The Gaming Outpost

My purported master, Wa Lei, helped me limp out to his rickshaw as he explained that I had a year to train to defeat the Champion of the White Crane Tong in a city-wide kumite. We rode out of Hong Kong, stopping to pick up his parrot which I had rescued from a thief earlier, and to Wa Lei country estate on the non-Communist(‘What’s a Communist?’ He asked me when I ventured a worry.) mainland. I could abrogate the deal he had struck on my behalf as I paced in my berserker fury, and thus fatally injure his own status, and lose horribly to their Champion. Or I could accept him as my teacher.



He seemed offended when I wanted to know how good he was, but it seemed a fair question to me. So, the pony-drawn rickshaw was halted, and the seventy-year-old man got out, and punched an eight inch thick tree down with two blows of his knobby fists. That answered my question very thoroughly.



Once at the estate, I was purified by steam baths, and plain food. Luckily, he considered meat essential for keeping the strength of mind needed to resist suggestions and mind games. It was fortunate that purification was the first step, because the aftermath of a berserker rage leaves you as weak as a kitten for several days.



The fourth day began the training, and the verbal abuse. But in two weeks too his evident disapointment, I had worked off what little out of toneness existed. Being a verser is a very strenuous lifestyle. I rarely meet a too overweight or out-of-shape verser. Landing in a dessert without food or water, and walking out over the course of three days as one such verser did tends to be all too common an experience for us.



“Now my flabby little foreign devil, we get serious.” Considering, I was running twenty miles a day, and sparring for two hours at a stretch I thought we were already serious.



Add running up a mountain, at night, with a backpack full of jagged rocks, and a pschyotic guy waiting somewhere in the dark to spring out, and trip you so you can roll down the hill, and varying it for spice with beating one with a stick, and then you have serious.



“How do you like my mountain?” He asked me a week later as he did something that made my sprained ankle not sprained. I had yet to make it to the top.

“What mountain?”

“That one!” He pointed to my nemeses.

“That’s not a mountain, that’s only a hill, a little one at that.” It was about four thousand feet high, and I had planned this insult with care last night as I lay in a ravine with a snake crawling over my scraped body. Laughing Boy had dumped me here with a trip and a kick in my stomach.

He turned red, and then he started dancing about, screeching at me in some other of the several Chinese languages.

“Really, I have climbed ones that were seven times as tall.” He stomped off to sulk. But I was not sure that it was not all a game to him.



About this time, I became aware that my genteel host had other interests. Men came and gave him gifts. Other men came, and he directed them to suggest things to men who were not so forthcoming with giving gifts. Things were built, and laws were passed when he smiled on them. And the converse was true. My host was a gangster just like the White Crane Tong.



I packed, and confronted him with this on my way out the door. After chastising me for my simple, Western morality which did not move me much at all, other than to laughter, he admitted it. He told me, and showed me his operations. Yes, he was a criminal, but he was as much as possible, a positive influence. And he did his deeds with a gentle hand that was never arbitrary.



“If you leave, then I am without a champion. I have stalled the White Crane who longs for mastership of the city. I have bluffed him. But I lack the strength to defeat him. If you leave, the boy who is the future of the City as I am the past, and White Crane is the present, if you leave, the boy will be his, and his barbarous forces will rule the city with blood.” He pleaded with me.



It was a good point. Unfortunately, there were a lot of places on many worlds where a relatively benign capo di tutti capo would be an improvement on the local government, or lack thereof. Who do you want in charge, Michael Corleone, or Mao Se Tung?



I consented on one condition, the boy, would be allowed to grow up with his family, and not under my host’s tutelage. The old man nodded softly.

“Perhaps that is for the best. Quite subtle for a Westerner.”



We never talked of that again, and the next day I was back running up the hill. Soon, new obstacles appeared. Hurdles, traps, hired men to attack me en masse. The year passed slowly.



“You have done wonderously well.”

“But…”

“I fear it is not enough.” He said as he listlessly demonstrated a Dim Mak technique.

“What of other techniques? Flying, projecting chi in visible manifestations…” I ran through a list of wild kung-fu techniques I had heard of. At the end, he stared at me, and laughed.

“Those are the stuff of story. Not real, the best we can manage is a few varieties of a killing strike, and I would know if more were possible.”

“More is possible elsewhere.” I muttered to myself as I remembered the vast array of worlds where I had worked magic, and done other wonders. Never had I been to a world where you could fly through martial arts, but I expected that such was out there somewhere.

Too bad my plasma cannon did not work here, or I would just light up the White Crane and cook them for dinner. Mm,mm, good, crane soup.

“What about this Dim Mak then?” I asked.

“Ineffective against their champion. He had specially strengthened the muscles over his heart so that it will not work.”

“Show me how Dim Mak works.” I said as an idea bubbled up within me.



Later that night, I told him of the verse. The multitude of worlds I had visited and that stress to the point of death was the ticket to a new world. He is a fascinating conversationalist, and we talked the Sun down, and up again. He thought I was giving him a last gift before we died. Wa Lei let me take a few days off before the tournameant.



I did not relax, but I practised a new technique.



The week came, and we began to fight. I shall not go into great detail, but we triumphed in this double-elimination tournameant. I learned a lot of respect for my competitors, except for the Champion who had no competition. Fear of reprisals ruled his matches. Anyone who actually fought him risked their family being injured.



“You need to stop the intimidation.”

The Champion just stared down at me. I am not a small guy; in fact I dwarfed most of my competitors. This guy was a mountain. Actually, he was a Gifted One. In this world, the physical abilities of the human race exceeded ours by maybe twenty percent. In other words, most people were just like you and me. But a few were literally superhuman for someone from my native planet. Wa Lei, the Master of the White Crane, the boy Yaung Chang, and this mass of muscle known as the Champion who was actually only half-gifted compared to the other three. His gifts were strictly physical without wisdom, or charm, or mind that was any better than normal.

“No.”

“You make yourself look weak; like you need help.”

“Hah.”

“If you go into the last tournameant with me without a single flaw, since I already have a single elimination, the only way I can beat you is to kill you.”

Maybe one of my arguements sunk in. The intimidation stopped.



We entered the fight, and simply put, he was better than me. But he saved me from defeat. He kept me from rolling out of the ring, because he was wanting to slowly beat me to death. I would make an excellent example to the horrified crowd of thousands.



Using most of what I had, I escaped, and got to my wavering feet. I prepared for Dim Mak, Tiger-verser style. He came at my throat in a move that I had to block, for it would result in a broken neck otherwise.

I ignored the attack, and took the damage. A tournameant fighter trains for a clean defense, and a quick jab. A streetfighter accepts a punch in the gut, if it leaves his opponent on the ground with a dislocated knee. A determined verser lets his opponent break his neck if it means that he can get a full force, unobstructed Dim Mak strike in.



He fell back with his heart stopped, and I forced myself to stand there with my hands holding cradling my head. The referee grabbed my hand, and raised it in victory. My head moved a bit, and bye-bye spinal cord. I was out of that world.



I figured the boy would grow up honest and push for honest behavior, and would gently dismantle the corruption of Wau Lei, as the community leader he, Yaung Chang, almost inevitably would become. I hoped and prayed that my sacrifice wasn’t for nought as I fell through the scriff to another world.



Tadeusz

  We were driving along a multi-lane highway, headed home late one afternoon in light traffic, when I saw something I’d not noticed before.  Someone had taken that black patching tar that is used to fill cracks in pavement to prevent them from worsening, and in letters perhaps three and a half feet tall had written BOB squarely in the middle of our traffic lane.  It was quite clear, quite apparent, and did not look at all random.  I cannot help but think that some road worker had a free moment and decided to write his name on the road with the road tar.  I suspect it will be there for some time to come.

  It will not last so long as some, however.

  Some decades ago I was a scout leader, and before that a scout; and our particular troop did a great deal of canoeing.  Along the Delaware River there is a rather notorious stretch of water known as Foul Rift; the earth rises in cliff faces on either side.  On the Pennsylvania side there is a bit of a still place against the wall, a sort of backwater eddy in which one can for a moment rest if desired; and on this cliff face are scrawled in various media names of many forgotten people.  One of them is said to have been one of General George Washington’s scouts.  I do not know if that is the oldest there; but I suspect there are older examples of names left in odd places.  The genesis of cave paintings is a matter of speculation, yet it does seem that our perhaps preliterate ancestors were responding to that universal urge in mankind to leave something behind that tells the world we were here; or in the case of headstones and memorials, we tell the world that someone was here about whom we cared.

  It is not merely our names that we leave behind.  World War II soldiers were fond of a picture of a large nose, a couple of eyes, and a pair of hands hanging over a wall above the words Kilroy was here.  In the sixties, words worth remembering as the story is again revived appeared in major U.S. cities:  Frodo lives.  Poems and limericks, bawdy jokes, intellectual gags, and amateur artwork decorate walls and railcars, bathrooms and mountainsides, ancient edifices and modern sidewalks.  It is so ubiquitous that Stephen Wright was able to know he was not the first child before he was born, or so he says, by the graffiti on the wall of the womb.  There is, far from here, a plaque which in some ways is the pinnacle of the expression of our inherent need to scratch our names on the walls of the places we’ve been.  In part it reads, We came in peace for all mankind, and adorns the side of a piece of scrap metal which was once the landing gear of a lunar module, still resting on the moon.  We traveled to another planet, and wrote our names in the dust so it would be known to those who followed that we were there.

  The application seems almost as obvious as handwriting on the wall.  One wants to ask why this delinquent effacement of every unprotected surface in the world isn’t echoed in our games.  It seems that nothing is ever written on the walls of the dungeons, spaceships, mines, caverns, castles, tunnels, control centers, barrooms, and anything else we explore unless it has some terrible significance.  Why don’t we ever carefully translate an inscription, only to discover that it says Pieter of Bordland was here on the Third day of the Third month of the Fourth Year of King Pelham of Nocturne–or something even less enlightening, like Immanuel Kant, but James Cann?  How many bawdy limericks have you read on the walls of out-of-the-way places?  How many have your characters read?  How many names were written on or carved into the tops of school desks you’ve used?  How many have you placed on the furnishings in your imagined worlds?

  I once wrote that if the only tapestry in the castle is the one that hides the secret door, it’s a bit obvious; but if there are tapestries on every wall, players will stop looking.  It seems to apply equally here.  Of course if there’s an inscription on the wall, and there are never inscriptions on any walls, the players are going to take note of it.  But if they are accustomed to the idea that other adventurers are going to have marked up the walls with their own identifiers, they may well give little attention to yet another bit of writing on the wall.  They might even add their own, if the mood takes them.  If it’s important, you can give it greater attention–use a brass plaque, or fix a light on it.  But in many cases we give too much attention to things that should be overlooked, merely because we’ve failed to make them seem as ordinary as they are.  A single sheet of paper on a desk is going to be noticed; a desk covered with papers one of which is important is likely to be overlooked.  Graffiti on every wall will make all such graffiti seem ordinary, and allow you to slip a few bits in here and there that do matter without making them seem overly important.

  In the recesses of my mind I remember one party of adventures whose games I ran who ordered custom-made metal plaques identifying themselves, and proceeded to mount these in the out-of-the-way places they’d visited.  At the time I recognized the possibility that someone reading them might, for good or ill, seek out the group.  In retrospect, it strikes me that I didn’t think of including similar Kilroys from other adventurers for them to find along the way.

  I did, however, include a plague on one door deep in a dungeon maze, in an ancient dialect few could read, prominently displayed in their only path forward.  After much difficulty, the characters managed to decipher the ancient script and gain the esoteric knowledge it concealed.  Whether they considered the possible ramifications of the message I cannot say; perhaps it told them more about the place they were exploring than I realized.  Yet it seemed the right words at the time.  It read, Employees Only Beyond This Point.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

I’m an idiot.



Why you ask?



Because last Friday I GM’ed angry.



I got home late from teaching my Tae Kwon Do class Thursday night. I was worn and sore, having re-injured my left ring finger (still can’t get my wedding ring on). When I got home my wife told me that she had made an accounting error and our checking account balance wasn’t what we thought it was. One of the traditional money arguments husbands and wives have ensued and I went to bed a bit ticked off.



Friday morning I woke up late (slept through my alarm) and found I didn’t have a shirt clean for work. I got a shirt cleaned and then hopped in my truck to find out I was almost out of gas. Anger rising…



Of course I got to work late, and to help things get worse one of my client’s servers was down. Unrecoverable down. And it was one of my tech’s fault. The client is now pissed at me because I coordinated the work that the tech did incorrectly. Anger turned into rage.



At noon I found I’d forgotten my lunch at home. So no food until the game that night. Rage gets stronger.



When I show up at the game I discovered I’d forgotten my notes for the dragon. I was so angry I was shaking.



It was a huge green dragon for my D&D game and the party had spent a whole week prepping for the fight. I had three pages of spells, powers and other essentials set up for this dragon. It was going to be an all session battle, a huge climactic, cataclysmic battle that the party and I would discuss together in years to come as “That time we fought the Green Dragon…” But now it had a good chance of sucking as I was totally unprepared and in a very bad mood.



As most folks know, I like to improv as much, if not more, than the next GM. Part of my reputation as a GM is my love of improv. But I was so mentally beaten up by the day’s events that the forgotten notes were an unrecoverable blow to my GMing spirit. I did NOT want to run D&D that night. But I did it anyway.



The players had been prepping for this fight all week – I’d been answering email questions for 3 days and they’d sent dozens of emails between each other creating their game plan. You could tell by the look in their eyes they wanted this fight bad. Heck, they were practically drooling on the table. They wanted to game and I let them talk me into it.



I winged it as best I could, but my heart wasn’t in it. The dragon was half of what it should have been,and in the end the players won. Not because they out thought, or out fought the dragon, but because I didn’t want to play. Sure, the players had a great plan, but I didn’t care enough to put up a fight. They got away without hardly a scratch and it was pathetic.



We’ve all seen the advice before regarding GMing when you don’t feel like it. But more often than not we’ll ignore it and run the game anyway. Why? Because we allow ourselves to get talked into it. Don’t let it happen to you.



Gaming is, at the core, about having fun with a group of people who are at the game to have a good time. How fun can it really be for anyone at the game if the GM is only going through the motions?



As a player I’ve been there when it was obvious the GM didn’t want to run the game that night. He was tired, and had other things on his mind. The events were sub-par and no fun was had because we the game was numbly wandering along. I’ve seen some players who try and take advantage of the GM in this situation, trying to get the GM to allow items, powers, etc that he normally wouldn’t if he were mentally fit to GM – but in the end, even these players feel the hollowness of their victory.



In my Friday game tempers flared more often than I’d seen before. The players and I became overy adversarial, looking at each other as The Enemy, even though we were supposed to all be there for the same purpose: To have fun. That could have easily been the end of that game group. We could have said to heck with it and quit because we didn’t have fun. And without fun, why would you game?



One of my players suggested that we pack along some board games or card games so that if another case of “GM Fatigue” were to hit us, we could still have some fun together and give the GM a break for a while. Another player said that he would be willing to GM sometime if this happened – just running a one-shot game for the group. Sounded like some good ideas so we’ve adopted these as our contingency plans.



What gets me the most, and the reason I feel I’m an idiot, is that I knew what would happen if I let the players talk me into gaming that night. I knew it wouldn’t be much fun and that the players would have a cheap gaming experience. I knew we should have done something different. I’m a smart guy, but I didn’t listen to the voice of reason in my head and I ran the game anyway. I had a choice and I took the obviously bad option.



Life is sometimes about learning from the mistakes of others so think up a contingency plan for you game group and don’t GM angry. It’s not worth it.



-Brett J.B.

I had promised to try to retrieve Yaung Chang, a talented and respectful grandson, from the clutches of the the White Crane Tong.



Reviewing strategy and skills as I hopped from sampan to sampan boat across Hong Kong harbour left me with the conclusion that a direct approach would be best. Sure, I had received training several worlds back in other cultures, but despite my master’s degree, I doubted that I could out-indirect this Tong, especially when they thought they held all the cards.



So, I would have to educate them.



My cyberware and psi skills were non-functional, but I did seem to be able to use my adrenal gland control to apparently slow time. The waves splashed against the boats in eerie slow motion as I precisely hopped from gunwhale to gunwhale. Never landing in the boat, but only lightly touching down to bounce off the top of the sampan’s low walls, I proceeded.



It was exhilarating behind that cool control brought on by my focus.



Arriving in the City proper, I dodged rickshaws toting Britishers and bicycles with long pig-tailed men that carommed every which way in a mad tangle that seemed moment by moment on the verge of a street filled with trauma patients, and yet other than curses, and a flash of a hand as one particularly annoyed man struck another across the face, it was remarkably unblooded.



I leapt to the roofs, and ran across them because it had been a long time since I had been in such a large city. Larger cities, far larger, have been my home. Recalling my first world that I clearly remember with its multi-billion resident sentients “City Complexes” I compare them, and yet Harpischord CC hardly ever seemed this crowded.



The thief’s path atop the roofs brought me into contact with thieves. I apprehended one in the process of making off with a valuable parrot in a gilded cage. We exchanged blows, and he was very good. His kung fu was of several orders better than most people considered masters. But I had trained under Musashi, and he knew no tricks that I did not. Furthermore, I was a lot stronger than he was.



So we made a deal. He could go free without the bird if he led me to the White Crane Tong’s headquarters. He did this more willingly once he realized I was going to attack them. This would lead to my certain death he was sneeringly sure.



I let him go, and Australian rappelled down into the open, stone-paved square that was the atrium of the Tong’s multi-story building. Guards spotted me, and I bowed to them with my fist in my palm which saved me from being skewered with a half-dozen arrows.



“I would request audience with the Master of the White Crane.” I informed them in my most perfect Mandarin. Using the dialect, and the body language that Her Imperial Radiance had taught me in an alternate 880 B.C. before gifting me with an umbrella(which was a significant honor, really.), I waited for the reply.



The leader of the guards said in a crude form of the language.



“Beat this foreign devil, and throw him out.”



A dozen students with bo sticks came charging out of an archway to do just that. I accelerated myself, and ran at them. It was easy to knock a few sticks pointed my way aside, and then I was among them. A few elbow jabs, tramping on a foot, and throat punch, and I stood yawning on the other side with a bo stick in hand, and five of the dozen laying on the ground.



A sharp command, and four guards leapt over the second floor balcony to land twenty feet below on the stone paving of the square. The students faded back. Oops, this was my first indication that things might not go that well.



They advanced with swords out. A heavy, almost scimitar sort of blade was the chosen weapon for them. Still Musashi had shown that a good quarterstaff could out-do a katana. I was very good with a quarterstaff, even Little John had been impressed.



We fought for ten minutes, and I could have beat them, but I had a guy penned up against a wall, and after jabbing him, I planned to use him as prop to hold my balance while using the pole to do a leap kick backwards.



He ran up the wall about ten feet, and I fell on my face. The flats of their blades came crashing down on me. Ouch.



“Hmmm.” A soft voice said, and remarkably everybody stopped. I looked up, and saw an old man sitting on the edge of the roof. To my left on a balcony, a dangerous looking man in velvet and thread of gold stood watching me get beaten. Behind him loomed a shadowy, and massive figure.



“Why do you offend me by invading my house?” The dangerous man asked in a tone of utmost reasonableness.



“I come for Yaung Chang.” I said past the split lip. The young man in question slipped around the man. Potential glowed about him in a non-visible, but very real sense. This was a boy who would go far in whatever he did.

“At the request of his grandmother.” I added.



The dangerous man sneered, and the boy inquired as to her health. A girl clung to his side.



“Kill him, and send the body to this grandmother.”



Rage flickered in me, and so did a memory. And I wondered to myself. Maybe this was a world where the skills of the body were great? I gave in to the memory out of the darkened span of time in my mind wondering what would happen.



For a second, I rode a dragonship with Olaf as we broke the Vikings of their marauding ways. And then, I was aware of my surroundings once more.

But, in a distant way for nothing mattered more to me than justice and my anger. Berserker anger.



A fist flashed out, and the head of the closer guard bent like a melon, and the sword coming down was caught in my hand. The blood splattered as it sliced open my hand, and I was caught between a growl and a laugh, so I did both as I wrenched the sword from the guard’s hand.



The three guards backed up in fear as I licked the blood off my hand. Stalking forward, I saw the arrows being drawn, and I moved without thought. The sword was flung, and it sliced through a bow, and the archer. Before the arrows were let loose, I grabbed a guard with a sword, and he became a pincushion. His sword sped toward the dangerous man.



For a second, all seemed well. Then the dangerous man knocked the sword aside contemptuously. Growling, I prepared to climb the balcony.



A command from the old man stopped everybody but me in our places. Ripping my fingernails loose, I climbed the stone wall, and then another harsher command shocked me. It was just a word, “Stop.”, but it was uttered with such authority as to penetrate my bestial rage.



The old man and the dangerous man negotiated in a blur of Mandarin which I might not have understood even if I had been sane. In my berserker fury, I was thinking in Old Norse.



So, I halted, hanging on the wall, but I did not like it. I wanted desperately to kill. I dropped loose, and like a caged tiger circled the square with my footsteps falling heavy on the stones. None of the students or guards dared look me in the eye, which was just as well, since I would have killed them by trying to rip them apart.



The deal they negotiated was thus, I would go with the old man for a year, and the boy would go with his parents for that year. At the end, I would fight the White Crane’s chosen champion in a city-wide kumite for custody of the boy and for status between the dangerous man and the old man.



After the old man soothed me back to humanity, I wondered if I should do this.



Part Three next week.

Tadeusz

  In a city not far from me there is a radio talk show host who happens to be black.  I knew that before I saw him interviewed on television not from his voice but because he seems to have a problem with it, as if being black was a handicap beyond anything experienced by anyone else in the world.  He seems to be of above average intelligence, is well spoken and articulate, and I take him to be successful in his industry and respected by the community (he certainly is more successful in radio than I was); but from time to time he makes statements that betray a complete lack of any understanding of the similarities between the lives of others and those of his race.

  There was an outstanding example of this a few years ago, when he was responding to the suggestion that European immigrants faced the same kinds of discrimination in their day that blacks have at times faced.  His statement was, “I really don’t consider it discrimination if all you had to do to avoid it was change your name.”  He somehow thought that all European immigrants would look the same as Americans of European descent, and could only be distinguished by their names.

  This is patently false to the point of foolish.  Overlooking the fact that “they all look the same to me” is horribly prejudiced, something to which you would expect victims of discrimination would be particularly sensitive, it fails to recognize that there are nuances of cultural difference that are inescapable by those raised in a particular environment.  The early twentieth century still had much of such discrimination, an age in which expressions like, “But what is a Swede but a Norwegian with his brains knocked out?” were not merely common but ardently believed.  Dr. J. Edwin Orr reports that when he, an Irish evangelist, proposed in the 1930′s to marry a Swedish telephone operator, both Irish and Swedish friends were against such an “interracial” marriage, as their temperaments would be almost certainly incompatible.

  It was on his first visit to England that an English lorry driver said to this same Irish Dr. Orr, “I knew you were a foreigner as soon as you opened your mouth.”  Some people are quite skilled at identifying where people are from by their accents.  The way we talk, the way we dress, the way we move all distinguish us as products of our culture.  We cannot easily escape this; it identifies us with who we are.

  This is not a new fact.  There is a tale told millennia ago, in the twelfth chapter of a book called Judges, in which just such a cultural nuance meant life or death for certain people.  The men of Gilead were furious with the men of Ephraim, because the latter not only did not come to their aid when they had to fight the army of Ammon but stood against them.  The Gileadites captured and held the fords of the Jordan River, and questioned those who tried to cross.  The test was simple:  say Shibboleth.  That initial fricative was not a phoneme familiar to the men of Ephraim, who would say Sibboleth, thus revealing their identities and subjecting them to punishment.  Ephraimites might look the same as Gileadites, and they might dress the same and speak the same language, but they couldn’t fake the accent, and it cost them their lives.

  There are those among us who are exceptionally good at such things.  Some can pick up the preferred local pronunciation and usage within a few days, possibly a few hours, by carefully listening to what is said and how it is said by those around them.  Others are finely attuned to dress and attire, noting that earrings mean something depending on the ear in which they appear, or that only certain categories of people are allowed to wear purple.  Still others take note of body language, such as how close these people stand to each other when they talk, and in what ways they use their hands as they do so.  Very few people can do all of those things, although some who cannot always spot the important points can still duplicate them if someone calls attention to them.  Faking a cultural identity requires tremendous acting skill; even then, it’s easy to be tripped up by the cultural information base, the things that anyone from around here would know which aren’t known elsewhere, even if it’s only the best place to eat or the name of the beloved king who died ten years ago.

  Of course, cultures diversify; even in the same place, there will be some things that are known to some people and not to others.  My brother Roy tells a story of attending a computer technology show years ago and seeing what was then one of the latest innovations in surge protection.  Asking the technical representative how it works, he got this explanation.  “The power surge comes in here, and it goes around and around and around”–to which Roy responded, “And it comes out where?”  Although his companion nearly fell on the ground from laughter, the representative, seemingly oblivious, repeated, “No, it goes around and around and around.”  As Roy later said, you’d think that even if the guy didn’t know Louis Armstrong he’d have to remember Bugs Bunny.  We don’t all know all things about our own cultures; or rather, we are all members of cultures within cultures, sharing some things in common with all but identified as much by that which we don’t know as by that which we know.

  Adventurers tend to adventure; they tend to travel, to go where the adventures are.  That means they are already people out of place.  It will take time, wherever they are, to adjust to the culture around them; and no matter how good they are at this, they will almost certainly always be recognizable as foreigners.  This will at times work against them.  At times they won’t understand the local customs, whether accepting the bread offered by the young girl promises something the character didn’t intend, or giving the beggar money instead of food obliges the man to do something in return, or just how bargains are sealed between businessmen.  It may also mark them as people who don’t know their way around and have no connections, people whom the police are not likely to take seriously, tourists who can be cheated today because they will be gone in a week.  Those are minor aspects.  If a character has to say Shibboleth–or Mlambo, or Qorani (with a click)–on pain of death, will he be able to pass the culture test?

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

The gentle bobbing motion, and the pleasant scent of cooking chicken lulled me back to sleep. A few minutes later, by my internal clock, I felt something soft brushing my lips. Sniffing told me that it was fresh rice.



“Emissary of the Celestial Emperor, I offer you food.” An old woman said in Mandarin and I opened my eyes to see her framed against the curve of her boat. She extended chopsticks with a smidgen of rice on them, and my stomach grumbled as I spotted the chicken cooking over a charcoal grill.



My previous hosts would not have approved since they were so vegetarian as to not be able to conceive of a use for the cutting teeth in my head. But, I had gone nearly a month and a half with only a contaminated can of wieners to garnish the mountains of lettuce. If I could not have a Whataburger, then wok-cooked chicken terriyaki would do as a fine substitute.



The old woman did not look like she was malnourished, and so I felt unworried that I might be taking her share. Still, I would have to make it up to her. So, I ate, and then I asked what she needed.



She bowed to me, and banged her head gently, a couple times on the bottom of the boat floor. Then she got me some green tea. I drank it, and engaged in polite conversation about the harbor with its swarm of tiny boats that such as her lived on.



It turned out that the city was Hong Kong.



Luckily, the people had been spared being turned over to the Reds because Mao had been killed in the Time of the Warlords by a servant of the Celestial Emperor. No Cultural Revolution, or any of the other numerous atrocities that delineate the nature of that self-centered land in my world had happened here.



“Oh, great one, if I, your most humble servant may ask a favor of you?” She said bowing again. Probably because I had appeared out of thin air on her boat, she assumed I was some sort of demigod or angel. Evidently, I was expected to be a minor functionary in the bueraucracy of the Celestial Emperor.



I doubted that explaining the truth to her would get anywhere.



I consented, and she asked again trying to bind me to my word, and I agreed, and she asked again trying to get me to agree to the favor before she even asked.



“You are an excellent cook, and no doubt a credit to your community, but I do not have all day. Pressing matters call for my attention.”



Then I had to assure her that I did have time to actually listen to her petition. That took a while.



If my stomach was not full of her good teriyaki, then I might have snapped, but it was easy to be mellow, and let the evening sea breeze play over my face while the boat rocked in the harbor.



“My grandson is a most excellent, and well-favored boy. He is most respectful to his elders, and to his ancestors, and he gives sacrifices of fruit and money on all the holy days.”



Now we were getting to it. I studied her face, and she seemed sincere. This was not just the automatic praise of someone pumping up another’s reputation.



I nodded, and she continued.



“Great one … blah, blah, blah for several minutes…he has been taken by the White Crane Tong to be one of their warriors.”



“Did he wish this?”



“No!” She cried, and then relented a bit as I stared at her sternly. Many a young fellow thought being a hood was a romantic occupation. It was one of those multiversal constants–stupidity.



“He thought much, and was enticed by them with many gifts, and the leader’s daughter giggled to see him, but in the end he listened to the advice of his parents and his grandmother. He promised he would not, and he was ever good to his word.”



I could see this being complicated, but I would have intervened even if the punk had wanted to join. A dose of reality can be an effective cure for dreams and insanity.



“And so being a devout servant of the gods, I prayed for a deliverer.”



She looked at me with desperate hope shining in her eyes. For all I knew, I might have been sent by the Celestial Bueraucracy. Gods seem to feel less compunction about messing with versers. After all, we are immortal and thus even if we break, we are easily fixed. Besides we often know many of the secrets of the gods already.



I stood, and thanked her for my meal, and hugged her.



“I’ll see what I can do.”



Tadeusz

Well, I opened my big mouth and said that I’d like to write an article for GO using MJ’s articles as my inspiration (at least to start with), so I guess I’d best get to it and get something posted.



So, what do we have this time from Mark?



Prophecy eh?



Let’s see what we can do with it…





I view prophecy in my RPGs as a great opportunity to test my improvisation skills. As Mark shows us, prophecy tends to be rather vague and subject to interpretation. Lots of room for the GM to use improv their skills. Prophecy gives you a tool so you can put out a great plot element without giving the whole thing away – and without knowing, at the time, exactly how I’ll get it to work. Everything is mutable in an RPG, and the key to improv is to take your cues from the players.



Let’s say you want the PCs to uncover something about your major bad-guy NPC, but you don’t want to give too much away. Prophecy fits this bill nicely. Using a fantasy setting for an example, you can cook up a scroll, wise woman, old hermit, dream, whatever and give the PCs the information in prophecy form. Just be sure you are vague in keeping with the spirit of prophecy.



GM: “The scroll you found tells of the weakness of Valdanor, the undead lord of Ugoloth!”



PCs together: “What does it say!?”



GM (using his “prophecy voice” he’s been working on for a week): “Only the pure form may pierce his heart. And only the unclean may find his heart.”



1st PC (with grin): “Been looking for an excuse to use that voice then?”



Now, let’s say your original idea behind this is that Valdanor’s heart is actually kept in a magic jar outside his body, thus preventing his true death unless someone finds and destroys it. And let’s say you will only allow (using D&D terms) someone who is Lawful Good to destroy the heart. You’ve also set it up so that the jar holding his heart is actually guarded by a nasty disease demon or some-such thing that will basically cause the players to get plenty dirty/sick before they can get it – thus fulfilling the “unclean” bit from the prophecy.



Sounds awfully straightforward you say? How can you improv with this?



Well, prophecy, as we know, is subject to a multitude of interpretations. Your players will most likely find a way to interpret your prophecy in a way you were not prepared for.



1st PC: “I know what it means! We have to find a virgin to destroy the heart.”



2nd PC: “Yes, but we first need the virgin’s mother to actually find it!”



3rd PC: “I see what you’re saying! Virgin = pure, but to be ‘unclean’ would be a woman who has had children.”



2nd PC: “And by using the virgin’s mother I’m sure we’ll have better luck finding the heart and destroying it – magic likes trends and connections like that.”



1st PC: “I’ll be there’s a connection between these two women and Valdanor as well. Let’s look into that.”



At this point we could easily work to direct the players away from their interpretation and get them back “on track” to our vision of the prophecy’s meaning. But why? Our original vision isn’t set in stone, and the idea the players came up with is actually a bit more interesting (at least they seem to like it), so why not roll with it?



Let the players being their investigation for the virgin and her mother. Let them ask question of other NPCs, let them look into ancient scrolls and tomes of vast knowledge. The only rule here, is to make the PCs tell you exactly what they are looking for. The trick to remember is that one thing leads to another. The players will show you where to go if you let them.



Coax the players into being specific for what they are looking for. If necessary, tell them if they aren’t specific you can’t give them answers. Also pay attention to the direction they are headed. This will let you think ahead and guide them to a solution. You can even use your original idea as part of the solution to the prophecy. You put the work into creating it, be a shame to not use at least part of it right?



The players have the prophecy and they are looking for a virgin and her mother. They look in an ancient tome, asking you for any info on people who were close to Valdanor when he was still mortal. You tell them that Valdanor was a horrible man when he was mortal, noted for raping and slaughtering. The players will take it from there, most likely start looking for some connection between Valdanor and a woman –most likely a woman he raped who had a child.



Let them find what they are looking for. More research/adventure hints that Valdanor, when he was still mortal, actually raped a woman who gave birth to a daughter. That daughter in turn had a daughter, and they are both living in the city of Xultuc. “Ah!” Say the players, “Now we’re getting somewhere!” Keep this going and soon you’ll have the players set to finally go after Valdanor’s heart with virgin and mother in tow.



By doing this you are rewarding the players for quick thinking, good roleplaying and problem solving. As I said, they don’t get all this info right away, they have to dig it up through various adventures. Trips to the library, a short quest to find the crazy old man who wrote the scroll and knows where these women live and so on. But that’s the nature of prophecy solving.





Well, that’s all from me for a bit. Let me know what you think, and I’ll see you in the Forums!



-Brett J.B.

  Fantasy often includes within it the idea of glimpsing the future.  Our stories are filled with seers and prophets, ancient writ or song speaking of future events, visions and dreams which warn of disaster.  Yet such predictions are rarely found in our games, or if they are they are difficult to execute.  There are some tricks of the trade that can be useful in this regard, and if properly used may open the possibility for new dimensions in the game.

  I’ll start by looking at the Scottish Play.  In crafting this tragedy, Shakespeare included the predictions of three witches, predictions crafted to put MacBeth’s mind at ease while at the same time foretelling his doom.  Of these, the one that calls attention to itself was the charm that the usurper need “fear no man of woman born”.  MacBeth took this as assurance that no one could hurt him.  This was opposed to the instruction to “Beware the Thane of Cawdor.”  This nemesis, MacDuff Thane of Cawdor, broke the charm with the information that he was “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped”–that is, a caesarian section not born naturally.

  There’s a clue here to how to do good fantasy predictions.  If you didn’t see it, you’ll find it again in Ezekiel 12:13, where it’s considerably less a fantasy yet very similar in form.  The prophet declares of the king, “I will bring him to Babylon in the land of the Chaldeans; yet he will not see it, though he will die there.”  One easily imagines that Zedekiah considered this nonsense.  How could he be taken to Babylon, and die there, but never see the place?  The answer is revealed in II Kings 25:7, where we are told that as the king fled Jerusalem, he was captured, and Nebuchadnezzar had him blinded before taking him back to Babylon.

  In these cases, there was a seeming contradiction in the prophecies themselves which was resolved by what almost seems a trick, a piece of information which makes the seemingly impossible possible.

  But perhaps to determine the use of prophecy in your games, you have to take a step back and decide on the nature of prophecy.  There are some critical questions that must be answered in this regard before you make your first prophetic announcements.  Chief among these is whether the future predicted is fixed or mutable; that is, has the seer declared what will inevitably happen, or is this a declaration of what may happen if steps are not taken to prevent it?  Multiverser uses both kinds of predictions, but carefully distinguishes them; thus it provides a viable example for how this can be done.

  In Multiverser, psionic predictions, those of the sort people call psychic and attribute to special mental powers, are almost always mutable.  That is, the psychic is not seeing the actual future, but rather the most probable future based on the present.  This means that the future predicted will occur if nothing intervenes; but the fact that the psychic has foreseen it means that there is opportunity to intervene and so prevent the impending disaster.  I believe that this is the sort of “seeing the future” that is used in Minority Report, in that three psychics are attempting to predict crimes before they occur.  It is the fact that one of them can disagree with the other two (hence the minority report) that suggests they are not seeing the future–were they seeing the future, they would all see the same future.  They are instead seeing the most likely future based on current events.  (The very fact that they can take steps to prevent that which they have foreseen demands that they are not viewing the future itself, since once they have prevented it from happening they have also prevented themselves from seeing it.)

  Another example of this is found in Dune’s Paul Atriedes.  Unlike the guild steersmen, he doesn’t see “the future”; he sees all possible futures, and chooses his actions as a means of selecting which of those futures will become reality.  The steersmen are doing much the same, on a smaller scale.  They see that if they leave port now, there will be a collision.  They thus choose not to leave port, and so prevent the collision.

  Magical predictions (in Multiverser), by contrast, are nearly always fixed, immutable.  These are the utterances of prophets, the readings of omens, the statements of oracles.  They may be conditional, such as “if you do not mend your ways”, but if they do not state a condition they are generally deemed absolute.  This poses a much more challenging problem for the referee, as once such a prediction is made it must come to pass in some form.

  It is that last clause, in some form, that is the secret to using such predictions in games.  I cannot control the actions of the players, even if I am quite skilled at manipulating them.  Thus part of the trick is to so couch the initial prophecy in such a way that you can fulfill it no matter what the players do.

  That doesn’t mean you have to railroad them into your plot.  It means you have to give predictions that are subject to interpretation.  Of course, the players will probably ascribe a certain interpretation to them.  If they did not do so, the prophecy would be pointless.  But the wording has to be such that there may be alternate ways to fulfill it; and the referee has to have these possibilities in mind when he delivers the prediction initially.

  Certainly the trick we saw above is useful in this regard:  to have a method of fulfilling a prophecy which appears on its face self-contradictory.  If the players can see no way for a prediction to be fulfilled, they cannot easily thwart it.  But there are many other ways to accomplish the same goal.  Prophetic messages are often vague, frequently symbolic, and always fragmentary.  This last point is the most useful.  In MacBeth, the warning was that the end would come when the woods came to the castle; they did come to the castle, in the form of disguises worn by the attacking armies.  Could that prediction have been otherwise fulfilled, perhaps by the forest being cut for siege works, or being brought for rather peaceful purposes such as firewood or construction, or washed up to the walls by flooding?  The sisters did not say how the woods would move; in the absence of that information lies the opportunity for fulfillment.  Vague predictions are easier to fulfill, but less useful.  The trick is striking that balance, where the prediction appears to be very significant but can be brought to pass by any of several events.

  I’ve suggested something along this line elsewhere, and the discussion there may be helpful despite that not being game related.  But these ideas should help get a few prophetic visions into your games, and get around the problems normally associated with them.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

I woke on something soft, and from the feel of the edge around me, rather bed-like. Paranoia awoke, and do not be getting that tolerant to idiots look, my friend. If you knew how many times I had woken on a table about to be a medical experiment, or implanted with a control device, or burned at the stake, you would be paranoid too.



My Lekostian cyberware functioned so I was effectively a fifth degree black-belt crossed with an Olympic weight-lifter on steroids, and I had the added advantage of almost a dozen tiny war toys inbuilt.



My hearing isolated noises, and the very smart(which means it does not work that often in most worlds) software listened, and confirmed that the sounds were breathing. Non-standard. I checked deeper because Humans were non-standard to the Lekostian Star Empire. Non-human, as well, the software informed me sulkily inside my head.



So I leapt up, and prepared to spring at the two rather massive figures. Each was over eight feet tall, and at least a thousand pounds. But before I could pound them into unconsciousness, they both folded like a checkerboard.



Puzzled, I did not stay to examine them, but I ran out of a huge doorway in the general direction of my stuff. We versers, worldwalkers, gatesmen, can sense the stuff we brought with us.



I saw several more of these mountainous figures with dangerous looking alien mechanical devices in their hands. Desperately, I sprinted toward them to close to hand-to-hand combat range. None of the tiny ranged weapons I had implanted in my body were suited to taking out something the size of an overgrown bull(at least the non-broken ones were not. It was kind-of hard to take the cyberware back for repairs since I had never been back to that world, yet. I intended to remedy that error about letting things slide as soon as possible.



The crew of three folded, and I vaulted them. It could not be that they were being affected by a virus because versing out cured you of such.



Beyond them, I saw a room full of them, a cafeteria it seemed with heavy shield-sized salads all around. Any of the dozens could have taken my head off with a thrown plate, or crushed me with a chair.



I got ready to fight and die because I was so not going to be disected while alive again. The nearest to me folded, and then others beyond them started falling with me as the obvious epicenter of the effect.



An elderly being, supported on both sides by beings who looked like they could bend an I-beam, croaked a few words as he came out of a door on the far side of the cafeteria.



“Please, stop being mean.”

“Mean, buddy, you have not seen anything yet.”

More fell.

“Stop.”

“Not while you got me lined up for a little medical experiment.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Y’know, cut me open, dope me with drugs, see what makes the weird looking alien tick?”

Around the room, about half the lot fell into their salads.

“That would hurt, wouldn’t it?” The elderly leader-type asked me.

“Yeah, it would. Which is why I am not going to let you do it. So who wants some? Come and get it.”

“Wants what, alien? You are very perplexing, very mean creature.”

“Me? You are the one who is going to dice me up for sausage?”

“No, and no. Stop alien, you hurt us. We invite you into our home, and offer you a place to sleep out of the rain in which you were sleeping, and then you come and stink bad thoughts of blood and pain at us. You hurt us, I am sorry to have to tell you. If you like the rain that much, we will be glad to let you sleep in it all the time. We are sorry to have offended you, but please, please stop being mean.”



A flashing light produced inside my optic nerve finally got my attention as I calmed down. The Lekostian drug, H43, is useful for a lot of things in Lekostians, but primarily in humans it produces rampant paranoia. Seems my software dumped a load into my bloodstream for reasons currently undetermined.



I looked at the tables filled with rabbit food.

“So you are psis?” I got an affirmative. “You are herbivorous?” That got me a puzzled look and a question.

“Is there any other way to be?”

I dodged the question not wanting to go into war, murder, cannibalism, and the eating of a nice tasty hamburger right at the moment.

“Will these people be all right?” I asked as I pointed at my victims scattered about the cafeteria.

“Yes, if they get rest and a peaceful week to graze in their own private gardens. And no more horrifying images from your mind.”

I nodded, and attempted to think pink, fuzzy thoughts.

“Can you determine why this device in my head dumped a chemical in me at this time when I did not tell it to do so?”



They looked inside my body and inside the software. The herbivores wondered at the design, and they puzzled over what possible use my retractable claws could have.(Digging for legumes was their favorite theory.) Finally, they decided that my cyberware had done so ‘because every Lekostian needed such a dose every ten years.’ Despite my status in the central database as a non-normal, all the separate databases in my cyberware had not gotten the memo.



I snarled nasty thoughts at the Lekostians, and the whole medical team passed out.



When they woke, I apologized profusely, but I understood why they were a little leery of me. They suggested lunch alone.



So, I faced a mound of lettuce and other vegetables. Luckily, I had brought some blue cheese, and was able to make a good dressing.



I lived there for some time among these gentle giants with their star-spanning civilization, and their psionic gifts, and gradually I forgot what meat tasted like.



That is until, I was cleaning out my backpack, and came across a dented can of wieners. It did not look like it had expanded, I told myself, as I feverishly opened it. Frankly, I was a little out of my mind. I liked it here, but I did not belong, or fit in.



Shortly thereafter, Salmonella made itself known. And when the doctors came for me, well, I could not tell them I had eaten meat. It would probably kill them. So, I versed out.



Tadeusz

Let us imagine that Lee won Gettysburg.



I know what you’re thinking, another “South won the war” scenario. But stick with it.



Lee won at Gettysburg. From there he faked a blitz toward Baltimore. Eights days later he was surrounding D.C. and severely outnumbering the local Union troops. During the night Lee sent a small number of his troops behind the lines and captured the officers. Ass the Sun peaked over the horizon Lee boots hit the White House’s carpet. A reluctant sigh bubbled from Lee’s chest. Negotiations were going to take a long time.



And it did. Tens of thousands of Union troops were encamped around D.C. while negotiations took place. Breaths were held and soldiers swore they could hear yelling coming from the White House.



Lee and Lincoln sat across from one another, sweat dripping from both their brows. Lincoln leaned forward and the words quietly sizzled between his clinched teeth.



“The South States never left the Union. That is the plain truth when seen clearly. There was no law, high or low, that provides for it. And if memory serves my election was completely legal. I didn’t threaten them with the taking away of their slaves. I spoke my mind. I said that it should remain where it was. There was no law passed and a man may speak his mind. For that our boys died when you attacked unprovoked.”



“Mr. Lincoln, you know perfectly well that your words hold weight above all other men. It is as if they were binding law. When you said that States should not decide the issue of slavery then you threaten the rights of all States. The Federal Constitution lays it forth plainly. The States hold more rights than that of Congress and the Presidency. We have the right to defend ourselves. The States also entered into this Union as a compact, retaining their sovereignty. Even President Jefferson spoke of the right of the States to void those laws they found to be outside the authority afforded to Federal Government.” Lee’s eyes burned behind his calm words and calculated rhythms.





Lincoln worked into the night, arguing passionately the fact that the Constitution held the Federal and Constitutional law were the Supreme law of the land. Being that the Executive Office was charged with enforcing those laws he was only acting with in his duty by sending out military forces. And to allow States to effectively usurp Federal authority under any circumstance would make Union and the Constitution unworkable and unenforceable.



This is where the two men came to a crossroads. They both realized that the Constitution did not provide for State secession and that each stood on either side of the conflict with some good points. It was here that Lincoln and Lee worked together.



Under Lee’s advice Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy put a moratorium on all activities, going so far as to disband militias and de-mobilize regular troops. Lincoln called Congress back (even from the Southern States) for a joint session and had the Supreme Court meet as well.



With much passion and deliberation they drafted the 13th Amendment (alternate amendment in this timeline). It provided for a joint court for a suit brought against the U.S. Government. It would have seven Justices, three coming from the Federal Supreme Court and three from the Supreme Court of the State bringing the suit. The seventh would be a neutral Justice or Judge agreed upon by both sides. After a verdict was announced both parties would have sixty days to come to an agreed restitution. If they did not the court would rule on restitution.



It was reluctantly ratified by all the States. But with the backing of both Lee and Lincoln, as well as the entire Congress, it was accepted. The next piece of legislation to come forth was the Lee-Lincoln Act, a resolution of the Civil War.



It said that (1) the Confederacy was not an actual government, but merely a provisional organization for the enforcement of the rights of participating States. (2) That participating States had never left the Union. (3) That no person could be bought, sold, or imported into the U.S. as a slave. (4) That a temporary tariff would be applied to all interstate trade and that the assets of the U.S. Army and Navy would be partially liquefied to pay for the freedom of all slaves with in the U.S. (5) All Confederate regulars would be attached to Union Army units.



Two days after this bill was signed into law the occupation ended. From beginning to end it had taken four months to get here. Confederate troops joined Union troops and Union buttons were applied to gray uniforms. Brothers and cousins embraced for the first time in over two long years.



Not all went so smoothly. In at least two State Capitols units would not put down their arms. They were eventually brought in line and tried in military courts. Several riots also broke out. Drunks were sitting on the roofs on State Capitols, prevented them from taking Confederate flags down.



All in all it was peaceful. The exception to this was about twenty thousand men from the Confederate militias and regulars who were livid over the end of the Confederacy. They took their families and slaves and move westward, too fast to be caught be authorities.



This would be the catalyst for the second Mexican-American War.



Visit this link for history on Maximilian I…

http://www.onwar.com/aced/nation/may/mexico/fmexico1858.htm



“The French encountered no resistance to their occupation of Mexico City. In June 1863, a provisional government was chosen, and in October a delegation of Mexican conservatives invited Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph von Habsburg of Austria to accept the Mexican crown, all according to the plans of French emperor Napoleon III. Maximilian was a well-intentioned monarch who accepted the crown believing that this act responded to the desire of a majority of Mexicans. Before departing for Mexico, Maximilian signed an agreement with Napoleon III, under which Maximilian assumed the debts incurred for the upkeep of the French army in Mexico. On June 12, 1864, the Emperor Maximilian I and his Belgian wife, Marie Charlotte Amélie Léopoldine, now called Empress Carlota, arrived in Mexico City. The republican government under Juárez retreated to the far north.



Maximilian, schooled in the European liberal tradition, was a strong supporter of Mexican nationalism. He soon found resistance from all quarters of the political spectrum, however. The conservatives expected the emperor to act against the Reform Laws, but Maximilian refused to revoke them. Mexican liberals appealed for military assistance from the United States on the basis of the French violation of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, but the United States was involved in its own civil war. The end of the Civil War in the United States in 1865, however, prompted a more assertive foreign policy toward Mexico and released manpower and arms that were directed to help Juárez in his fight against the French. In Europe, France was increasingly threatened by a belligerent Prussia. By November 1866, Napoleon III began recalling his troops stationed in Mexico. Conservative forces switched sides and began supporting the Mexican liberals. United republican forces resumed their campaign on February 19, 1867, and on May 15, Maximilian surrendered. He was tried and, on Juárez’s orders, was executed on June 19.”



Juan Ruiz de Álvarez, a Mexican reformer, had set up a democratic government in Mexico that had been overthrown by a joint occupation force made up of Spain, Britain, and France to collect debts. In this timeline Maximilian I is contacted by the former Confederate troops who have a proposition for him. They want to have the unregulated right to own their slaves without interference from the U.S. They are willing to declare themselves Mexican citizens and help take back former Mexican territory in exchange for that unregulated right. The former Confederates are also in contact with two rich plantation owners who are U.S. Congressman. They are willing to provide intelligence. They emphasize the fact that with the extra territory he could levy more taxes and pay back his debt faster.



Maximilian’s interest is peaked. He feels both a surge of national pride and a want to give more to the Mexican people. He is also impressed by this secret army of twenty thousand, which is nothing to balk at. He also needs to get political pressure off his back. It would give the military something to do and the Priesthood in certainly interested in reclaiming missions in what is now Protestant lands. The Conservatives end up liking the idea because it is a show of force and resolve, cementing his emperorship.



He rationalize it by pointing out to himself that the U.S. is pacified, licking its own wounds, and that they won’t invest the energy in reclaiming sparse frontier land. He cements the deal with the former Confederates.



With intelligence provided by their contacts in D.C. they launch raids against frontier forts, collecting arms and ammo as they go. Mexican troops march in and occupy pacified territories.



Numerous reports came by telegraph of a force of white soldiers bearing the Mexican flag attacking Union strongholds. Hundreds and even thousands of white settlers had escaped capture by Mexican forces and showed up in Eastern cities. In January on 1865 President Lee sent General Grant out West to deal with the problem.



Along the way they encountered the traitors who now sat under the Mexican flag. They ambushed them at every turn, launching raids against their supply lines and sniping officers. Grant got in his share of shots, taking out two thousand of the five thousand that made up the raiding force. He trapped clusters of them along his lines and ground them into the dust. At times the battle became so fierce that the ground was slick with blood and men were loosing their footing. However, Grant only had seven thousand men, most of them irregulars. He suffered losses of about 3,500. He men were exhausted, supplies were depleted, and his forces were in disarray. Grant took a fatal chest wound, splinters or rib bone imbedding in his lungs. Most of his men were captured. About half were taken to an isolated valley by a few hundred of the men. They were then disemboweled, stretched out on racks, had their eyes burned out, and were even burned at the stake. The former Confederate soldiers carried it out with a psychotic glee. Once their commanders learned about what happened they sought to return to their base of operations. The other half of the Union troops were taken back as prisoners. Some made it back with news of what happened.



Lee was quiet when he heard what had happened. He moved quietly to a cabinet and took out his old Confederate uniform. He put it on, removed the long jacket, and put on the blue jacket of a Union soldier. He applied the appropriate medals and patches and then said this, “I am ashamed those men ever marched under any flag.” After sheathing and fitting his saber to his side he said one last thing that night, “I just wanted to make sure they still fit.” His aides noticed that his hands had been trembling.



Being the brilliant military mind he was he realized that Grant wouldn’t have taken those casualties with out someone telling them he was coming. He suspected several men, most of whom were in Congress.



He pushed through a war declaration against Mexico and tallied those who voted against it. Ten in the House and two in the Senate. Lee was wily on this one. He let the Pinkertons use agents buried in various Congressional staff to monitor and retrieve telegraph messages from their offices. This and receipts for various gifts received from the ambassador of Mexico gave enough information for search warrants to be issued for their arrest. They were tried, found guilty of treason, and executed by hanging with in the week.



Lee raised a force larger than that of the Union during the Civil War. A large number were veterans. It took about twelve weeks to train new recruits. They were mobilized.



Lee led the force himself. He tapped the Texas Rangers to do observation and tracking behind enemy lines, while capturing officers and blowing up ammo dumps. This softened the traitor forces. He swept over them and those that weren’t killed were taken prisoner.



Mexican occupying forces were routed and either sent retreating or taken prisoner. U.S. forces joined with Juan Ruiz de Álvarez’s at the Mexican border and pushed toward Mexico City. They encamped around Mexico City and Maximilian surrendered. Mexican and traitor forces were organized into work camps to repair the damage they did and officers were tried and executed by a guillotine that France had given the U.S. to test. Out of gratitude, and to avoid its debts, Mexico became part of the Union.