As Requested, My Curriculum Vitae-

Pictured - Mona and I at our big SCA wedding with the kids, Ash was had turned 12 then and Em had just turned 7 earlier in the month, John was still 9.

My name is William Dowie. I am a 43 year old white man from the rural northern edge of central New York state, on Lake Ontario. I am a giant history nerd, in college I majored in history with a focus on Classical Antiquity and the European Middle Ages, I minored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I also took a bunch of Anthropology courses, but not enough to count as a second major. I am 6'6" tall and I have worked as a substitute teacher, short order cook, bouncer, machinist and convenience store clerk, just to name a few. I speak French passably well, Spanish slightly less so, and can usually guess my way through written Italian or Latin. I have tried to teach myself Scots Gaelic, much less successfully, but can pick out a number of written words on sight and sometimes recognize words when I hear them. Oddly enough I can pick out Welsh words now just as easily when they are cognates to the Scots Gaelic words I know, I see patterns in language easily.

I am married to a wonderful woman named Mona and we have three children; Ashli (19), John (17) and Ember (14), who were literally left on our doorstep when they were 11, 9 and 6 respectively. We live on a small, mostly forested plot of land in New Haven, New York - which is north of Syracuse and east of Rochester, nearest to the smaller city of Oswego, NY - where I continue to scheme ways to homestead and get off the grid, mostly because I hate the high cost of electricity in a county with three nuclear power plants, and I want healthier food than I can buy from the store, with the bonus that it'll be cheaper too. I have been frustrated in my attempts to clear my land because it's a lot harder to do than you would think, I have a lot more respect for pioneers now, especially since they did it with no power tools at all. I also have some valuable lumber that I can't seem to get anyone to harvest because my lot is too small and the presence of my house and the power lines along the edge of the road make it too difficult to be worth it, so apparently I need the price of Cherry to rise back to the level it was before our economic collapse to attract loggers.

I have been playing board wargames and D&D since 1980, when my friend Chris introduced me to both the week that we went to see Excalibur together with my dad. We played SPI's Sorcerer that weekend, because he had brought it over to my house and played D&D with him DMing before the week was out using the Holmes Basic rules. I went out and bought a set as soon as I could save up the money, maybe a month later. For a long time after that pretty much all of my money went into my D&D habit in some way or another, books, modules, Dragon Magazine, "official" Grenadier miniatures.

I found the SCA while the local group was doing a demo at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in Sterling, NY back in 1983 when I was 14, I have drifted in and out of the SCA ever since. I am currently missing Pennsic for my 41st time in a row. Something always comes up. Not that it matters anymore, I have passed my fighting prime and I don't think it's coming back no matter how hard I try. I keep resolving to make it to fighter practice more often and get back into my "Crown Tourney" rhythm, but that just isn't going to happen at my age anymore. I don't heal quick enough to fight six days a week anymore. That and I can't afford the gas money for the hundreds of extra miles per week I'd be putting on my minivan to go to all of the extra fighter practices and events. Still, I have made a lot of good friends in the SCA over the years and some great memories, I am happy to have been there for what I did and I wish I could do more still.

1985 was the year of the release of the 1st edition AD&D Oriental Adventures book, it's one of those books that you either love despite it's warts or you hate because of them. I love that book and it's probably because it's the only AD&D book I ever pre-ordered at Twilight Book & Game Emporium in Syracuse, NY - a sadly long gone FLGS. Despite the fact that the glue cracked on the binding causing several pages to become loose literally the first time I opened it, I was determined to get my money's worth out of it. Before my friend Tim left for Basic training in the US army the next year I took over DMing duties from him, which I had only rarely done before, and we played an epic OA campaign. I have played in one pretty epic OA campaign, as a Steppe Barbarian named Chanar Ilkhan, and DMed a few more since. One of my current projects is rewriting the OA book as I think it should have been.

As a side note, I was really anti-Rokugan because they changed the default setting in the 3e version of the Oriental Adventures book to Rokugan from Kara-Tur, and that made me, by default, anti-Legend of the Five Rings. I had been strongly attracted to the setting through AEG's Clan War miniature battle game prior to that, but hadn't bought into it at the time because I could not find at least one other person that was willing to also jump on board with me and had been burned by miniature games that way in the past. Now I am happy to say I have come full circle because I started buying old Clan War miniatures on EBay for my OA campaign and ended up getting the rules, which made me interested in the setting, which made me interested in the RPG, which got me to buy the new board game, which led me to buy some CCG cards too. I have even read through some of the published fiction, and, until it was shut down recently, was playing in a Facebook app version of the RPG called Emerald Empire. I really hated the 3e version of Oriental Adventures.

I played (A)D&D, tried out some other RPGs and wargamed a lot through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Wargaming kind of died in the 1990s (except on the PC, it boomed there), and I concentrated on just RPGs, then just D&D. Sometime after 3rd edition D&D came out, after the novelty wore off for me, I realized I disliked DMing it rather intensely. I was a little late coming to the 3rd edition party, because my D&D group was happy with 2nd edition and we didn't switch over until that campaign died. At the time, I had grown bored with 2nd edition AD&D and welcomed the change, although several things bothered me from the beginning; the faster rate of rising in level was a big one and I missed real multi-classing. I took me a while though, and DMing for several different groups, to realize the worst part was that it neutered the DM. My original AD&D groups, who were familiar with my fast and loose, shoot from the hip DMing style were OK with me making rules calls on the fly when none of us had any idea how something was supposed to work in the new system; we'd keep the game moving and I could look it up later. We might even like my way better. The other groups had people who STUDIED the rules though; at first, every time I made a ruling I'd see disapproving looks, eventually they got brave enough to start offering suggestions as to the right way to handle the situation.

So I quit DMing and let one of them DM in each group. Neither group lasted much longer. One started a new campaign and it was just too railroad-ey, I actually started stress testing that campaign to see what would happen if my character deliberately did things that were contrary to the predestined storyline. My character got punished, he made minor alterations to his storyline, but nothing seriously bad could ever happen to us, so, eventually, as a group we got bored and quit. The other guy just took over my game where I left off and had me make a character that would take his place. He had been unlucky in my game and died several times, but I assume that was because he kept making wuss characters, Rogues and Bards. I made a Barbarian, it was fun while it lasted, we went from 8th to 11th level with him at the helm, then he TPKed the party.

I took a break for a while, despaired over playing D&D again, then picked up Hackmaster. I ran a pretty fun Hackmaster game for a while and that was what led me to realize that I should just go back to playing 1st edition AD&D. That was the year we got the kids though, so I wasn't done with 3rd edition - when they decided they were interested in learning to play D&D, they wanted to play the newest version, 3.5 at the time. I gritted my teeth and went with it, anything to get kids into gaming. I have been walking them back in home games for years now, and have only recently discovered the Moldvay Basic half of B/X myself. Back in the day I bought the Expert Boxed Set when it came out, but I never got the Moldvay Basic Set that matched it because I already had a Basic Set, the Holmes Basic Set. So we've been playing that a bit lately, but my home games are pretty much at a stand-still right now, almost everyone that doesn't live here is too busy to come over and play, and everyone that does live here doesn't want to play with just their mom and dad, brother and/or sister. John is still gaming this summer, he's in a regular 4th edition D&D game with some guys he goes to school with and I am playing Dawn Patrol semi-regularly with Darryl & his dad, John and Dalton. We also recently tried out the Legend of the Five Rings 1st edition RPG here at the house. I am trying to start a game of 43 AD and it's supplement Warband, but the start has been plagued by bad luck and poor coordination of schedules.

I have always run my D&D games in my own "World of Garnia" fantasy setting as a default. It's my Greyhawk, my buddy Darryl and I have been working on this on and off for decades, we're doing a serious reboot of the entire setting and discussing it on my other blog. The primary idea for the campaign is that a group of Celts fled the Roman onslaught to this new world, the world of the Sidhe (Elves) where magic works. The main campaign area is one where their culture has flourished. I designed it originally using the core 1st edition AD&D rules, so there are a lot of 1st edition AD&D assumptions in the setting, but I am trying to make the setting system neutral so that it can be played with any FRPG system. When we have finished the maps and gazetteers they'll be released for use. Currently we're working on the whole world, then we plan to "drill down" and do specific regions. I will also most likely release the adventures that I have written for the setting over the years, it's just finding and transcribing all of the stuff, then updating it to match the current standard is going to be a chore.

By now you are probably wondering where all this "Great Khan" stuff comes from, right? Well back in 1996 my buddy Darryl and I were living most of a continent apart and wanted to play some D&D together. He had played a lot of the SSI Gold Box D&D games starting with "Pool of Radiance" when it came out and we were both new to the internet and on AOL at the time where they had a game called "Neverwinter Nights" that ran using the same engine, but was multi-player, up to 300 I think it was. I guess that makes it the first MMORPG, it was great fun anyway. Darryl was more savvy than me and figured out the best way to advance in the game was through guild membership, so we duly joined a guild together. ERS, the Explorers of the Rising Sun, who made us create new Screen Names, because that was your character's name in the game, and everyone in the guild was named ERS something. I was ERS Garn, Darryl was ERS Frodal, we were named after deities I had created for my Garnia campaign world.

But then we realized, being ambitious adventurers, that ERS was there to help newbies find their bearings and, in general, be nice; and we wanted to move up the food chain in NWN. So we decided to create our own guild, which would, even though it was a gamble, make us guild leaders and let us take charge of our destinies and how we wanted to play the game. We needed a hook though, and that's where our collective history nerdity took over, we decided to play as Mongols, because we wanted to send out a strong challenge to the status quo in all of the guilds and it was unique in NWN to play a culturally oriented guild, unless that culture was a fantasy one. Mostly I think we chose the Mongols though because I was playing them at the time in Civilization. Partly I think we picked them because we both loved the NES game Genghis Khan*, Darryl and I used to spend weekends playing that game together. We also both liked the Mongol reputation for ass-kickery and conquest. Then we studied and studied some more, at this point I think that our kids could hold their own at a conference of Mongol Medieval History scholars.

Anyway, the Steppe Warriors were born. Technically, since NWN is in the Forgotten Realms, we were members of the, at the time, recently defeated Tuigan Horde that decided to march west rather than return east. Darryl was our first Khakhan with his character SW Ogotai, named after one of the sons of Genghis Khan, the reasoning was that he could afford to be online more often (remember this was when you paid/minute of use) because I was in school at the time, and he was a better recruiter. My character was named SW Jagatai, also after a son of Genghis Khan. Ultimately Darryl resigned the position of Khakhan and I was elected to fill it. We've had our highs and lows as a group, and we're pretty dormant now, but I have been Jagatai, Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors since 1997 on the internet, so when I named the blog and when I created my initial Blogger account, I just naturally went with the same motif. My Yahoo email address is still SWJagatai at yahoo dot com, created in the same era. Back when I was sure we were going to leap from AOL's NWN into the expanding universe of MMOs I registered three domain names, steppewarriors.com, steppewarriors.org and steppewarriors.net; I used to joke that they would soon be followed by steppewarriors.edu and steppewarriors.gov. Clearly things didn't turn out as well for the Steppe Warriors as I had anticipated in the late 1990s.

Ultimately, I am pretty pleased with my alternate persona. In doing the research to properly play a Mongol character I have learned a great many things about the Mongols and other steppe peoples. I have eaten a bunch of Mongol food, drank Kumiss, shot arrows from a composite bow (not while mounted though), been in a yurt and made friends with a bunch of people that I otherwise probably never would have met. When I think about how it could have gone another way, if I'd been playing a different Civilization that day when Darryl and I were talking on the phone, or if he and I hadn't played so much of Koei's Genghis Khan together and he hadn't been as receptive to the idea, or maybe it was the fact that he had played in one of my epic Oriental Adventures campaigns that made him cool with the idea. If Darryl hadn't signed on for Mongols, we might have been a Samurai guild or a Viking guild or a Celt guild, they were all infinitely more familiar to both of us at the time; or maybe we'd have gone with something lame like a Dark Elf Ranger guild, who knows?

At any given time I usually have more irons in the fire than is wise, so many of my projects get back-burnered until I get back around to them. Currently I have on hold an Oriental Adventures campaign that just kind of fizzled when it was starting to get good, I had converted the Temple of Elemental Evil for OA and made it the Black Temple from OA1. I have a B/X Viking campaign that stopped when two of my regular adult players got new jobs. I have a B/X conversion for WW II that I spent a lot of time working on last summer, but my regular group, which is mostly my wife and kids and family friends, was lukewarm about play-testing it. I'd say it's an early alpha level right now. I am working on a total rewrite of the 1st edition OA book, kind of recasting it in a form I find more desirable. I just started learning the L5R RPG, I am GMing and the party is about 1/2 way through the adventure in the back of the book, I still haven't found the fumble rule. I have announced several times, prematurely, the start of my 43 AD campaign, so while that should be starting soon, I am going to not say when just in case something happens again. Mostly though, right now, getting a lot of my time behind the scenes, is the reworking of my old Garnia campaign world. We've made some interesting progress on it. I also have a bunch of OSR stuff piling up on my to read list, making me wish I had bought hard copies rather than pdfs because I mostly hate reading off my monitor, but that's where my copies of "Lamentations of the Flame Princess", "Carcosa", "Vornheim", "Adventurer, Conqueror, King", and several other major releases are sitting waiting to be read.

*Out of all of Koei's strategy games for the NES, Genghis Khan had the best multi-player play, Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms were too slow, and Nobunaga's Ambition II had the annoying "siege mode" in battle.

N is for-

Nudity in battle! Among the ancient Gauls there were an entire society of warriors called Gaesatae that fought in the nude. Their opponents, Greek and Roman, that wrote about them could only speculate as to why they did this, but they did observe that they were the most seriously hard-core bad-asses on the Gaulish side of the battle. Polybius said that the name Gaesatae meant "mercenary", but it is a much closer cognate to the Old Irish word gaiscedach or "Champion".

N is for Norsemen. I can't say enough good about the Norsemen. I love their culture, their religion and their women. The Norse had a more direct effect on how English and American democracy came into being than the Athenians did because of their democratic councils or Things. The Norsemen and their culture touched and had a lasting effect on every other non-Mediterranean European culture starting from their Scandinavian homeland and heading west to France, Britain and Ireland; across the Baltic to Germany and all of the Baltic and Slavic states there. They pretty much created Russia and it was named for them*. Aside from all the raiding, raping and pillaging, they also colonized pretty aggressively. Normandy**, The Danelaw in England***, Orkney, Shetland, Sutherland, Caithness and the Hebrides in Scotland, the entire Isle of Mann and pretty much everywhere there is a city in Ireland (Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Cork). As explorers they found and colonized The Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland and, briefly, Vinland****. They also were pretty hard-core capitalist-consumers. They loved trade.

N is for Normans which are what you get when you take Norsemen and "civilize" them. Teach them all about Christianity, Feudalism and French culture, then give them horses. You got a culture that retained the dynamic expansionism and warrior ethos of their Norse forefathers and gave them the sense of history, responsibility and entitlement or the Frankish aristocracy, then added the imperative to serve the church of Rome to save their souls. Oh, and they learned politics and public relations along they way too. The transitional period from the early middle ages, or so called "Dark Ages" to the High middle ages might as well be called the Norman middle ages. The Normans had two major conquests in that period, both with Papal blessing; their Duke William the Bastard got to become known as William the Conqueror in the more famous of the two, the Norman conquest of England; but they also conquered Sicily and southern Italy under the leadership of the Norman de Hauteville family after a decades long campaign.

Normans from Normandy would continue to migrate to both areas of conquest, and both of the conquered areas would become launching points for further military adventures by Normans. Over the course of the 11th and 12th centuries the Normans would come to dominate Scotland and Ireland and Wales. They would secure all of southern Italy from the Moors and Byzantines. They would wage war against Papal armies to secure their own rights by conquest. They would be among the key players in the first Crusade*****, founding Christian kingdoms and principalities in territories that had long been in Muslim hands.

The Normans weren't completely about conquest and war either, they were patrons of the arts and of the church too. The Bayeux Tapestry was a Norman commission and most of the medieval cathedrals in England are Norman built. They were big on poetry and feasting and hunting and stuff that most nobles of the middle ages liked too.

N is for Nobunaga. Technically it's Oda Nobunaga, but he's famous enough that people will recognize him just from his first name. The Japanese video game company Koei has put out an entire series of Nobunaga's Ambition games; including an MMORPG set in feudal Japan. Sadly not all of the series have had English translations. The first two were available for the NES though and were part of what got me interested in Japanese history, particularly the Sengoku Jidai period. Oda Nobunaga himself is the first of the three great unifiers of Japan. Before he completed his work and unified the nation, ending the age of battles; he was betrayed by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide and forced to commit seppuku. His unification of Japan was ultimately completed by two of his vassals Hideyoshi Toyotomi and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

N is for Neverwinter Nights, specifically AOL's Neverwinter Nights. AOL NWN was an SSI Gold Box AD&D 1st edition computer game adapted by Stormfront studios for multiplayer online play. I know that I spent literally thousands of dollars for my wife and I to play this game, making it one of the most expensive entertainment expenses I have ever incurred, and I do not regret it. The community of players made it worth every penny. My wife and I once traveled, with Darryl C and his wife Muriel, to a wedding in another state for a guy we had only ever met online, and he was from a rival guild! In July it'll be 14 years since that game stopped being and I still miss it and I know I am not alone. I am pretty sure that if someone were to get the game up and running again most of the old players would come back, crappy graphics and all. I mean, the graphics were already 10 years out of date when we were playing the game in the late 90's.

N is for Ninja. Mystical bad-ass assassins and spies of feudal Japan. I have found that in every Oriental Adventures campaign there is always that one guy that wants to be the Ninja. I have tried to work with that guy on numerous occasions with varying degrees of success. My advice is that Oriental Adventures campaigns come in two types- Samurai campaigns and Ninja campaigns, keep them separate. Other then that the only real thing I know about Ninjas is that there weren't any at my wedding******.

N is for Naginata, essentially a Japanese Glaive. Traditionally considered a good weapon for women because it increased their reach, this did not discourage their use among men. The Japanese don't really have a lot of pole-arms, the only other one I can think of off the top of my head is the Yari which is just a spear.

N is for Nomads. I have to give Nomads a shout out because not only are the Mongols nomadic pastoralists, but I lived a pretty nomadic life for much of my young adulthood anyway. I used to limit the amount of stuff I owned to what I could easily move, with a couple of friends helping, in one day. Getting married and having kids kind of put the kibosh on that, but I still like the concept of a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Of course now it's just because I am getting older and don't want to deal with the Oswego county winters anymore. I keep telling Mona that when Em graduates from high school we're moving someplace with less snow, like Alaska or Canada.

*Actually what the Greeks called them, Rhos or Rus.

**Funny story that's largely forgotten by history; apparently there were very briefly two different Normandys in France. The records of the era are spotty and there isn't much information available on the "other" Normandy in English. Maybe not in French either, I don't know.

***Or, as people with maps call it half of England.

****How long the Vinland colony lasted is disputed by scholars, which should come as no surprise since scholars didn't believe in it's existence half a century ago. Scholars also argue about how long the Norse maintained contact with North America after the failure of their colony. Archaeological evidence from Greenland and Iceland suggest that the sagas weren't bullshitting us on this one either, they probably continued making trips to North America for wood into the 14th century; when global climate change made the trek across the north Atlantic near the Arctic circle in a small open topped boat dangerous. Also, Eskimos probably killed the last of the Greenlanders off.

*****The First Crusade is arguably the only really successful one, and it came in two waves. The first wave was a bunch of poorly trained and led religious fanatics, many of them peasants and clergymen; they were pretty soundly beaten, which may have been what caused the Muslims, who were also busy at the time fighting among themselves, to not take terribly seriously the second wave of professional soldiers that pretty much handed them their collective asses wherever they stood to fight. Professional Norman-Style Christian knights were inarguably better trained and better equipped and better led than any of their Muslim opponents during the First Crusade. For later Crusades the Muslims got their shit together and started taking Europeans seriously, then it was the Christian Europeans that didn't take their Muslim opponents seriously, which was a big mistake when you are trying to maintain a series of colonies hundreds of miles from home in an alien environment surrounded by hostile natives with a tech level roughly the same as your own.

******Or were there?

J is for-

Jagatai my online Mongol persona. Considering I am an American of Scottish Highland, English and French descent some people find it a little strange that I have a Mongol Warrior persona on the internet. Jagatai came about through a strange conjunction of circumstances. When the Steppe Warriors were forming in the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL, Darryl C. and I were looking for a hook to make our new guild different from every other guild. I had been playing a lot of Civilization at the time and the Mongols were one of my favorite civs to play. I had been one of, apparently, relatively few fans of the Hordelands Campaign setting from TSR*. I had read and enjoyed the Horde trilogy, although everyone I know who has read it agrees that it is total BS that King Azoun of Cormyr beats Yamun Khan; simply unrealistic and unsupported by the history on which so much of the Tuigan/Mongol thing is based. They would have been better off having Yamun die some other way and force the horde to return to Qaraband for a new couralitai, that's how Europe was saved from the Mongols historically. Twice.

Anyway, we decided that the culturally distinct warrior Mongols made a fine addition to AOL's Neverwinter Nights and we ran with it. We created our own back story in keeping with Forgotten Realms canon, we were Tuigan survivors of the Battle of the Golden Way. Cut off from retreating to the east towards home we crossed all of Faerun and ended up settling outside of Neverwinter, where we were largely welcomed as an organized force of warriors that helped to protect the land. Essentially we became Cossacks in the service of Lord Nasher, but not really. Our ultimate goal was to set up an independent horde, like the Golden Horde, and conquer everything. It says so in our group charter, which is known as "The Revered Yassa of Jagatai, Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors"**.

That Jagatai and the Steppe Warriors would bleed over into almost every aspect of my life is kind of amusing to me, considering the whole thing started as an online AD&D character. Obviously it has though, look at the title of the blog! I have made friends over the years that only know me as Jagatai. The Steppe Warriors and Jagatai have been present in a plethora of online games since their inception in 1996, with greater and lesser presences depending on the game; ranging from MMORPG to FPS to RTS to chat room D&D. We have held a number of gatherings, where people come from all over the US to camp in my yard for a long weekend and get to know in person the people they spend so much time online with. It's not really too much like "The Guild". We have featured a number of medieval and Mongol style sporting events, including boffer fighting tourneys, archery, thrown weapons, races and feats of strength. We also play D&D, face to face, on the table top then too, it's pretty cool.

J is for Japan, the source of so much of my inspiration, particularly feudal Japan. I blame the TV mini-series Shogun airing when I was at an age to be particularly susceptible to cool exotic stuff. I am from rural upstate NY, dairy country, and while I can't say I had never seen an Asian face before, I can say I had never seen an Asian culture before and it was presented so as to make it easy for us westerners to get. Some people say that James Clavell played a little too free and easy with Japanese history, I think he set a good balance. He made learning about feudal Japan palatable and digestible to the average American. In order to get the same kind of easy to understand story going we would have to wait another 20 years for "The Last Samurai", and that seemed to me to just be a rip-off of "Dances with Wolves".

Anyway, like most nerds from the 80's, I grew up loving Samurai and Ninja. I learned as much as I could about the exotic Japanese culture, from martial arts and Bushido to the tea ceremony and Zen. Then, of course, I ran D&D games there.

I eventually graduated to watching Japanese Samurai movies, the Seven Samurai is still my favorite, but I recently watched 13 Assassins and that was a lot of fun too.

J is for Jarl, according to Norse mythology, one of the three social classes of men along with Karls and Thralls. Jarl is at the top of the social heap and kings are descended from them. Curiously, they were all fathered by Rig, who scholars believe to be Heimdall. Why then are the first born (thralls) at the bottom of the social ladder?

*OK, I am not going to lie here, the setting itself wasn't that great, it kind of read like a boring history and travelogue of central Asia with random fantasy thrown in; but I did like it as an expansion for Kara-Tur, which it worked as quite well.

**Before I sound like too much of an ego maniac here, we stole the style from Genghis Khan and I was not the first Khakhan of the Steppe Warriors, Darryl C. was. He got the job because he could afford to be online more often than me playing NWN back then (hourly rates, he had a real job, I was in college) and he had been playing longer than me and knew more people in the NWN community; which should have made things easier for us to transition our new guild into place. As the Khakhan Ogotai, Darryl has a number of credits to his name, he was a good recruiter and a decent diplomat with other guild leaders. He led us to victory in the flurry of wars that we were forced into when we arrived on the scene. He wrote the first Yassa and a bunch of it's early revisions, the format of which is still used and the bulk of the text is the same; when the Yassa is revised it is usually clarified by addition not modified by subtraction. In the end, his real life issues made him a poor leader for us and he stepped down as Khakhan, then ultimately, left the Steppe Warriors all together. He and I parted ways somewhat acrimoniously as well, and despite both of us reaching out and trying to rebuild our old friendship on several occasions, we really still aren't speaking. I try and concentrate on the good times when I write about him, he was my best friend for something like 20 years, so I have a lot of those.

Odinbjorn's Tale- another old character post.

I have been a bit busy lately and haven't had much time to create new content or comment on other OSR stuff. So, just to give you, my loyal readers, some "new" content on my blog; I present the second, and possibly last, of my old character posts from my Steppe Warrior days. This one is a little different in that it is more or less an origin story and that it has vikings as the main characters. I hope you all enjoy it, much of it is based on actual play.

Odinbjorn's Tale

Reaving. That was the root of Odinbjorn's problem, as leader of Norway's chief berserker cult it should be considered a right, nay an obligation. King Harald Fine-Hair saw differently though, and had outlawed Odinbjorn and his followers for damaging his peace with the Danes. A friend in residence with the king had sent word that reached the berserk a day or so ahead of the kings' thanes. Outlawed, property forfeit and likely to be slain; Odinbjorn had gathered his followers, household and every portable piece of property and loaded it on his ships bound for Iceland. Of course goods, women and thralls hadn't fit in his raiding fleet, so he had been forced to raid his neighbors steadings for everything that could float. Reaving had been at the root, it was the branch and the tree too. Neighbors had kin and allies, the king had kin and allies; his floating household was hunted all across the whales road. A couple of small skirmishes had lost him some men and goods but so far his luck and the will of Ygg had kept him alive and he had gained more than glory, not that it mattered; gold was for the giving when you were a chief, not the hoarding. The captives had bled their lives out for the great god.

::::

The storm kicked up somewhere north of the Orkneys from out of a clear blue sky. “By Odin's eye!” the chieftain exclaimed, “Ran seeks to do what all Harald's men could not. By the Farmatyr I swear we'll not drown like rats!”. He ordered his men to ship sails and ride out the storm, as he idly rubbed the ring on his left small finger; such was his wont and habit before a raid and at other stressful moments. Unbeknownst to him, the ring; spawn of Draupnir, given by Odin to the first of his chiefly line; listened and began to glow a faint silvery glow, it would see that Odin's man would not be lost to the wrath of the sea giantess Ran. The All-Father's will would not be thwarted this day.

They rode the storm out for hours. Surprisingly none of the ships was lost, even the smaller, less sea-worthy ones. As darkness fell the Draupnirling had gathered what strength it could while still protecting the small fleet, it made it's move. Odin's will must be fulfilled, this man and his sworn brothers were the servants of Odin; sworn to work his will in Midgard; and throughout the nine worlds. Storm clouds were swept away from the ships. The northern lights burned the sky. The sea grew calm as glass. The air around the ships crackled with electrical charge. An uneasy silence fell among the crews, their households and their beasts. Unbidden Odinbjorn's left arm rose above his head. The ring flashed a bright white and was no more. Men and women, children and beasts were thrown to the decks of their ships. Ships burst forth from the water and when they splashed down the sea was different. So was the sky, the sun shone above them, night had lasted mere minutes.

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Odin's sorcery had saved the fleet from Ran's doom. Of that the chief was certain. Of other things he was not. When night fell for the second time the stars were not as they should have been, their configurations completely wrong. The gothi had no explanation for this, he was as stunned as his men. The night was spent quietly grumbling and listening to the crying of the women and children. The fleet sailed west though the night, the current pushing them slightly to the north. As dawn broke land was sight to the west, a wooded coastline. Odinbjorn decided to put ashore to effect repairs and replenish food supplies. After many days at sea and the sorcery of the previous night both men and beasts could use some time on land. He left his trusted lieutenant Hrolf in charge setting up camp while he led one of the parties of men inland to scout their surroundings.

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A mile or so inland the one of the gothi's men spotted smoke, as from a camp fire. Odinbjorn had his men make ready for battle and silently invoked the All-Father to grant them victory. As they crept up to the encampment the men were met with a very surprising sight, the camp contained not men but some manner of troll-kin; large, fanged, savage looking beasts in the general shape of men, but with a greenish caste to their skin and long greasy black hair. Their camp was strewn about with bones and rotting meat and one of them was counting out of a sack stacks of gold and silver coins. Grimnir had bidden them to Trollheim then. It all made sense now. He and his men would continue Helblindi's work here then, as Midgard was lost to him and his kind.

He and his men reconnoitered the trollish camp, it seemed the had posted no guards or watchmen. The trolls weapons were of crude manufacture, as was what armor they wore. He observed as one of the vile creatures shat right in the camp then kicked it away from itself. He determined their numbers about twice his, but his men were all battle-hardened veterans with surprise on their side; so he shouted the charge and called down the red rage.

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When the skirmish was over the rage faded. Odinbjorn's great axe had been blackened with the foul juice these beasts used for blood. His and his men's work a feast for the ravens. The whole thing had taken perhaps minutes, but the gothi felt drained and weak as a kitten after the rage fled. He sat down his back against a large tree. His well trained men gathered what loot there was, to be taken back to the brotherhood for their chief to dole out. A few more minutes saw spoils gathered, throats slit and the vikings on their way back to their own camp.

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A few more days saw a proper camp springing up along the seashore, with pens for the beasts and tents set up inside a wooden palisade. Scouts had fared inland perhaps a dozen miles and spotted a road and a couple of burned farmsteads, as well as more and different kinds of troll-kin. Odinbjorn supposed they were on the move raiding as the season was good for it. They had captured a few of the smaller troll-kin with orange skins and Odinbjorn had sacrificed them as was fitting. He had also realized this land was more charged with magic than Midgard had been, his chants and rune-castings more powerful than they had ever been. Truly this was the place where the All-Father's work was to be done. The favor of the Aesir was such that wounds, when the proper healing chants were used, could mend before your very eyes. Morale was higher than ever among his men and they grew restless for war.

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The gothi led his war band south down the coast seeking the larger trollish band that was advancing before them. The woods had emptied on to green rolling hills and farmland, though the crops and farmsteads were burnt. A few times they had spotted groups of stragglers or deserters from the trollish host put ashore and put them to the sword so no word of their coming could be given. At last they spied a city in the distance, under siege. It was a port and the trollish army had not attempted to blockade the harbor, so Odinbjorn would sail his sea steeds into the harbor prepared to sack and burn, then attack the trollish host assailing the walls.

Surprise met the vikings yet again as they drew closer to the city, first in the might of the magics being thrown at both sides in the battle- Lightning, great spheres of flaming death, clouds of fog that killed everyone caught in their path and silver-white darts of light that unerringly struck their targets with the force of flaming arrows; second in that the city's defenders were men. Men against trolls and mighty magics, obviously Odin had meant for him and his men to slay trolls here, the men must be allies. He needed to rethink his battle plan, so he ordered the fleet back around to the north and sought the council of his thanes.

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He beached his longships and his drakkar a couple of miles north of the trollish battle line and, leaving a small guard behind, led his men towards the trolls in the pre-dawn darkness. When the sun rose he charged his men in swine array thrusting into the enemy rear, tearing through their camps and supply trains before hitting their battle formations from behind throwing their already only semi-organized horde into further disarray. Hacking their way towards the trollish siege engines, Odinbjorn noticed that the besieged men sent forth a sallying force to reinforce them on their great raid, but it was repulsed by the trollish sorcerers volley of magic. From the southern side of the city a great party of Jotnar appeared and charged through the ranks of troll-kin towards the vikings. Odinbjorn and his men prepared to go to Valhalla in this moment. Odinbjorn's heart sank, he had led his men to their doom. Baleyg's favor is ever fickle and his blessing of victory can be taken back at any moment, the best they could do now was to die well, swords in hand, like men.

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His men being smashed to pulp by the giants all seemed lost; when a great shout of “URRAH” was heard above the din of battle and a great force of horsemen appeared from the west. Arrows rained down into the trollish host ahead of a mass of heavy lancers and swordsmen that carved their way through towards the remaining vikings. Troll-kin and giants alike fell before the advancing horsemen and all at once the morale of the besiegers broke in the face of the relievers. The city was saved as troll-kin and giant alike broke and ran in whichever direction was furthest from foes. The besieging army was routed and Odinbjorn and his vikings saved to continue to do the All-Father's will.

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When they had chased the troll-kin from the field as far as his battle weary men cared to, Odinbjorn sought out the leader of the horsemen. He was not hard to find. Beneath a horse-tailed banner the leader conferred with several of his compatriots. They were a short swarthy bunch for the most part, but their leader was a huge man, swarthy also and top-knotted like the rest; he pointed to and fro with a battle blackened scimitar issuing commands in a language Odinbjorn did not understand. Men of the city also came to the standard of the horse chief and spoke in another language he didn't understand. He spoke in his own Norse tongue to the gathered men. Several attempts were made at communication in a variety of languages between Odinbjorn and the two groups, all of them trying every language they knew; none of them in common, until a sorcerer stepped forward and chanted a spell. At once everything was clear. The horse chief was called Jagatai, and his people Tuigan; he complimented the vikings on their brave stand versus the enemy host. Long had it been since he had been impressed with any infantry on the field of battle. Upon finding out that the Norsemen were refugees from home as well the Khakhan invited them to make camp with his people who had a lack of decent infantry and a lack of homeland here. The lord, Nasher by name, of the city, which was called Neverwinter, granted the Norsemen rights to farm the burned lands and keep the in freehold, much the same as the Steppe Warriors had been given the plains to the north and west to hold as allies.

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And so it came to pass that the viking berserker cult that had fled Norway and king Harald's wrath, joined forces with the Tuigan horde that protected the lands around Neverwinter; and later, when the great cataclysm destroyed Neverwinter, joined them on their quest throughout the multiverse.

Jagatai's Hunt- An old character post I found

This is one of my old posts from the Steppe Warriors message boards.

The ger of the Khakhan was not a happy place this particular day. The Khakhan Jagatai and his wife Monelun were having a very subtle argument, a contest of wills, over what course their children's lives should be taking. Jagatai, for his part, was trying to make his children tough and capable, able to live and lead after his time was in the past. Monelun in turn apparently assumed he wanted them dead. Thirteen years is plenty old enough to raid into the settled lands, Jahanghir is a man, he thought. But that woman and her foals, she keeps them hobbled near the ger. Obviously there is a chance he'll get hurt, but he'll be with his arban! He has trained for this day since he was very small! He stroked the small grey cat sitting on his lap absently, for her part she grabbed his thumb with a paw and bit it gently.

In the old days crockery would have flown and the fight would have been heard throughout the auruq, Monelun had always been a rather spirited woman. These days only a very skilled observer would be able to deduce there was a problem. Jagatai and Monelun had learned to be subtle in their disagreements so as to protect their regal dignity. Jagatai, however was getting annoyed. He was supposed to be sitting here at court listening to the terms of a treaty agreement with a family of merchant princes; but dickering over just how much tribute would be paid to his people, combined with his quiet marital spat was too much for him to take. He motioned to his major-domo Shigikutuku, who then silently slid into position in front of the Great Khan and dismissed the audience. Jagatai set the grey cat on the floor of the yurt and stood up from his stool. He turned and shot one look across the room towards Monelun, whose green-brown eyes pierced him like arrows. So much for reconciliation now he thought as he strode toward the flap of the ger.

Outside the sky was blue and the air chilly. The Khakhan made his way to the corral for his favorite mare, the spirited one that reminded him of his wife, but had never held a grudge against him over anything greater than what treat was brought for her that day. The guards of the Keshik followed at a respectable distance, they knew the Khakhan would be in no mood for company today from long experience; they'd keep their distance with a small contingent and keep him in sight, but barely. These are, after all, well tamed lands; no enemy could get within many miles of the auruq unannounced. Jagatai bribed his mare with a piece of carrot then saddled her up, he'd go hunting today he decided. Handing the reigns to a bo'ol he called for one of the Keshik to bring his hunting bow. Once it arrived he mounted up and rode out from the auruq into the vast plain beyond.

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Hours later, with nothing but a marmot to claim for the day, but happy to be away from governing; Jagatai rode back toward the auruq. Suddenly a peccary burst forth from the underbrush right in front of Jagatai. He gave a whoop of joy and spurred his mare into the chase. The wily peccary ran for a small gully and Jagatai urged his mount into a burst of speed to jump over the edge into the gully after it for a clear shot.

From out of nowhere the world turned bright white, then red; fading around the edges of his vision towards black as the ground rose up to strike him in the back of his head and shoulders. He attempted to shake his head, trying to clear his vision. Enough success came in time to see a great tusked humanoid beast swinging a club the size of a tree trunk into his beloved mare's back. The mare screamed in horsey agony. Before he could make sense of what he saw, it swung again ending the mare's screaming and reducing her body to a bloody, pulpy mess.

Jagatai started to rise, and fell backwards; attracting the beasts attention. He took a quick assessment of his situation. His left eye was swollen shut now, the edges of his vision faded until it appeared he was looking through a cave at the creature; blood sprayed from his mouth and nose with every painful breath. He had no idea what had happened to his bow and his sword was still slung in its scabbard attached to the mangled mares saddle. The mannish thing stared at the fallen Khakhan and laughed a deep guttural laugh, then spoke in its beast tongue some foul words Jagatai could not understand as it took two long steps towards him raising its gore drenched tree trunk weapon for a killing blow.

Jagatai made silent prayer to the Tengri to grant him strength, and in one smooth motion rose, drew his knife and stabbed the beast in the groin, where the leg attaches to the trunk of the body, hoping that it would be made on the inside like a man and this blow would kill, if not instantly, surely. The monster howled with rage and swung it's huge club towards Jagatai, connecting with a glancing blow that sent the Khakhan reeling to his right. Jagatai staggered back into the beast and stabbed it again and again in the abdomen and legs, no longer targeting with precision, merely attempting to cause as much damage as possible before dying. The beast fell over backwards, twitching, it's chest and head sprouting numerous arrows. Jagatai turned his head to the sounds of hoof beats at a gallop and his black clad body guards rushing to his aid, he raised his hand in silent thanks before his vision faded completely.

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He awoke laying on his back inside his own ger, a masked shaman chanting over him and dancing erratically. As the shaman noticed that his patient awoke he stopped his dance and changed his chant, kneeling down next to Jagatai. He removed his mask continuing his new chant, Jagatai recognized him as Teb the chief Shaman of the auruq. The shamans' hands began to glow with a silvery white light and Teb reached down and grasped his stricken Khakhans' face none too gently. Jagatai felt a new wave of pain at the touch followed by the queasy feeling of his bone and flesh knitting back together. Vision returned to his left eye as the swelling receded. One of Tebs' assistants handed him a bowl decorated with the spirit sigils of Tebs' spirit guides. Teb put the bowl to Jagatais' mouth and bid him drink in his hoarse shaman's voice. The substance within smelled foul and tasted worse but Jagatai knew it would be a healing draught, and so choked it down. Pain dissipated throughout his body.

For the first time he took in his surroundings. His wife Monelun was within his sight, flanked on either side by their daughters Altani and Ebegei. All three wore looks of concern so Jagatai determined his injuries must have been severe. He croaked out “Where is Jahanghir?”. Monelun answered somewhat tersely “He left with his arban as you ordered. Yesterday.”. Her concerned look returned and she asked her husband “How do you feel?”. “I've had worse” he lied, and attempted a smile. “Liar.” she retorted and sighed a bit of relief. She knelt next to him, leaned over and kissed him on the brow. “Get some sleep” she said. And so he did.

Secret History of the Steppe Warriors

When the original Neverwinter Nights went offline I wrote a document I titled “The Secret History of the Steppe Warriors” so that I could record for posterity the events our gaming guild had been a part of in that realm while they were still fresh in my head. I distributed electronic copies to all of the Steppe Warriors and I had a copy sitting on our Yahoo Groups site so that anyone with access to the group could re-download it as needed.

However, in a fit of pique, I decided to delete the Yahoo Group as extraneous since no one was posting and the Steppe Warriors had, in essence, disbanded. I did not back these files up to my hard drive at the time because I was certain I already had copies of everything there. On my hard drive, in my documents there is still a folder called Steppe Warriors and it has a number of subfolders that include old copies and current copies and beta versions of every single official Steppe Warrior document; subfolders that have old message board posts and fiction written about our characters. What I don't have is a copy of the Secret History.

Doh!

This is particularly annoying in light of the fact that I have recently restarted the Steppe Warriors Yahoo Group and now I don't have our single greatest history document. I restarted the group largely so I could have some communication with former Steppe Warriors, whom I miss a lot. Kind of an alumni association. I also did it so I could have the guild structure in place for future online gaming endeavors. It is just easier having a ready made group of friends to game with, whether it's an RPG, RTS or whatever.

Now, the old Secret History was not without it's flaws. Complaints regarding it came mostly in two kinds. The Secret History was considered by some to be too unkind to the memory of Ogotai (Darryl C.) who was our first Khakhan or that the Secret History was too easy on the memory of Ogotai. I tried to be as unbiased as possible in my presentation of the facts and to show both sides of any contested arguments, but I know my personal bias showed particularly in the parts regarding the end of Ogotai's reign and the beginning of mine. Ogotai was certainly a polarizing figure of a man.

Sadly, gone forever are a number of minor stories and even vast swathes of history. We fought a number of inter-guild wars, some of them were just to roleplay our characters, some were in deadly earnest. We destroyed a number of guilds that made themselves our enemies and I am not sure I could name the roll call. We spawned a couple of child guilds, but only one comes to mind right now. The Secret History also documented mine and Darryl's entire history of play within Neverwinter Nights up to the formation of the Steppe Warriors. All of the guilds we had previously been members of, whose names I barely remember now for myself. The Secret History contained at least one minor anecdote about every single member we had, even if they left the guild early on, now I'd be lucky to remember the names of most of those people.

D&D CRPGs

Computer RPGs and I have a long history, since I was a computer nerd from way back. I played Telengard and Zork and a bunch that no one has ever heard of. Today I am going to talk about D&D CRPGs.

The first one I played was "Pool of Radiance", which I have to admit I watched my friend Darryl play a lot more than I played myself. The entire "Gold Box" line from SSI was pretty much the same. They were essentially fairly long D&D modules, set in either the Forgotten Realms or Krynn. They were menu driven and the later ones had some mouse control options. I forget how many there were ultimately. I think the best ones were the first two, "Pool of Radiance" and "Curse of the Azure Bonds". I never finished any of them. They had a hard time holding my interest after a while because of the limitations of the format and the fact that I had plenty of opportunities to play actual live D&D with people.

The things I liked about them were the lessons I learned about D&D tactical combat and the house rules I picked up from them for my real D&D games, like holding your action. That was a big one. Holding your action may seem like an obvious rule now, but no one I ever played with had ever considered the benefit of going later than their initiative previous to then. Mind you we were teen-agers, but still. Even wargaming hadn't made us think of it because they pretty much all work on an I-go-you-go system too, with occasional breaks for opportunity fire. I may lament the fact that D&D has become a tactical miniatures combat game now, but tactics are real and were always important.

The other thing I liked was that the "Gold Box" format made my transition to online gaming easier via "Neverwinter Nights", the first one, that only was available on AOL, not the later one that everyone has heard of or played. "Neverwinter Nights" was a "Gold Box" game and the only one using that engine that was designed for multiplayer use. We used to get a couple of hundred people playing at a time. We had guilds and quests and special events more than a decade before WoW arrived on the scene. I founded a guild- The Steppe Warriors- with Darryl, who at the time was living in Utah. We figured it was the only way we could play together. I could go on at great length about the community and what an awesome time was had by all or the Steppe Warriors (I miss you guys) but I'll save that for another time.