The Blog of Roon

PBS showed a half-staged version of Candide the other day. I am probably close to alone in loving that show as much as I do. It’s over-cerebral, Brechtian-distanced, shapelessly plotted (at least, as it’s generally cut down), sometimes much too slow—but it’s wonderful and I love it and always shall. I’d quite die to play the easily-assimilated Old Lady.

The production was good; I was dubious about Kristin Chenoweth as Cunegonde, but she pulled it off. I don’t like what they did to the second act, though. Yes, any production of Candide has to be cut viciously; the show is just too long, and contains too many songs that are wonderfully clever but don’t advance anything much. And yes, some of the cuts were good—if you’re going to keep Pangloss’s “Dear Boy” then there’s no reason to keep his patter-song about how Paquette gave him syphilis.

But you can’t cut without considering the shape of the whole, and this production to my mind didn’t leave enough shape. They apologized for it by emphasizing the word “picaresque” in the narration, but that’s not enough. Candide does have a thematic shape, to my mind. Our Hero starts out clueless but deeply honorable and goes through six different kinds of hell in the first act, while Our Heroine starts out greedy and soulless and gets exactly what she wants. The act ends with hope for both: Our Hero thinks he can improve his fortunes in America, while Our Heroine is quite willing to abandon her ill-got gains to go with him.

The second act is a muddle, no question about it. Myself, I think the way to play it is to demonstrate that Candide can resist every temptation, every worldly evil, and even despair itself (El Dorado, the two-faced shipmaster, and Martin) as long as he can believe in Cunegonde.

(I’d love to stage “The Simple Life,” because it’s just begging for a setpiece boat that can be shifted about by chorus members in time to the music, but I do agree with this production about cutting it. Its thematic purpose is to show Candide the way forward, despite the hypocrisy of the speakers; but Candide is strong enough to find his own way. Martin’s anti-Pangloss song of despair is more important.)

But Cunegonde too fails Candide—she is helpless throughout, dependent on her surroundings—in a part of the show this version left out. Reduced to penury, she and the Old Lady proposition a disguised Candide merely because he is rich; he recognizes her, and his heart fails at last.

Was it this, the meaning of my life?
The sacred hope I cherished?
Nothing more than this?
…
You cared for gold,
you cared for gold!
Take it with my kiss,
my bitter kiss.
Since it was this you wanted,
No more than this.

Without this, the show falls apart, I think. They really should have kept it, not just because it’s a gorgeous song (which it is), but because it’s Candide at his nadir, his last extremity. Only if he goes down this far does “Make Our Garden Grow” become a fulfillment for him.

You may be wondering why I post this analysis here rather than CavLec. I fear the answer will disappoint, but here it is nonetheless: there is a passing similarity between Candide and Renate. They can get through anything that assails them from without. Gangbangers, hired swords, demons, murderers, dragons—Renate can face them down and not flinch, game right to the end.

It is only from within that she can be hurt. Emil did it. Rien did it. Aryk did it. Aaron did it. She is careful about what she loves, but Rien demonstrates how perhaps she is not careful enough. Betray or deny her trust and her love, and she will do you the favor of destroying herself for you.

The really curious thing about this, though, is that I suspect it to be true of Dark Eternal as well. We shall see if I am right.

I am learning that one of the pleasures of GMing is the added little fillips of drama and irony when one’s players discuss situations they don’t have all the answers to.

Especially when the answers are really gonna hurt. If they ever find them, which they very well may not; they can cope with the situation without all the answers.

When I came up with this year’s Murder at Christmas character, I was thrilled to bits with her until I realized that nobody in her right mind would think she’d dunnit. (At the time, of course, nobody knew who the murderer would be yet.)

But I checked this year’s whodunnit poll, and what do you know! Somebody thinks Pamela dunnit!

Partly I got fortunate in the first victim, I must say. But even so, it’s nice to keep the streak going, after my successful portrayal of a carmine kipper last year.

Did Pamela do it? I ain’t sayin’. She might of done. Means, motive, and opportunity all there. But I’m just thrilled to be a suspect, whether she dunnit or not!

Ximun is methodically getting to the bottom of the ugly attack on his fellow mage Miryam, using some good old-fashioned formulaic spells. (I didn’t plan this to play into his spell-list, but I’m not at all displeased that it did.) Looking into the past a piece led him to a burial and a curiously dispassionate priest, Whom (I may say, as it’s not much of a spoiler) We May Expect To See Again.

Jullanar and don Bermudo have sped off to Logroño to beg some vis from any mages passing through. They have found a mage, and are about to make their request. I know whom they’re addressing, and I know exactly what he’s going to do with their petition.

Arnau is returning to the covenant, having discovered that the local Jews’ fears of a pogrom in Estella were (thankfully) unfounded. Scratch one hypothesis for the attack on Miryam. Or so he thinks.

Theo and Cano have gone up into the hills to assay the area for iron-mining. Theo had a nasty dizzy spell, which (unbeknownst to him) corresponded with a minor earth-tremor back at the covenant. I’m going back and forth between two explanations for this; pretty soon I’ll just have to up and pick one.

Paul and Justin have gone off to Estella to canvass the rest of the town for news; I’ve taken that thread silent, as Justin’s player isn’t posting and David wants to concentrate on don Bermudo. I’ll bring Paul back as an NPC with appropriate news. I had a mini-adventure ready for them, but it can go into cold-storage for the next group to hit town.

All in all? Not bad.

So Aryk’s in this huge Ilium poetry slam, right? And he needs to place in the top three, because if he does, he’ll get to open for Purgatory (and maybe throw a monkey wrench or two into their pro-Andragar propaganda machine), okay? All-freestyle, so the audience (in this case, David, reading over my shoulder) throws out topics and the emcee randomly picks one.

Second round, and what’s Aryk’s topic? This is all David’s fault, by the way.

“Bunnies.” I totally kid you not. “Bunnies.”

Between them, Alan (GM, playing Aryk’s backup Arretia and Aryk’s opponent Ambrose, as well as emcee Iron Telomere, impresario Hadley Domingo, and four out of five slam judges) and Matt (playing Aryk) totally ran with it, with me chucking in a few random numbers as Eleanora, the fifth slam judge. Herewith, The Bunny Rap Scene. Bits in parentheses, by long-standing Dragonhunt convention, are out-of-character backchat.

Alan: “The word for this match is…” Iron Telomere hunts around in her bag. “…bunnies! Bunnies?”

Alan: “Dammit, Hadley!”

Alan: Hadley shrugs. “They’re all audience suggestions!”

Aryk: “Bunnies?! BUNNIES?! HOW CAN I RAP ABOUT BUNNIES?!”

Alan: The audience is laughing, wondering what the contestants are going to make of it.

Alan: Ambrose Thunderhead stares at the ceiling, then says “Hm. I know.”

Eleanora: (You can kick David’s ass when you move to Wisconsin, Matt. I give you a free innings.)

Alan: “Well, call it, Thunderhead.”

Alan: She flips. “I call heads!” the dwarf cries.

Alan: [1d2] -> [1] = (1)

Alan: “And I’ll go second. If you’re so flummoxed, paladin, I won’t let you have time to think about it!”

Alan: “Okay then,” Telomere laughs. “Bunnies! Whenever you’re ready!”

Alan: Arretia giggles to herself. “What do you want, Aryk? Dark or light?”

Aryk: “Light. Overly light.”

Alan: “You’ll get both.”

Aryk: “Ridiculously light, even.”

Eleanora: (”Li’l bunny Froo-Froo…”)

Alan: She pops two soundcubes in and starts playing one… “Little bunny foo-foo was hopping through the forest…”

Alan: (Jinx!)

Aryk: What the fuck, man!!

Aryk: Okay, here we go.

Alan: She instantly slams the fader to a post-Slab rage band. “DEAAAATH! DEEAAAATH!”

Alan: The fader again: “pickin’ up the fieldmice and boppin’ em on the” “DEAAAATH!”

** Aryk shakes his head, and then begins to feel the beat regardless **

Alan: Then she drops the beat, leaving the bunny tune over the top.

** Eleanora is laughing herself to tears in the judges’ row. **

Aryk: “Fluffy bunnies, fluffy bunnies / The world is full of fluffy bunnies

Aryk: “That’s people living happily / Finding dragon tyranny so funny

Aryk: “That’s idiots spending frivolously / wasting all that hard earned money

Aryk: “Just to make their lives seem calm / at ease / what else do you want from me?

Aryk: Why is it people live selfishly / ignorant of the blood-stained truth

Aryk: While you work your fuckin’ nine-to-five / dragons make decisions for you

Aryk: While you go home / Kiss your wife and kids/ Dark Eternal pretends to implore you

Aryk: When honestly he don’t give a fuck / But you think that he adores you

Aryk: Nations will collide / Do you think that Heaven will ignore you?

Aryk: Honestly, it makes me sick / To see good people act so dumb

Aryk: When demons, dragons, crime syndicates have you under their thumb?

Aryk: It’s time for a change/ the system to be rearranged

Aryk: You’re little Jack Horner/ go fuckin’ eat your plums

Aryk: So prance around and dance around and eat up all your greens

Aryk: You’re all just little fuckin’ bunnies, man / Now it don’t sound so obscene

Aryk: When you leave tonight / in a state of fright / you’ll know just what I mean!”

Alan: Arretia has been shifting the beat darker and darker as you go along, fading the bunny song out.

Alan: But now she concludes by snapping it back in: “Now I’m going to give you one… more… chance…”

Alan: And the bell rings.

Aryk: “That’s my word!” He winks at Saladin and slams the pickup back into its holster.

Alan: The audience goes wild. They love raps about bunnies!

Alan: “I think I’m slowly going insane,” Iron Telomere says. “Okay, Ambrose Thunderhead, bring it back.”

Alan: Ambrose signals to his drummer, who starts up a beat.

Eleanora: (”Coal Miner’s Bunny”) (editor’s note: the joke here is that Aryk’s opponent in this round is a miner who raps a lot about how much mining sucks)

** Aryk plops down in his seat. He has no idea how he was able to rap about bunnies. He can’t even remember what he said. **

Alan: “When I pick up my pick-axe, flak flies from rocks / when I swing my mattock, cracks spread in locks / when you jackrabbit out of your cave, I’m taking over the rave like pirate radicals blockade the docks!”

Alan: “You’re a hare, a lop-eared, cotton-tailed disgrace / When I get up in the spot, I’ll put you back in your place / When you step up to the hill, I’ll shoot you down with my bow / You’d better learn which warren-holes are safe to go!”

Alan: “So listen up: I’m straight Ithaca style / and when if you pick up an inch, I’m going to pick up a mile, we’re talking old style / none of these Dragon’s Reign kilometers / we’re more hardcore than lodestone barometers”

Aryk: “Wow… that’s not bad.” Aryk looks a bit concerned for his own welfare.

Alan: “I’m an uncut stone that bears weight / I’m on a throne of bones of those who battled fate / and lost, but I never wear county blues, I floss / soot stains and coal dust / you can never control us!”

Aryk: Aryk whispers to Arretia and Saladin, “I wish I hadn’t gone first this time… he’s feeding off me.”

Alan: “Don’t bunny-hop; you can’t dodge my fletchery / you’re not a pimp-dad; you’re just a master of lechery / you can’t hang against dwarves, you’re not that tall / and when I kick for the goal, keep your eye on the ball!”

Alan: The dwarf stands down with a satisfied smirk.

** Aryk gives Thunderhead a respectful nod. **

Alan: Iron Telomere says, “Let it be on the record that he used five of those phrases in the battle at Conroy’s on Woodson Street two months ago. You know the rules.”

Eleanora: (I thought that might be the case.)

Alan: A certain amount of repetition is allowed; after all, there are only so many rhymes, period. But if someone actually has you made, you lose a point for every two self-bites.

Alan: As a rough estimate.

** Aryk suddenly feels a glint of hope **

Alan: “For the record, he adapted a few of them to the random word,” Tarno Thraddash whispers.

Alan: “But yeah.”

Alan: “Okay then,” Telomere says. “Let’s score! Aryk first.”

Eleanora: “Yeah, so shit, replacin’ one word…” Eleanora mutters back. “I expected better of that boy, I really did.”

** Aryk closes his eyes **

Eleanora: Eleanora scribbles quickly, thrusts a 9 defiantly into the air.

Eleanora: Eleanora doesn’t give 10s.

** Aryk clasps Arretia’s hand. He doesn’t look. He only wants to hear the final score. **

Eleanora: She believes there’s always room for improvement.

Alan: Tarno Thraddash gives Aryk a 7. “Always harder second round,” he whispers.

Alan: Master Tanager impartially offers an 8. “I like bunnies, too.”

Aryk: (LOL)

Alan: From Damiano Entemann, a 7; from Trenton Lakhat, an 8.

Alan: “Lot of heart,” Trenton explains.

Aryk: (WOOHOO! I can live with that)

Alan: “So the total is 23, seven points shy of a perfect score. From this crowd, not bad!”

Alan: “Now to judge Ambrose Thunderhead. Judges?”

** Aryk hugs Arretia **

Alan: Master Tanager offers another 8. “Excellent rhymes. Now get a message.”

Aryk: “No matter what happens, Arretia, you were great.”

Eleanora: Eleanora shakes her head, offers a 5.

Alan: Trenton gives a 6. “I didn’t feel anything.”

Alan: Damiano hands out an 8: “At the risk of stereotyping myself… I think it would sell.”

** Eleanora rolls her eyes disdainfully. **

Eleanora: That wasn’t a ten before deductions. Please.

Alan: And finally, Tarno Thraddash gives out a 4, with a half smile. “Old grudge.”

Alan: Judges are chosen to be impartial—and if someone chooses unwisely, you’re stuck.

Alan: Iron Telomere echoes Eleanora’s concern. “That’s with the two points taken off, Entemann?”

Alan: “Huh, it’s not just a guideline? Hm… six, then?”

Alan: Master Tanager says, “It’s a guideline for me. For you it’s the law.”

Alan: “My eight is unadorned.”

Eleanora: “No, it’s not just a fuckin’ guideline, man, get your head in the game!”

Alan: Damiano nods. “Six. Six.”

Aryk: “Damn!”

Alan: “Then the total is 17. A clean victory for Aryk!”

** Aryk throws his arms around and kisses on the cheek the nearest person. **

Alan: “Watch out, though, kid; I think we can all agree your message and your lightwarrior won that one for you.”

Eleanora: “Room for that,” Eleanora says complacently.

** Aryk nods **

Alan: Master Tanager shrugs. “Everyone has opinions, Tess.”

Eleanora: “Yeah, an’ everyone should have mine!”

I managed to surprise the Dragonhunt GM last session. I do not often do this, so I will take a moment to be proud of myself.

Renate had no luck tracking Aaron down, and time was running out before he did something (she wasn’t sure what, but the possibilities were frightening) that got him jailed, killed, or possibly both.

So she cut it off at the pass. By challenging the Baron of Glenworth to an individual duel. And (here was my surprise) dropping her weapons on the field of honor and inviting him to kill her, so long as her blood ended the feud.

It didn’t fly. (Meta-plot reasons, mostly.) Words speak louder than actions in the Dragonhunt, and while Renate is a fair wordsmith, she wasn’t up to countering Stephen of Glenworth’s demagoguery that day. (Hard enough to walk onto a field and tell a man to hurt you. I don’t blame the girl one bit.) He was ready to send her home in chains just for humiliation’s sake, but Aaron’s wife the Heaven commander interceded. So Renate collected Aaron and went home.

Seeing real, two-hundred-proof hate-filled insanity shocked her out of Bad Headspace, at least. She’s herself again, though (understandably) grieving over Rien’s and Aaron’s untruths and betrayals. Her flirtation with suicide has caused Coris to back way the heck off, though in my humble opinion all it really shows is how perfect they are for each other… but this isn’t the first romance Renate’s risky lifestyle has derailed; she understands his hesitancy perfectly, and won’t press him for more than he wants to give her.

(She also has suspicions about his birthplace and birth-rank, but she’s keeping her mouth shut about them. Because if they turn out to be true, she will have even more cause to regret driving him off.)

I’m working on a fluff piece with Renate and Coris, but it’s slow going because it’s hard to keep Coris properly noncommittal. (It’s not my business to decide what Coris thinks and feels.) I do want to let the two of them bond a little over strayed siblings, have Renate discreetly indicate that she’s not offended at Coris’s reaction to her little stunt, and perhaps get across what Renate’s political plans are.

(Karlbotel can’t handle Glenworth-plus-Heaven alone, and the chances of Ilium heeding Karlbotel’s difficulties are nil. So it’s time to work up some defense alliances, and perhaps even a one-way tariff or toll on anything going into Glenworth—with any luck, that would start to depopulate the place, as its residents don’t share Stephen’s onus and must share a web of family relationships in Karlbotel and the other surrounding provinces, creating an incentive to leave. Renate, of course, will want to be prepared with resettlement aid. Expensive, but if it cuts off Stephen’s economic support at the root without harming his people, absolutely worth it.)

What can Renate do, with broken relationships and a brand-new political morass? Well, what can she do but start over?

My sense is that Renate is going to lose the Dragonhunt. When I have a chance to jump, I just don’t jump the right way. Poor girl, she deserves a better player.

But I’m proud of her anyway, because she’s going to fail well. Despite Alan’s protestations, the Dragonhunt world is not one designed for noble heroes—it is designed for loud, arrogant, warmongering blowhards. Renate isn’t any of these things. QED.

Aaron Wrenfall, you will remember, snuck off to arch-enemy Glenworth in order to have words with his not-quite-ex-wife, Heaven functionary Poya Kern. Renate couldn’t manage to track him down, so she promptly lost what was left of her temper and decided to put her own spoke in the wheels.

Which she did in gallant style, by issuing a personal challenge to Baron Stephen of Glenworth and then refusing to hurt him, offering her own life in redress of the damage Karlbotel had done him. Noble. Heroic, even. And it failed.

Well, it did and it didn’t. It certainly derailed the tournament, along with whatever personal confrontation Aaron had planned. So she has achieved her immediate goal of getting him and Coris out of Glenworth unharmed. But mad Stephen wasn’t having any satyagraha, thank you; it took Aaron’s wife’s intervention to keep him from sending Renate home in chains or putting her in the stocks or something similarly humiliating. (Which, of course, she would have put up with patiently and with dignity, because Renate’s all about the dignity when the occasion calls for it.) She did win the open, public admission that he is trimming with Andragar, sufficient that even complacent Ilium will have to sit up and take notice. And she took the measure of Stephen’s chamberlain, an interesting fellow indeed. As failures go, it was a successful failure.

And really, it was an enormously Renate-like thing to do, entirely in line with what I know of her personal ethical code. No one is above sin; likewise no one is beyond redemption. (Why will Renate never be an indiscriminate killer? Because death ends the possibility of redemption.) Ex-enemies are the best friends. When you make a mess—and sometimes there’s just no choice—own up to it and clean it up yourself. Nobility amounts to dignity, honesty, responsibility, and sacrifice. Heroism is not war; seeking peace is often more heroic than battle. Nor can worth be measured in a single person or a single decision or action; it is the sum of many people and a thousand thousand actions. (This, to her as to me, is the signal failure of the Kahanite belief-testing mechanism.) The value of a sentient being (or a group of them) is not necessarily measured in skill or even efficacy, and certainly not by belief. Forgiveness and mercy are godlike, and revenge is outright evil; when you must kill, kill for the sake of the future, not the past.

(Which is why Stephen of Glenworth just hit her “better-dead” list, along with Keph LoCaine and [ha ha] Dark Eternal. Stephen’s going to make a hell of a mess if he’s let live. I have other ideas for what to do about Glenworth, but if Stephen’s chamberlain has the sense he appears to, he’ll keep Stephen way the hell away from Renate in future. She gave Stephen his chance; he didn’t just turn it down, he spurned it. Renate’s got no personal animus about that, but she’s fully aware now that Stephen of Glenworth is immediately dangerous to Ilium in general and Karlbotel in particular and needs to be neutralized, by death if there’s no other way.)

Renate does not violate her personal code by allying with the nominally (or actually) evil, only by working toward an unacceptable goal. The idea that one denies another an opportunity to do good, whatever their tangled personal reasons for it, is just enormously strange to her. (She and Aryk have fought over this point, and doubtless will again.) She does not necessarily violate her personal code by keeping another’s secret (though she vastly prefers openness), only by cravenly hiding from her own deeds. Hypocrisy, I think, is the sin that would damn her in her own eyes.

I suspect that my fellow players and GM think that Renate’s cold conduct toward her brother violates her code, considering how highly she values forgiveness. They’re wrong; that’s not what I think they’re thinking it is. They should ask about it sometime.

But in any case, I reiterate that I don’t think this code is going to get Renate to her goal. She will, however, fail nobly by my lights and die well, and I am reasonably content with that, as much as I would prefer to imagine her dying quietly at an advanced age sitting under apple-trees in bloom with the sound of her grandchildren’s laughter around her.

I am having just entirely too much fun with a hairsplitting Monrroyo back-and-forth on the nature of time. Dangers of GMing, I suppose.

And normally I hate these kinds of discussions…

I’m teaming up with lovely MC again for this year’s Murder at Christmas. (Last year, we played sweet but silly Selina and her cannier but eviller brother Will.)

This year, MC decided against her usual rakish bloke in favor of Arabella, Dowager Countess of Gower. I will be playing her daughter Lady Pamela, one of those nice, plain, oft-disregarded English girls who seem to feature prominently in almost any novel you name, usually as a foil for the much-lovelier female protagonist.

(We’ve got beauty to burn this Murder, it seems; an actress and a Southern-belle singer and I don’t know what-all. I’m sure they’ll appreciate having Pamela around to sneer at and steal beaux from.)

As is customary in Murder at Christmas, all characters have secrets they are desperately trying to keep from everyone else. I don’t know Arabella’s (how could such a sweet-faced old lady have a bad secret?), but I can say that Pamela’s isn’t horrible or evil, just rather sad and sorry.

Last year’s game was a trip; I have high hopes for this year’s.

An IM conversation:

Me: Heh heh heh. Congratulations for inducting Matt into the Dragonhunt Hall of Paranoia.
Alan (D’hunt GM): Now it’s everyone from any Dragonhunt campaign ever!