Back to the Future

I don't really have anywhere to post about 40K. This blog was originally about VSF, then some VBCW crept in, and just Imagi-nations stuff in general. So this is probably the place for it. But I may as well admit that this blog is just 'everything that isn't Sword'n'Sorcery'.

I haven't been visiting LAF (link) much lately. I haven't been painting, I haven't been playing, I've just been messing about with flags and alternative histories. I have at least 3 unplayed games lying about (GASLIGHT and In Her Majesty's Name for VSF, Setting the East Ablaze for Back of Beyond) that I'd like to take for a spin but I just don't get round to it.

What I have done recently is get the paints down again and do some work on the piles of lead, pewter and plastic in the loft. This has lead to me actually completing my Space Marine Battle Company (at least, as near as damn it). I have painted six Tactical Squads of Ultramarines (with some alternative Sergeants and special/heavy weapons troopers should I want to take Plasma Guns or Heavy Bolters in lieu of Flamers and Missile Launchers); 2 Devastator Squads (I had to bodge a Missile Launcher Marine with some wonky parts and some broken guitar string); and one Assault Squad (the other Assault Squad is waiting on having its ammo pouches and holsters painted brown - the last thing I have to do for the 100 battle-brothers of the 2nd Company of Ultramarines). I still need to finish a Command Squad and I don't have eight Rhino transports for them but I've done all the troops and that gives me a certain satisfaction. As 9th Edition is being released now, and as I started this during 4th Edition, it has taken me a while, and probably the army is unplayable (I gather there are now Super-Marines now called 'Primaris' Marines but I don't know anything about them, except they're 'better'), but ho-hum.

I rewarded myself with a visit to the LAF and found something that I had missed on many of my last visits. About three years ago, some of the lunatics over there decided to co-operatively build a Space Marine Chapter (link here). This would have colouring and iconography derived from the forum - the Chapter's colours would be based on those of the forum and the Chapter Icon has been taken from the artwork on the forum. The letters 'LAF', possibly in Greek form (lambda alpha phi, λ α φ ) would also form part of the Chapter's iconography in some way.

I love co-operative world-building. I'm always trying to do it, whether that's the Atlantis Campaign I was involved in, or the as-yet unsuccessful attempt to run a Ruritania Campaign. Over on my fantasy blog I've attempted to get involved in a variety of co-operative world-building ventures and even tried to start some.

So, a co-operatively-built Space Marine Chapter is right up my alley. I still have a few random Marines knocking about from my many ebay purchases building the Battle Company over the last 15 years or so, so I plan on donating a few to the cause and painting them up as members of the Lead Legion, a Chapter hailing from the Lead Mountains of Attica. Here's my take on the painting scheme anyway, with a little excerpt from the forum pages to hopefully show how the colours relate.

Space Marine originally from the Bolter and Chainsword Space Marine Painter, here - http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/smpbeta.php

I've simplified the Chapter Icon even further than the proposed version on the LAF thread. I really hope there are some transfers still in existence, because I don't fancy painting that 10 or 20 times if I don't have to. I might be able to paint a white circle to put the transfer over though!

This will I hope keep any further itch to paint Space Marines satisfied, for a little while at least.

Return to Zenda (again...)

Sadly I have to report a crime - against history no less. A chunk of the Wikipedia entry on Ruritania has been removed. I shall of course argue for it to be re-instated, as soon as I can remember what my Wikipedia log-in details are.

The section removed is as follows:

Hope depicts Ruritania as a German-speaking, Roman Catholic country under an absolute monarchy, with deep social, but not ethnic, divisions reflected in the conflicts of the first novel.

Geographically, it is usually considered to be located between Saxony and Bohemia; the author indicates that the capital city, Strelsau, is reached by railway from Dresden. The distance and direction are not clearly stated, but to reach Strelsau from Paris the hero must pass through Dresden then cross the border and travel some 60 miles to the capital. It is probable that Hope had Prague in mind for Strelsau, described in the novel as second only to Paris in terms of desirability for an ambassadorship. In The Heart of Princess Osra, set in the 18th century, Hope refers to a palace "which stood...where the public gardens now are (for the Palace itself was sacked and burnt by the people in the rising of 1848)". In this novel, it emerges in passing that Jews were not then allowed to hold an interest in land in the capital.

Other, more recent authors have created homages set in Ruritania, such as Simon Hawke's science fiction re-working The Zenda Vendetta (Time Wars Book 4) (1985), John Spurling's After Zenda (1995) and John Haythorne's The Strelsau Dimension (1981).

Neither Hawke nor Spurling adheres to the Hope canon; their works show influences from the film adaptations. Hawke relocates Ruritania to the Balkans, and makes it smaller and more socially cohesive; Spurling, who places the country in the Carpathians, thus hinting at its being in fact the former Habsburg province of Transylvania—today part of Romania—introduces ethnic and linguistic divisions; Haythorne puts Ruritania on the Northern side of Czechoslovakia to Spurling's setting, in approximately the same location as Hope's original.

Hope's novels resulted in "Ruritania" becoming a generic term for any small, imaginary, Victorian or Edwardian Era, European kingdom used as the setting for romance, intrigue and the plots of adventure novels. It lent its name to a whole genre of writing, the Ruritanian romance, including the Graustark novels by George Barr McCutcheon. An early reference in a non-canonical story is the mention in "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", a Sherlock Holmes short story from 1924, of an ocean liner named the Ruritania. In Evelyn Waugh's 1930 comedic novel Vile Bodies, one character is a deposed and maudlin "ex-King of Ruritania"; he is presumably the same figure who appears in several witty P. G. Wodehouse stories, mostly as the doorman of Barribault's Hotel.

Later authors develop the idea further. Ruritania inspired other fictional countries, such as Ixania in Eric Ambler's The Dark Frontier, Riechtenburg in Dornford Yates' Blood Royal and Fire Below, and Evallonia in John Buchan's Castle Gay and The House of the Four Winds, which share with the original the depiction of complex power struggles in which a visiting protagonist from a real country becomes deeply involved.

In 1970 Neiman-Marcus selected Ruritania as the subject of its annual fortnight, in which the arts, culture, and goods of a country are highlighted both in the store and through special events. Previous subjects included real countries including England, France, Italy and Denmark.

In the 1974 novel Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser, Ruritania is claimed to be a fictional country based on the (equally fictional) Duchy of Strackenz that borders Germany and Denmark, and the events of The Prisoner of Zenda were simply imitations of the adventures of Harry Flashman whilst in Strackenz.

In Uncanny X-Men #204 (April 1986), Nightcrawler rescued a New York businesswoman, Judith Rassendyll, from the X-Men's enemy Arcade; she subsequently learned that she was the hereditary queen of Ruritania and relocated there to claim her crown.

In 2006, Ignacio Padilla published La Gruta del Toscano (ISBN 84-204-7072-4), a novel in which Ruritanians discover a cavern in the Himalayas, somewhere on the border between China and Nepal. The cavern seems to be an earthly replica of Dante's inferno, and several expeditions try to reach its ninth circle, including one directed by "La cofradía de Zenda", a group of Ruritanian mountaineers. Part of the action is set in Strelsau, capital of Ruritania.

Ruritania is featured in the animated series Count Duckula, in which it is depicted as a popular ski resort, with competitions in winter sports held in the Ruritanian town of Danglegoggle.

Ruritania is mentioned in "The New Traveller's Almanac". In Back in the USSA, Princess Flavia of Ruritania marries into an alternate history Romanov dynasty.

Jolly updates...

On the VSF front: I have recently taken delivery of a large quantity of Prussians Ruritanians from Northstar - a pack of 24 Infantry, two cannon with crew, and 10 Hussars. These (along with the dozen or so Ruritanians, composed of Zendarian Troopers from Westwind, and some officers from various places, that I already posses) will form the basis of my long-delayed Ruritanian forces.

I have made a provisional decision on colour-schemes. A long time ago, I discussed on Lead Adventure the notion that Ruritania should look 'chocolate box-y'. As such, using Prussian minis from 25 years before the general setting will not be out of place. Also, for 'colourful medley' effect, each regiment will have its own tunic-colour. The now traditional 'Ruritanian Gold' jackets (which in themselves are a reference to Colonel Mustard, rather than anything in the Zenda books) will remain the uniform of the Ruritanian Infantry. Artillery will be dressed in purple tunics, I think. That will I believe look 'well natty'. The Hussars I'm thinking will be uniformed in pale blue; I'm not sure about their hats yet. Future additions to the force may include Uhlans or Cuirassiers, or both, if they aren't the same thing, I'm really not too knowledgeable about this stuff. Rudolf Rassendyl is definitely described in Zenda as wearing a white Cuirassier uniform, perhaps something like this rather natty illustration:

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Anton_von_Werner_-_Garde-du-Corps-K%C3%BCrassier.jpg

This implies that Prussia at least had some! So maybe I just need to look harder for the minis. Should I source any, they will be dressed in white (a damn tricky colour to paint effectively, I'll agree). If I can't, then the Uhlans will have to stand in, though Northstar's Uhlans don't have breastplates, which is rather what defines 'Cuirassiers' as far as I'm concerned. Also in the pipeline, some Jaegers, as Commodore Lethbridge-Stewart (the mini is another Westwind Zendarian, one of the Vampire Slayers) has a lovely dark green jacket, and can lead them when they have been purchased. However, I spent my Christmas-and-birthday money on the latest batch, and can't really justify getting more toy soldiers at the moment.

In other news, I'm finally reading Vile Bodies and have a little more information on the 'ex-King of Ruritania' featured in its pages. Vile Bodies is set around 1928. The ex-King is a godson of the Archduke of Austria (he does not say which), was a reigning monarch, and refers to the end of the monarchy being occasioned by WWI. This means he is likely to have been an adult before 1918, so at absolute minimum he was born before the turn of the century. He has a wife, called Maria Christina, currently in a lunatic asylum somewhere in southern England; his Uncle Joseph was assassinated at the opera, by people throwing bombs (likely, Anarchists); his unnamed sister also foiled at least one assassination attempt on herself involving bombs; there was indeed a plague of political bombing in Ruritania before the War; there was a Liberal minister in Ruritania called 'Count Tampen' who stole the King's favourite pen (a gift from his godfather); and the Prime Minister at the end of the war (it is not stated whether this is Count Tampen or not) was thrown from a window by an angry, indeed rebellious, mob. That is as far as I can get at the moment, but it does provide some clues to the post-Rudolfian history of Ruritania which I am trying to tie together with the other info.

What I would like to be the case is that I can make the chronology fit with the ex-King being the eldest son of Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and Princess Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen of Scandinavia. This would tie the events of Zenda with those of Scandal in Bohemia... except, Wilhelm in this case is not King of Bohemia or even King of Ruritania... because Flavia is the reigning monarch. He may actually be King of Bohemia if this is not the same as Ruritania, and heir-apparent to Ruritania, perhaps, but I think I'll just demote him to Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein. Anyway, if their marriage was in 1888, as I think is perhaps the case, it is perfectly likely they had a son who was born in c. 1890, and was old enough to inherit the throne of Ruritania before the war. 'Uncle Joseph', perhaps Wilhelm's younger brother, was in this case probably assassinated around 1905-8.

The last thing I'm going to post today is a couple of newspaper clippings from the Strelsau English Gazette (Ruritania's only English paper!) that I made and then forgot about.

These are successive editions that relate to the projected beginning of the Ruritanian crisis. But perhaps nothing will come of it...

Flags of Ruritania

Well, playing around with Scrontch of course...

Variations on a general theme of red and white, with a gold eagle. It should probably be two-headed but Scrontch doesn't support that. Obviously, I could go back and do most of these with a diamond not a roundel and other variations. I may do that another time. The last one is the problem for that as I haven't used a roundel anyway - I've actually used a white cross on a vertical-striped red-and-white background. This produces a flag divided into three, with a central white bar and two side-panels of white crosses on red. It actually looks a bit Danish to me. I've used the same technique (but reversed) to produce a VBCW flag with St George's crosses, that I've thrown in at the end as a bonus.

There are two with thin horizontal red and white stripes. One goes red-white-red... the other white-red-white... but they're so similar that they would be indistinguishable on the tabletop. They could only be used as variants I think, so I've listed them as 2a and 2b. When I get around to it, variations of these will be accompanying my Ruritanian troopers, who will see the light of day at some point I'm sure.

Ruritanian unit 1

Ruritanian unit 2a

Ruritanian unit 2b

Ruritanian unit 3

Ruritanian unit 4

Ruritanian unit 5

Ruritanian unit 6

Ruritanian unit 7

And, for a VBCW unit or something similar, perhaps Anglicans from Exeter given the tower motif and the St George's crosses...

South Devon Anglican Defence Force

Meh, more flags of Khemed

I had forgotten about these 'Khemedistan' flags until I was on the BoB facebook page today.

I realised that there were other combinations of crescent-and-star on green, with added red, that I hadn't tried so I did a few more. Theoretically there are loads more but some don't look very good, and some would only be very slight variations on what has already gone before, making it impossible to see the difference. These at least are sufficiently different I hope to be distinguishable on the table. Maybe the last two won't be. But, anyway, alternative flags with Khemed-inspired imagery.

Flags of Khemed

I've been playing with Scrontch's flag-designer and inkscape again.

And Imagi-nations.

And thinking about Central Asia.

I'm being tempted by another Interwar adventure, this time the 'Back of Beyond' setting. I picked up 'Setting the East Ablaze' a couple of years ago but have never done anything with it. Still looking for inspiration I suppose, and also, I have a bazillion minis for games I don't play, I might not get more minis for games I don't play...

But anyway... messing about with the flag of Khemed, from Tintin.

You can see the original here:

... or on on the Flags of the World website:

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/f/fictkhmd.gif

These are my versions, which are intended to represent 'pan-Khemedian' forces in Central Asia, on the somewhat tenuous analogy that Khemed is something like Turkey, and therefore there might be a 'Khemedistan' where Turkmenistan is now.

Here's the results - variations on a theme of green and red, with a white crescent-and-star motif. Someday they might get themselves on a battlefield, but we'll see...

New Old Things

I've been helping my parents clear out their loft as they're moving house. Little by way of my gaming stuff left at their house, but I did find one of the old Matchbox Models of Yesteryear.

This is what it looks like (though the pic was ripped from the web):

Jaguar SS-100 from Matchbox Models of Yesteryear

It will possibly see service in VBCW gaming - that's the plan anyway. Maybe as the personal transport of the leader of any Fascist forces. I can just imagine it with a couple of pennants flying from the radiator grille.

Another find at my parents' house was a very old game called Scoop!. It's a newspaper game: the basic idea is that the players are the editors of daily newspapers (The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express and the News Chronicle, which ceased publication in 1960 and kinda dates the game). The editors spend resources to get stories that they use to fill in blocks on a mock-up of a front page; the winner (as far as I remember, I haven't played it in more than 30 years I don't think) is the first to complete the page.

The reason I bring it up is that there's a certain amount of Imagi-Nations goodness going on. One of the stories that editors can ... bid for? ... is about a war between the Stentorians and the Ugonians. I haven't examined the game in detail yet but there may be other stories which mention imaginary countries or other significant events. At the very least, there is a war between two Imagi-Nations that needs to be taken into account sometime in the 1950s (at a reasonable guess). The likely explanation is a Cold War conflict but like tension between Greece and Turkey or Chile and Argentina, it could be two Western allies that were in conflict. Or, like the USSR/Vietnam v China/Khmer Republic conflicts it could represent strife between different 'communist' countries. I shall do more research and think on.

I was reminded of another game from my childhood that features an Imagi-Nation, possibly the most famous of them all. As a kid I played a game called Contraband, which belonged to one of the friends of my parents. The game was a kind of card game that involved smuggling. Different cards involved different things that needed to be smuggled. I seem to remember these included some diamonds, a gun and the Ruritanian Crown Jewels. The game seems to have started production in the 1950s. I definitely played it around 1979, which suggests that between those times, the Ruritanian Crown Jewels were missing. I guess the reason is, Ruritania was an Eastern Bloc country between the 1950s and 1970s (probably something like 1948-1990) and the Royal Family (if it even survived) was in exile. We don't know exactly what the history of Ruritania is but that seems a reasonable supposition. If the 'ex-King' (or possibly ex-Kings) that feature in the works of Evelyn Waugh and PG Wodehouse are anything to go by, Ruritania had suffered at least one deposed monarch by the late '20s, though whether deposed by Communist uprising, a liberal democratic republic, or Fascist takeover is entirely unclear. But whatever happened between the wars, after WWII Ruritania was likely in the Eastern Bloc. The definitive history of Ruritania is yet to be written, but there are hints at least. Sadly I don't have a copy of Contraband but I'm thinking I might try and get one. Probably should get hold of Vile Bodies too.

The Ruritanian Succession, Part 1

Well, now, how will this work? According to the 'history' we have, Flavia is the last reigning monarch of Ruritania - at least, the last we know about, up to the end of 'Rupert of Hentzau'*. I'm not counting Haythorne's 'The Strelsau Dimension' (1981), Simon Hawke's 'The Zenda Vendetta (Time Wars 4)' (1985) or Spurling's 'After Zenda' (1995), partly because I've never read any of them, and partly (at least in Hawke's and Spurling's cases), because it's not 'our' Ruritania, being variously in the Balkans and Carpathians. Haythorne gets Ruritania in more or less the right place it seems. Maybe worth picking that one up from somewhere.

WIP shot of random Artizan Texas Ranger (painted as generic cowboy) with Westwind Tsarina, Tsar and Zendarian Vampire Hunter; aka, in this context, Queen Flavia, her potential cousin Albert (of Molvania? Of Graustark? Of Strackenz?) and Kolonel von Sanf-und-Schinkel

There's a non-canonical Holmes & Watson story called 'The Seven Percent Solution' by Nicholas Meyers (1974). This sets the action of 'Zenda' in 1891. An additional possibility is a book that I've only just discovered called 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hentzau Affair' by David Stuart Davies(2007). Curioser and curioser...

And there's always 'Royal Flash' by George MacDonald Fraser of course.

Anyway, at the moment there's little we know about the Ruritanian monarchy after the death of Rudolf V (who is, as we now know, Rudolf Rassendyll). Flavia continues to rule; some time later 'Rupert of Hentzau' is published. Finding the gap in time between 'Prisoner' and 1898 (publication of 'Rupert of Hentzau') is something of a matter of taste.

Fritz von Tarlenheim relates the story to his son, of whom there is no hint in the novel: we are left with the impression that the events of 'Prisoner of Zenda' take place some 14 years or more before the time of writing 'Rupert of Hentzau'. If, as we may suspect, publication of Fritz's memoir was swift, we may believe it was written around 1897; if Fritz's son had not been born at the time (as seems reasonable), the events of 'Hentzau' would be around 1886 at the latest (though of course, they could have been several years earlier). The latest date for 'Zenda' is thus c1883. The only times that they must post-date are the building of the railway line from Dresden to Strelsau (around 1840 - actually, having checked this, the first part of the line from Dresden to Prague was opened in 1848), 1848 (when riots burn down the White Palace in Strelsau) and 1852 (the Second Empire in France; Rassendyll has an 'Imperial' beard of a style fashionable in France after this period).

So at some point after 1852, and before 1883, the events of 'Zenda' take place. After that is where it gets tricky.






*However, both PG Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh refer to an 'ex-King of Ruritania' who works as a doorman at Barribault's Hotel. As Waugh is also a source for the Royal Corps of Halberdiers (of which more to come) and the Loamshire Regiment, as well as other fictional regiments; and Wodehouse is the source for things that definitely exist in the 1920s yet to come, their credentials check out. So we know that there must have been another ruler of Ruritania after 1898. Either a new husband for Flavia (seems unlikely, frankly) or some distant cousin, perhaps? What about some relative descended from Osra's brother (Henry? The one who left anyway), or perhaps from the House of Graustark even?

More fictional Eastern Europe

Hard on the heels of the Central Europe map, here is the corresponding South-East Euope version. I'll admit, I don't know as much about Samavia, Jiardasia, Wallaria and Molvania as I do about Ruritania, but it seems plausible enough for an alternate-history 1890-1910.

Fictional Central-Eastern Europe

After an evening messing about with google images and picture-editing software, I have this - a map of fictional Central-Eastern Europe as it might have existed in a VSF late 19th century.

Included are Ruritania, with Strelsau, Zenda and Hentzau marked; Molvania, with its capital Lutenblag; Graustark, with Edelweiss and Ganlook; Leutha, from Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories, and several other fictional territories.

It may have some relevance to the question of what exactly Whimsy's father was up to - then again, it might not.