Sunday, October 27, 2019

Reality to Fantasy and Back

I want to explain some of the fantastic and mudune items that appear in my last post. This piece felt like a bit of Ready Player One. There are many references which may be unclear.

  • On Transit Road, in East Amherst is a former bar converted to a Church. I have no idea what kind of church, but there it is. My wife really did point it out to me. 
  • In Buffalo, it is common for people to tack on an "s" to words that should not have them. "Anywheres" is a horrible one, but we also say things like "Federal's" for "Federal Butch Shop". It's not entirely clear if we think that Mister and Missus Federal own the butcher shop or if we think we need to add an apostrophe because we dropped whole words. "Timmy runs", "Timmy ho's" and "Tim Hortons" are some of the more common language butcherings we perpetrate. 
  • The Peasant Dance and The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder are the source of many of the references in this story. If you enlarge the picture on the right, look at the two men carrying pies on the unhinged door. There is an extra foot or two people have 5 feet. The foot is wearing a shoe which doesn't match the boots of either men. Mysterious, eh? 
  • Fact: The very high booths are a reference to a bar named McBee's. (Again, that damned Buffalo "s".)
  • The picture on the wall matches McBee's style and mirrors Bruegel's styling of the Wedding painting, but is actually an image from the classic D&D module, X2 Château d'Amberville.
  • Bruegel is referred to as "the Elder", but he wasn't a friar or anything. 
  • Many of Bruegel's paintings depict The Church in a questioning way.
  • "Diamonddraught from the Land" is a reference to the Thomas Covenant Chronicles. It heals people. 
  • "Black Taquynian coffee imported from the Country of Torre" is a reference to the game Gemstones IV. 
  • Gemstone IV is entirely textual. Actually consuming coffee from a text game would be weird. 
  • The coffee referenced can be found in the town of River's Rest or simply "the Rest", which is referenced in the blessing prayer potion of the text. It is the reason that one word is capitalized after the comma. 
  • Elanith is not in Canada, it is the fictional world Gemstone IV and DragonRealms takes place in. 
  • The menus and dice are a reference to the many tables in various RPGs. 
  • "Scout. The Son of the Miller" was meant to sound like the name of a Tarot card. 
  • One of the ways of gaining experience in Gemstone IV is run messages. Destinations are random, as is payment. 
  • The die rolling is kind of reference to The Deck of Many things and how it is presented is how a Deck of Many things might work for a married couple. 
  • The blessing is a reference to classic Cub Scout and Boy Scout meal time prayers. My son is a Scout and lifeguard at a local camp.  
  • I'm a teacher who has taken over a classroom from an excellent teacher and mentor named Ms. Miller. This has happened at two different schools, three times. Weird how that happened. 
  • There is only one magic item table with an entry for 67-68 in the Efreet DMG . It's the Armor and Shield table, Splint Mail, +3. 
  • Believe it or not, passing down tradition like D&D has been going on for 3 generations, with more to come. 

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