

Why the Hate for Misspent Youth?

I'm a big fan of Peter F Hamilton's books. I thoroughly enjoyed his Night's Dawn trilogy (though the three books are so huge that they had to be split into two paperbacks each for the mass market edition), read through the Greg Mandel stories in no time, and grabbed up his stand-alone novel Fallen Dragon. Then he launched his Commonwealth Saga and Void trilogy, and I've enjoyed all of those five books tremendously.

But somewhere in there, I discovered that I had missed one. Misspent Youth is part of the Commonwealth Saga, but not part of either main plotline. It's based in the mid-21st century on Earth, and tells the story of the first person to receive the Rejuvenation treatment central to the culture of the Commonwealth during Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, and thus functions as a prequel of sorts.

I looked in the bookstores, but it couldn't be had, out of print. That's surprised me a bit. I went looking for it on Amazon, and they were out. What the hell? The book wasn't that old. Then I scrolled down to the reviews. Hooboy.

There was a lot of haterade spilled in the reviews. People who otherwise adored Hamilton's books were up in arms. Others swore they could never read his books again after giving up on Misspent Youth. It just all seemed a little extreme, so I dug deeper.

One of the themes of Misspent Youth is the repercussions of Rejuvenation, returning a person to full bloom of youthful health. Hamilton glosses over the societal implications, which I found a little disappointing after the depth to which he'd portrayed the society of the Commonwealth, as well as that of the Confederation in Night's Dawn. He focused more on the impact to the rejuvenated main character's immediate relationships of the return on youthful hormones to man of seventy-plus years.

That's right, Misspent Youth could be considered chick-lit. Mildly smutty chick-lit at that.

After reading the reviews, the "mildly" portion surprised me somewhat. Misspent Youth was originally published in the UK, and his publisher didn't think it would sell as is in the US. So they toned down the smut for the US release, and the reading public still hated it.

I was having none of that, so I ordered the original unabridged edition from Amazon UK. After the uproar, I half expected something more at home in the pages of Penthouse Variations, wondering whether I should plan to read the book one-handed, if you catch my meaning.

Can you say anti-climax? Misspent Youth is mildly racy sure, but it's got nothing on mainstream romance novels. This book is about the relationships between the characters, not about what gets done in the bedroom.

Like I said, chick-lit. And yet, not entirely chick-lit.

For one thing, it completely ignores the proven formulae for successful romance novels. That makes sense to an extent. Hamilton's not a romance author; he's a speculative fiction author, and he's exploring repercussions so he's confined to a logical chain of events.

The other thing about Misspent Youth that keeps it off the romance shelves is its dual purpose. The novel acts as a prequel to the Commonwealth Saga, portraying the European Union in a state of political upheaval and scattering about elements that fans will recognize as precursors to elements of Commonwealth society. That's not the usual backdrop for a relationship piece, and readers of that genre would likely be put off.

So Misspent Youth is nothing like what I expected, except for one thing. It's an excellent book. Hamilton's engaging style kept me interested through a storyline so focused on relationship conflict rather than violent conflict that it probably woudn't have kept my interest otherwise. I was prepared for some smutty trash, but nothing has prepared me for how "touchie feelie" Misspent Youth would be. Aside from two major scenes and one minor one, there's no real danger faced by the characters, only implied by reference.

If someone had told me that, I might have actually skipped the book. Well, no. It was the last book of his that I hadn't read, so I was doomed from the outset. That's OK. As I said, Hamilton's writing kept me turning the pages.

So I heartily recommend Misspent Youth unless you're an uptight member of a Kansas school board. In terms of reading order, I suggest reading Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained first, but once you have those digested, it's not important whether you read Misspent Youth before, during, or after the Void trilogy.

Originally posted at http://davedynamo.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-hate-for-misspent-youth.html.

Hegemony

Time to grab another three bits of random and see what can be made of them.

The Writer's Book of Matches. A woman with a terrible disease is offered an experimental drug therapy.

I at first thought this one might be tough to work into whatever I picked from the other sources, but the point of the exercise is not to make it particularly easy either.

From Archetype to Zeitgeist. Hegemony

Hegemony is the domination of one culture, or group, over another by nonviolent means. The book has a good 2-page entry that includes some evolution of the idea from Antonio Gramsci and mid-20th century feminism to expand the scope from one political body over another to cultural, class, gender, or ethnic dominance.

A Dictionary of Symbols. The Minstrel

This had me scratching my head a bit. The entry refers to the Minstrel Tarot card, but I didn't recall that card. Then I couldn't find the Tarot reference I thought I had in my library. To the Internet! Turns out, the Minstrel card is considered by some sources to be the original card that became the Magician.

In many interpretations, the Minstrel/Magician represents mastery, whether of a skill or the situation at hand. It can also represent teaching or learning.

It didn't take too much thought before these three fell neatly into place. In an intellectual hegemony, the dominance of a highly educated elite would be sustained in the long term by a system of education that confers the unstated implication that more education equals better. A fine message in itself, if somewhat simple in the blatant abstract, but can it be called hegemony, is it actually dominance, if the system is meant to bringing greater education to all?

It could be argued that maximizing every educational opportunity to every member of a culture is an economic non-starter. In some perfect system, it might be possible to make available all the education every individual cares to consume, but in the world's current model, it costs time and money to attend school. Investing time and money into a given vocation faces diminishing returns, sooner for some professional areas, later for others.

The education system in an intellectual hegemony would almost certainly be multi-tiered. There would be extremely basic schooling available for a labor class, teaching the absolutely necessary skills to get by within the larger culture. At the other end of the spectrum, a highly educated elite would receive every opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills.

But common to every tier of this education system would be the implication that the more education received, the more worthy the individual to make decisions and benefit from the best the culture has to offer. The elite class would be taught this to bolster their commitment to continue their studies and their confidence in their "rightful" place at the top of the hierarchy. The labor class would be taught this to convince them that others are more worthy to make their decisions for them and reap the benefits of those decisions.

This strategy is a multi-generational strategy, gaining strength with passing decades. How does such a hegemony start, especially in cultures that don't necessarily value a classic education, holding more dear the lessons taught by life experience?

One way it might do is via gifts of the fruits of intellectualism. Under the guise of a helping hand, another culture is wooed with surplus food, luxury goods, and medicines. While none can call foul that the hungry are fed and sick are healed, there is always the spectre of ulterior motive.

It's not always conscious. World history is full of examples of the hauteur of the more prosperous sowing the seeds of cultural destruction among a "less advanced" people. Sometimes the result is a thriving partnership, but it should be clear to the astute observer that the result is more often subjugation or conflict.

I'd originally intended to take this into a dark fictional setting for stories or a game, but instead it would appear that I've crafted more of a commentary on the current state of world affairs. Honestly, that wasn't my intent.

When the real world begins to resemble dystopian fiction, it might be time to reconsider the direction we're traveling, time to challenge our shared assumptions, time to make sure that our helping hand isn't really a fist.

Originally posted at http://davedynamo.blogspot.com/2011/09/hegemony.html.

Last Resort Challenge #1

It's time for the first try at the Last Resort Challenge. So let's pull down three books and get cracking.

First component: from ISMs: A Compendium of Concepts, Doctrines, Traits, and Beliefs: Hyperpituitarism, the glandular condition that triggers growth disorders such as giantism and acromegaly. I need to look up that last one. [...] OK, it's like giantism but mainly in the extremities and usually adult onset.

Second component: from the Cassell Dictionary of Superstitions: Flying Ointment, made by a witch and smeared on the body to gain the power of flight.

Third and last component: from the Dictionary of Theories: Group Theory. This one is in the book twice, and I happened to stab my finger on the Politics version rather than the Physics version. In Politics, Group Theory states that individuals and whole societies are not significant political actors. Rather, groups of individuals interact and negotiate their priorities and platforms, and from this process emerges policy.

OK, this could be tough, but I already have the kernel of an idea.

The word witch is a loaded term with a ton of cultural baggage. In stories, witches tend to be separated from society, operating solo or in small groups, figures of fear and superstition. It's reasonable to assume that their impact on societal policy is minimal. But it's not as simple as that. As a feared or possibly hated group, they've been driven out of the main social groups, but not wiped out entirely. Why? Because witches are frequently portrayed as the source of counsel and aid not commonly available, such as the classic love potion or the secret answer to the troll's riddle.

Since I drew Flying Ointment above, you can probably guess that I'll focus on the specialty products of the witch's cauldron over their information services. Witches of folklore and other story turn out a varied array of substances to produce extraordinary effects. Unguents, potions, oils, philters, powders, and ointments from the hand of the witch cause the subject to fall in love, stride seven leagues in a step, breath underwater, or fly through the air.

These unusual abilities stay unusual in most stories, and there's typically a reason for it. Either the witch's price is dear, or powerful societal censure would result if anyone found out. Frequently, both of these cases are in effect.

So the witch's customers have access to the resources to pay the witch's price, meaning that they are likely the more politically powerful members of society. They are also secretive, though they always assume no one will ever find out. That makes them ripe for a blackmail scheme, but what if the witches had something else in mind?

The typical witch's product is ingested somehow, whether by drinking, breathing, rubbing on the skin, mixing with food, or what have you. So suppose the witch's craft were advanced enough to sneak in some side effects, such as a subtle glandular condition, something that takes a period of years and multiple applications to produce obvious symptoms, such as elongated extremities or some other easily noticed feature. Then it becomes obvious who the most frequent consumers of witchcraft services are.

If the condition can be suppressed with yet another product, the witch has the wealthy patron over a barrel. A high price can be demanded, perhaps changes in policy, or the suppression agent will be withheld. I mentioned above that political group theory holds that policy is the result of negotiation between groups of individuals, and this is a form of negotiation. But what if the witches have something else in mind?

Over time, consumers of a witch's services would find the services indispensable, an advantage over their rivals, a way to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles. The witch's services are indispensable, but the witch still lives in isolation. Suppose rather than blackmail, the witches have organized and have decided to pursue societal revolution. Rather than blackmailing their customers into acting as their political proxies, they force their customers to live with their new physical features as a brand, a scarlet letter, and obvious mark of the witch's services for all to see.

It's a risky scheme, and in the short term the witches are likely to weather some level of cultural backlash, but there is the potential payoff of making it clear to the larger culture that their services are highly valued by the societal elite, individuals that many wish to emulate. In time, the negative connotations of witchcraft may fade, and the witches might be accepted into mainstream society, just another group contributing the interaction and negotiation to create and establish policy.

---

So there's my first post on the Last Resort Challenge. I'd hoped to come up with a better title, but the post turned out to be at least somewhat about the process of combining the components, so the brute force title stays.

Originally posted at http://davedynamo.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-resort-challenge-1.html.

Last Resort Weekly Challenge

At nearly a year since my last post, I am forced to admit to myself that I am not good at keeping up with this. Some people find blogging to be habit forming, but I am apparently not one of them. I did well when I challenged myself to post daily, but I didn't have much creative energy left for anything else, so this time I'll try a compromise. I'll give myself until midnight Saturday each week to post something, anything really. If I post earlier in the week, I'm off the hook.

That's the Weekly part. Now the Last Resort part. If I come up with a topic, all well and good, but if I'm stuck, or if the topic I'm working on isn't coming together on time, then I engage in an exercise I've been meaning to start anyway.

I have a shelf of books that I think of as my Brainstorming library. They're a fairly random collection of short-entry dictionary/encyclopedia-style books such as Archetype to Zeitgeist and The Encyclopedia of Dreams. Occasionally, I grab one at random to browse for something interesting to think about.

The exercise I envision is to grab three of these books, either at random or by whim, open each at random, blindly stab a finger onto each open book, and combine the three concepts thus chosen into a post somehow. It doesn't matter what it's about, just something to post. It will probably be something consistent with my existing interests and posts, but no guarantees. The point of this blog is to get and keep me writing, not any kind of consistent topicality.

So stop by for your weekly does of vitamin WTF. Or don't. As I've said before, this blog is not for you, it's for me. If anyone else gets any value out of it besides me, that's just a bonus.

Btw, this post doesn't count for this week, so look for the first challenge post by next Saturday.

Originally posted at http://davedynamo.blogspot.com/2011/09/last-resort-weekly-challenge.html.