Count Maximillian Disappears

This is the scrap of newspaper that Whimsy Pootling finds in the ransacked study... is it a clue to her father's disappearance? It's the front page of an old copy of the Strelsau English Gazette, Ruritania's only English paper. She is certain her father was on his way to Ruritania when he was last seen.

But what has it to do with him? The newspaper is nearly twenty years old, from the very month she was born. What can the connection be between the mysterious disappearance of Count Maximillian, whoever he is, and her father's disappearance? And who are the dour men in black jackets that have been seen about the village? Were they responsible for the break-in at Pootling Hall?

Whimsy really doesn't know, but she is beginning to suspect that things are going to get a lot more dangerous before she gets any answers...



The image, first posted over at the Lead Adventurers' Forum, is thanks to the wonderful engine at the Newspaper Clipping Image Generator, a fine place to start a story off indeed, and newly added to the links on the left there. Make your own Martian Invasion, Shrinking Ray Discovery, Custard Explosion or whatever you like. But beware (as all press barons should) that with great power comes great responsibility...

Fictional Army Regiments

I've been checking out the various fictional army regiments that different people have written about over the last... oh, 160 years or so, and of course there's a wikipedia page for them. As I'm not a total masochist I'm not going to type up every single one, but I will start adding a list of regiments, period of earliest (fictional) mention, and (where known) theatres of operations, for regiments up to 1900.

Details of the vast majority of these regiments can be found on the wiki page listed above. Some have an unknown early history, but their earlier existence can be surmised (eg the 'Musketeer' regiments probably pre-date the Napoleonic Wars). Some I'm making up on sketchy evidence I'll admit.

Regiments in existence before 1800:
4th Musketeers (early history unknown, but existed during WWII)
Duke of Buckingham's Light Infantry - Marlburian campaigns, Jacobite Risings
Lord Semphill's Highland Regiment - Jacobite Regiment
Royal Corps of Halberdiers (formerly Earl of Essex's Honourable Company of Free Halberdiers, founded in Elizabethan period, early history unknown, as RCH existed in WWII)
Royal Loyal Musketeers (Irish regiment, early history unknown, served in India in late C19th)

Before 1850:
6th Light Dragoons - Napoleonic Wars
Bombadier Guards
'Jackboot Guards' - regimental nickname, official name unknown
Lifeguard Greens
South Essex Regiment - Napoleonic Wars (Peninsula and Belgium): Under Major Sharpe
South Oxfordshire (Light Infantry?) Regiment - have a battle honour for Waterloo (Endeavour)

Before 1870:
27th Lancers - Crimean War
117th Foot 'The Royal Mallows' - served in India during the Mutiny? See 'Before 1890'
1st Bangalore Pioneers

Before 1880:
114th Queen's Own Royal Strathspeys Afghan Wars, after 1880 remained in the North West Frontier Province until at least 1897 - link here
Princess Hohenzollern's Own Merthyr Tydfil Light Infantry (this name has been considerably shortened from Kipling's original) - served in India
34th Bombay Infantry
77th Bengal Lancers - North West Frontier Province?
South Oxfordshire (Light Infantry?) Regiment - have a battle honour for Kabul, which may relate to this period; they also seem to have fought in Africa in the late 1870s (Endeavour)

Before 1890:
117th Foot 'The Royal Mallows' - served in India until c.1885, potentially from 1850s; afterwards stationed at Aldershot by c.1888; from 'The Crooked Man' by Arthur Conan Doyle
Royal Cumbrian Regiment (though this may be anachronistic, perhaps they should be listed as the Royal Cumberland Regiment) - Sudan (took part in Gordon's expedition?)

Before 1900:
117th Foot 'The Royal Mallows' - information moved to 'Before 1890'
'The Black Boneens' - regimental nickname, official name unknown - served in India
'The Black Tyrone' - regimental nickname, official name unknown - served in India
Lennox Highlanders - Matabele Wars; Richard Hannay's Regiment
Royal Loyal Musketeers (surmised to exist before 1800) - served in India
Royal North Surrey Regiment - Sudan (took part in relief of Khartoum?)
'The White Hussars' - regimental nickname, official name unknown - served in India
19th/45th East African Rifles - served in West Africa (perhaps based in Ghana or Nigeria?)
South Oxfordshire (Light Infantry?) Regiment - apparently fought at Mboto Gorge, 1892 (Endeavour)

Regiments that don't appear on the wiki page:
The 'Fighting' 43rd (Regiment of Horse, also known as 'Prince Rupert's Regiment of Horse') - South Africa if my memory serves (it was Captain Cadman's regiment in the stories of the cowardly Captain in the Victor comic when I was a lad - though see notes below, I may be mis-remembering)
The South Oxfordshire Regiment (from 'Endeavour') - before 1900: fought at M'Boto Gorge, c. 1892, though the painting in the regimental HQ shows soldiers in an older version of tropical uniform, perhaps from c. 1880, so it may be that they spent an extended period in Africa. They have battle honours that include Waterloo, and Kabul (possibly the Second Afghan War, 1878-1880)

I have not been able to place the Duke of Clarence's Own Clanranald Highlanders (the 'Invernesshire Greens') though I suspect that they go back at least to the mid-18th century.

Well, that's a start anyway. Of course there are regiments that are listed post-1900 that may exist beforehand... but they'll live to another day.

I've also noticed they have a list of fictional British Army Officers on wiki...

Later additions and corrections to the list are italicised.

Another new link...

... to a random scenario generator.

This is a great generator for 'Weird World War II' scenarios, but with very little work could be for Cthulhu as well. It's part of the 'Operation: Fallen Reich' site - tagline 'Can Evil Be Stopped In Time For Tea?' which I think is one of the best taglines ever.

I don't play the game so some of the terminology is a bit obscure (I think 'Fallen' are Nazi Black Magicians but I could be wrong about that) but one of the random story generations I just span is: Location - a mental institution; Basic Plot - a child posseses special powers and needs to be baptised; Sub-Plot - the location has bad energy which helps Fallen; Main Villains - a secret society influenced by Fallen. That without too much work could be useful for a lot of games...

The site also includes a brief listing and descriptions of wars from 1920-1940 that British Chaps might be involved in - also useful for fleshing out character backgrounds in Cthulhu/Pulp/Gangster/Very British Civil War games. One of the designers described the game as 'The X-Files sett in WWII with Mulder and Scully replaced by Jeeves and Wooster' - and what's not to love about that?

New links

I've added some new links: one to TerraGenesis, in my opinion the best terrain-making site on the web; one to Seventh Sanctum a fantastic random-results generator for everything from names for Gundam robots to titles of books about dragon biology, from plots for B-Movies to names of sci-fi substances... there's so much to just wander through, it really is incredible; and also, a link to a relatively new sci-fi vehicle building forum called Universal Engineering, which though it's small at the moment I think has a lot of potential (and I'm interested in building sci-fi vehicles so there).

Enjoy...

Great new Random Name Generator...

... that one of the thoroughly lovely chaps at the Lead Adventurer's Forum posted, it's a Pulp story-name generator but it produces some great results, included in the 'Invasion of the Squirrels from Jupiter' stuff. I was particularly struck by 'Finlay's Eldritch Rockets', and now feel that I should build some, or write something about them at the very least.

It really is a very good story-name generator, I've added it to the links to the left.

Another one it produced was 'The Thieves that Misplaced Tomorrow' - and I have to go, I feel a scenario coming on...

Well that's the summer more or less over...

I say, it's getting beyond a joke. No sooner had I complained that May was gone and I hadn't done anything, some sinister (and probably foreign) fiend made off with June, July and half of August too! Dashed bally rotters, that's what they are.

My Dwarves in the Service of the Queen-Empress are still languishing in their box... err... barracks, my King of Ruritania is still only half-painted, and I am very behind with my frankly not-very exacting schedule of getting units ready! I'd hoped to get a bit of VSF gaming in over summer but alas, it has not yet happened.

I have been playing some 40k and painting fantasy Orcs and making terrain though so I've been doing some gaming stuff... too easily distracted I suppose. Well, the Atlantis campaign over at Lead Adventurers is getting back on track, let's see if that can keep me focussed on VSF. Onward and upward!

Blimey where has May gone?

Assignments and exams have kept me very busy this last month - the last thing I had to report was my Dwarves in Pith Helmets arriving. Well, I've not even got them out of the box yet (OK I have, but I put them back in again).

Normal service will be resumed when I am no longer a Prisoner of the Fiends of the Ivory Tower. Or at least, when they let me out for summer.