Welcome aboard! and the Age of Personal Miracles

I am so excited to announce these two new followers. At first I wasn't going to wait until my usual "Welcoming Wednesday" post, but I decided to stay disciplined about it, then I ended up a little under the weather and missed Wednesday itself by a few hours. Damn.

First we have Obsidian3D, author of the blog "Thinking Outside the Box" and master of the Obsidian Fists space marine chapter. This blog as been rolling on and going from strength to strength since 2006. Quality content keeps the readers coming back, and that's the secret to longevity over at "Thinking Outside the Box." This blog covers topics outside gaming, too, including computer topics so rarefied I have no idea what's going on, although I always learn something. Welcome aboard, Obsidian3D!

And now, drumroll please ... we welcome none other than Francis Lee, the Angry Lurker himself! Francis is a member of Posties Rejects and frequently posts about the activities of (and personalities in) that wargaming club. The Angry Lurker blog is another with great longevity, and I am always informed and entertained by the writing there. I try not to get too starstruck in this field, but as gaming bloggers go, the Angry Lurker is tops in my book and I'm truly honored to have him visit my little corner of the interwebz.

Speaking of being starstruck, may I truly say we live in an age of miracles. This technology and the advent of social media have made things happen for me I never would've believed possible. To be in such close contact with the creators of the games I enjoy, the writers of blogs I follow religiously, the sculptors behind the minis I crave and can't get enough of, the authors of novels that have shaped my own writing, and the artists who have executed such awe-inspiring paint jobs that my jaw just drops ... it is part the boon of the technology, but it is also great testimony to the generosity of spirit and warm-heartedness of those who make this hobby great.

Here are some of the things that still leave me gobsmacked:

• I count among my closest friends Hendybadger and The Galley Wench of "Tales of a Tabletop Skirmisher." In fact, although I'm an ocean away, I am Coleen's Official Stalker™.
• When I asked to piggyback on someone's Crocodile Games kickstarter buy so I could get one figure, it was Liliana Troy who offered to help. I've admired the elegant and color-rich work of this legendary painter and Slayer-weapon winner for a long time.
• I couldn't remember a reference work that was mentioned in an interview I read with Tim Powers, James Blaylock and K.W. Jeter, the godfathers of steampunk. Hell, Jeter coined the term. I sent him an email asking if he might know what I was referring to, not really expecting to hear back since authors of his stature are busy people, they have legions of fans and he doesn't know me from Adam's housecat. I got a response from the author of "Infernal Devices" and "Morlock Night" in under two hours.
• Craig Cartmell, co-author of "In Her Majesty's Name," has been highly complimentary about the fiction I've posted here. 
• I am currently engaged in a Facebook poke war with wappellious, winner of Crystal Brush and Golden Demon awards aplenty. James truly goes the extra mile in the how-to articles on his informative and educational (and beautiful) blog.
• And most of all, the outpouring of love and support we've received from you, my readers and colleagues, as I've shared things about my own struggle with hoarding and depression and my wife's continuing battle with her spinal condition and chronic pain. You have buoyed our spirits, dried our tears, fueled our fires and inspired us both to continue fighting the good fight. All you people are amazing, and I am more grateful than I will ever find adequate words to say.

There are more and others, but these are the ones I can find in my head and my heart most easily tonight.

Damn but you people are fantastic.

Dramatis Personae for my steampunk dreams

Today I'm going to introduce you to someone very special to me. He's a character who's been banging around in my head for several years now, and I've finally given him some form and function, and he's going to be prominent in my steampunk London, the setting for the battles I shall fight using Empire of the Dead and In Her Majesty's Name rules.

Because I came to wargaming after years of being a roleplayer, I'm very much a story/fluff player. It's doubtful you'd ever see me build a beardy/killy/WAAC* list. What matters to me is the narrative. As such, I haven't written out rules/stats for this gentleman yet, as I don't really see him as a combatant, at least not at first. And if it comes to that, he has access to powers and abilities that would put a very strange spin on things, so maybe he could be drawn in as a campaign-ending big bad (or maybe a medium-sized bad).

Those of you who've been with the blog a bit over this past year have already been introduced to the Army of the Abandoned, my Moreau-inspired gatorman army I plan to run as  a werewolf list under the EOTD rules. I've also talked a little about and shown some figures I've acquired for the Ladies Auxiliary, my EOTD Gentlemen's Club analogue. Well, all these and the gentleman you're about to meet inhabit the same steampunk setting in my head, along with others to whom I hope to introduce you as we enter our second year together here at "Dispatches from the Rim." (The blog's one-year anniversary is coming up on July 8th. The forty-fifth anniversary of my birth is coming up July 15th. Huzzah to both of us!)

As is my custom, I'll introduce you to this fellow in a little piece of fiction. I call it, "The Crooked Man."

His fellow pedestrians did not look at Synryll Voolge as he walked by, though they yearned to stare at him, at the oddness of his shape, at the curious way he moved. 

They did not dare, though, for it was better to burn with curiosity than be caught in Voolge's singular gaze, to be transfixed by those phosphorescent orbs staring out of a head hung too low on his chest.

It almost looked as if Voolge's head sprung from the center of his sternum, like a strange fruit dangling from the high, rigid arc of his twisted spine.

The Crooked Man, they called him, when they were sure he could not hear them.

He heard, though. 

As striking as they found his appearance, they found his movements even stranger. Voolge's steps were feather-light, his pace assured, though his deformity allowed him to look neither left nor right as he walked. 

When he reached a corner, it was not as if he turned -- more like he stopped midstride and the world rotated around him. The effect was known to induce vertigo in those nearby as he angled, or was angled, to his new direction. Then, his cat-soft steps would resume, as if there had been neither change nor interruption. 

Voolge made steady progress across the rain-wet cobbles towards his place of business. Its grandiloquent exterior lacked any indication of its nature, no explanatory sign indicating what goods or services one might procure within. 

Had anyone had the temerity to stare as Voolge approached his customary destination, they would have witnessed the massive teak door swing open as if weightless, welcoming the master back to his mysterious domain. And they would have seen Voolge swept quickly inside, as if boosted by a sudden gust of wind, though the clockwork regularity of his footsteps never altered.

The massive black door. The fluted columns along the colonnade. The gargoyles and grotesques atop the roofline. Many paused and wondered what secrets or riches might be hid within. Only those who received the personal invitation of the Crooked Man knew for sure. 

At night they could be seen, some coming boldly, others furtively, but always eagerly, to the sumptuous façade in Pangborn Lane. Each visitor, whether clad in the finest bespoke fashions or wrapped in crudest rags, presented the gilt-edged calling card pressed into his or her hand by the Crooked Man.

"Synryll Voolge," it read, in flowing script. "Curator."

And below, centered in heavy Roman letters, the hidden name, the secret name, the mystery to be plumbed:

"THE OBSCENARIUM"

That, my friends, is Synryll Voolge, the Crooked Man, master and curator of The Obscenarium. What bacchanalian delights await within his demesne? What depraved pursuits are there conducted? And how does a man so crippled by nature move in a way at odds with all of physics and physicians?

These questions and more will be answered as I reveal, person by person, group by group, perhaps building by building and street by street that which makes up this area I intend my tiny painted minions to fight and die over. Let me drop a few more phrases that are scratching at the inside of my skull: The Stitcher Cult. The Scarlet Sisterhood. The Shattered Saint. The War for the Sewers. Cuthbert, Dibble & Grubb, Solicitors. "The halls! They move!" And The Strange Case of the Basement of the Palladium.

For those who are curious, or who suspect as much, Synryll Voolge is in part based on/inspired by Leonard Trask, who was called "the Wonderful Invalid." His spinal curvature is much more severe than I imagine Synryll's to be, but of course Trask's was exacerbated by physical accidents such as falling from a horse. Here's the first paragraph from the Wikipedia entry I just linked to:

Leonard Trask (June 30, 1805 – April 13, 1861)^[1][2] was an American who suffered from a "contortion of neck and spine" during his late 20s after an accident while horse riding, which led to Trask becoming a medical curiosity. After numerous attempts at a cure, several further accidents resulting from his condition, and a loss of employment and mobility, Trask (by then earning small amounts of money as a curiosity) published an account of his condition which further increased his renown. His condition remained unsolved upon his death, but he was subsequently diagnosed post mortem with ankylosing spondylitis (AS).^[1][3]

I discovered him while researching ankylosing spondylitis, the genetic disorder from which my wife suffers. And suffers is definitely the right word. And the distress this causes the spine brings on a host of other problems, including spinal stenosis. In some ways, Synryll is an acknowledgement of her condition, and his pursuits are an acknowledgement that, if my wife were not slowed by her condition, she would've taken over the world already like the evil mastermind she is. (Tracey, you know it's true. And I will always be your most loyal minon!) That Voolge can move and do all the things he does are an indication that he has access to resources beyond the ken of good, decent folk.

Well, thanks everyone, and I promise more to come soon. These people (and creatures, and places, and things) are crowding my brain and I've got to get them out. And you're all in the line of fire!

Back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table.

* WAAC = Win At All Costs

Confession to make

OK, you readers have been too polite to say anything, but I hear the whispers of the questions through the vibrating power lines. My mechanical parts feel the doubt building in the stray electrons left by my posts.

"Christopher, why don't you ever post pictures of your painted minis?"

Because there are none. Not new ones anyway. To be honest, I haven't applied paintbrush to mini in over two years. And the last time all I did was spray-prime my nascent zombie horde.

It hasn't stopped my planning and acquiring minis to paint, obviously. You've seen those photos.

It's not for any insecurity about the results. I'm a decent painter, to what I consider a good tabletop standard.

My problem is finding, or rather making, space to paint.

Because I'm a hoarder. Every surface in my home is crowded and cluttered. The floor, to me, is a low, flat shelf.

God, it feels good to admit it in a public forum. I. Am. A hoarder. (Warning: Personal revelations only tangentially related to gaming follow. If you're a tl;dr type of person, you may want to skip to the end.)

For years I thought I was just sloppy. And lazy. And I am both those things, for certain values of sloppy and lazy.

It moved into full-fledged hoarding over the years, as health crises and family events chipped away at my stability. It's not to the degree of the people you see on television, mainly because I don't own property. (And no cat skeletons under the furniture here. Our cat is very much alive and a multi-clawed threat to my safety and well-being.)

My wife and I rent a two-bedroom duplex, and the clutter and collections and trash, sometimes all intermingled, have taken over both bedrooms and are threatening the living room and the kitchen.

If it were just me, I might ignore it and just go full-on batshit crazy and become "that guy" in our little town, with the house the kids warn each other away from with the judicious use of campfire tales and sleepover horror stories.

But even as the indecision, insecurity and, at times, obsession inch closer to overwhelming me, I am consumed with something more powerful.

The love of my wife. I love her with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. I would pull the stars from the sky for her. I would drag souls to hell for her. If I could heal her crippling genetic disorder with a smoothie made of severed heads and blended babies, I would become the greatest mass murderer this planet has ever seen.

But I can't. So I won't. (Who am I kidding? I abhor violence IRL. I even have trouble transgressing my own moral code in a VIDEOGAME. I am the only person who plays Grand Theft Auto and stops at the stoplights.)

Instead I am fighting the bad programming in my head that makes the stacks of boxes and mounds of clothing feel like castle walls and parapets, protecting my too-oft-wounded heart. Even as I shoulder Sisyphian guilt over the condition of our home, I also feel safe. The clown prince of clutter. A king of rags and patches.

I gradually make headway against the clutter littering the floor, which has reduced the amount of our home my wife can access to about 25 square feet.

Unfortunately, even if it were spotless, she couldn't move much farther anyway. She suffers the genetic disorder ankylosing spondylitis, which I think I've written about before. It's sometimes called "bamboo spine," because as it progresses, it fuses the spine into one solid mass of bone. It hinders her movement and leaves her in constant pain. She gets about some with a walker, mostly by wheelchair. Drugs manage most of the pain and the muscle spasms.

She has made friends across the world on the Internet, as have I. I try to make sure she has as much access to information, communication and entertainment as possible. Now I'm fighting my own brain, my fear, to return our home to a state of which she can be proud.

It approaches irony that the artistic release of painting minis would do much to ease my mind and soothe my brittle feelings. So all I can say is ...

Yes, soon. I made big strides on my days off this week, and I plan to do a little more each day. Eventually, I'll have enough of a clear work area that I can drag out my minis and paints and get to work. My goal is within two weeks. I'm also using this as a motivator:

Studio McVey painting competition on Wamp

Having just acquired Sedition Wars (and having a few of the metal SW minis as well) I am spoiled for choice. And the entry deadline isn't until April. Even I should be able to hit that.

I'll be back later today with more about the Empire of the Dead: Requiem kickstarter (to which I've already pledged.)

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!