Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa Mackinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Kyle Krueger, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Transcription:
A week has passed
We found something digging in the mud and a week has passed and
We made new families and a week has passed and
We planted our gardens and a week has passed and
We met The Beast and a week has passed and
We met The Creature and a week has passed and
We saw a good omen and a week has passed and
We consolidate our tools and a week has passed and
We learned the legends passed down by those before us and a week has passed and
We splash in beauty and a week has passed and
We learn of the ruinous girl who has been with us a long time and a week has passed and
We meet the charismatic girl who has been with us a long time and a week has passed and
We feel old love and a week has passed and
We get into a playground fight and a week has passed and
We find the first pine tree and a week has passed and
We prepare to kill The Creature and a week has passed and
We say goodbye to old love and a week has passed and
We die to The Creature’s hand, defending its home, and a week has passed and
We feel the hunger of summer storms and a week has passed and
We know that summer is fleeting and a week has passed and
We welcome a new face into our community and a week has passed and
We feel the potential of summer all around us and a week has passed and
We try the first ritual and a week has passed and
We welcome a new family into our community and a week has passed and
We build new homes and a week has passed and
We are reminded of the danger of the woods and a week has passed and
We discover the absence of wildlife and a week has passed and
We slip in our ritual, dooming us all and a week has passed and
We mar something beautiful and a week has passed and
We meet the marauders and a week has passed and
We fight ourselves, fighting progress as well and a week has passed and
We part ways with those who feel they cannot belong and a week has passed and
We weather a natural disaster and a week has passed and
We enjoy the fruits of our labors and a week has passed and
We quarantine our ill and a week has passed and
We mourn the death of the strongest among us and a week has passed and
We throw our strength into a single project and a week has passed and
We finish a project early and a week has passed and
We are cold, tired, and miserable and a week has passed and
We react to the winter weather and a week has passed and
We watch a soul disappear into the winter night and a week has passed and
We see a good omen and a week has passed and
The Frost Shepherds arrive.
When the sun finally returns to the sky, the mountains are still. The river continues to run. Winter lasts forever and is over in as much time as it takes to declare that spring has arrived.
We are all that is left, and we have been searching for a place to call home. We find ourselves gathered together in a dark wood, nestled between sharp mountain ridges. The forest is filled with scrawny and sickly trees that stretch upwards like twisted spears. We make our way through the forest to find a small river and an abandoned mining camp. The buildings of the camp are rusted and the wood in them rotting. Mysteriously, all of the trees in this area have been cut despite the area having been abandoned long ago, and only the occasional stump remains, sticking up from the ground. The sun has dipped below the horizon as we take stock of the area and group together.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa Mackinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Forgotten Chamber – Power Unfaded – Score Music – Dimitris Vachaviolos
Underground Lake City – Whispers of the World Below the World – Score Music – Marko Gugic
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Eileen who has been with us a long time is perfected.
She walks through the community square in the still frost of a winter midnight, her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment, the illusion of a Greek necessity flows in the scrolls of her toga, her bare feet seem to be saying: we have come so far, it is over.
As she walks sprites come down from the mountaintops each one coiled, a white serpent, one at each little personal garden, now empty. She has folded them back into her body as petals of a rose close when the garden stiffens and odors bleed from the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
As Eileen who has been with us a long time walks into the forest, escorted by the rippling roots of pine trees which leave needles scattered over her path, she passes the Jewel of Gerard. The red rock iced over and pastel rusted snow drips from its pocked surface.
In the morning she is gone, but the flowers once shriveled and frozen rise up healthy and red in the dry sunlight of the morning.
We see this good omen and know that despite those who have left us, we can grow out and up, into the sun as the flowers do. Our personal gardens bloom, with red flowers, oily and bright, pierce the snow and reach to the sky.
Emboldened by this good omen, we set about the camp. Remaining in our homes until spring will only breed restlessness, and what better way to shake that restlessness than exploring.
We walk through the sickly trees, speared up into the air from the crusted forest snow. Our vision now is only blocked by pine trees we could have sworn did not grow when we first settled in the area those months ago. Some circle around small clearings, others form lines in the woods, still others dot the landscape randomly.
One grows on the bank of the river, and as Safwan approaches it, they hear a whisper ease from the bark, and stumble back in fear as a woman’s face rotates into view, mossy and old.
“I know the bottom of the river,” she says. “I know it with my great tap root: it is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. Is it the sea you hear in me, its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it – Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.”
Saffwan stands still and thy hear the rumble of the river, frozen over, whose current rumbles against its icy cover. Ezekiel walks its banks but trips in shock as the rumbling turns into a voice that greets him, saying,
“All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, echoing, echoing. Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush. And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.”
The pine continues to Saffwan:
“I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root my red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires. Soon I will break in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violence Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me cruelly, being barren. Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. I let her go. I let her go diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me.”
Yuen plays throwing snow and ice at the boarded doors to the mines. Her arm halts mid-throw as she hears a reptilian voice eke out from the cracks in the wood and stone:
“I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; all day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Is yours the face of love, that pale irretrievable? Is it for such you agitate my heart?”
That night, trying to explain to the adults the children are unable to remember the words, they find themselves incapable of more knowledge. What was this, this face shown to Saffwan, so murderous in its strangle of branches? What was this voice that spoke to Yuen, its snaky acids hissing. What spoke to Ezekiel, which petrifies the will.
These are the isolate, slow faults that kill, that kill, that kill.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the fortieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Sylvia Plath. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to PROTECT MUELLER AND THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
The New York Times reported that in June of 2017, Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, but backed down when his White House lawyer threatened to quit over the decision.
Trump has been publicly playing with the idea of firing Mueller, the special prosecutor leading the independent investigation into Russia’s election interference, their potential ties to the Trump campaign, obstruction of justice, and a litany of related financial concerns. Trump cannot fire Mueller himself, but he can coerce someone in the Justice Department to do so. Trump’s public criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, causing many to believe Trump may fire Sessions and replace him with someone who agrees to fire Mueller. Trump could even launch a large scale staffing shake-up, similar to Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” until he finds someone willing to fire Mueller.
Last fall, Mueller impaneled a grand jury in Washington D.C. That was a significant development, showing Mueller’s seriousness in moving the investigation forward with prosecutions in mind; the grand jury allows Mueller to subpoena documents, call witnesses to testify under oath, and indict individuals if sufficient evidence of a crime arises. Because grand juries are arranged by prosecutors, if Mueller were fired now, this grand jury would effectively be dismantled. It is vital that Mueller’s position and investigation be protected.
Two bipartisan bills have been introduced in the Senate to do just that – one by Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and one by Chris Coons (D-DE) and Thom Tillis (R-NC). While the bills differ in when a judges panel would review the firing of a special prosecutor, both plans limit a president’s ability to do so.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa Mackinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Forgotten Chamber – Chamber of Voices – Score Music – Andrea Marras
Dark Elf Temple – Supplicant to Demons and Web – Source Music – Phil Archer
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
More than a week has passed.
Time passes.
Forever passes in the quiet still of a snow that falls onto the mining village as the sickly trees break brittle their ice covered boughs.
Eileen who has been with us a long time had not known before forever was so long a word. The slow stroke of the clock of time she had not heard. ‘Tis hard to learn so late; it seems no sad heart really learns, but hopes and trusts and doubts and fears, and bleeds and burns.
The night is not all dark, nor is the day all it seems, but each may bring her this relief— her dreams and dreams. She had not known before that Never was so sad a word, but wrapped in desired forgetfulness— she wishes to not have heard.
Again a morning comes and we are less. The bandit leader, strong and cunning, having brought her marauders in to our community for warmth and home, does not sit at our breakfast table this morning. Footprints in the snow lead from her shack out to the circle of pines and disappear in snowy drifts from the nightly winds.
The night before, she stirs. Drachs voice growling in the night, prowling close to her window with animal longing or a stirred remembering of past life. Snow falls to collect on a hairy shoulder, and breath condenses from a toothy maw. As the Beast walks through the mining camp with Drach’s eyes, the bandit leader wakes to see. She grabs her knife and her coat and opens the door to the wind, stepping out into the night. She follows Drach unseen until he disappears into a circle of pine trees, strangely close to the camp, not there the night before but thick and tall as if they’ve been there for all time.
She walks into the circle of pines and into a mountain cave filled with sprites flying throughout the air wearing masks made of ice. Before she loses consciousness she hears them rasp out verses of a faerie poem:
We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— this debt we pay to human guile; with torn and bleeding hearts we smile and mouth with myriad subtleties, why should the world be over-wise, in counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while we wear the mask. We smile, but oh great shepherds, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile beneath our feet, and long the mile, but let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!
The bandit leader learns the debt we bear just for one quiet year, times of regret and grief, sorrow without relief. Pay it we will to the end— until the grave, our friend, gives us a true release— gives us the clasp of peace. Slight was the thing we bought, small was the debt we thought, poor was the loan at best— and now the Frost Shepherds prepare to collect the interest!
As the last footprint of the bandit leader drifts over with winter snow, and Eileen who has been with us a long time helps Ezekiel remove his frozen boots, we look up to the mountains where a great fog is forming, rolling slowly down to our community, and we discover yet another phenomenon of our new home. As the fog freezes overnight we wake to thick layers of frost that seems to twist into floral patterns, petals of ice growing everywhere we look.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the fortieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Paul Laurence Dunbar. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to OPPOSE WORK REQUIREMENTS FOR MEDICAID BENEFICIARIES
On January 11, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released new policy guidance that allows states to impose work requirements on working-age, non-pregnant, unemployed adults in order to receive Medicaid coverage. States must specify how they will help Medicaid beneficiaries find work by connecting them to services like job training. However, CMS prohibits states from using federal Medicaid money to fund these services. CMS also allows for some exemptions to work requirements, e.g. for people who are ill or disabled; however, qualifying for these exemptions will be difficult, and many who should be exempt will likely lose Medicaid coverage anyway. Also, people who already meet the work requirement would need to demonstrate their compliance or risk losing their benefits.
About 60% of non-disabled adults on Medicaid already work. Thirty-six percent of those without jobs are too sick or disabled to work, 30% are acting as caregivers, and 15% are students. Imposing work requirements on this population will not decrease unemployment. An evaluation of work requirements in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program found that 5-year employment rates among TANF recipients with and without work requirements were the same. The study also found that the overwhelming majority of people who got jobs remained in poverty. By contrast, a study of Medicaid estimated that the program kept 2.1 million Americans out of poverty and 1.4 million out of extreme poverty in 2010.
Medicaid is designed to be a safety net program that helps protect low-income people from disabling illness and medical bankruptcy. Imposing work requirements is inherently at odds with Medicaid’s core mission and will penalize thousands of Americans simply for being low-income and struggling. Congress must challenge this dangerous decision by CMS to limit access to Medicaid.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa Mackinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Portents of the Future – Prophecy of the White Witch – Score Music – Lois Paton
Elven Dirge – Fallen Petals – Score Music – Phil Stokes
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Some of our younger members lived their entire lives in the city, before the Jackals came. Winter comes to them foreign and in another language. As the wood of our homes creaks and cracks in the dry frozen air we translate to them, and tell them what to expect from short days and long nights. The soldier and the farmer would have been the best to tell the children how the cold was an enemy to fortify against, that can be beaten, or how the snow blankets the fields, only to melt and water crops months later. With their deaths still heavy on us like the spindled icicles hanging over our heads, we make do.
Everything frozen, solid unmoving, unchangeable, brittle and breakable. The river’s mud once held Ezekiel’s attention but try as he might to crack the shell of ice, his trowel pulls only solid slivers from the black river’s banks. Implausible fish bloom in the depths, mercurial flowers light up the coast; we know red and yellow, the other colors,— but the sea, the unseen outlet of the river’s progress, that’s most dangerous to look at. What name is there for the color that arouses this thirst, which says, the saga can happen, even to you—
As the temperatures plunge further every day we restrict our movements, freeze ourselves inside. Cooped up, the children run and scream and set off the nerves of their caretakers. It might be nice to give them a chance to play outside, but half an hour of bundling up with small fur jackets and mittens and hats and scarves and thick pants tucked into stiff boots with woolen socks on, wrapped up until the children are as muffled as the snowy ground they stomp on. The Creature remains completely unaware of their presence deep in its cave. Their forms are so padded The Beast cannot smell them from its home in the woods. Only Eileen, who has been with us a long time, watching from a window as her eyes roll with ocean turbulence, looks on.
The footprints that the children leave in the thick snow blow over with wind in less than an hour, large dunes of snow build up between shacks, drifts close in on doors. The red sun rises without intent and shines the same on all of us. We play like children under the sun. One day, our ashes will scatter— it doesn’t matter when. Now the sun finds our innermost hearts, fills us with oblivion intense as the forest, winter and sea. Back inside & shivering, Yuen hangs up a dripping sock near a weak fireplace.
That the stars are adamant everyone understands— but Eileen who has been with us a long time won’t give up seeking joy on each river wave or peace below every gray stone. If happiness never comes, what is a life? A lily withers in the sand and if its nature has failed? The tide washes the beach at night. What is the fly looking for on the spider’s web? What does a dayfly make of its hours? (Two wings creased over a hollow body.) Black will never turn to white— yet the perfume of our struggle lingers as each morning fresh flowers spring up from hell. The day will come when the earth is emptied, the skies collapse and all goes still— when nothing remains but the dayfly folded in a leaf. But no one knows it except for Eileen who has been with us a long time, and she cannot begin to warn us.
We begin a project this week. The blood red plants that bloom in the snow must have something in their veins to ward against the cold. On even the harshest days when our breath hardens our lungs and the wind numbs our fingers the moment we walk outside, the flowers still pop and ooze. Locked inside to fight the cold we have little else to do but wonder, and see if this is something we can learn to benefit us in the cold months ahead.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty ninth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Edith Södergran. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to CLOSE THE BOYFRIEND LOOPHOLE FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE GUN BANS
As we piece together the terrible personal histories of the mass shooters in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, once again we are reminded that the majority of mass shooters have a history of intimate partner violence and domestic abuse. Extensive data have shown that people who abuse and threaten partners and family members are even more dangerous when they have access to firearms. In fact, abused women are 5 times more likely to be killed by their abuser if the abuser has access to a gun.
Although keeping guns out of abusers’ hands reduces gun violence, major loopholes in federal gun safety laws allow users to readily access firearms. For example, federal law does not consider an assault domestic violence if the abuser and victim were in a dating relationship without living together or having a child together. This so-called “boyfriend loophole” leaves thousands of abusers able to legally purchase guns to use against their victims. Also, although it is well known that stalking is a reliable predictor of future violent behavior (76% of women murdered and 85% who survived a murder attempt by a current or former intimate partner experienced stalking according to one study), federal law does not consider misdemeanor stalking as a serious enough crime to limit an abuser’s access to guns. Furthermore, federal law does nothing to restrict an abuser’s access to guns during the most dangerous time for victims of domestic violence, the period when a victim has left their abuser and filed for a Temporary Restraining Order. Until the restraining order is permanent, violent abusers can easily buy and use a firearm.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate have proposed several bills to close the boyfriend loophole, protect victims of stalking, and limit abusers’ access to deadly weapons. Congress must act now to prevent perpetrators of domestic abuse from accessing deadly firearms.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Crypts of the Undead – Where the Dead Dwell – Score Music – Wilddog Productions
Ancient Chamber – Eon City – Score Music – Mark Stothard
Heavenly Plane – Paradise – Score Music – Luka Lebanidze
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
It becomes time to accept that many good people are dead. From their old coats we make little jackets; we make little trousers from their old pants. There’ll be in their pockets things they used to put there, keys and coins covered with dust and straw; Ezekiel shall have the coins to save in his bank; Yuen shall have the keys to make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, and the dead be forgotten; life must go on, though good folk die; we eat our breakfast; we take our medicine; life must go on; we forget just why.
Llyana knows what zer heart is like since zer love died: It is like a hollow ledge holding a little pool left there by the tide, a little tepid pool, drying inward from the edge. The winter’s freeze caps the ebb of the pool, holding its volume unchanging against the hard mountain stone.
Winter arrives without invitation, without asking if it can take our warmth from our chest, and without letting us dry the tears as they fall. Winter freezes a mask of grief.
What lips our lips have kissed, and where, and why, we have forgotten, and what arms have lain under our heads till morning; but the snow is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh upon the glass and listen for reply, and in our heart there stirs a quiet pain for unremembered lads that not again will turn to us at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, yet knows its boughs more silent than before: Llyana cannot say what loves have come and gone, ze only know that summer sang in zem a little while, that in zem sings no more.
We wake to find zer fireplace cold with the ashes of yesterday hard against the stone. Zer face covered by an icy mask.
Winter elements leave everyone cold, tired, and miserable. From fatigue physical and emotional comes a deep sleep, and Llyana’s eyes close in a forever slumber.
All ze could see from where ze stood was three long mountains and a wood; ze turned and looked another way, and saw three islands in a bay. So with zer eyes ze traced the line of the river, thin and fine, straight around till ze was come back to where ze’d started from; and all ze saw from where ze stood was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things ze could not see; these were the things that bounded ze; and ze could touch them with zer hand, almost, ze thought, from where ze stands. And all at once things seemed so small zer breath came short, and scarce at all. Ze screamed, and—lo!—Infinity came down and settled over zem; forced back zer scream into zer chest, bent back zer arm upon zer breast, and, pressing of the Undefined the definition on zer mind, held up before zer eyes a glass through which zer shrinking sight did pass until it seemed ze must behold immensity made manifold; whispered to zem a word whose sound deafened the air for worlds around, and brought unmuffled to zer ears the gossiping of friendly spheres, the creaking of the tented sky, the ticking of Eternity. Ze saw and heard, and knew at last the How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore. The Universe, cleft to the core, lay open to zer probing sense that, sick’ning, ze would fain pluck thence but could not,—nay! But needs must suck at the great wound, and could not pluck zer lips away till ze had drawn all venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn! For zer omniscience paid ze toll in infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of the wishful girl who had been with us a long time, all atoning hers, and hers the gall of all regret. Hers was the weight of every brooded wrong, the hate that stood behind each envious thrust, hers every greed, hers every lust. And all the while for every grief, each suffering, she craved relief with individual desire,— craved all in vain! And felt fierce cold our community crawl; perished with each,—then mourned for all! Drach was starving in a cave; he moved his eyes and looked at her; she felt his gaze, she heard his moan, and knew his wolven hunger as her own. She saw at sea a great fog bank between two ships that struck and sank; a thousand screams the heavens smote; and every scream tore through his throat. No hurt he did not feel, no death that was not his; his each last breath that, crying, met an answering cry from the compassion that was hers. All suffering theirs, and theirs its rod; theirs, pity like the pity of God. Ah, awful weight! Infinity pressed down upon the finite Me! Llyana’s anguished spirit, like a bird, beating against zer lips ze heard; yet lay the weight so close about there was no room for it without. And so beneath the weight lay ze and suffered death, but could not reach infinity. Long had ze lain thus, craving death, when quietly the earth beneath gave way, and inch by inch, so great at last had grown the crushing weight, into the earth ze sank till ze full six feet under ground did lie, and sank no more,—there is no weight can follow here, however great. From off scaled breast ze felt it roll, and as it went zer tortured soul burst forth and fled in such a gust that all about zem swirled the dust. Deep in the cave ze rested now; the cool hand of the conjurant girl who has been with us a long time upon zer brow and soft zer breast beneath the head of one who is not gladly dead. And all at once, and over all the pitying snow began to fall; They three lay and heard each melting drip upon the mountainous step, and seemed to love the sound far more than ever they had done before. For snow it hath a friendly sound to one who’s six feet underground; and scarce the friendly voice or face: a grave is such a quiet place.
Eileen leaves flowers dead, dried, cracking on Llyana’s grave. How can she bear it; Llyana buried there, while overhead the sky grows clear and blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, beloved beauty, that she shall never, never see again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, that she shall never more behold! Sleeping zer myriad magics through, close-sepulchred away from you! O God, she cried, give zem new birth, and put zem back upon the earth! Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd and let the heavy snow, down-poured in one big blanket, set me free, washing zer grave away from me! She ceased; and through the breathless hush that answered her, the muffled rush of scaled claws came whispering like music up the vibrant string of her ascending prayer, and—crash! Hidden in the wild wind’s whistling lash the startled Creature woke in turn and roared up in terror in its cavern, and the big snow in one white wave resumed its surge and struck the grave. Eileen knew not how such things can be; she only knows there came to her a fragrance such as never clings to aught save happy living things; a sound as of some joyous elf singing sweet songs to please himself, and, through and over everything, a sense of glad awakening. The ice, a-tiptoe at her ear, whispering to her she could hear; in the cave the confused girl who has been with us a long time felt the sprite’s cool finger-tips brushed tenderly across her lips, laid gently on her sealed sight, and all at once the heavy night fell from Eileen’s eyes and she could see,— A drenched and dripping apple-tree, A last long line of silver snow, A sky grown clear and blue again. And as she looked a quickening gust of wind blew up to her and thrust into her face a miracle of stale mountain-breath, and with the smell,— she knew not how such things could be!— the fading girl who has been with us a long time breathed her soul back into she. Up then from the ground sprang Eileen who hailed the earth with such a cry as is not heard save from she who has been dead, and lives again. About the circling pines her arms she wound; like one gone mad she hugged the ground; she raised her quivering arms on high; and laughed and laughed into the sky, till at her throat a strangling sob caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb sent instant tears into her eyes; O God, she cried, no dark disguise can e’er hereafter hide from me thy radiant identity! Shepherds move across the cycles of time and her quick eyes do see Them pass, and speak, however silently, and her hushed voice answers Them. She knows the path that tells Their way through the cool eve of every day; God, she can push the cycles apart and lay her finger on Their heart! The world stands out on either side no wider than the heart is wide; above the world is stretched the sky,— no higher than the soul is high. The heart can push river and land farther away on either hand; the soul can split the sky in two, and let the face of God shine through. But East and West will pinch the heart that can not keep them pushed apart; and she whose soul is flat—the sky will cave in on her by and by. And so Eileen who has been with us a long time turns to The Beast and The Creature, taking their hands, and rising to the sky.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty sixth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is T.E. Hulme. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to DEMAND PROTECTION OF OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS On Monday, December 4th, Trump traveled to Utah to announce the reduction of two National Monuments in the state: Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Combined, the reduction removes two million acres of land from the public, shrinking Bear’s Ears by a whopping 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 45%. This decision by Trump represents the largest rollback of federally protected land in American history, opening the way for development, logging, drilling, and mining on these lands. This assault on our public lands is just his first. In April, Trump issued an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review the status of all national monuments that make up 100,000+ acres and were created since 1996 under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The results of this review, leaked to the Washington Post in September, recommended modifying 10 national monuments including the shrinking of at least four. These sites include the 2 Utah monuments along with Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou. There is some question if Trump has the authority to reduce National Monuments under the Antiquates Act of 1906, and legal challenges by Native American and environmental groups have already been filed. Congress also has a responsibility to speak out against this attack on public lands and demand Trump change course. Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance. And until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Dirge – Undome ar lomin – Score Music – Stephane Lorello
Forgotten Chamber – Power Unfaded – Score Music – Dimitris Vachaviolos
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Occasionally, we lack verse for our stories, as the events of life do not sync with poems or songs.
The shovels dig into the frozen earth as we burrow deep for our food store’s foundation. The steel scrapes against the icy dirt and we chisel downwards and downwards in the frigid fall air. Soon it will be winter in earnest and although the river still runs, throwing mist into the air to create halos with our shadows, the ground remains as hard and unmoving as stone.
That is, until we breach through the layer of solid ground and into an opening. We had nearly forgotten all those months ago, of our friends lost in the mines when we ventured deep to confront The Creature. Yet, when we set about to dig our base we had moved far away from the hill. No distance, it seems could put us away from the burrowing halls and carved passages underground. As the first shovel breaks through the crust and sends it wielder flying, we start back, prepared to flee or to be devoured. And yet, no movement ekes its way up from the crack. The frozen shell of the earth does not give way to a scaled eye in this moment. And we breathe a sigh of relief.
The opening we have found was long ago sealed off from the rest of the mines, it seems. As we widen the hole enough to get a good view inside, we notice a cave-in further down; long wicked roots weaving through crumbled dirt. The lack of any motion inside the cavern emboldens us enough to cautiously ease down into the space, where we find a hermetically sealed cavern. Some of the roots near the cave-in glow a soft blue when we brush dirt from them, however no signs of life other than ourselves fills the cave. Our foundation is completed with barely any effort.
As the last days of autumn crystalize away into the cold afternoon of winter, we gather around a celebratory bonfire to share songs and enjoy a warm meal. Between celebrations, we load up our new storeroom with hearty roots and jars of food to keep during the cold days to come. We discover something new as well, as small black flowers bloom from underneath the snow. The color of the petals looks like the night sky, but as Yuen steps on one to crush it under her boot, the bud bursts and a deep red oozes into the white snow. She giggles and kicks some of the snow at Ezekiel and Safwan, who both scamper away laughing.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty sixth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is T.E. Hulme. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to protect the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which Congress passed in 1990, is designed to provide people with disabilities equal access to employment, government services, public accommodations and businesses, and transportation services. Title III of the ADA requires businesses to proactively remove obstacles that prevent people with disabilities from accessing their establishments. However, businesses have resisted Title III for decades and have now pressured Congress to pass a law, the ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017, to drastically limit Title III enforcement. The ADA Education and Reform Act, H.R. 620, would eliminate all incentives for businesses to proactively ensure their businesses are accessible to people with disabilities. Instead, people with disabilities would have to notify businesses when their rights are violated, wait six months for the business to act to address issues, and only then bring the matter to court. The bill further exempts businesses from facing any penalties for noncompliance, as long as they can show “substantial progress” in fixing issues. Thus, people with disabilities could be forced to wait to access necessary services for months or even years while waiting for businesses to decide to comply with the ADA. By shifting the responsibility of ADA compliance from businesses to people with disabilities, Congress is essentially destroying a key element of the ADA. People with disabilities already face substantial obstacles to full participation in public life even with Title III in place. It would be unacceptable to weaken this provision further. H.R. 620 has passed committee and now awaits a full member vote on the House floor. Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance. And until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
The scratch of pen on paper, the ring of hammer on nail, and the sound of warm laughter in the autumn air ring an echo in our ears of Drach’s absence. Idle hands lead to idle hearts he was fond of saying, and we know that if we took more than a moment to focus on his fate that the idle heart of grief would drown. We focus our efforts on a central project, as those few of us gathering wood soon become those many of us and we decide to step up our efforts. We add on to the project to bring down those trees large enough to sustain the fires in our empty homes as a way of paying tribute to his loss, and the circle of pines watch, at night their faces turn to each other and babble their speculative mourning.
Eileen watches the community throw their strength into this project, remembering her time with Drach in the spring following Jules and Gerrard’s deaths. Lighthearted they had walked into the valley wood in the time of hyacinths, till beauty like a scented cloth cast over, stifled them, bound motionless and faint of breath by loveliness that is her own eunuch. Now Eileen passes to the final river ignominiously, in a daze, without sound.
The creak of a falling tree fills all our ears as we watch another fall to be cut in smaller bits by the town. Llyana helps pull the sickly trunk clear of the line and as ze stretches zer back, ze look to the moon hanging high in the fall sky.
Beauty is the marking-time, the stationary vibration, the feigned ecstasy of an arrested impulse unable to reach its natural end. Llyana, whose bent form the sky in archèd circle is, seems ever for an unknown grief to mourn. Yet today we hear zer cry of weariness of the roses and the singing poets. Ze wipes away sweat of hard work and sets about cracking boughs and splitting knots.
A touch of cold in the Autumn night – the terrifying girl who has been with us a long time walks abroad, and she sees the ruddy moon lean over a hedge like a red-faced farmer. She does not stop to speak, but nods, and round about the wistful stars blink, and send white faces like town children. As the light of the stars touch the split trunks of the ancient yet ascetic trees the transforming girl who has been with a long time lifts her hands and picks iridescent scales from between her fingers. She turns her luned eyes to the moon watching down. The clearing grows larger this cycle.
We start a new project, the last we will start before winter comes. The excess of lumber affords us the resources to rebuild our food stores, and perhaps this time the building will stay upright. To counter the failings of the last attempt, we dig deep for the foundation. The scraping of steel tools on frozen earth echoes in a blue cave, and scaled eyes open, reptilian nostrils breath blue mist through a cave, and a Creature stirs.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty sixth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is T.E. Hulme. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to stop final passage of the disastrous Republican tax bill.
Around 2am on December 2nd, the Senate voted 51-49 to pass H.R. 1, the Republicans’ sweeping, multi-trillion dollar tax bill. Bob Corker (R-TN) was the only GOP Senator to vote No, citing the bill’s massive and consistently-reported $1.4 trillion deficit increase as a dealbreaker. In a major departure from procedural norms, Senate GOP leadership waited until only a few hours of floor debate remained to unveil the final text of the bill (479 pages, filled with illegible notes and changes written by lobbyists), preventing senators, nonpartisan analysts, and the American public from understanding the bill’s widespread effects before the vote took place. The House and Senate have now each passed differing versions of H.R. 1, setting up two potential paths forward for the bill. Either the House will simply vote to pass the Senate’s version, or the two chambers will agree to go to Conference Committee where an identical compromise bill will be agreed upon and sent back to each chamber for another full member floor vote. While the former path leaves little room for change, a Conference Committee creates a window for the bill to be derailed. The chambers may struggle to reconcile differences — ACA individual mandate repeal, child tax credit, estate tax, etc. — or other previously agreed upon caveats may fail in the interim. For example, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), voted for the Senate bill under the condition that two ACA-protecting bills pass first, but the House has offered no guarantees that they will pass either of them. Regardless of the tax bill’s path forward, the passage of this bill in both chambers has illustrated that Republicans have prioritized lining the pocketbooks of the wealthy and corporations over providing much-needed relief for struggling middle-class families and workers. Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance. And until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Crypts of the Undead – Where the Dead Dwell – Score Music – Wilddog Productions
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
We don’t choose the cards we’re dealt.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, while round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, so that our precious blood may not be shed in vain; then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, and for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Connecting cabins together with walls and halls makes the disparate shacks of the old mining community into one large building. Sleeping quarters ring around our central square where the ruined model of a skyscraper towers in the open air. Drach smooths the last sealing coat over his work and watches it dry slowly in the cold autumn air. The heavy snowfall of weeks prior has all melted away and we feel unusually warm this far late into the year. As he sets his brush down a roar and a scream pull from the woods.
Sopping wet, The Beast pulls itself from the bank of the river, little Ezekiel trying to scamper backwards over the hardened sand. Having run from his work, Drach is the first to reach the river. The fur of The Beast, once lush and full now hugs to its bones and while its stomach warms from its meal of the bandits recently, it still bears the signs of starvation. It hesitates when it sees Drach, and Drach hesitates as well.
The morning sun sparkles on the frost that grows on the withered stalks of the flowers that grow from the Jewel of Gerrard. Ezekiel runs to the shacks crying as Drach holds The Beast back. By the time the rest of us arrive it is too late. We rob The Beast of a meal, but not of a kill.
We do not joy to see the playful snow, like white moths trembling on the tropic air, or waters of the hills that softly flow gracefully falling down a shining stair. And when the fields and paths are covered white and the wind-worried void is chilly, raw, and in the mountains a spell of heat and light the cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw, like the mourning girl who has been with us a long time you’ll long for home, where birds’ glad song meant flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry, and tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong, beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky. But oh! more than the changeless southern isles, when Spring has shed upon the earth her charm, we’ll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles by the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.
We find Drach’s journal under his cot. The last page a meditation on anger, reflecting on the Jackals, the bandits who now share our homes, and the monsters living both in the woods and in his dreams. He ends with a poem, and as we read it out loud, we set about a new project: with Drach’s own tools we begin to dig a well. Without the protective girl who’s been with us a long time, we no longer feel the strong pull to the river, and we can’t guarantee that it will stay flowing in the cold of winter. We put our mourning to use in the same way he did, transferring our emotions into work.
Drach:
Anyway, I found this poem in one of Clovis’s books. He said he used to read it to Figueroa whenever the Jackals took strides. I gotta keep it in mind, remember it when things get too rough.
I will not toy with it nor bend an inch. Deep in the secret chambers of my heart I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch I bear it nobly as I live my part. My being would be a skeleton, a shell, If this dark Passion that fills my every mood, And makes my heaven in the white world’s hell, Did not forever feed me vital blood. I see the mighty city through a mist— The strident trains that speed the goaded mass, The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed, The fortressed port through which the great ships pass, The tides, the wharves, the dens I contemplate, Are sweet like wanton loves because I hate.
Never was a lot for poetry before but I like this one. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, journal. Those houses won’t seal themselves.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty fifth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. The voice of Drach is Aaron Catano You can find Aaron on twitter at Aaron underscore Catano, where you can reach him for all sorts of Voiceover work. He’s been an absolute joy to work with, and you should check him out if you need anything. This week’s poet is Claude McKay. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that needs doing in the world, and we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. You can also use ResistBot, a free service that emails or faxes your representatives based on text messages you send through the service. Calling makes the biggest difference, but it’s a smart strategy to cover your bases. A polite and persistent approach across multiple mediums is the way to go. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to DEMAND THE FCC MAINTAIN NET NEUTRALITY.
Internet users scored a significant victory in 2014 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) installed protections for net neutrality and the “open Internet.” Net neutrality allows all users to have equal access to everything available on the Internet, and prevents Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from essentially turning the internet into cable television — creating fast and slow speeds for sites of their choosing and charging consumers premium prices for upgraded access. Without net neutrality, small businesses, low-income individuals, and much of rural America would lose access to affordable, reasonably-fast internet service. The four major ISPs (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and AT&T) have been lobbying against the 2014 net neutrality regulations, frustrated by the constraints placed on their ability to profit from those who need their services the most. They have specifically targeted the classification of ISPs as Title II services, a category that requires more strict federal oversight. In response to their lobbying efforts, the new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has pledged to roll back these net neutrality protections with a softer Title I classification and will allow ISPs to instead make voluntary, unenforceable commitments that they will maintain the open Internet.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Dirge – I Nainie A Nierme Uuvea – Score Music – Mike Bridge
Dark Elf Temple – Ode to Submission – Score Music – Cameron Last
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
At night the Universe grows lean, sober-faced, of intoxication, the shadow of the half-sphere curtains down closely against our world, like a doorless cage, and the stillness chained by wrinkled darkness strains throughout the Universe to be free. Listen, frogs in the pond, (the world is a pond itself) cry out for the light, for the truth! The curtains rattle ghostily along, bloodily biting our souls, the winds knocking on our cabin doors with their shadowy hands.
Rattled wind comes not only from outside our homes, however. The tragedy of Autumn’s harsh storm these past weeks pulling down our attempts at a hospital reveals itself to us now. Safwan’s cough no longer plagues them, but others in our community lack the fortitude of youth. Wheezes, coughs, hacking rings through our community and echoes off bare wooden walls of the old mining community. Influenza is autumn’s friend, the cycle of yearly contagion does not skip our community.
The strongest among us abandon the project to consolidate housing for the week to ensure the available warm beds are given to the sick and those who need comfort the most. With the grace of fortune we do not lose any lives this week to the disease, but all progress stops in every other area while we care for the sick. As the disease washes through us quickly, Llyana puts xer hands to use. Caring for the sick is a farmer’s skill after all, regardless of if the sick are humans or livestock. Xe takes xer new duties seriously, and at the end of the week, when we all return more or less to the land of health, xe sits at the top of the hill overlooking our community center, as the sun dips behind the mountains and the last rays sparkle over the Jewel of Gerrard.
And victor of life and silence, xe stands upon the Heights; triumphant, with upturned eyes, xe stands, and smiles unto the sun, and sings a beautifully sad farewell unto the dying day. And xer thoughts and the eve gather their serpentine mysteries around xem, xer thoughts like alien breezes, the eve like a fragrant legend. Xer feeling is that xe stands as one serenely poised for flight, as a muse of golden melody and lofty grace. Yea, xe stands as one scorning the swords and wanton menace of the cities. The sun heavily sinks into the mountains beyond, and leaves xem a tempting sweet and twilight. The eve with trailing shadows westward sweeps on, and the lengthened shadows of trees disappears: how silently the songs of silence steal into xer soul! And still xe stands among the crickets, in the beauteous profundity sung by stars; and xe sees xem softly melted into the eve. The moon slowly rises: xer shadow on the ground dreamily begins a dreamy roam, and xe upward smiles silent welcome.
When we am lost in the deep body of the mist on the hill, the world seems built with us as its pillar! Are we the gods upon the face of the deep, deepless deepness in the Beginning?
We begin a new project at the end of the week, for if we are to bring everyone under the same roofs, we need more lumber, stronger lumber as well, to hold the warmth of winter in. We hear the call of a copse of pine trees, we hear them upon the hill, by the silent river where the lotus flowers bloom, we hear you call, pine tree. What is it you call, pine tree, when the rain falls, when the winds blow, and when the stars appear, what is it you call, pine tree? We hear you call, pine tree, but we are blind, and do not know how to reach you, pine tree. Who will take us to you, pine tree?
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty fourth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Yone Noguchi. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to STOP THE GOP GIVEAWAY TO CORPORATIONS AND THE WEALTHY
The goal of the House Republicans’ tax reform plan, dubbed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is clear: to provide corporations and the ultra-wealthy as many tax breaks as possible. The bill would permanently lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, gradually phase out the estate tax (which applies to estates with over $5.6 million in assets), and eliminate the alternative minimum tax (AMT) immediately. The AMT only applies to people who make more than roughly $130,000 a year; Trump paid an additional $31 million in taxes solely because of the AMT in 2005. Meanwhile, this plan offers no tax breaks to the bottom 35% of Americans and will increase the deficit by a whopping $1.5 trillion over the next decade. This deficit will in turn necessitate future cuts to critical government programs like Medicaid and Medicare; the Congressional Budget Office found the House tax bill would force a $25 billion cut to Medicare in 2018 alone.
To cover the revenue shortfall from slashing taxes for the wealthy and big businesses, the GOP will eliminate a multitude of itemized tax deductions that typically offer relief to middle-class consumers, including deductions for student loan interest, adoption costs, alimony payments, and extremely high medical costs. As a result, any middle-class consumer who adopts a child, has costly student loans, pays more than 10% of their income on medical costs, and/or has multiple children could pay more under this plan. The larger standard deduction also means that middle class consumers have less of an incentive to donate to charity, hurting non-profit charitable organizations in the process. Further, the bill would eliminate tax incentives for using renewable energy while preserving tax shelters for the fossil fuel industry.
Meanwhile, this plan offers no tax breaks to the bottom 35% of Americans, and the bill’s massive deficit will necessitate future cuts to critical government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The GOP claims their plan is designed to cut taxes for the middle class, but it is clear that their primary goal is helping the wealthy avoid paying their fair share in taxes. If implemented, these changes would result in the transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich and will continue to exacerbate income inequality in this country. Bottom line, this plan is a raw deal for Americans.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Following the devastating snow, we cry “O Dreary life!” and yet the generations of the birds sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds serenely live while we are keeping strife with Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife against which we may struggle. River girds unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards unweary sweep: hills watch, unworn; and rife meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees, to show, above, the unwasted stars that pass in their old glory. O thou Gods of old! Grant us some smaller grace than comes to these;— but so much patience, as a blade of grass grows by contented through the heat and cold.
Patience brings us to harvest as autumn comes to a close. Those crops not pulled before the frost are pulled now and we work from before the sun rises until well after it hides behind the crags of the mountains overhead.
We are too ready with complaint in this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope indeed beyond the zenith and the slope of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint to muse upon eternity’s constraint round our aspirant souls. But since the scope must widen early, is it well to droop, for a few days consumed in loss and taint? O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,— and, like a cheerful traveller, take the road— singing beside the hedge. What if the bread be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod to meet the flints?—At least it may be said, “Because the way is short, I thank thee, Gods!”
Drach works with the bandit leader and her crew to divide harvest responsibilities, and while he works, he is met by one of their pets, a young sheepdog. It was but yesterday he mused, forgetful of his presence here, till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear; when from the pillow, where wet-cheeked he lay, a head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way right sudden against his face,—two golden-clear large eyes astonished his,—a drooping ear did flap him on either cheek, to dry the spray! He started first, as some Arcadian amazed by goatly god in twilight grove: but as his bearded vision closelier ran his tears off, he knew Flush, and rose above surprise and sadness; thanking the true Pan, who, by low creatures, leads to heights of love.
The original planters of the field, Eileen and Llyana watch proudly as the entire community gathers to harvest, coming together in harmonious work. The face of all the world is changed, I think, since first we heard the footsteps of forest soul move still, oh, still, beside us, as they stole betwixt us and the dreadful outer brink of obvious death, where Eileen, who thought to sink, was caught up into love, and taught the whole of life in a new rhythm. The cup of toil and working fields, she is fain to drink, and praise its sweetness, sweet, with Llyana anear. The names of country, heaven, are changed away for where ze are or shall be, there or here; and this… With Eileen’s lute and song… loved yesterday, (the singing angels know) are only dear, because her love’s name moves right in what she sings today.
With stammering lips and insufficient sound she strives and struggles to deliver right that music of our nature, day and night with dream and thought and feeling interwound and only answering all the senses round with octaves of a mystic depth and height which step out grandly to the infinite from the dark edges of the sensual ground. This song of soul she struggles to outbear through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, and utter all herself into the air: but if she did it,—as the thunder-roll breaks its own cloud, her flesh would perish there, before that dread apocalypse of soul.
After the harvest we still barely have enough food for the community, and who knows what winter will bring. But we do know that we have a new abundance: love and companionship. As those toiling return to their homes few return alone, and those who do, do so by choice. As we dry the frosted fruits of our labor, ripe heat warms both our harvests and our beds.
We discover something new while we work, for as we pull up semi frozen roots and break through the top layer of frost in our fields, the underlying layers of clay and loam still radiate warmth upwards to the surface. Strangely, only a foot or so down, it is as if the seasons have no effect at all on the state of the earth. We shrug and put this knowledge in the back of our minds for now.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Elizabeth Barret Browning. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to urge my representatives to OPPOSE ANTI-LGBTQ JEFF MATEER FOR FEDERAL JUDGESHIP
Donald Trump has nominated Texas Assistant Attorney General Jeff Mateer for a lifetime judgeship on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Despite being a constitutional lawyer, Mateer has repeatedly insisted that the separation of church and state should not exist. He has worked for the First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal defense foundation that often pursues cases involving disputes over religious liberties. He has compared the treatment of Christians in America to that of Jewish people in Nazi Germany, calling the Obama administration “totalitarian”. He also has a history of hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community. In 2015, he described transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan” and has likened same-sex marriage and polyamory to people “marrying their pets”. Mateer is also an active proponent of conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ individuals, despite extensive evidence that this “therapy” is ineffective at best and dangerous at worst.
Trump’s nomination of Mateer to a lifetime judgeship is an attack on both the separation of church and state and on LGBTQ+ individuals who remain vulnerable to abuse and discrimination. Mateer is an anti-civil rights, anti-First Amendment judge who has admitted outright to discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. Trump has already withdrawn a directive allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice, and banned transgender military recruits. Appointing Mateer to this judgeship would further undermine the rights and protections that LGBTQ+ people and their allies have fought for years to secure.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Crypts of the Undead – Where the Dead Dwell – Score Music – Wilddog Productions
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Before the storm hits, the camp of marauders shares hot beverages and crumbling trail cakes. Their leader watches our community in the charged autumn air. The moon tonight is like a scimitar, a little silver scimitar, a-drifting down the sky. And near beside it is a star, a timid twinkling golden star, that watches likes an eye. Drach looks up at the smoke in the hills from their camp, and through the window-pane of the hospital he helps to build he sees the bandits have a fire again, just like the ones we make,— and somehow he knows the meal they share, having shared similar ones before. Eileen jolts him from his staring to ask for his help with a beam, the artist helping to accelerate the project before the snows hit.
In the mountains, The Monster reaches the gates. As the freezing girl who has been with us a long time steps into the cavern where the Frost Shepherds slowly struggle against their bonds, she casts small spells. Her might and magic stand no protection from the ancient withered shepherds, but shepherds aren’t the only things living in the mountains. With her first footsteps into the cave, tiny tempests whisk themselves up, stirring sand and dust from the floor. She pleads to the four winds blowing through the sky, they have seen the cycles of life and death in the mining camp, to tell her then what to do. She keeps an image of Eileen, Drach, Llyana in her mind, knowing that if not for their affection that she would never have been captured by our community. She knows nothing stands in the way of the Frost Shepherds’ annihilation, and yet if she could bring those three with her into the next cycle, the winds may hold the key to keep her love may be true. As the winds stir, the mountains pick up their snowy caps and in calling the elements to help her, the foolhardy girl who has been with us a long time may have doomed us all. Unnoticed to her, the storm rages down from the mountains, and the valley where miners centuries ago toiled rests at the ending point of the storm’s path.
First comes soft rains from the winds and the smell of the ground from the mountains, and songbirds circle with their shimmering sound; and frogs in the river sing in fear at the night, and wild plum trees shed their tremulous white, robins wear their feathery fire and whistle their whims on a low fence-wire; and not one of us foresee the storm, nature will not care at last when it is done, would not mind, neither bird nor tree, if we all perished utterly; and Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, would scarcely know that we were gone.
In the caves, said the wind from out the south, “Lay no kiss upon his mouth,” and the wind from out the west, “Wound the heart within zer breast,” and the wind from out the east, “Send her empty from the feast,” and the wind from out the north, “In this tempest save them not, when thou art more cruel than they, then will we be kind to thee.”
Before she kissed Eileen only winds of heaven had kissed her, Before Drach, only the tenderness of rain, before Llyana, the fire of the summer sun— with winter coming, how can she care for kisses like theirs again? In the river, she sought the sea, yet now she sends her winds to meet us, surging down the mountain singing of the south— She looks on from the cave her head turned away to keep still holy our kiss upon her mouth. And swift sweet snows of shining November weather found not her lips where living kisses are; she bows her head lest they put out her glory as snow puts out our star. The North Wind speaks “They are yours forever, sealed with a seal and safe forevermore— think you that we could let beggars enter where monsters stood before?”
Crisply the bright snow whispers, crunching beneath our feet as we walk through the ruins of snow collapsed buildings, our shadows dance, fantastic shapes in vivid blue. On the broken foundations of the hospital the chickadees flit to and fro, with sharp turns weaving a frail invisible net. In ecstasy the earth drinks the silver sunlight; in ecstasy the birds drink the wine of speed; in ecstasy they laugh drinking the wine of love. Had not the music of their joy sounded its highest note? The bandit leader holds Drach’s arm, the marauders and our community having struck a bargain to ensure their help getting everyone to safety. Our homes may be destroyed, as well as our hopes of a hospital building, but no lives were lost in the storm. Eileen and Llyana hold each other underneath a door frame, all that remains of one of our homes crushed under the weight of wet snow, and suddenly, with lifted eyes ze tells her to look. There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple, fearless and gay as our love, a bluejay cocked his crest! Oh who can tell the range of joy or set the bounds of beauty?
We begin a new project. Consolidating our community into the few remaining shelters is no easy task, and between marauder, newcomer, and our original settlers, there are plenty of people looking for beds. We plan on moving everyone into main living areas over the next three weeks, and sorting out other structures for purposes of storage and other needs. Drach’s thick hair keeps his head warm during this work and he grits his teeth against the appetite he builds. Despite the rough work, Llyana’s long nails remain pristine and zer blue eyes glow in the sunlight. As Eileen flows through the camp, leading us in our efforts with inspiring song, we look to the river. If it can keep running after the storm, so can we.
Thank you for joining us for the thirty second episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Sara Teasdale. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress MANDATE THE DISCLOSURE OF ONLINE POLITICAL AD INFORMATION
This fall, the US electorate learned that Russian operatives spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on political ads across Facebook, Twitter and Google to influence the outcome of the 2016 US elections. Because online political advertising is not currently covered by political ad disclosure regulations (unlike television, print, and radio advertising), these ads went undetected for over a year. Campaign advertising requirements have not been substantively updated since the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, when Internet advertising was still in its early days. Consequently, the millions of American voters who were targeted by Russian political operatives were unaware of who was behind the political advertisements they were seeing, how they were being targeted, or the scope of Russian advertising influence on the electorate.
Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mark Warner (D-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ) have introduced the bipartisan Honest Ads Act to update standards for political advertising and reduce the potential for foreign interference in future elections. The bill would mandate that all online ads include a disclosure statement identifying the ad as a political one. The bill would also require that platforms running online political ads (such as Facebook, Twitter or Google) build and maintain public databases of these ads. The databases would include images of the ads as well as information about the buyer, linked organizations, cost, and targeting. Furthermore, online platforms would be required to make “all reasonable efforts” to ensure political ads are not being purchased by foreign citizens or governments, just as radio and television broadcasters must already do. The new rules would apply to online platforms with more than 50 million active users, organizations buying political ads with a total value of over $500, and ads for both specific candidates and for legislative issues of national importance.
The Honest Ads Act is not a sufficient standalone response to Russia’s election interference in 2016, but it is a reasonable and necessary first step in safeguarding our democracy, informing our electorate, and ensuring campaign disclosure rules reflect the rapidly changing landscape of advertising and online media.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Crypts of the Undead – Festering Heart of Evil – Score Music – Novak Cuic
Druids Grove – Life Answers – Score Music – Richard Daskas
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
We live in a little world made cunningly of elements, and an angelic hope that violent desperation has betrayed to endless night and of our world, both parts, no, all parts must die. Our lives, which beyond that heaven which was most high have found new spheres and of new lands can write, pour new rivers in our eyes, that so that we might drown our world with weeping earnestly, or wash it, if it must be drowned no more: but oh! it must be burnt; alas the fire of lust and envy burnt it heretofore, and made it fouler; let their flames retire, and burn with a fiery zeal and, which does in eating heal.
Drach sleeps outside, giving his bed to Djuna’s cousin, Heru, wounded seriously in the marauder attack on our community. His sleep is restless, tossed by the chill of the autumn dew and of his dreams. The embrace of she whose face shocked his during the attack. In his dream they fight, holding off Jackals. Those nights in the city they shared together and as his dream pushes them to one another in an ephemeral kiss he wakes to a quiet snowfall. She too wakes in the night, dreaming of closeness, and as the wet snow silently drifts across her camp she pulls her blanket closer and runs her thumb over Drach’s name monogrammed on the wool.
So, break off this last lamenting kiss, which sucks two souls, and vapours both away; turn, ghost, that way, and let me turn this, and let ourselves benight our happiest day. We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe any so cheap a death as saying, “Go.” Go; and if that word have not quite killed either, ease the two with death, by bidding them go too. Or, if it have, let the word work, and a just office on a murderer do. Except it be too late, to kill them so, being double dead, going, and bidding, “Go.”
Heru dies in the night. In the morning Djuna employs Drach to help bury the body, the work warming the autumn frost from his muscles. His silence betrays his feelings as her vengeful rage pours in mourning.
Unheard, she gathers her newcomers. Never treated like members of the original homes, those of us who found the mining camp first, Djuna and her family find hardships and setbacks in integrating into community life. Djuna warns the newcomers that our community will never be their home, maybe not through malicious intent, but through oversight, limited resources, and now the misguided sentiment Drach harbors for the marauders who beat down our homes, our community is not the haven they sought to find. She gathers those close to her, as well as some vital supplies, and sets out into the woods. As she leaves, she notices a small letter tucked into her pack, with a map and directions into the woods.
The letter reads: Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove of golden sands, and crystal brooks, with silken lines, and silver hooks. There will the river whispering run warm’d by thy eyes, more than the Sun. And there the enamored fish will stay, begging themselves they may betray. When thou wilt swimme in that live bath, each fish, which every channel has, will amorously to thee swim, gladder to catch thee, than thou him. If thou, to be so seen, beest loath, by Sun, or Moon, thou darknest both, and if my self have leave to see, I need not their light, having thee. Let others freeze with angling reeds, and cut their legs, with shells and weeds, or treacherously poor fish beset, with strangling snare, or windowie net: let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest the bedded fish in banks out-wrest, or curious traitors, sleavesilke flies bewitch poor fishes wandering eyes. For thee, thou needst no such deceit, for thou thy self art thine own bait; that fish, that is not catch’d thereby, alas, is wiser far than I.
At the bottom of the letter is a signature in an unintelligible script, and the symbol of a snowflake.
We begin a new project this week, for as the night brings snowfall, our generator ticks itself nearly into exhaustion to keep up with the cold. If we salvage what unused technology we have, we may be able to duplicate the device and increase the power available in order to better heat our homes. A freeze will surely kill as well as a spear, knife, or gun. As we approach the dark night of a cold winter, we do not want to die. No, Death, be not proud, though some have called you mighty and dreadful, for you are not so; for those who you think you overthrow die not, poor Death, nor yet canst you kill us. From rest and sleep, which but your pictures be, much pleasure; then from you much more must flow, and soonest our best with you will go, rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. You are cursed to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, and do with poison, war, and sickness dwell, and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well and better than your stroke; why swell you then? Soon, the Shepherds wake eternally, and death shall be no more; Death, you will die.
Thank you for joining us for the thirtieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is John Dunne. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress rush to SUPPORT THE ALEXANDER-MURRAY ACA STABILIZATION BILL
In a deliberate move to sabotage the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Trump recently decided to stop payment of cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies to insurers selling Healthcare.gov marketplace plans. These payments help insurers provide lower-cost health insurance plans on the exchanges. In anticipation of the lost CSR revenue, insurers have already increased their rates dramatically. Some insurers may even exit the exchanges entirely, further jeopardizing health insurance access for the 18 million Americans who buy their insurance plans on the ACA individual market. However, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) have announced a bipartisan bill, the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilization Act of 2017, to attempt to stabilize the ACA’s individual markets by reinstating CSRs for insurers for two more years. The bill would also create a low-cost catastrophic coverage exchange plan and reinstate funding for ACA enrollment outreach, funding which the Trump administration has slashed in yet another attempt to undermine the ACA. In exchange, the bill would give states more flexibility to let insurers offer new types of insurance plans that are comparably affordable to existing ACA plans. Most importantly, the bill would preserve ACA standards for what exchange plans must cover preventing the erosion of protection for those with pre-existing conditions. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a score of this bill and concluded that it would not negatively affect insurance access and would, in fact, reduce the federal deficit by about $3.8 billion over the next decade.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Joy Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Crypts Of The Undead – Where The Dead Dwell – Score Music – Wilddog Productions
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Striking in the night with wounding pain and ruthless might. The marauders push to camp, taking food and supplies from storage. Few of us rise to stop them, but the fight is rough. Night cacophony rings through the hills and wakes those sleeping in our homes. The need for warmth and nutrition keeps the marauders coming, they know if they run they will starve, but we know the same of our community, if we let them off with too much we’re doomed, especially with all the extra mouths of Djuna’s Newcomers.
The bandit leader propels them through the darkness, skipping through trees like turnstiles, sickly branches snapping and rotating in the night. She whoops loudly, to encourage their momentum and to drive our fear higher. We stay indoors, mostly.
The first one outside is Drach, his wrench held high in the night, but his spirits low in his heart. Working as our mechanic and carpenter allowed him to repurpose his strength from violence to creation, but now his building tools become weapons. He fells the first bandit with one swing, and inspires others to step up as well.
He stops when he sees the face of the bandit leader. He recognizes the scar across her forehead, and he knows that the Jackal that gave it to her lies in a ditch with his bullet in the same place. They both stand still as violence bursts around them. Quietly he shakes his head at her, and she meets his gaze with sadness. As more of us pour from our homes she whistles and calls back her marauders into the black of the night and as the sun rises we’re left with tattered ruins of the houses in progress for those new among us.
The marauders had torn down the buildings closest to the area of their descent, the freshest structures they could find while looking for resources. All of Drach’s work to set foundations and raise walls torn down in an evening of violence.
As the marauders had struck our homes, we hear The Beast strike them in their retreat. Muffled roars and a single scream echo into our camp as we pick up broken trusses. The Beast has a meal tonight and we shudder at our relief that it was not one of us. Eileen hums a dirge and we all join in as we pick up the scattered pieces from the ground.
Sombre the night is, and, though we have our lives, we know what sinister threat lurks there. Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know this poison-blasted track opens on our camp— on a little safe sleep. But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy. Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks: Music showering on our upturned listening faces. Death could drop from the dark as easily as song— but song only dropped, like a blind man’s dreams on the sand by dangerous tides; like a girl’s dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there, or her kisses where a serpent hides. The Creature, woken again by the scent of violent purpose, stirs undetected in its underground lair.
We discover something new today, as small skinks stir in the leaf litter on the forest floor, come out to hid under the large bits of debris, and as the autumn sun lights on their hiding holes they scamper to and fro to find larger bits of shade. Up high in the mountains, the bandit leader wakes to find one of her marauders slipped away in the night, the small skinks lightly licking their bandaged wounds.
The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps to her hand, a strange sardonic rat, as she pulls a frosted poppy to stick behind her soldier’s ear. Droll skink, they would shoot you if they knew your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this bandit hand you will do the same to Drach’s soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure to cross the sleeping green between. It seems to inwardly grin as it passes strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, less chanced than it for life, bonds to the whims of murder, spawned from The Creature’s lair, sprawled in the bowels of the earth, the torn mountain valley. What does it see in our eyes at the shrieking iron and flame hurled through still heavens? What quaver—what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins drop, and are ever dropping; but hers in her soldier’s ear is safe— just a little white with the frost.
Thank you for joining us for the thirtieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Anna Seward. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress protect the Clean Power Plan:
On October 9th, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the agency will take steps to repeal the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy aimed at reducing carbon emissions from power plants and combating climate change. There is no question that increased carbon emissions have led to climate change and the rise of more and more floods, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes that have put populations in the US and around the world in danger. It is irresponsible for the EPA to roll back policies that curb carbon emissions under false promises of reduced costs or a coal industry comeback.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Druid’s Grove – Life Answers – Score Music – Richard Daskas
Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
While summer roses all their glory yield to crown the votary of love and joy, misfortune’s victim hails, with many a sigh, thee, scarlet Poppy of the pathless field, gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield thy flaccid vest that, as the gale blows high, flaps, and alternate folds around thy head. So stands in the long grass a love-crazed maid, smiling aghast; while stream to every wind her garish ribbons, smeared with dust and rain; but brain-sick visions cheat her tortured mind, and bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain, kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed, thou flimsy, showy, melancholy weed.
We wake and the girl on whom we all depend who had been with us a long time is gone. We can feel her absence more than we had in her time in the woods. Now she has left for good.
While one sere leaf, that parting Autumn yields, trembles upon the thin, and naked spray of the river, November, dragging on this sunless day, lours, cold and sullen, on the watery fields; and Nature to the waste dominion yields, stripped her last robes, with gold and purple gay — so droops our life, of our soft beams despoiled, Youth, Health, and Hope, that long exulting smiled; and the wild carols, and the bloomy hues of merry Spring-time, spruce on every plain her half-blown bushes, moist with sunny rain, more pensive thoughts in my sunk heart infuse than Winter’s grey, and desolate domain faded like my lost Youth, that no bright Spring renews.
On the fleet streams, the Sun, that late arose, in amber radiance plays; the tall young grass no foot hath bruised; clear morning, as the marauders pass, breathing the pure gale, that on the blossom blows; and, as with gold yon green hill’s summit glows as the rising sun sparkles off of their sharp weaponry, the river inlays the vale with molten glass and the desperate heart of their bandit leader glows with hope as she sees our community nestled down the mountainous slope: now is the year’s soft youth, yet one, alas! Cheers not as it was wont; impending woes weigh on her heart as she sees Drach putting final touches on the houses for Djuna’s newcomers; the joys, that once were theirs shared during the War against the Jackals, Spring leads not back; and those that yet remain fade while she blooms. Each hour more lovely shine her crystal beams, and feed her floral train, but oh with pale, and warring fires, decline those eyes, whose light romantic hopes sustain.
Lurking as the marauders do, The Beast watches the bandit leader. Its jaw tight with hunger but its body too weak to strike outright. As it perches above the marauders, it watches them as they watch us, both waiting for the right moment to strike.
Behold that tree, in Autumn’s dim decay, stripped by the frequent, chill, and eddying wind; where yet some yellow, lonely leaves we find lingering and trembling on the naked spray, twenty, perchance, for millions whirled away! Emblem, also! too just, of humankind! Vain man expects longevity, designed for few indeed; and their protracted day.
Down in our community, Safwan gives a small cough as the autumn chill tickles their lungs. What is it worth that Wisdom does not scorn? The blasts of sickness, care, and grief appall, that laid the friends in dust, whose natal morn rose near their own; and solemn is the call; yet, like those weak deserted leaves forlorn, shivering they cling to life, and fear the fall. We begin a project to erect a hospital, a safe tent for those ill. As the nights grow longer and the warmth of the mountains turns into a rocky chill, we may need this facility in short order.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty ninth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. This week’s poet is Anna Seward. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com.
Listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. In these times there’s a lot that scares me in the world, but we have to stand up as a people and make our voices heard. I ask that you make a few phone calls to your representatives about issues that matter to you. I’ve been using a great website at 5 Calls dot org which provides critical issues, background information, contact info, and even scripts to read while on the phone. Thankfully my representative’s offices have been polite and personable when I call, but if you’re worried about it, or if you experience phone anxiety, there’s an app you can download called Stance, which allows you to pre-record your statement, which it will then deliver straight to the representative’s voicemail. Today I’m calling to demand that congress pass a clean DREAM act:
In September, Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals act, threatening over 800,000 undocumented young people with deportation. The declaration gave Congress until March of 2018 to pass a legislative fix or equivalent to DACA, or else those currently protected would face rapid deportation. The most robust legislative fix is the DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill originally drafted in 2001 that not only provides protection and work permits to roughly a million undocumented immigrants, but also a path to legal citizenship.
Please make your calls to help make our world a better place. Thank you, I love you, and I’m proud of you in advance.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Underground Lake City – Whispers of the World Below the World – Score Music – Marko Gugic
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Our hearts are like a singing bird whose nest is in a water’d shoot; our hearts are like an apple-tree whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; our hearts are like a rainbow shell that paddles in a halcyon sea; our hearts are gladder than all these because my love is come to me. Paint a mural of cities silk and down; hang it with vair and purple dyes; carve it in doves and pomegranates, and peacocks with a hundred eyes; work it in gold and silver grapes, in leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; because the birthday of our life is come, our city is come.
As Eileen works over the mural of our city, she reflects how our quiet year passes quickly and we sometimes lose sight of its progress, lacking gratitude for the moments of Spring and Summer. We should have come to the cuckoo’s calling, or when grapes are green in the cluster, or, at least, when lithe swallows muster for their far off flying from summer dying. Fall brings the apples’ dropping, a time when the grasshopper comes to trouble, when the wheat-fields are sodden stubble, and all winds go sighing for sweet things dying.
None of us in the community die this week, but death comes for a dream.
Come to us in the silence of the night; come in the speaking silence of a dream; come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream; come back in tears, o memory, hope, love of finished years.
The mural spiraling up on the wall of a shelter now drips with a vandal’s paint. Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, whose wakening should have been in Paradise, where souls brimfull of love abide and meet; where thirsting longing eyes watch the slow door that opening, letting in, lets out no more. Yet while the mural drips ruined, the image of our city comes to us in dreams, that we may live our very life again tho’ cold in death: comes back to us in dreams, that we may give pulse for pulse, breath for breath: speak low, lean low, as long ago, our love, how long ago.
A fool we were to sleep at noon, and wake when night is chilly beneath the comfortless cold moon; a fool to pluck our rose too soon, a fool to snap our lily. Our personal gardens we have not kept; their shoots now faded and all-forsaken. Eileen weeps as she has never wept: oh it was summer when she slept, it’s winter now she wakens.
Oh why is heaven built so far, oh why is earth set so remote? We cannot reach the nearest star that hangs afloat. We would not care to reach the moon, one round monotonous of change; yet even she repeats her tune beyond my range. We never watch the scatter’d fire of stars, or sun’s far-trailing train, but all our hearts are one desire, and all in vain: for we am bound with fleshly bands, joy, beauty, lie beyond our scope; we strain our hearts, we stretch our hands, and catch at hope.
Safwan does not weep, nor Djuna, nor her cousin Heru. The newcomers who hail from another city over feel no attachment to our towers and why should they? Safwan falls asleep, pretty one, warm on Djuna’s shoulder: sleep soft, small one, through trouble and treasure; sleep warm and soft in the arms of your carer, dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.
The remorseful girl who has been with us a long time mourns with us the loss of our monument, the tie back to our old life. As the sun sets over the glint of the river waves she lilts a song to the rapids, soft and sweet. She stays on the river all night, we never see her leave the bank.
Where sunless rivers weep their waves into the deep, she sleeps a charmed sleep: awake her not. Led by a single star, she came from very far to seek where shadows are her pleasant lot. She leaves in the rosy morn, she leaves our fields of corn, for twilight cold and lorn and water springs. Through sleep, as through a veil, she sees the sky look pale, and hears the nightingale that sadly sings. Rest, rest, a perfect rest shed over brow and breast; her face is toward the west, the purple land. She cannot see the grain ripening on hill and plain; she cannot feel the rain upon her hand. Rest, rest, for evermore upon a mossy shore; rest, rest at the heart’s core till time shall cease: sleep that no pain shall wake; night that no morn shall break till joy shall overtake her perfect peace.
To replace the vandalized mural, we will need to come together as a community first and identify why it was ruined in the first place. A project begins, planning a tribunal. Eileen, Clovis, and Drach take responsibility as artist, elder, and worker of the community. Suspects will be listed, motives unearthed, and restorations made. But time must first pass.
And as Spring and Summer passed, Fall trudges on, and as the leaves begin to fall in earnest,
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty eighth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Some people have been curious as to the poetry that gets woven into each episode. I’ll begin putting the poet’s information in the show notes, and in hindsight I should have done so from the beginning. As I’m able, I’ll go back to old episodes and include this information. This week’s poet is Christina Rossetti. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. As the determined girl who has been with us a long time returns to our community, we only now notice that she had been gone. Her head dips low in failure and while she does not speak of her time in the woods we know that whatever mission she set out upon, the results were not to her satisfaction.
Up in the mountains, the ponderous bodies of the Frost Shepherds stir underneath miles of rock and exposed to miles of air. All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again, and as the cycle of autumnal chill bathes the community in its shivering rain, the grinding of stones produce a wailing hum. The magical girl who has been with us a long time had attempted a spell, a ritual to interrupt a spiral. But the spiral still continues, and she knows there will be no escaping. If anything, she has only accelerated its progress.
If you were to sit above the thrones of the inscrutable, untranslatable, ineffable Frost Shepherds and watch the valley between the mountains you would see over eons the same patterns played out. A great spiral, a slow, ever-widening, unmeasured spiral unrolling itself horizontally. The people in this community, frozen in time and sometimes frozen in ice, appear to be motionless at every stage of their progress, each one is simultaneously being born, arriving at all ages and dying. You would perceive that it is a world without mobility, everything taking place, has taken place, will take place; therefore nothing takes place, all at once.
To the people in the community, this spiral moves so slowly as to be immaterial, they do not see the spiral, it only makes itself known at the beginning, and at the end.
The ritual has completed. The desperate girl who’s been with us a long time had tried to stop the spiral but as a small shell worn down in the river’s flow the spiral continues even after the form has gone.
A violent luck and a whole sample and even then quiet. The Frost Shepherds do not hold strength to come just yet, but as the heat of summer held them at bay the chill of autumn welcomes them to waking. They send their eyes into the water of the river, the water that is squeezing, water that is almost squeezing on lard. Water, water is a mountain and it is selected and it is so practical that there is no use in money. A mind under is exact and so it is necessary to have a mouth and eye glasses. A question of sudden rises and more time than awfulness is so easy and shady. There is precisely that noise. A peck a small piece not privately overseen, not at all not a slice, not at all crestfallen and open, not at all mounting and chaining and evenly surpassing, all the bidding comes to tea. A separation is not tightly in worsted and sauce, it is so kept well and sectionally. Put it in the stew, put it to shame. A little slight shadow and a solid fine furnace. The teasing is tender and trying and thoughtful. The line which sets sprinkling to be a remedy is beside the best cold. A puzzle, a monster puzzle, a heavy choking, a neglected Tuesday. Wet crossing and a likeness, any likeness, a likeness has blisters, it has that and teeth, it has the staggering blindly and a little green, any little green is ordinary. One, two and one, two, nine, second and five and that. A blaze, a search in between, a cow, only any wet place, only this tune. Cut a gas jet uglier and then pierce pierce in between the next and negligence. Choose the rate to pay and pet pet very much. A collection of all around, a signal poison, a lack of languor and more hurts at ease. A white bird, a colored mine, a mixed orange, a dog. Cuddling comes in continuing a change. A piece of separate outstanding rushing is so blind with open delicacy. A canoe is orderly. A period is solemn. A cow is accepted. A nice old chain is widening, it is absent, it is laid by.
A new discovery. A glass carafe of frozen ice by the door of every home. Every home except those of the newcomers to the community. A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The newcomers know that the first groups bound well, and pushing sticks into bonds can stretch. The difference is spreading.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty seventh episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, Emmeline Duplois, and Kelsey Campbell: THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher
Crypts of the Undead – Restless Souls – Score Music – Phil Archer
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Some moments in life sing with poetry, but others sit flat on the page. Not every week will show our lives bustling with rhythm or meter and the vivid images of a poet’s pen do not suffer any obligation to show themselves. This week we live our lives plainly.
That said, plainness comes with benefits. For this week we live our lives in this community, as we forage around our camp, fish from the rivers, till our fields, show love to family members, orient ourselves with Djuna’s family, chronicle our history in Clovis’s journal, marvel at the skyscraper model in the center of the town, play with dolls, or lay by the river.
Things don’t always have to do things, utility is not the pinnacle of purpose, and a life without flair can be just as valuable as a life oversaturated with sensation. The trick is to find the stillness in life’s still points and to hone in. We make the most of this warm autumn week, and relax amongst ourselves as life passes, nestled in craggy rocks.
Some of the foragers, bolstered by the still-warm sun of autumn, explore deeper into the sickly trees on our side of the river’s bank. Joking amongst themselves, Reese and their friends bustle through the undergrowth, laughing as they push through twisted trunks. Further than they’ve travelled before, emboldened by the happiness of the harvests, or just at peace in each others company, they reach back to the foots of the mountains. The mines would dig into the rocky bases here, and as the young adults skip pebbles off of the foothill’s cliffs, the stones clatter throughout the thin forest.
Sometimes you never notice something until it shows up after being gone for an extended time. We hadn’t made too much of a deal of the lack of wildlife in the mining camp, but every one of the boisterous explorers freeze as one unit as a timid marmot climbs out of a hole in the rocky landscape. A deer here or there we’ve seen in our community, or a rustling bird flying overhead, but no small ground mammals live in the hunting grounds of The Beast or The Creature. The marmot slowly waddles to a trio of dandelions and lazily munches on the leaves of the weeds.
The explorers watch the marmot for minutes, stretching the time out in wonder as they see a natural creature not bound by fear or scarred from an attack. After the marmot has filled his stomach for the time, it wanders back into its burrow, and Reese and their compatriots head back to camp, with wide eyes.
Underneath the rocks, the marmot trundles through dirty passageways, its eyes glazed over with a glowing blue film. As the passageway grows larger around it, the stones and roots begin to glow with a similar blue light. The marmot stops in front of a scaled Creature, whose warm breath mists up the glowing chamber. The furry mammal vomits the contents of its lunch on the earthen floor of the cavern, and rearranges the chewed leaves into a rudimentary map. The saliva coating the chewed leaves starts to glow with a blue tint, and a trail emerges in the sick slime. The creature grins a scaled mouth, and the marmot trundles back into the darkness.
Back in the community proper, we undertake a new project. A great mural begins on the largest shack in the camp. Soaring images of our once great city rise up on the wooden walls, painted by Eileen and the newcomers as a way to remember our past lives in the metropolises.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty sixth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
The first sunrise of Autumn peeks over the top of the highest mountain and the golden rays of sunlight dance upon dew gathered on the collar of a corpse.
Yesterday was a cold evening, down by one of the fishhouses Clem sits netting, his net, in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark purple-brown, and his shuttle worn and polished. The air smells so strong of riverfish it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water. All is silver: the heavy surface of the river, swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, is opaque, but the silver of Clem’s bench, the holding pots, and nets, scattered among the wild muddy shore, is of an apparent translucence like our small old buildings with an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls.
His big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and his wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them. Reese visits and brings Clem a rolled cigarette. They talk of the decline in the population and of codfish and herring as they wait for autumn to come in. There are sequins on Clem’s vest and on his thumb. He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty, from unnumbered fish with that black old knife, the blade of which is almost worn away. Down at the water’s edge, at the place where the river has started to haul up driftwood, up the long descent into the water, thin silver tree trunks are laid horizontally across the gray stones, down and down at intervals of four or five feet. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, element bearable to no mortal, to fish. Cold dark deep and absolutely clear, the clear gray icy water . . . across the river from Reese and Clem, the dignified tall firs begin. Bluish, associating with their shadows, a million thick trees stand waiting for winter. The water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.They watch the waves over and over, the same sea, the same, slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones, icily free above the stones, above the stones and then the world. It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever, flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
Reese finds Clem this morning, as a group of foragers clears the river’s bank and reenters the community center. Reese is concerned at first that the fisherman had stayed up too late mending his nets, but when Clem does not move at Reese’s call, the other boy grows nervous, then runs and calls for help. Gathered around the body, we move Clem from his place and see the wounds on his front, left in the night by The Beast.
While mapping the forest, a topic of conversation common amongst foragers, Reese in particular, was where The Beast was, lurking in the forest it called home. Complacent to take our peaceful gathering at face value, we forgot the danger in the woods, but now The Beast has struck us at home.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. We lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. The war with the Jackals has given us practice in losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was we meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. In fleeing the city, Ezekiel lost his birth mother’s watch. We lost our cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms we owned, two rivers, a continent. We miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Even losing Clem it’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may sound to listeners like disaster.
We mourn Clem’s passing. We add another plot to our cemetery. We discover something new about our community: as the newer members mourn with us, Safwan scampers near the edge of the crowd, and stumbles. As they right themself, they stare into the trees across the river’s bank and lock eyes with The Beast as it slowly backs into the forest. The trees themselves move around The Beast’s passing and seem to give off a silvered glow. As they return to their natural standing, Safwan could swear they see faces on the bark, faces whispering a soft chant.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty fifth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher
Heavenly Plane Caelum – Score Music – Maria Milewska
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Earth has not anything to show more fair: dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so touching in its majesty: our houses now, like clothing, wear the beauty of the morning; silent, bare, fish nets, field plows, shacks, statue, and community square lie open unto the fields, and to the sky; all bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep in his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; never saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! the river glides at its own sweet will. The very houses seem asleep; and all that mighty heart is lying still! But while the houses sleep, they sleep well full, for the influx of community members has packed them wide. Djuna’s family and friends sleep on makeshift hammocks, or nestled tightly invited into already full beds. Housing once again is scarce in our community.
Drach, having spent time still in quiet rest on the river bank with the charming girl who’s been with us a long time, now stirs restless in her absence. His journal, neglected for a time, not occupies his days and he begins to feel the call of idle hands again as the summer days begin to cool. No longer as warm as to make work sting with sweat, he begins to look for more work in the community.
As he polls the newcomers, Djuna’s friends and family reunited with her once more in our small community nestled in the mountains, they ask themselves “Who is this happy Warrior who no longer holds his blade?”
It is the generous spirit, whose high endeavours are an inward light that makes the path before him always bright; who, once doomed to go in company with Pain, and Fear, and Bloodshed, turns his necessity to glorious gain; controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves of their bad influence, and their good receives: more skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, as tempted more; more able to endure the light of the sun and the strain of the work as he begins to build new houses, and, as more exposed to suffering and distress; then, also, more alive to tenderness and warmth to those newly come to us.
Drach’s work brings him closer to those new to the community and as his hands build walls, his chatter builds bonds with folks of all sorts. He labours good on good to fix, and owes to virtue every triumph that he knows. He comprehends his trusting nature and knows each person good and as he works to expand the houses we have in our community we start to grow into more, into the first inkling of a town. He works happy as a lover; and attired with sudden brightness, like a Man inspired; he who, though once suffering storm and turbulence in the fight against the Jackals is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans to homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes; Sweet images he shares with the newcomers, many of whom still dream in the night of Jackals and danger. He finds comfort in himself and in his cause. This is the happy Warrior; this is he that every man in arms should wish to be.
Drach works, not tirelessly, for he feels the strain of his work and in the evenings retires to a bunk to sleep strongly through the night and wake in the morning with stiff muscles. As he works, the youth in the community greet the newest youngster, a small child by the name of Safwan. Yuen carries with her the doll that Ezekiel had made to mend their feud, it having been completed this week only. She holds it to Safwan as an introduction, and as they reach for it, the three youngsters go to bonding over the new doll, all admiring Ezekiel’s craftsmanship.
As the last light from the summer sun edges below the trees, we take a moment to sigh and appreciate our summer. It went by too quickly but most of us are better for it. As the forest foragers go their rounds and Llayana tends to xer soil, we take stock of the dusk light and ask ourselves what should our focus be going into autumn.
I think Drach’s (pronounced like ox) got the best idea, for sure. Especially if more people find our camp, we should have roofs to put over their heads. Especially if the days are getting shorter and colder.
Shelter’s great, but we’re barely keeping up on our food supply. I think we should focus on stocking our larders for the leaner months. Winter may freeze this river solid, and crops won’t grow under snow.
Any time we prepare for something, it goes wrong, or something new happens, or we change priorities. If we live life day to day and let the magic of the mountains come to us we should be ready to adapt to whatever life sends our way!
The Beast in the woods and The Creature underground have left us alone for a suspiciously long time, and we haven’t seemed to have even met the Monster in the river. The warning on those metal plates still rings in my ears. We should make sure we can defend ourselves when the inevitable happens.
Indecisive, the only thing we can all agree on is how beautiful the summer sun looks as it dips behind the peaks.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Druids Grove – Life Answers – Score Music – Richard Daskas
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed
Eileen lays her sleeping head, nestled with her love, human on Llyana’s faithless arm. Soul and body have no bounds to the lovers as they lie upon her tolerant enchanted slope in their ordinary swoon, grave the vision Venus sends of supernatural sympathy, universal love and hope; while an abstract insight wakes among the glaciers and the rocks the hermit’s carnal ecstasy. Djuna slumbers nearby, the large woman welcomed warmly into the community, and seeking out Eileen and Llyana’s company seems to have healed most of her panic and calmed her spirit. Eileen with her creativity and art uplifting and empowering Djuna’s expression, helps to process the time spent alone in the woods. Llyana takes a different approach to the same goal, as xe guides Djuna’s hand in the field and focuses her muscles into expressing for her. Certainty, from this night not a whisper, not a thought, not a kiss nor look was lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: let the winds of dawn that blow softly round our dreaming heads such a day of welcome show eye and knocking heart may bless, find the mortal world enough; noons of dryness find us fed by the involuntary powers, nights of insult let us pass watched by every human love.
Early, at the first peak of the sun’s rays over the mountains, as the golden light splashes down into the mining camp, the foragers in the woods return to camp with more bodies than they had set out with. As we welcome, blanket, and feed the newcomers, Djuna brushes the morning dust from her eyes and catches a heartbeat as it nearly jumps from her chest. She runs to a small man in the new crowd and pulls him into her heavy arms with a strong embrace.
Down by the brimming river that night we heard a lover sing under an arch of the railway: love has no ending. ‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you ‘till the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street, till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry and the seven stars go squawking like geese about the sky.
‘O plunge your hands in water, plunge them in up to the wrist; stare, stare in the basin and wonder what you’ve missed. ‘O look, look in the mirror, o look in your distress: life remains a blessing although you cannot bless. ‘O stand, stand at the window as the tears scald and start; you shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart.’ It was late, late in the evening, the lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, and the deep river ran on.
The shores are pummelled by the waves; in a lonely forest the rain lashes an abandoned mine cart; magpies fill the mountain caves. Unendowed with wealth or pity, clever birds with jet black legs, sitting on their speckled eggs, eye our happy community. Altogether elsewhere, vast herds of antlered beasts move across miles and miles of golden moss, silently and very fast and lost in the forest a small ring of pines begins to chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you, you cannot conquer Time. In the chamber of the Shepherds where winter naked is, time watches from the shadow and coughs when we would kiss.
Ezekiel, playing with Yuen in the mud, as if no time and no feud between them has passed, kneels and digs with a small trowel. It strikes something in the mud and, as excited as he was on the first day in the camp, he scampers about in a small circle before resuming his dig. He finds a thick cable, buried in the rivers edge. However, unlike the frayed chord that led us to the old generator, this cable thickly plunges into the mud under deep waters.
Based on its direction, it looks to head directly into the dark and thick woods on the other side of the river. As Ezekiel and Yuen follow its course and try to guess where through the dirt it may travel, a harsh roar from across the river sends songbirds into flight. The two children rush from the river, without the protective girl who’s been with us a long time, their fear and memories of The Beast and The Creature make their flight stronger. As we sleep tonight the roars continue, quieter but no less hungry than the first.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Gnome Village – Tinkertown (Short Loop) – Score Music – Kevin MacLeod
Crypts of the Dead – Stain of the Departed – Score Music – Evan Kitchener
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Yuen dances on the river’s shore, cloudy and blustery as Summer begins its descent into autumn; What need has she to care for wind or water’s roar? She tumbles her hair spraying wet river drops; being young she has not known the fool’s triumph, nor yet love lost as soon as won. The hesitant girl who has been with us a long time watches as Yuen plays, watching also the foragers in the woods, Drach finally goaded into assisting. He, the best warrior, whose violence now lays dead and all the sheaves of river reeds to bind it! What need that yuen should dread the monstrous crying of wind?
The conflicted girl who has been with us a long time hears the brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, looks up and sees the brilliant moon and all the milky sky, and all that famous harmony of leaves, which had blotted out The Beast’s image and its cry.
She rises, noting the indentation her legs leave in the grass and the mud near the river’s edge, the way her scales, hidden so well from human eyes, leave tessellated imprints in the wet soil. As she rises so too does the wildness on the river, and on the instant clamorous eaves, A climbing moon upon an empty sky, and all that lamentation of the leaves, could but compose her image and her cry.
Venturing to the ring of pines where once she sheltered Yuen, the headstrong girl who has been with us a long time crouches into the woods and begins to draw circles and lines in the dirt of the forest floor. As she draws, the outline of a face begins to appear in the air, the pines pull into the center of the ring, and the birds go quiet. With the last circle she traces in the soil, she looks back to the path to the river.
The face in the trees solidifies into reality, etched into the bark of each pine for moments, then incihng and creaking down the trunks to slough into the earth. Rising from the clay is a prone body, a sleeping man. The magical girl who has been with us a long time rests her eyes on his face, and her memories turn back to those who first came to this mining camp. She can see him still— the freckled man who goes to a gray place on a riverbank in gray mining clothes at dawn to cast his flies— it’s long since she began to call up to the eyes this wise and simple man. All day she’d looked in the face what she had hoped it would be and the reality: the living men that she hated, this dead man that she loved, and how when the Frost Shepherds came, the work of The Beast, The Creature, and her The Monster tasked with the beating down of the wise and all the great art beaten down.
She knows this ritual, and despite having never cast it before she knows the length she’ll need to afford it. Waking up after a chilled afternoon nap, Eileen finds a note from the absent girl who’s been with us a long time, devoid of details but noting her disappearance. Not to return to the community for six weeks since suddenly she began, in scorn of this forested audience, imagining a man, and his sun-freckled face and gray mining cloth, climbing up to a place where stone is dark with river froth, and the down turn of his wrist when the flies drop in the stream— a man who does not now exist, a man who is but a dream; and the pines themselves moan around his sleeping form, “Before we are old we shall have written him one poem maybe as cold and passionate as the dawn.”
High in the mountains, the Frost Shepherds stir. Now as at all times they can see in their mind’s eye, in their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones appearing and disappearing in the blue depths of the sky with all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones, and all their helms of silver hovering side by side, and all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more, being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied, the newest inhabitants of the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
In the community proper, Ezekiel begins a small project of his own. Becoming of age and maturity, or at least approaching those steps, he realizes his past mistakes. Though still very much a child, he can see the damage his fight with Yuen has caused on their relationship and regrets the lost weeks of their friendship together. He remembers how Yuen would look in wanting at the doll tied to the watchful girl who has been with us a long time’s belt and begins to gather materials for his own creation. A bit of unused cloth here, a stray bead or button popped from its original home there, in two weeks he’ll have a present, a peace offering to give to his friend. With this new project in his heart, Ezekiel begins to work his creativity and keeps in his mind the joyful memories the two youngsters have shared.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty second episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Caelum – Score Music – Maria Milewska
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
White, glittering sunlight fills the community square, spotted and sprigged with shadows. Double rows of bartering booths spread out their tempting shows of harvested golden fruit, the morning air smells sweet with ripeness, on the pathway there a wicker basket gapes and crashes down spilling out small, meek plums. The market glows, and flaunts, and clatters in its busy care. This week we finish the project to build the centerpiece of this square and as the final touches are put upon the magnificent monument the sun peers out from behind a cloud and glints off of the model skyscraper, throwing reflections across the camp in beautiful sparkle. A stately Eileen at the northern side lifts her voice to the distant sky, and through the wide clear camp peals a song, suddenly — crashing, triumphant in its joyful tide, quenching the square in vibrant harmony.
The summer warms not only our bodies but also our determined hearts. Addressing our food shortage has been a concern since we first set up camp in this wooded clearing, from farms and fields, to river catches. Today Eileen’s song brings us warmth but melodies and song can’t replace the warmth of a full belly.
We double down efforts to bring food to our tables, more hands assist with the farm, repairs are made to the tangled nets of the fisheries, and most importantly, a cadre of brazen individuals set forth across the river to forage in the thicker woods. Our hunger outweighs our fear of The Beast and while we sometimes hear the rumbled growls in the woods we manage to bring back overflowing handfuls of mushrooms, berries, and roots unimpeded. We start a project to organize protected details of foragers to address this bounty of untapped resources. We estimate small groups at first but if we see success we plan on having fully stocked market stalls and food storages within four weeks.
The only ones opposed to this plan are Eileen, Drach, and the nervous girl who has been with us a long time. Every time we venture into The Beast’s home she watches at the river’s shore. The children say she mumbles under her breath and seems to see things they cannot but we pass this as worry for our safety.
One afternoon as we explore our limits in the woods she sits unseen on the river’s bank and watches The Beast, who looks on our explorers with a great hunger. The Beast is now barely a set of fur over bones, kept from meals by the watchful gaze of the torrential girl who has been with us a long time. It lets out a ravenous whimper and meets her eyes, but she shakes her head and we walk into the woods, wary yet unaware.
In the absence of Old Miley, lost in the earthen tunnel weeks ago, a younger man named Shaddock works to repair the fish farms near the river’s bank. Cold, wet leaves floating on moss-coloured water, and the croaking of frogs – cracked bell-notes in the twilight. Tonight he sits with Yuen & Ezekiel and shows them the ropes, encouraging them as they splash lines into the water. When the three get tired, they sit on the shore and stare at the stars overhead. Shaddock recites a rhyme from the days in the City to teach the children about the constellations overhead:
By day you cannot see the sky for it is up so very high. You look and look, but it’s so blue that you can never see right through.
But when night comes it is quite plain, and all the stars are there again. They seem just like old friends to me, I’ve known them all my life you see.
There is the dipper first, and there is Cassiopeia in her chair, Orion’s belt, the Milky Way, and lots I know but cannot say.
One group looks like a swarm of bees, Papa says they’re the Pleiades; but I think they must be the toy of some nice little angel boy.
Perhaps his jackstones which to-day he has forgot to put away, and left them lying on the sky where he will find them bye and bye.
I wish he’d come and play with me. We’d have such fun, for it would be a most unusual thing for boys to feel that they had stars for toys!
As they watch the stars sparkle in the warm summer night, a dim point of light in the sky sparks to life in a supernova infinitely far away. The three of them watch as the star, almost so small as to be unseen before, grows and grows until it outshines the other sparks in the night. When the sun rises the next day, the light from this blaze is still strong enough to be seen in the blue air.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twenty first episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Dirge – The Passing Of The Elves – Score Music – Mark Stothard
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
For months we lived under the assumption that we were the only survivors of the war with the Jackals. Only we few living in this mining camp, here to live out the rest of our days and watch ourselves fade into the mountains as an echo of the last cities to fall. Today that changes, as a woman walks into camp an hour before noon. Her feet run bloodied as her torn shoes flap on the forest ground. Her torn and ripped leather jacket hangs near rags over her muscled shoulders, and her eyes glare determined, then soften to relieved, as she sees our concerned faces. As Eileen rushes to her, she collapses in the dirt, and Eileen carries her inside to sleep. As she sleeps she dreams.
She dreams of the dark, when the Jackals came for her wife and for her city. She dreams of the wind-blurred pines that lined her escape, with a glimmer of light between trunks. She fights for a time, as they come in wave after wave. Then she runs, entombed for an hourless night with the world of things unseen. She runs until the forest chokes from pruned and groomed trees to wilder scrub, and then to feral old growth, where the trunks are wider than her arms can wrap, and then just when she thinks she has lost her hope and herself to the woods the trees thin and she hears two sets of noises. From one direction she hears growling and the plodding of heavy feet, and from the other she hears the sound of our community, and as she hears the sound of laughter she feels a pull and the ground ahead of her puts up a strange fog. Mist, the dust of flowers, leagues, heavy with promise of snow, and a beckoning road ‘twixt vale and hill, with the lure that all must know. Despite it being nearly mid day she sees a light, as if it came from her window’s gleam, soft, flaring its squares of red, she looses the ache of the wilderness and longs for the fire instead.
As the woman sleeps in Eileen’s bed, resting the miles from her feet, the sun moves overhead and dips below the mountains. The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem to grope, with eerie fingers for the window of the shack—then— to rest to sleep, enfolding her, as in a dream. Faith—might she awaken! The night temperature drops and clouds form overhead. As our gossip precipitates, so too drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat. Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise, and softly patters by, like little fearing feet. Faith—this weather! To warm the woman, Eileen sparks a fire in her hearth, and the smoke rises into the shower, the feathery ash is fluttered; there upon the pane, and as the night winds on the dying fire casts a flickering ghostly beam,— then closes in the night and gently falling rain. Faith—what darkness!
The morning eventually comes, and those able to wrest sleep from the vice grips of curiosity wake to find Eileen, Llyana, Drach, and Clovis, a foursome of welcoming faces, supporting the woman as she gingerly steps from the shack into the sun of the mining camp. Drach and Eileen support her arms and Clovis & Llyana offer encouraging words with her steps. They bring her to a table near the community’s center, and bring food and water to entice her story. She gives her name as Djuna, and thanks the community for her welcoming.
We begin a project, a catalogue of our history. Clovis leads this effort, interviewing Djuna about her time in the forest. The goal is to create a lineage of every one of us in the community, so that nothing is lost when we leave the world.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the twentieth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Druid’s Grove – Vision Quest of the Bearheart – Score Music – Geronimo Snijjtsheuvel
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
Two weeks have passed.
Summer is fleeting, and the weeks pass almost unnoticed. The first seven days go by as normal, but on the eighth day the river floods. Llyana, having helped to clean the shore of the river, now plants thistles and brushes, aromatic wild brushes gathered from the scrub trees nearby, to pad the river’s shores and break the sting of bugs as we play on the shores. Stirred by the summer storms, great mountainous glaciers break and melt and over the days past the storm we are allowed some peace before we feel their floodwaters. However, on this eighth day we see the sweep as the river swells and drags one of Llyana’s sage bushes with it, the whole purple herb, a stray branch among meltwater teeth, they chewing weeds that line the shore,- perhaps tomorrow’s moon will grant us refuge and community again.
With the tenth day the rush of the river pulls us back from its edge, much to the annoyance of the insistent girl who’s been with us a long time. The floodwater does not push up to our homes in the mining camp, but we stay wary of its currents and marvel at the rush of the new rapids, somehow divine in their strength. We take in the sight, sleepless as the river under, vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod, unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend and of the curveship lend a myth to God, perhaps, and, despite his ongoing grieving for his late husband, even Clovis comes to see the magnificent waters flush.
You will not hear it as the sea; even river stone is not more hushed by gravity. But slow, As loth to take more tribute – sliding prone Like one whose eyes were buried long ago, The River, spreading, Bows – and spends our dreams. What are we, lost within this tideless spell? And bows within itself, heaps itself free. At the end of the twelfth day All fades but one thin mirror of skyline ’round on the water’s surface. Ahead No embrace opens hut the stinging sea; The River lifts itself from its long bed,
Imponderable the dinosaur sinks slow, the watery saurian ghoul, the western bank, While rises along the coastwise range, slowly the hushed land – Combustion at the astral core – the dorsal change Of energy – convulsive shift of sand. But we, who watch the bends, the promontories Where strange tongues vary messages of surf Below grey citadels, repeating to the stars The ancient names – return home to our own Hearths, and as the rush of the river settles so too does our excitement over the floodwaters. For the rushing shift of the river clears out the bank and washes the outstretching log where Drach loved to sit and journal, and in it’s crater left behind we find rich clay, no more of the muddy silt of the river, but a deep rusty red. Eileen immediately gathers some in her hands and declares that this discovery will supply us with an abundance of resources to build, sculpt, and use in healing.
Our project to dig out space for a cemetery has come to its conclusion and as we put up tombstones for those lost, we look upwards, the stars have grooved our eyes with old persuasions of love and hatred, hirth,-surcease of nations. But who has held the heights more sure than us, o listener!- Ascensions of you hover in me now As though at junctions elegiac, there, of speed with vast eternity, do wield the rebound seed. As we clear the cemetery for the night the competent loam, the probable grass, pushes forth a seed and sproutling, red stalk and rose colored budding flower, a twin to the flower clinging to the Jewel of Gerrard, a pure natural impulse bred to answer deepest soundings! 0, upward from the dead it grows, to represent our grief in death and celebrate the blooms of our living brotherhood.
This acceleration of summer sparks our energies, but as we feel our happiness, love, magnificence rush as the river does, we feel in the back of our minds the lost time as autumn speeds towards us as well. We know that we must begin to start preparing, as the summer weeks are finite, and our loving celebration may need to give way to amorous patience to shield Love from despair – when love foresees the end, leaf after autumnal leaf break off, to descend descend.
And a week passes.
This week we drew the King of Diamonds which discards two cards from the Summer deck in an acceleration towards autumn. You may have noticed that we missed an episode last week as I was in Saint Louis for Geekly Con. As we follow our game in real time this lost week takes the place of one of the discarded cards in Summer. The other lost week will be the week of August 20th, when I will be in Indianapolis for Gen Con. I thank you for your patience between weeks as con season takes time out of our production schedule, and hopefully this narrative cheat will cover the weeks lost in our story to the interruption.
Thank you for joining us for the nineteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Portents of the Future – Glimpses of Pasts to Come – Score Music – Ben Chandler
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
We are beset by storms. They crash over the sickly trees, they crack a live branch and split a bough to show the wood beneath the twisted bark. The branch is white, the green crushed. Each leaf is rent like split wood. The storm burdens the trees with black drops.
As we remember those lost in the tunnels we storm within ourselves as well. The short project begun to shore up the hole under the tree and bar the doors of the mines has completed. Yet anger and arguments flare to who is responsible for the loss in the first place. We should never have allowed or encouraged, the excursion beneath the earth. Were we so fresh from the Jackals that we strike up against any threat to come our way regardless of the danger? As thunder peals through the rocky mountaintops and rolls through our mining camp, the shouts of anger rumble through the wooden walls of our shacks.
The storm breaks one tree clean in half, snapped like a weighted leaf in the wind, it is hurled out in the wind to crash into the river, foaming and black, the branch whirls up and sinks, a green stone.
The community is in two minds, there are those spurred on by the spilt blood who quiver for vengeance and are pushed by anxiety and the spectres from the woods, the ground, and the water. In opposition are those unmoving for fear, as a rabbit stops in the field to be snatched by an eagle, those who would do nothing rather than violence, but whose trepidation is not unfounded. The Jackals inflicted tragedy on tragedy and a life ended prematurely yet unstained further with blood is preferable to continuing the horrors of war.
The storm rages on. Shadows in the night sprint around the camp. Some shadows have legs and arms. In the gale it’s difficult to tell if the shadows are attached to bodies or if they’re tricks of the storm, tree limbs moving as our own. Who knows if it was by hand or by wind that the walled structure carrying our food was toppled.
The wind breaks, scattering pink-stalks, snapping off spiced heads of fruit, to fling them about with dead leaves— spreading the paths leading to the shack with twigs, limbs broken off, trail great pine branches, hurled from the far wood across the river, right across the melon-patch, to break pear and quince— leaving half-trees, torn, twisted, but showing the fight was valiant.
We do not wake to find this, as the storm rages far too loudly for us to sleep, but as the clouds part and we walk from shelter into the open camp, we discover that food, once in abundance, now has become a scarcity once more.
We begin a project over the next week to clean the shore of the debris, to pull branches broken from the roofs of shacks, and to remove the wasted food from the muddy dirt of the camp. The hot summer sun will cause rot if left to bake, and the trashing of the spoiled food serves as an insult to our injuries.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the eighteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Ancient Chamber – Eon City – Score Music – Mark Stothard
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Following the ceremony to memorialize Figueroa, we return to our dedication to explore the earthen tunnel, exposed by swollen roots and clotted dirt. The summer sun has ducked behind storm clouds, and the rays of warmth disappear in favor of a chill and humid wind.
Months have gone by since we last raised arms, and while the war against the Jackals is far from over the memories still haunt our minds. Trembling before the mouth of the cave, with ancient armaments polished and reflecting the grey sky above, we poise, ready to venture into the earth.
Concerned faces greet the brave explorers. When once we mocked their drills as having forgotten the terror of the Jackals the passing of Figueroa reminds us again of the two lost first in the camp. No mockeries now for them who stand at the mouth of the newly opened cave; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs of birds and the silent faces of those watching from the field. The memory of Gerrard and Jules who met their end at the hands, no, claws, of the Beast within the woods, echoes ringing like metal plates struck by grief thrown mallets ring in our ears of the scaled creature deep within the mines. Spurred by warnings our generator hums on to power the bright lights to ward off the Beast, and despite the soothing words of the calming girl who’s been with us a long time, we keep a wary eye on the river to watch for the Monster as yet unseen.
Together we steel ourselves and take our first steps into the dirt tunnels. The first boot steps into the darkness of the tunnel, as Micha tests the soft loam of the earth and smells the rank scent of the caves. In order to combat against the nausea, he packed flowers from his personal garden into a face mask over his mouth and nose.
As the mask passes under the cave opening, back at Micah’s home, his garden wilts. As one, every stalk in his planter goes slack, and the colorful blooms searching for a sun obscured by clouds go grey and slimy. Atop the Jewel of Gerrard, the lone flower closes its bud. Playing on the hill near the sealed doors of the mine, Yuen and Ezekiel see a quick flash of pearlescent blue light peek through the cracks in the barred doors.
From the distant woods, a smug growl rumbles in the trees, and at the river’s bank, helping with the morning’s washing, the wary girl who’s been with us a long time gives pause and her luned pupils sparkle in the water’s reflection.
Twelve of us enter the dirt cave. What candles may be held to speed them all through the lightless earth? Not in their hands, but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes we thought we would not need. After three hours, eight of us walk out. Of the missing four, Micah’s face is the most absent, the leader of the excursion having disappeared in the tunnels.
As the eight survivors gather, wounded and in need of healing, a voice from the back asks “What happened? Where is Micah? Where are Miley, Arah, and Eugenia?” The remaining eight look battered & confused, but some of them respond, with conflicting answers.
“We made it through the caves, into a blue room, they stayed there, they wouldn’t leave, they wouldn’t move.” “The creature roared when we touched its nest, the scales cut into us like knives and it swallowed Micah in one gulp and, and we ran. I don’t know why the rest didn’t.”
“Micah was the bravest of us, but when he saw it there sleeping, he… he just laid down next to it, like he forgot we were there to attack.” “I was in the back so I couldn’t see much, but something grabbed someone, maybe Miley? Just reached out from inside the dirt itself and pulled him through the walls”
As the storm clouds break, we light candles in mourning, and move to gather petals from the gardens of those lost. As we see Micah’s garden wilted and rotting, so too do we see the gardens of Old Miley, Arah, and Eugenia in similar stages of decay. The forest sends us omens, and the seeds that sprout do so for good or ill. Their flowers tell the tenderness of patient minds, And at slow dusk we share a drawing-down of blinds.
And a week passes
Thank you for joining us for the sixteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Additional voices this week were provided by Frankie Garza who is at Frankie Extra on Twitter and who runs the Actual Players of Color podcast, Cole who is At king cole miner and appears on the Blue Dawn podcast, Brandon Leon Gambetta who is at Dr Captain Kobold and who hosts the Stop Hack And ROll podcast, and the aforementioned Dave. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Dirge – The Passing Of The Elves – Score Music – Mark Stothard
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. Hear me out for I too am concerned and every man who wants to die at peace in his bed besides.
Clovis rises early as usual and prepares to begin his day. His heart stirs and falters, as he sits in his bed next to his husband, and can no longer hear Figueroa’s labored breathing. Death came quietly in the night for the old man.
As the brave and strong among us finish our drills and prepare to explore into the exposed root cave, Clovis puts them to pause as he walks to the center of the town carrying Figueroa’s light frame. The old man weeps for a considerable time and we as a community mourn with him. We prepare a funeral, placing Figueroa’s body on a wooden gurney, and wreathing it with flowers from our personal gardens. With Clovis in the lead, we carry the gurney to the river.
We set Figueroa down near the bank of the river and as the summer light streams through the thin leaves it sparkles on our tears. Clovis walks a few paces into the water and pulls the floating gurney to him. The cold running water soothes his arthritis as he grips the gurney, and he speaks, half to us gathered at the riverbank, and half to Figueroa’s still face. As Clovis gives his eulogy, our flowers light upon the water’s surface, begin to trail downstream.
“We lived long together, a life filled, if you will, with flowers. Today I’m filled with the fading memory of those flowers that we both loved. There is something, something urgent I have to say to you and you alone but it must wait while I drink in the joy of your approach, perhaps for the last time. And so with fear in my heart I drag it out and keep on talking for I dare not stop.
I have learned much in my life from books, and out of them about love. Death is not the end of it. It has been for you and me as one who watches a storm come in over the water. We have stood from year to year before the spectacle of our lives with joined hands. It is the mind, the mind, that must be cured short of death’s intervention, and the will becomes again a garden.
It was the love of love, the love that swallows up all else, a grateful love, a love of nature, of people, of animals, a love engendering gentleness and goodness that moved me and that I saw in you.
We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life in our new home in these woods. Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most… human.”
We begin a sorrowful project. We prepare to spend three weeks putting aside a plot of land to memorialize Gerrard, Jules, and now Clovis. We can not know yet how much use we will make of this plot in the coming months, but we will soon find out.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the sixteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. The voice of Clovis was James Malloy who is At and the meltdowns on twitter. You can find James on the Stop Hack and Roll podcast. Please consider visiting our website at Riverhouse Games dot com, or supporting this show and other Riverhouse Games work on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Simcha Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Caelum – Score Music – Ian Fisher
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Summer joy delights the community. Breathless we fling ourselves upon windy hills, laugh in the sun, and kiss one another amidst the lovely grass. They say a kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years and nowhere more is this true than the home of Clovis and Figueroa. Despite their considerable age, the two husbands frolic as much as they can, arthritis and asthma be damned. Each kiss they share rejuvenates their elderly bones.
In the farming fields, Llyana and Eileen share kisses as well, the artist and the farmer each teaching the other their craft. As Llyana sketches crudely in the sandy soil of the fields, Eileen guides xer hand. Likewise, as Eileen struggles to plow through the harsh earth Llyana is there to offer xer shoulder for strength.
As Micah, Reese, Clem, and Giuseppe all share romantic looks over a picnic lain over the dried river bank, the summer birds chirp in the sun. Reese, a lanky nurse pulls their hair back to reveal a tattoo of a fox on their shoulder. Clem pulls back their thin hair and pulls a bottle of wine from a basket. Guiseppe pulls a small block of cheese.
But in the river swims she who swam before rivers were begun. Immense, of fishy form and mind, squamous & omnipotent, but far from kind. As the Monster churns the bottom of the river, mud into mud, death eddies here.
We toil to open the hole in the roots far from the river’s shore. In that rich earth, a richer dust concealed. As we dig it away we sharpen blades. Few of us share the bloodlust but those who do commit themselves. Time enough has passed so that dreams of Jackals now are rare and hot blood stirs even hotter in summer air.
Someone raises caution and cites the story from the metal plates but we don’t care. We are here to explore these caves and root out the Creature within, if it even exists at all. Watching the bravado from their shack, Yuen and Ezekiel quietly remember the glint of eerie blue light on scales. The children watch the glint of moonlight now on swords waving as we engage in drills. By next week when the tunnel is widened we will have trained together as a group and be ready for the worst. We think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by community given. Our sights and sounds; dreams happy as our days; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness In hearts at peace, under a forest heaven.
A second project starts this week as well. A long project, taken at a leisurely pace. Six weeks we will spend, on a large statue in the town center, a scale model of our old city’s most impressive building, a skyscraper that once literally scraped the sky. When our model is complete it will stand just slightly taller than us. Eileen oversees the project, with a tug at her heart as she looks to the field where Llyana works out of earshot and too far away to talk to. The project is the first one we’ve started without a utilitarian goal.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the fifteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Crystal Arch – Score Music – Ian Fisher
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
We have survived the Spring and Summer’s rays shine down on our community. We play in the river. We harvest our fish, and plant seeds in our fields. Food is no longer a scarcity of ours as our once meager collection shelves in the town center now brim with offerings. Eileen returns from a morning spent in the sickly trees with an armful of small berries and herbs which grow in small clumps here and there between stumps and twisted shoots. Old Miley pulls fish after fish out of the river in the morning, and spends his afternoons filetting them to be eaten for dinner or stored in our icebox. Llyana tends to the fields, soon we may even have an abundance of food once the crops start coming in.
The generator hums away, its noise a backdrop for the community, so pervasive we never really think of it. We continue to feed it fuel to power our lights and keep our perishable food from spoiling. Every few days we talk about venturing across the river to get thicker logs, to take heartier trees for fuel. Every time we have this conversation, we look to the Jewel of Gerrard, the small flower growing atop the weeping boulder, and we hear the growls of The Beast in the woods.
Drach’s work to repair our shacks is impressive and sturdy. Despite not having the best lumber to work with, he’s made significant improvement to our houses and now when the summer storms roll in, only mild leaks and drips interrupt our nights. The shade from having completed roofs over our heads protects us from the worst heat so far.
Beyond the limits of our houses and community square, and a short hike from the banks of the river, one solitary pine tree stands amidst the thin trunks. We did investigate the copse of short pines Yuen told us about after her fight with Ezekiel, but this single tree dwarves the ring of pines. The towering trunk stretches up to the sun and the needles from its branches blanket a ring around its roots. We’ve given it berth since we arrived, but recently it’s been a topic of discussion in the community. The roots of this tree have begun to swell, more than roots do in the course of natural growth. These roots pull themselves up to the surface of the dirt, snaking for hundreds of feet and rising completely out of the earth in some places.
One section of exposed roots leads to a new discovery that divides the community in gossip and speculation. The exposed roots pull up a chunk of earth with them, revealing a system of dirt tunnels, just large enough to crawl into. These tunnels could lead to the mines, perhaps they were exit tunnels or maybe even a system for ventilation. The bravest of us, Micah, ducks his head into the tunnels, but recoils quickly. The scent of rotting meat fills the dark earth. As he recoils, his shirt catches on a splintered fragment of root that tears away a chunk of earth. Exposed to the air for the first time in who knows how long is the knobbed end of a human femur, chips and gashes running down the shaft of the bone.
We begin a project. Two weeks from now we will have excavated the mouth of these tunnels, and will have prepared breathing masks of pleasant herbs and florals to keep the stench from our noses. The shock white bone serves as a warning for us to be cautious, and we dust off the cloth covering the ancient weapons we found near the river.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the fourteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Portents of the Future – Prophecy of the White Witch – Score Music – Lois Paton
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
As Spring’s heat inches slowly towards summer, the mountain air provides little relief. The altitude prevents the sickening humidity we found in the city from cloying at our breath, but the rays from the sun beat down on our mining camp. Without the strong trees and foliage found across the river, the heat is unfettered in its assault. The shores of the riverbank are popular among us, and bathers flock to the cool relief of the water. Completed last week, the fish farms and netting strain against the river’s current, already flush with silvery trout.
The heat strains more than our bodies cool, however. Tensions rise as the sun bakes our heads. Tempers are shortened as days grow longer, but for the most part our snaps are short and our apologies are long. This is the case among adults, though, as our older members can calm ourselves quicker than the youngest.
Playing by the riverbank and sweating on the shore, Ezekiel and Yuen chase each other in a game of keep away. The watchful girl who’s been with us a long time has returned the ancient doll to Yuen for this activity, and despite the rigorous pulling and stretching between the children, the old fabric retains a surprising fortitude. Yuen throws a feint and a yank to pull the doll from Ezekiel’s hands and he falls to the ground. The baking sun has dried the river mud to a harsh and compact surface and he scrapes his knee on a hidden rock. Teary eyed, he looks at Yuen, holding the doll with both hands and yells out a cuss in her direction. Overhearing, Eileen shouts his name in admonishment which bursts his frustration out of control. As a shaken and upset Yuen runs off into the woods, followed by the consoling girl who’s been with us a long time, Ezekiel cries a tantrum under the hot sun.
In the woods, Yuen and her babysitter find a small copse of trees and Yuen collapses underneath them in tears. The comforting girl who’s been with us a long time sits down near her and holds her until they both fall asleep. Sleeping there they lay, while The Beast of prey, came from forest deep, to view the maids asleep. Bestial iris, burning bright, in the forests of the night; what immortal hand or eye, could frame that fearful symmetry?
The protective girl who’s been with us a long time, stirred by the plodding paws of The Beast, opens her eyes. As she sees the dripping teeth and shaggy mane, she blinks. With the lifting of her eyelids, her pupils change from round, black, and ringed with deep brown irises, to pointed lunes of pearlescent silver, ringed with shifting, tidal blue. She locks eyes with the beast for a painful moment as both monsters share an eternity, and then an understanding. The Beast lowers its gaze, and backs slowly into the woods.
When they return to the tow, Yuen tells of the circle of trees where she slept, how strange the ring of pines was amidst the sickly branches struggling upwards, how the pines looked healthy and full.
And a week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the thirteenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Caelum – Score Music – Maria Milewska
Gnome Village – Tinkertown (Short Loop) – Score Music – Kevin MacLeod
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Clovis begins his day like every other day in the mining camp, by waking up slightly before sunrise to make breakfast for himself and for his husband. While Figueroa sleeps, Clovis gets out of bed, sitting on the side of their straw mattress for a moment and listening to Figueroa’s labored breathing. Even in the city Figueroa had difficulty with his lungs. After decades and decades of life one would anticipate difficulty breathing, but with the old man’s diagnoses first with asthma and then with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease it only grew worse and worse. Clovis breathes in and smells the tinge of forest pollen. Today will not be easy for his husband.
The clatter of dishes in their kitchen wakes Figueroa. He gives a few sputtering hacks to clear his throat, then rises and dresses himself. Every day seems harder for him, but after the long struggle against the Jackals he is determined to make the most of this life in the mining camp. Calm surroundings and an ill body are preferable to health and war. He shuffles out to the kitchen where Clovis has prepared a breakfast of fish and herbs. Stopping near a window, Figueroa pinches a flower from his personal garden, placing it next to his husband’s plate as he sits down to eat.
After breakfast the two men wash up together, splashing their thin hands into a barrel of collected rainwater. Figueroa scrubs the plates clean and washes his hands, then softly runs a washcloth over Clovis’s hands as well. Figueroa feels the knots in his husband’s knuckles, the swollen joints. As they clean their dishes, they marvel at the air around them. Spring is almost over and the mountain valley is getting warmer and warmer every day, yet the air still feels fresh and breezy, not the hot stagnant air of the city they left.
After the short clean up Clovis walks Figueroa down to the river. Despite Clovis’s arthritis and Figueroa’s pulmonary struggles, the journey is relatively painless, and in fact, by the time the two men arrive at the river’s banks, they’re smiling and laughing with each other. We all greet them with hearty hellos and move to lay out the blanket they’ve brought with them. We position their blanket underneath two of the larger trees near the river. On the other side of the water the forest grows thick, with massive trunks larger around than the tallest of us is tall. Yet, the trees on our side of the water are all still scrawny, like wooden bristles struggling to catch hold in the dirt.
The only tree on our side of the river with any size is an old uprooted oak, stretched partly across the river, but broken and splintered maybe ten feet out. Drach lounges on the outstretched trunk, writing in his leatherbound journal. As we play and splash in the water, the cheerful girl who has been with us a long time, lounges near the roots of the oak, playing with some twine, twisting it into a belt for the ancient doll she carries with her always. In our merriment someone asks what we’re most excited about for the summer days that are quickly approaching us.
It’ll be nice to see our farms & fisheries start pulling food! I’m ready to not wake up hungry anymore.
We’re doing it right now! This river is beautiful. Monster, Schmonster, There’s no way anything could ruin this. This is the only place I’d want to be, & the summer heat is only gonna make it better.
I’m excited to finally be able to rest & enjoy our lives. We’ve worked so hard to make this place our home, & I’m just finally realizing that we’ve done it. I’ll be happy to relax & go back to our lives, as normal as we can make them.
And a week passes.
Drach:
Well phew, seems I’ve been working on roofs since, well, forever but now I’ve got these shacks fixed up into proper houses, it feels like barely any time has passed at all. Looking over at the walls I’ve put up, the floors I’ve set, and the roofs I’ve sealed gives me a real good sort of pride. It’s been about 70 days since we first set up camp here but it hasn’t really felt like home to me without real homes. Maybe that’s shallow thinking on my part. I know lots of people been getting really cosy around here and I’m real happy with that.
I’ve been so busy on these repairs I kinda lost touch with what’s been going on. Heard Clovis & Figueroa talk about some sorts of monsters hanging over us like specters but I gotta tell you, journal, that on this bright day with the birds chirping and the river babbling away it doesn’t feel as doom & gloom as they’ve been making it out to be.
Speaking of the river, let me tell you how great it makes me feel to be here. I’m writing now on a big old tree that must have fallen ages ago, stretched part-way across. That cheerful girl who’s been with us a long time showed me where it was & it’s hard to resist just lounging here now that my hands aren’t busy. She’s alright, that cheerful girl who’s been with us a long time. I can see her watching over Yuen & Zeke now, playing on the bank. They really love that mud now don’t they? I don’t know why it took us so long to get to know one another, she’s been with us a long time but I feel like we just never bumped into one another. Oh well, we got plenty of time here in this camp & neither of us seem to be going anywhere so now’s as good a time as any to meet I guess. She asked if I might wanna have dinner tomorrow & with my schedule free now I might just take her up on that offer. She sure is sweet, that cheerful girl who’s been with us a long time.
Thank you for joining us for the twelfth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Additional voices for this episode were provided by Rob Abrazado who is at flatvurm, Frankie Garza who is at frankie extra, Vi Brower who is at the fox blood, and Aaron Catano who is at Aaron underscore Catano. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com and Aaron Catano. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Caelum – Score Music – Maria Milewska
Elven Dirge – Journey To The Silver Isles – Score Music – Novak Cuic
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Living in the community is a girl who has been with us a long time. We can’t quite remember where she lived in The City, but we’re glad she’s with us now. She carries along with her that old doll that Yuen found in the river, tied to her belt, and speaks with a voice like flowing water.
The river grows ever more full as the mountain melt increases. White petals fall from the trees and float down the river, as waves tumble them under. How fast the river flows in these late spring days, the waves thud like a great beast stamping, but at the bank where the children play it is smooth and the current is light.
Daily she takes Yuen & Ezekiel to splash and muddy their clothing. Yuen says that this curious girl who has been with us a long time always knows the best places to find frogs in the river weeds. Ezekiel tells us that the muddy girl who has been with us a long time has an encouraging voice. She laughs with them, and splashes water onto the head of her doll as if to bathe it in the river waters. It feels like more than a week goes by with her watch, it feels like she’s been the children’s guardian and friend forever. We wonder why we haven’t asked her to watch them before, since she’s been with us for such a long time.
As they walk to the river, Yuen and Ezekiel skip ahead and talk to one another. As they pass the town square, many people stop to chat. The day is warm and the square is busy. Fresh from his project of repairing our homes, Drach hoists a bustle of firewood gathered from the surrounding woods, and as he passes them he nods to the girl and she nods back, pausing to adjust a loose branch about to fall. He carries the firewood down to the water. The approach of summer warms the woods, and as the days grow long we celebrate around bonfires near the river’s banks. Where air meets water, and water meets earth we build a fire to bring the elements in harmony.
Today she watches Yuen & Ezekiel as they play in the river. She brought them to the bank this morning, saying her morning hellos to Eileen and giving her a knowing wink. Last night they spoke at length about Eileen’s work with Llyana to prepare the farm. Llyana praises the hardworking girl who has been with us a long time. Eileen is grateful, too. As they have worked together on the field, she’s grown closer to Llyana, noting how the summer sun plays off of xir shoulders. The river thrums quickly, and the three of them often spend an evening at the banks, lying on the grass, looking upwards. It seems to Eileen as if the whole world were flowing and curving — on the earth the trees, in the sky the clouds. she looks up, through the trees, into the sky. The clouds lose tufts of whiteness as the breeze dishevels them. If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever; if this moment could stay for ever.
Yesterday she suggested to Clovis that the spray of riverwater would do well for his lungs. The old man shuts himself up in his shack with nothing but his personal garden to keep him company these days. Figueroa tells the observant girl who’s been with us a long time that he wishes Clovis would be more active in his age. The two of them are the community’s oldest members, and as elders they have a responsibility to be seen in the community. It takes surprisingly little to convince Clovis, however, and as he and Figueroa walk down to the river’s edge he tells his partner how the discerning young girl who has been with us a long time convinced him to move past his fear of quick moving water. The two old men totter determinedly down to join the rest of the community. The current is too strong for their old bones, but they enjoy our mirth.
His brain always whirring, Clovis begins to sketch in the dirt plans for a building near the river’s edge. With the fish farm soon to finish, and the plowed fields ready to sow crops, we plan on bidding farewell our hungers, and a place to store food will certainly come in handy.
Celebrating near the fire, on the bank of the river, and splashing in its waves, it seems as though we’ve forgotten already any fear we may have gathered from preceding weeks. As the calming girl who’s been with us a long time plays with us in the river, the doll she carries sits propped up on her clothes, dry on the river’s bank.
And a week passes.
Eileen:
My dearest Llyana,
Time sure flies by, doesn’t it? Having work to do with your hands makes time pass in an instant. Drachs always talking about putting yourself to work when you’re trying not to think of things and while I miss Jules & Gerrard still I’ve tilled my grief into the ground. You and I’ve become so close over these weeks, and you’ve taught me so much about healing. Not just healing of the heart, either. Real healing with medicine and herbs and soul.
We spent hours plowing those fields talking about what we left in the city when the Jackals came and while I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you to lose so much I thank you for opening up to me. You’re always welcome in my home and in my heart.
I know that despite our being close, that last week was the hardest. After everything that’s happened recently I know it must be stressful for you, but I’m so glad that sweet girl who’s been with us a long time stopped by to chat and help with the fields. If it weren’t for her we would never have finished with enough time to splash in the river together. Before we left the fields you said “that hardworking girl who’s been with us a long time gave us a gift today” and you were right. I’ll never forget how that riverwater made your hair sparkle. I could have just told you this in person but she suggested writing it in a letter for you to find. She sure is something, that sweet girl who’s been with us a long time.
Yours by the river,
Eileen
Thank you for joining us for the eleventh episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who also provided additional voices this week, and is our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
The heat of the warming sun warms the community, but with the hot sun pushing air up and the cold chill of the mountain air at night pulling air down, showers and thunderstorms peal through the woods. One day the air is still as the rain eases.
Near the river, as we prep the shore for nets and fish farming, we notice the tips of old wooden beams poking through the thick mud. Over the years between the original inhabitants and our settlement, the earth must have risen over foundations and the flooding of the river must have laid silt down to cover what was once built. The echoing words of the permanency of change in this area ring back to our ears as we examine the beams and wash the mud away from a buried plot. We find support beams and a footprint similar to our water mills back in the city.
Those of us not close enough to read the etchings on each support beam titter and murmur about rebuilding. A water mill could be of great use to the community to grind the grain we plan on growing in our developing farm. Those of us doing the cleaning have different opinions, and share them as we read the words carved centuries ago yet preserved in the ancient wood by the curse of preservation.
One beam lists three names unfamiliar to us and dates in a strange format. Another beam says simply, “She lies in wait.” A third beam seems to be inscribed with a poem, its verse reading:
“I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
Every beam tells the tale of loss, and of the woman living in the river. One can only assume this woman is The Monster of the river, referenced in the metallic plates found weeks ago.
The debate to restore the mill or not is quick and decisive. The beams are gathered together and stacked in alternating pairs. Dry wood is stacked in the center of this new tower, and kindling and brush stacked within that. With the flick of a wire, sparks fly to the heart of the brush and flames start to rise. We have no room in our community for bleak warnings or harrowing reminders of the fate of those who came before us.
As the flames rise into the night sky, we celebrate with a feast and a community party. No use wasting a perfectly good bonfire, after all. However, as the first screams start we halt our merriment and stare at the blaze in terror. What started as the whistle of steam escaping the waterlogged grains of wood transforms into the wails of death. Smoke curls upwards in the shape of human faces and swims into the air, howling in pain. The screams go on for almost a minute before transforming into ragged laughter. The laughter cackles into the night sky and the flames flare up into the shape of a Monster. A torso, head, and two sets of arms lead to a curved waist, and the burning fire warps into the shape of a serpentine fish where her legs should be. She lets one more cackling bleat into the sky before bursting into a shower of sparks.
No one notices the river boiling during this horrible display, but the next morning we are all awoken by the smell of dozens of dead fish lining the shore. As we clear the bloated fish, Eileen and Lyanna suggest burying them in the tilled soil of the new garden. Might as well make the best of a terrifying situation.
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the tenth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds.
A few people have asked about the game we’re using here to play out the story of our community. The Quiet Year is a tabletop roleplaying game by Avery Alder. In The Quiet Year, play occurs between players based on cards drawn from a deck. You can find the specially designed deck at Avery’s Website at Buried Without Ceremony dot com. You can also play with a standard poker deck and the PDF of the rules available from Avery’s site as well.
Play happens in turns, with each turn representing a week’s worth of time in the story, and marking representations of everything that happens on a living map that represents the community. The player who’s turn it is will draw a card from the deck, and answer a short story prompt based on the card drawn. For example, the prompt for this week was “An old piece of machinery is discovered, cursed and dangerous. How does the community destroy it?” After answering the question and drawing something on the map of the community Then the player will have a choice of three actions: Discover Something New, like in this episode where the community discovers a river of dead fish, Start a Project, like when Drach started repairing the community’s shacks, or Hold a Discussion, like in the first episode when the community debated whether this mining camp was a safe place to hole up. Once all that is done, play transfers to the next player and a new week starts. If you want to learn more about this amazing game or other works by Avery Alder, please go to her website which again is Buried Without Ceremony dot com.
If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Vi Brower, Rob Day, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Dirge – Journey To The Silver Isles – Score Music – Novak Cuic
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
Still shaken by the grim warnings of the metallic plates, we try to return to life as normal. Or as close to normal as we can get in our new home. Still, nine weeks is a fair amount of time to adjust to a new setting. While Drach hammers away on our houses, and Eileen and Lyanna toil in the soil to prepare our fields, we know that for every unsettling moment in the camp, there will be a moment of peace coming for us. The town square hums with life and we make a conscious effort to lift up the spirits of those who may still be anxious or worried about the message left to us by those passed.
The mountains above us have reached warmer temperatures, and the river swells with floodwater. Thankfully, the riverbanks hold and even with the increased current from the meltwater no danger presents itself from rushing tides. Ezekiel and Yuen still play in the mud with the other children. The chilled water is crystal clear and refreshingly cold as the spring sun grows stronger and stronger. With the clearer waters we are granted a better view of the river’s bottom. The mud of the riverbank transitions into light pebbles and gravel which eventually turns into smooth boulders that line the bottom of the riverbed. Occasionally one of the older members of the community will spot a bone of some kind of animal reaching up from the rocks below, and try to steer the youngest of us away from the area, but if the children see the bones they either don’t care or don’t say anything.
Iridescent trout school together in the deeper pools, and long sturgeon swim the bottom of the river. With the clearer water, we can observe their movements exposed to the sun’s rays. The lackadaisical meandering of the larger fish tells us that, even at the deepest parts of the river, the current is lazy and serene. The occasional group of river otters splashes and plays with each other in the rocks below, and one morning Clovis returns to the camp telling of a massive elk drinking from the stream. He neglects to relay the significant scar running down the elk’s neck, or the fact that one of its antlers was chipped and broken in places. After the events of last week it’s best to emphasize the beautiful and gloss over the grisly.
The clear water and our glimpse into the hidden parts of the river has inspired a new project. Operating in threes, with two people working and one person keeping watch, we begin to weave nets and set traps to catch the plentiful fish we now see live in the river. Those keeping watch labor over whether or not to outfit themselves with the ancient weapons we found weeks ago. Some of us have forgotten the war with the Jackals already and grab a sword or spear eagerly, with a mind to show the Beast in the woods punishment for Jules and Gerrard’s death. Others still remember their roles in the war and leave the weapons behind in favor of signal horns or footwear for running away.
We work to set up these new fish farms and budget a few week’s for their progress.
And a week passes. Thank you for joining us for the ninth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Dark Elf City – Black Towers Of The Spider Queen – Score Music – Marc Cholette
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
The rain has fallen for a week straight. Roads dug into the earth have become troughs of mud. We huddle in our shacks for warmth, and protect dry clothing as if it were a scarce resource. The spring air has begun to warm, but the extra degrees do not make up for the heat lost to dampness. The only ones unphased by the wetness are the children, whose excess energy of youth spurs them to create their own heat through activity. Ezekiel, Yuen, and the others sprint and scamper through the camp, their yells and laughter bubbling its way into our dripping homes.
This morning, as they play under the leaking clouds, they venture near the mine entrance for the first time in weeks. As if the scaled creature below were nothing more than a dream, Yuen goads Ezekiel towards the doors set in the earth. They giggle and dance together in the rain and the mud, splashing both in each others direction. As they near the mines, Yuen’s heel catches on something dislodged by the rain and she tumbles backwards.
As she rights herself, Ezekiel pulls the offending object from the earth’s grasp. A thick rectangle, made of rusted metal, the same rust that bleeds through The Jewel of Gerard. He turns the item over in his hands and sees indents and carvings in the surface. This engraved plate, lost long ago by the original inhabitants of the camp, lain under the dirt for who knows how many years. Ezekiel, eyes wide with wonder, stares at the rusted surface and rubs his thumb over the signature of the artist in awe.
Back in the shacks, as Drach’s hammer rings out over us, Ezekiel brings the plate to his mother, Eileen. She and other artists set about gingerly cleaning the rust and grime from the plate. As Ezekiel and Yuen watch, the community’s artists restore the engraving over the course of a soggy afternoon. When they reveal the grisly tale depicted, murmurs and hushed whispers ripple backwards through the onlookers. Despite the best efforts of the adults, both Yuen and Ezekiel catch a glimpse of a scaled creature engraved in the metal, bursting from an egg, with humanoid legs all that is left to protrude from a ravenous mouth.
Eileen hands the plate to Clovis and Figueroa, two lovers who were once art professors in the city, and ushers the children out of the shack. The lovers trace their fingers over the engravings and are surprised to feel the barest of indentations that would compose a script. The script flows off the edge of the plate, where Clovis discovers a hairline split that once teased splits the plate into two engravings, melded by time. Figueroa cleans the second as Clovis reads the first. Through their shared experience, the two manage to piece together a rough story that follows the images on the plates. After a short conference, they gather the adults and present a warning from the previous occupants of the mining camp, a warning left under mud and overgrown with weedy grass for an innumerable amount of years. Clovis begins the tale, and is assisted by Figueroa when the words become too much.
“Beware those who settle here, to mine, to log, or to live. There is something within the earth. There is something within the woods. And there is something within the river that runs through the camp. We have made relative peace with two of these three, but live in trepidation of the third.
Some strange effect preserves our changes to the natural world. Every tree we fell petrifies itself and no amount of effort can be made to remove the stump. Likewise, every chip we make into the earth is irreplaceable, and no sediment builds in the mines we dig. Our actions to this land are permanent, but I fear that we will not be. Our houses have shown accelerated rates of decay and through the actions with the monsters of this land our numbers have shrunk to nearly unsustainable levels. I leave this warning on hammered sheets of our gains from the mines, so that those who come to us will be forewarned.” At this, Clovis hands the plate to his partner and takes a hearty drink from a mug of water brought to him. Figueroa continues.
“The first monster, a great wolven Beast lurks outside the limits of our lights. It lives in fear of their beams, however, it will take any opportunity given by a flickering bulb or an inopportune shadow. Its breath fogs in the winter nights as the air grows colder. Its fur shags and mats with our blood. We have learned to control it by…” at this, Figueroa’s voice trails off and he explains that this passage has been worn down too far to read.
“The second monster is a scaled creature asleep in a cave we stumbled upon in our mining. It guards its nest ferociously and will thankfully not stray too far from its edge. However, once the eggs hatched it showed no restraint in its instinct to provide food for the young. We managed to lock it within the mine entrance and were forced to listen for two days as it ate its young, or as one of the young ate the others. We have still not opened the mine doors out of fear.
The third monster, asleep at the bottom of the river, came last. As the first snow fell in the fall we knew the danger as it rose from the wet banks and…” at this Figueroa stopped reading. The metal plates were handed to an aide and the two lovers held each other. Concerned faces looked at each other as we sat in the shack, silently shaken by the disquieting legend left to us in the earth.
Clovis and Figueroa announce that they will work to interpret the missing sections of the plates and will work with community leaders to use the warnings and knowledge to prepare us. Our leaders spread optimistic news in the face of these warnings. We will use their warnings to ensure our safety against the threats. With the recent activation of the generator, the perimeter lights, and reinforced housing coming soon, we should have nothing to fear.
Eventually the rain abates and the first ray of sunlight we’ve seen in a week peers through the clouds. The ray shines down on Yuen and Ezekiel playing, you guessed it, in the mud by the riverbank. As Yuen washes the mud from Ezekiel’s face, something floating in the river upstream catches her eye. As it floats past them, she grabs the floating doll from the water. Its cloth grey with age and wilted from lack of stuffing, she turns it over in her hands. Engraved in its back is the signature of the artist from the metallic plates. Ezekiel quietly asks her not to tell the adults and she silently agrees. She stuffs the ancient doll in her pack and they walk back to the camp, holding each other’s hand tightly.
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the eighth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Additional voices for this episode were provided by James Malloy who is At andthemeltdowns on twitter of the Stop Hack & Roll podcast. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Heavenly Plane – Caelum – Score Music – Maria Milewska
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. In this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
As we prepare the generator for activation, we gather the machines we have brought with us from the city. The generator looks like it can power many of them, but we know that it will be wishful thinking to believe it has the capacity to power all of our needs. Therefore, lining up our rescued machinery, we sit and think about what devices are needed, and what devices are only wanted.
Gerrard who has passed had brought with him his electric tiller, a machine designed to prepare ground for gardening. With a single tear running from her eye, Eileen carries the machine from her shack to the center of the town. Out of both respect for the dead gardener as well as acknowledgement that this device would be useful for helping to grow the season’s crops, we wordlessly place the machine into the need pile.
Young Mx Llyana, with the assistance of a few helping hands, drags a large sled to the center of the town. The sled holds an electronic well digger, a significant machine capable of boring into the earth. Xe urges caution of the river, citing the danger of the woods on the other side. If the town decided, they could power the well digger to put a source of water much closer to their new homes, and only venture to the river on rare occasions. Xer arguments, however, are not unanimously agreed. Some of us point out that the river offers more than just water.
An old man hobbles to the front of the community. His name is Miles Leverage, or Old Miley to the youths. His worn overalls hang to his bones wetly, and a fishing rod, smooth with age, sprouts up from where he has it tucked into his belt.
“Hm, now see if we move the drinking water closer to the town now that’ll just make it more lonely when I go down to grab fish out of that river. It’s already lonely enough spendin my days down there but every once in a while a friendly face is appreciated, but if fishin’s the only thing of use down there there’ll be no one to keep me company as I’m swallowed up by the beast next time it decides to show it’s head.”
Llyana rolls xer eyes at Old Miley’s protests, but does not argue as xe drags the well digger to the want pile.
Perimeter lights find their way to the need pile as setting watch for the beast is much more efficient when the watchers can see in the night. A beaten jukebox is placed in the want pile and we commit ourselves to be more musical in our day to day lives to make up for it. A small icebox is kept in the need pile as it could offer use storing food if we ever have a surplus.
As the spring rain falls, we activate the generator. It sputters to life, sending a cloud of smoke into the sky. One by one we connect our machines to it and they hum to life. The community cheers in celebration.
With the power of the generator flowing through it, the electric tiller promises a great boon to the community. The efforts of Eileen and the others gathering food from the woods are not unappreciated, but the community is larger than their collections and more often than not the food collection in the center of the town offers paltry options.
With the help of Llyana, Eileen sets about scoping land for a small farm. Perhaps with crops growing through the days which grow ever warmer, we’ll be able to harvest and bring a bounty of food to the community. This project will take a while, estimates place it at four weeks to set aside an area, till the earth, and prepare the soil for planting. As they get to work, the new electric lights shine out into the darkness.
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the seventh episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Dirge – Journey To The Silver Isles – Score Music – Novak Cuic
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the show will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed.
They say winter is insulating, and spring cruel. However, as spring rain stirs dull roots from the once dead ground, the mountains themselves throw blankets of fog and earthy warmth down onto the community. Morning dew slicks the weedy grass carpeting the ground in the mining camp. By midday the beating sun has drank its fill and the grass shrivels, but the morning moisture is more than enough water to give growth a chance.
On the edge of the camp a giant boulder lays immobile. Rust red with iron deposits, the boulder seems to weep blood from years of rain and morning dew. We pass the boulder every day. Once it unnerved us, with streaks of red running to the ground. So unlike the rest of the area’s rocks, this lone boulder sticks out like a bleeding thumb. Perhaps a geological anomaly, perhaps dragged out from the dark mines, speculation on the rock’s origin soon fades from conversation as the boulder becomes just another feature in the community.
This morning, however, gossip and chatter bubble up as the boulder becomes a new oddity once more. Unseen to us weeks ago, a small songbird must have stashed away stolen seeds from our personal gardens. Forgotten in the cracks and pits of the boulder, these seeds were watered by the rain and morning fog, and nurtured by the sun’s beating rays from above. Day in and out, the seeds did as seeds do, pushing roots from chaff and worming into the crevices worn by erosive forces. What roots clutch, what branches soon will grow from this bleeding stone we cannot say. The seedlings look varied and mixed from all of our collections. What is more, the height of the boulder prevents us from getting the clearest look at the growing shoots.
Gathered under the shadow of this red rock, the community gathers. We muse and speculate on how the seeds found their way to their new home. Regardless of how they got there, we decide that this new and improbable growth is a good omen. With the memory of those we lost still fresh in our mind we decide to give this monument a name. The Jewel of Gerrard, once a rusted boulder, bleeding and ignored, is now a symbol of our rebirth and persistence in a hostile land.
As the seeds found themselves deposited in a harsh and bloody land so did we. We take a day to celebrate and reflect on the bloody conflict from which we found ourselves deposited in this mountain clearing. Eileen leads us in creative endeavors to tell stories about new growth, and create art to commemorate this blessing.
It has been a week since Drach repaired the generator left behind by the mining camp’s previous tenants. A fixed machine with no fuel is as much use to us as a machine that had never been fixed in the first place. The workings of the generator seem extremely familiar to us, and although some of its more miniscule moving parts and details seem inscrutable, the basic idea seems to carry through. A large chamber sits on one end, with vents and fans on all sides. We gather wood from the area to fill this chamber and pile it next to the hut. Another chamber stretches tubes and hoses across the top of the machine. We begin to gather water from the river to fill this. This undertaking is a light project, and we whistle while we work. Next week we’ll have small amounts of power and should be able to start charging the machinery we brought with us from the city. Until then we toil into the darkness of the night, but we know the darkness is short lived. Our optimism is light enough for now.
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the sixth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Dark Elf City – Black Towers Of The Spider Queen – Score Music – Marc Cholette
Gnome Village – Tinkertown (Short Loop) – Score Music by Kevin MacLeod
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the show will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed. We buried personal affects of Gerrard and Jules, deciding as a community that an excursion to recover their bodies would be fruitless and dangerous. Their graves rest on the large hill overlooking the town, the hill that serves as the mouth to the abandoned mines around which this camp was built.
Still scarred from the run in with the Beast, Ezekiel hides in Eileen’s crumbling shack. Yuen visits every morning, knowing that fear has trapped him within the walls of the shack. Precarious as those walls may be, they offer the only protection from the world outside. She brings him berries picked from the spring ground, tart with their earliness. Every day, Yuen asks Ezekiel to explore with her, as he used to before. He is scared to leave, but she reassures him that being afraid while exploring with a friend is much better than being afraid alone doing nothing. After a week of these requests, Ezekiel agrees. The two leave Eileen’s shack holding hands, sneaking past their guardian, and heading towards the hill and the great oak doors of the mines.
Ezekiel & Yuen stand in front of the doors. Rotting and unhinged, the doors serve as little more than a symbolic barrier. Those who abandoned the camp long ago barred the doors shut from the outside, but the bars have rusted over the years and lean up against the mouth of the mines. Yuen pulls one aside, the heavy steel dragging in the grass as she pulls it away from the entrance. Ezekiel looks to the woods. They are still. Yuen pushes the door of the mine open slowly and the wood drags in the dry gravel within as it slides open just enough for them both to squeeze. She enters the mines and holds a hand out to Ezekiel to join her. Hand in hand they walk into the darkness.
As the meager light from the mine doors fades, their eyes readjust to the caverns that stretch before them, the sunlight supplanted and even overtaken in some areas by a blue bioluminescence. The mines are dry and drafty, a cool relief from the humid spring air above the surface. Yuen and Ezekiel walk, amazed, deeper into the mines. Following the tracks of a minecart, now overgrown with glowing fungus, Ezekiel squeezes Yuen’s hand happily, the terror of the Beast melting away at the wonder of this new world. Sitting here under their noses for these past weeks, this playground of sights offers a wonderland of adventure. They both vow to spend more time exploring here, to celebrate Ezekiel’s rebirth as an explorer and Yuen’s enterprising curiosity. As they walk the path back to the surface, they hear earth shift behind them, and they peer down a passageway in the earth they had not seen while walking in.
The blue glow from the fungus is strongest in this room, and converges on a central point. As the children’s eyes land on the sight, they stop in their tracks and their knuckles turn white as their hands lock together.
A nest of gravel, mud, and fungus lies in the center of the room. The owner of the nest, a scaled creature the size of a small horse, sleeps, curled around several glowing blue eggs. It stirs quietly in gentle but fitful starts. Every twitch from the reptile shifts dirt from the edge of the nest, causing gravel and pebbles to clatter quietly down the sloping sides. One shift dislodges a cracked bowl shaped item, and as it falls to the ground, Ezekiel and Yuen see that it is not a bowl, but a shattered fragment of a skull.
Without a word, they sprint out of the mines. Yuen makes Ezekiel agree not to tell anyone they went into the mines without permission, but as Ezekiel looks to the oaken doors not slid shut he can’t help but hear the growl of the Beast of the woods fresh in his memory.
Back in the community center, Drach the mechanic finishes work on the abandoned generator. With fuel it can be used to power many of the machines we brought with us. And if we as a community are resourceful and can work together, we may even be able to build new machines to help our lives here.
Idle hands breed idle minds and idle minds dwell on matters best forgotten for Drach, and so with his current project finished, he sets about repairing the shacks in the camp. The damage done by time is not insignificant and there are no small amount of shacks that need repairing, so he sets about planning for a long project. As he pours over blueprints and supply lists, he scrawls in his leather-bound journal, an item few in the community have seen him without. This work will ease his mind and occupy it for a time, and what the work cannot do, he puts to the page.
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the fifth episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Druid’s Grove – Vision Quest of the Bearheart – Score Music – Geronimo Snijtsheuvel
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the show will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed. As Spring often does, the temperature has dipped and a short cold snap from the mountains brings a slight dusting of frost and snow to the community. We know enough after the first morning of frost to bring our potted gardens inside with us to avoid the most damage to their sensitive roots, but reaction is not as good as prevention, and many lose their gardens completely to the cold. The last of the seeds are distributed and gardens are started anew. The frost and snow on the ground cover the open clearing of the mining camp with a solid white coat every morning. We wake to see a pristine wonderland, sparkling in the morning sun and the crisp spring air. One morning, however, the wonderland shows signs of danger. Large footprints meander through the camp. These footprints are larger than ours, with a large central footpad and four smaller divots to depict toes and claws. The hunters among us point out that no four legged animal could have made these prints, they must have been left by something walking on two legs. Some adults begin to dust over the large tracks, but it’s too late. Ezekiel and his best friend, Yuen, catch a glimpse of the tracks in the snow. Ezekiel, spurred by his recurring nightmares, runs back into Eileen’s house and begins to cry. Yuen, however, is mesmerized by the large prints left by the pads. She walks slowly out to the community square as the adults brush away the prints. She finds one unblemished by brooms and overlooked in the bustle. She crouches down to get a better look and she reaches her hand out to the ground. The edge of the print is crisp from where the snow melted at the creature’s warmth and then froze in the night. She traces her fingers in awe over the toe prints, and feels the sharp divot in the ground left by the claws of the foot. A shout from the center breaks her out of this spell.
Ezekiel in his terror had run from the shack. His eyes blurry from tears, he stumbles to the edge of the clearing, and in their haste to cover the evidence of the beasts, we have let him out of our sight. As he approaches the woods, the darkness between the trees lights up with dozens of bright white eyes. A beast steps out from the woods. The large footpads left in the snow were only a ghost image of the paws that dig into the mud of the riverbank. Short fur covers the claws from sight except for a small glint of their razor edge. The fur slopes upwards to the beast’s two legs, lean and punctuated by taut tendons that rise to meaty and muscular legs. The beast’s torso hunches down but as it emerges, it stretched itself to its full height and throws back strong arms that end in wicked claws. It brays a terrible howl into the morning air, steam billowing from its dire snout as its breath condenses in the chill. Ezekiel stands frozen. From the shack, two strong individuals burst, each holding one of the ancient weapons uncovered from the rivers banks.
Eileen watches as her lovers storm towards the Beast. The one in the lead, a hefty gardener named Gerrard, sprints to Ezekiel as the second, a tall hunter named Jules shouts and taunts the beast. Gerrard grabs Ezekiel and gives him a shove back toward the community square, but as he does this the beast knocks Jules to the side and grabs Gerrard by the back of his tunic. Eileen gasps in shock as the beast, with one arm, throws Gerrard across the river and into the dark forest. Breaking tree branches and inhuman screams echo through the woods. Taking advantage of the beast’s distraction, Jules strikes up with their sword and gashes the beast along its leg. Snarling, it looks down at Jules in rage and plunges its claws into their chest, before scooping their body up and sprinting back into the woods.
Stunned and silent, we stand. Ezekiel sobs sitting at the edge of the shack. One of us asks,
“Do we go in after them?”
“You saw what they did! There’s no way we’d be safe in those woods. We have to stay here where we have each other.”
“It happened so quick, it was so strong. There’s no hope for Gerrard or Jules and there would be no hope for us.”
“The only thing we can do is make sure we’re safe here so it doesn’t happen again.”
“You can’t stand there and say that! Gerrard and Jules loved me and they loved Zeke. We owe it to them to – to at least bury them.”
Thank you for joining us for the third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who is also our mapkeeper. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Additional voices for this episode were provided by the aforementioned Dave, as well as Rowan MacKeough who is At Elder Unikirin, Frankie Garza who is At Frankie Extra, and Past who is at Dromedary. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Elven Dirge – Farewell – Score Music – Philippe Payet
Elven Village – Ascending The Vail – Score Music – Kevin MacLeod
Transcription:
For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. But now, we’ve driven them off, and we have this – a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn once again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the show will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.
A week has passed. Two weeks into our new lives and we have begun to think of this place as a new home. The town center flourishes despite being hastily thrown together. The sun shines down on the community and its warmth energizes us. Intermittent rainstorms shower the mining camp and the water starts to soak into the earth. The riverbank remains muddy and soft, but the water up towards the camp was frozen and lumpy following the harsh winter of war. Now, however, with the spring rains the earth begins to open. Small sprigs of green weeds poke their way through the frozen earth and leaf litter that coats the ground. These meager sprouts remind us of our homes in the city. Collectively the community remembers the ceremonial gardens kept in nearly every home. Husbandry and care of these gardens represented the nurturing spirit of our cities, and offered moments of reflection and quiet as we cared for our own personal green spaces. The war against the Jackals broke down this routine and growing gardens often fell to the wayside in the struggle to survive. Window planters gave way to iron bars, and a healing green was replaced with gunmetal gray. The stillness of the camp in spring gives us an opportunity to bring back this practice. Clay from the river is gathered by the children who play at its banks, and the communal fireplace in the center of the camp becomes a kiln to produce earthenware pots. In our haste to leave the city, many resources were left behind, including massive seed banks. However, heirloom seeds were often kept by community elders and these small pockets of seeds soon are planted in pots of hope. After mere days the seeds begin to shoot up small searching shoots and the community gathers around them to coo and caw over the promise of growth.
In the woods the growling has grown more frequent. The children playing by the riverbank come home with stories of movement in the trees. Some stories are dismissed as playground imagination, but Ezekiel suffers harsh nightmares of figures walking between the trees. Now playdates are chaperoned. And even some adults return to the camp reporting movement and sounds from the dark and sickly woods. The spring melt from the mountains has raised the river’s banks and the floodwaters widen the divide between the community and the threats that lurk in the dark. The floodwaters bring a new discovery as well. A chunk of mossy earth is dislodged by the water, and a trove of ancient artifacts are exposed to the chill spring air. We gather what we can before it is swept downstream, and carefully unwrap the moldy canvas. Those watching recoil from what was kept within: a leather strap binding several rusted swords and axes together. We had left our weapons in the city, as we had left our dead. Violence was a tool used against the Jackals, and left a dangerous taste in our mouths. A timid voice suggests keeping the weapons to defend against the creatures that live in the woods. Drach, the community’s mechanic, wordlessly walks toward the table where the weapons lay. He unhooks his hammer from his belt and tosses it on the table with a dead clunk, then walks out of the shack. The hammer lays on the bleached wood. The head of the hammer is dented and uneven. The leather of the handle is worn and well held. The wooden shaft of the hammer spans between the two and as it connects to the head, the wood is stained brown with the blood of jackals.
A week passes.
Thank you for joining us for the third episode of From The Jackals To The Shepherds. If you like this show please give us a rating on iTunes, tell a friend, or share us on social media. As always the intro for the show was read by Dave Lapru, who has also started keeping our map for the community. You can find Dave on twitter at plantbird, and I’m at leviathan files. Please consider supporting the show on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Riverhouse Games. Music for this episode was provided by Battlebards dot com. Until next week, I hope your week goes well.
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, Alec Walker, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
Thank you for listening to this Riverhouse podcast. You can find more podcasts at RiverhouseGames.com as well as games and resources about queer & LGBT+ tabletop gaming. Thank you to the people backing the Riverhouse Games Patreon:
Nyssa MacKinnon, Jalyn Euteneier, Rohit Sodhia & GamersPlane.com, VJ Brown, Paul Bennett, Amanda Coyle, Rob Abrazado, Tobie Abad, Patrick ‘The Tyrant of Boredom’ West, and Emmeline Duplois, THANK YOU! If you want to see your name in upcoming Riverhouse games or podcasts, you can set a small monthly subscription at Patreon.com/RiverhouseGames
The poet this week is T.E. Hulme: 
From The Jackals To The Shepherds 