A Grand Jury has been called on account of Ken Holt’s investigative journalist father’s work on a bunch of waterfront racketeers, and death threats have been aimed against him and his family as a result.  As a precaution, Ken and Sandy must leave town to lay low.  One of the their friends knows a friend and place they can hide out undercover.  This friend is a young archeologist who needs help out with digging trenches at a colonial-era archeology dig on a remote southern New Jersey location on Delaware Bay near the remote setting of Claytown.

But where Ken and Sandy go, trouble follows. Strange and uncanny sounds of horse-galloping is soon heard near the shoe-string dig-site, and old-timers remember when rum-runners would be scaring away superstitious locals with a similar recording.  So why is someone trying to scare away the expedition of young archeologists and their amateur helpers?

Another nifty novel (book 9) in the Ken Holt series of amateur sleuths. I like how it neatly dovetailed with the watery adventures in book 1 of the series, The Secret of Skeleton Island.

::B::

Matt Cruse, teenaged cabin boy for the hydrium airship Aurora, is the first aboard a derelict aeronaut’s balloon found floating aimlessly over the Pacificus ocean.  Lying in the gondola in a crumpled heap is a very sick man, and only with great effort is the crew of the Aurora able to rescue the man (who had been attempting a round the world solo flight). Alas, the man dies raving a few days later.

A year later, still cabin boy on the luxury airship, Matt is forcibly reminded of the man’s delirious mutterings just before the explorer died .  The dead man’s very determined and very wealthy grand-daughter Kate de Vries arrives on the Aurora with the aim of proving that the impossible writings found in a journal kept by her grandfather are true.  Her mission seems impossible, and then Matt spies a strange black-painted airship closing sinisterly on the Aurora…

Airborn is set in an alternative world where transoceanic airships and airship commerce are common because of the existence of hydrium, an inert gas more buoyant than even hydrogen and helium.   There are other changes in this alternative history; no airplanes (just primitive ornithopters), latin styled endings to some geographical place names, and it doesn’t seem that either WWI or II has taken place.  I would peg the setting as late 19th century given the dress of the characters, but I’m not even certain England exists (and London seems to have been mysteriously renamed Lionsgate). There are also notorious air-pirates, alternatively evolved life-forms, and more, and the sum of all these subtle details makes this fictional universe most interesting.

It took me a few times to get into this Young Adult novel, but in the end it was worth it for reading Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn, which won Canada’s Governor General’s award shortly after it was published.  The two main characters are likable (the stalwart cabin-boy and the dangerous nerdy-girl), the villain is both ruthless & complex, and the inner details of the Aurora are nifty to follow and are a treat for all fans of airships and dirigibles.

There are two sequels to Airborn; Skybreaker and Starclimber (latter in hardback only).  The official web-page is neat, and I live the use of a control-car engine telegraph as the inspiration for the official web-page’s navigational controls.

::B::

mrs_dm

 , the Girl-O and myself all went to Gage Park in East Hamilton to attend this year’s folk-friendly music and craft-event, "It’s Your Festival".

There were rides, games-of-chance, pony rides, hippies, face-painting, and more!  While the day was overcast, we still had some fun eating some great food items (samosas, Belgian waffles, curry goat, mangoes, Jamaican patties, cabbage rolls & perogies), listen to some too-loud music, visiting vendors, playing mini-putt, and more during the 3 or so hours we were there. 

The batteries of my camera died shortly after arrival (sigh) but I managed to get these shots for posterity.

::B::

DRAGONLORDS 7 1981 Rare UK FANZINE D&D/RUNEQUEST
Your max bid: GBP 26.25
High bidder: GBP 34.33 (US $56.19)
    
DRAGONLORDS 6 1981 Rare UK FANZINE D&D/RUNEQUEST
Your max bid: GBP 26.25
High bidder: GBP 57.09 (US $93.44)
 
DRAGONLORDS 3 1980 Rare UK FANZINE D&D/RUNEQUEST
Your max bid: GBP 26.25
High bidder: GBP 46.00 (US $75.29)
   
THUNDERSTRUCK 4 JULY 1982 Rare UK FANZINE D&D GYGAX
Your max bid: GBP 26.25
High bidder: GBP 27.25 (US $44.60)
   
THUNDERSTRUCK 3 MAR 1982 Rare UK FANZINE D&D/TRAVELLER
Your max bid: GBP 26.25
High bidder: GBP 32.00 (US $52.38)

(sigh) I really wanted those back issues of Thunderstruck, too, as I have issues 1, 2 and 5 already (sigh).

As an aside, multiply the price in pounds sterling (GBP) by 2 or the US prices by 1.15 to get the Canadian prices in dollars.

::B::

shadow_maze

 ’s "Maze Campaign" this Saturday night, this a continuation of our last session held on June 21 2009.

Four (N)PCs

•    Orion (male Ranger played by Daniel)
•    Memory (male Wizard apprentice to Helm played by  )
•    Fair Light (female NPC Cleric)
•    Scar Crow (male Rogue played by myself)

Our GM =

shadow_maze

Back at the bridge-maker camp at night after their exertions with rescuing the river spirit Swift Anger, the four Crows were asleep.  Well, three were asleep, and one was wearing a leather cloak, fencing gloves, dark trousers and soft leather shoes with no heels; Scar Crow was silently and swiftly getting dressed for a nocturnal solo adventure.

Eager to get the obviously valuable golden spider at the top of the pile of stones left there so inexplicably by the river spirit. Scar snuck out again towards the darkened cairn just like he had the night before.  After his failure the night previously to obtain the golden spider ornamentation, the Thief was determined to make his own. In his ‘hunting kit’ were his lock-picking equipment,  a case-steel hardened chisel, a hammer thoroughly muffled in a piece of torn blanket, and other items ‘borrowed’ from the construction site workshop to help him wrest this item from its stony embrace.

He managed to tiptoe out of his shared quarters, silence the two guard lizards with a piece of meat and some soothing strokes, and with a bit of subterfuge, diverted the wooden palisade guards long enough to slip over the wall with a knotted rope.  Loping silently in the darkness of the night, he reached the rocky cairn just 70 feet away from the wooden wall, and clambered easily up to its apex.  He carefully studied the golden spider, and remembered from his exertions the night before that the ‘web’ affixed to the spider was a woven metal mesh of the same magically impervious golden material that could not be cut or melted.  That left either dismantling the spider, else un-knotting the metallic wire-web mesh material and removing one by one the many encased rocks and boulders encasing it.  Methodically, he set to work with the latter plan. 

An hour or so later, despite being attacked by swarms of bird-sized stinging insects that enervated his strength, the sweat soaked Crow managed to dismantle and take apart enough of the encasing stones to extricate the spider ornament.  Proudly taking away the golden artifact, he suddenly realized it began leaking water after removing it from the cairn!  Water endlessly bubbled out of the bottom part of the golden ornament in a small fountain of cold clear water that could not be shut off or stopped no matter how he tried.  He realized that with no barrel large enough, and no well inside the construction camp, he had no place to leave such an obviously endless spidery fountain.  Discouraged, and planning to sleep on it to come up with another plan, he tied a rope on the leaky treasure and hid it under the bridge of the river, with the rope affixed on the underside of the bridge. He then quietly snuck back into the construction camp.

The next day, chaos awoke the four Crow adventures. Not only was the altar cairn partly pulled down, they were told, but the pilings of the bridge were now missing too!  Orion the ranger tracked muddy footprints to under the bridge and found the gold spider ornament where it had been hidden submerged.  The footprints themselves disappeared inside the environs of the camp, and the identity of the culprit was indiscernible amonst the blending of all other foodprints and other muddied traffic.

Orion sought out Queen Bee, and asked thatshe made a pleading to the river god Swift Anger, apologizing for this act of seemingly sacrilege.  He said they would do their best to right this wrong, and wanted to know if there is anything else that could be done.  Queen Bee did admit the River God had an experience with betrayal, and that one “bad apple” doesn’t mean everyone is tainted with a similar brush.  She said they needed to put the shrine back together, and while that person who had removed and displaced the ornament was probably known to the river spirit, that godling would probably arrange a fit punishment at a later time.  Swift Anger would also want a compensatory gift, those 13 valubale golden spiders they had removed. Oh yes, they would still have to rebuild the bridge pylons, too!

Orion was dismayed at this reply and made an eloquent defense against what he perceived was an unjust judgment.  He pointed out that if Swift Anger knows who did this act, they should punish that person, not the four Crows and not everyone else in the bridge construction camp.  The disappearance of this altar or shrine should not affect neither them nor the bridge-makers adversely.  In fact, a better plan for the future is that they should make the altar or shrine dedicated to Swift Anger part of the future bridge structure, making it much less likely someone would be tempted to take the spider gold ornament in the future.  Queen Bee said that such plan should mollify the river spirit Swift Anger, and mentioned she wouldn’t want to be in that person’s shoes who had done this dastardly deed!

Scar, after hearing this plan, while muttering that he himself wouldn’t want  to keep nearby any artifact that was able to trap him once again (as the gold spider & net had done to Swift Anger himself), soon stopped that line of unhelpful comment. Intensely frustrated and baffled how he was supposed to ever become a master Thief when he not allowed steal from anyone—certainly he should not steal from his friends nor Family—but not even any kooky river spirit?  Who/what could he ever effectively hone his skills on for further improvement.  Discouraged and angry, he cursed continually and continuously to himself vile oaths and epithets as he packed up his travel dunnage along with the others. 

The party of four adventures that made up the Crows bid farewell and left the bridge construction camp by mid morning.  Leaving the merchant wagons they had guarded behind, they  headed up the Upper Blue River following a narrow trail to Half Way Camp (for their eventual destination of North Reach). 

They needed to get their destination before nightfall, else deal with the giant insect and spider scourges of the primeval night.  As they hiked swiftly along, the woods were thick and primordial in appearance.  Everything was larger than life and giant-sized, not only the trees, but also the giant shrubberies, undergrowth, and man-high grasses.  The relentless purple and brown colouration of the vegetation made a gloomy passage that matched Scar’s gloomy mood on their up-river trek.

Around noon-time as they were trudging along through a forest of giant columned trees, they stopped suddenly at hearing something new. A thrashing sound could be heard from further down the trail.  The path veered around a corner so nothing could be heard, but the sound was coming relentlessly closer in their direction. 

It sounded like a trotting pack animal, and as the sound become louder they could hear the rumbling sound of rapidly rolling wagon wheels, and the clinking and rattle of metal banging against metal.  Thinking this could be a runaway wagon or some other wheeled contrivance, Scar rapidly climbed out a tree, and went out onto a thick branch overlooking the trail.  Giving up a plan to tie a rope across the path, Orion quickly did the same, while the others pulled off the trail a bit to one side.

Bursting down the trail comes a runaway yellow and brass painted merchant wagon pulled frantically along by two racing pack animals.  They were a pair of huge black oxen, both with their eyes rolling in fright and in fear! Clinging to one of the animals is a dreadful spider as large as a dog, and another equally large spider is scuttling rapidly on the bed of the wagon!

One of Orion’s flashing arrows picks off the spider on the left sided pack animal, and just as the Memory the magic user’s Sleep spell stopped one animal (and its partner pack animal in the harness, making the wagon itself stopped suddenly), Scar jumped into the back of the wagon.

Everything seemed to happen at once.  As Scar landed in anticipation of kicking off the spider and grabbing the reins, the wagon jerked to a sudden unsteady stop, and the wagon’s spider is flung off and away into the woods. Balancing for dear life on the violently rocking platform that was the floor of the wagon seat, Scar momentarily envied the fallen spider, who had picked itself up unharmed and ran away deeper into the woods on terra firma.

The rocking wagon soon settled, as did Scar’s stomach.  Before the Crows could congratulate each other, bouncing from tree to tree like a rubber ball in a playground came another, much larger spider, one as large and as hairy as a great ape!  Its many eyes glittered like ruby jewels on a head as big as a pumpkin, and its many legs on its much larger lower body thrashed like a handful of wooden canes tumbling down a staircase.

Orion pulled back and fired an arrow from his bow, just as Scar jumped off the back of the wagon, and into the bushes near the side of the fallen pack animal. As Orion fired a second arrow towards the monstrous spider, Scar dodged around a handy large tree, readying his short sword to stab the distracted spider.  With a sudden spin around the tree, Scar caught the spider unawares, and pinned it through its thorax, his sword sticking through the creature and into the wooden floor the wagon.  The spider suddenly spasmed all its many legs, shriviled them up in a grisly curl, and swiftly died.

As Orion soothed and calmed the frantic still awakened oxen down, the others looked at the wooden wagon it and the now sleeping companion oxen had been pulling along. 

It was obviously a merchant wagon, one painted in the colours of the rival Striker merchant family.  The wooden box-frame was painted all in bright lemon yellow with gorgeous brass ornamentation, and in the back it seemed full of boxed and basketed trade-goods.  Looking inside several of these they found a shimmering mass of golden brown metal pots, pans, bird-cages, bells, and anything you could think of made of brass were jam packed together. 

Of the wagon’s driver, there was sinisterly no sign. 

After finishing his examination, Orion reported to the others that one of the oxen (the sleeping one) had a rather diminutive wooden javelin spear stuck in its side, one of a design he has never seen before.  He carefully removed it, and found it was unlike any human spear or javelin he had seen before, unless it had been wielded by a child or someone of child-like proportions. He also shared with the others that the other ox has been wounded in a way different than any spider bite would do. Orion added, almost as an afterthought, that if he believed in any mythical creature such as Goblins, this would have been exactly the type of weapon they would have used!

They waken the other ox, adminster care to the two of them, turn around the yellow merchantwagon, and start heading back down the trail to Half Way Camp.  Only Orion could drive the wagon, and Scar reluctantly went on ahead acting as scout, with Memory’s raven familiar also flying ahead to keep him company.

It was early afternoon, and they should soon be getting to Half Way Camp, Scar thought, and then stopped at a funny sound up head. From far off, he could hear shouting and yelling and the sound of clanging metal, along with strange cries with an oddly unhuman vibrating pitch to it.  Could there be a battle up ahead?

Scar ran up over a rise, and could see not far off the scene of a battle up ahead near a small wooden palisade encampment, one with wooden towers, wooden gates, wooden walls made of logs trimmed to points sticking up, and wooden buildings inside. The gate on the other side of a narrow wooden bridge to the palisade fort is wide open, and there is up ahead some kind of fight going on inside the camp.

Scar could see men at arms, obviously guards,  in the yellow and brass livery of House Striker fighting some strange green-black humanoid reptilian something’s.  Inside the wooden fort  he could see overturned a wooden trade wagon much like the one they had.  This one had dead oxen still in their harnesses piled in front of the wagon.  There are also dead people piled in broken heaps on the ground, a couple of persons still standing fighting against the green-black humanoid somethings, and several more dead something’s piled on the ground.
Scar ran back to give his report to the others, and added, “I’ll run ahead, sneak into one of the guard towers, and when you guys run up, we can attack from above and below!”

With no better plan, the others agreed, and Scar snuck into the camp, and crept into the tower, hearing the battle go on from below.  Reaching the wooden upper level, he snuck a look over the edge.  He saw the guard battling three creatures, and fall back.  The goblins were about to press the attack, when Scar fired his bow and shouted from above.

“Hey! Look up here, uglies!” Scar shouted, his voice more distracting than his missed arrow shot.

The surprised dark-skinned ugly something’s fell back, and the yellow liveried guard collapsed in a heap just as the others stormed the bridge and entered the camp.

“Look out!” Scar called out.  “There’s two to the right, and one on the left.  And there’s a fallen man there who needs help badly!”

So alerted, the Mage named Memory moved to one side and prepared a Dazzle spell to fire off next round, while Fair Light ineffectively hurled a sling bullet that only scared and did no damage to her creature.

Scar fired over and over with his short-bow at the gnarled black-skin creatures in view, and managed to kill two of them, and Orion charged a third dark-skinned creature.  With a sudden ducking, swinging effort with his magical waster-spirit blade, Orion managed to lopped its very surprised head clean off!

The battle over, they close the both wooden gates of the camp. The two guards were still alive, they discovered, and the Cleric Fair Light moved in to administer first aid.

While so occupied in the relative silence in the aftermath of their battle, they suddenly hear a thin quavery female voice pipe up;

“Hello…is it over?  Is it okay to come out now?”

Out of the wreckage at the centre of the overturned wagon crawls out a small figure.  It’s a short female human, wearing the yellow and brass uniform of Merchant House Striker.

They recognize her as the famous Sten Goodcellar of House Stryker, one of the master-traders on the island, and she is babbling in relief as she approaches them and collapses in the arms of Fair Light.

“We got attacked by goblins a week ago, and couldn’t get out!” Sten Goodcellar babbled weakly. “We had to keep burning our dead each night, and we thought it was safe to leave.  They attacked us from out of the woods when we were trying to leave to escape just now.”

“They?  What are those things?” asked Memory, the mage still puzzled at what the creatures could be.”

“We called them ‘goblins’!  Thanks goodness you arrived!” she answered weakly, and had to sit down with the others helping.

“Goblins? There’s no such things as goblins!” Orion said looking at Scar.

“So what do we do now? Hole up for the night with those ‘Goblins’ out there?” asked Scar.

It seemed that that’s all that could be done, he and the others all realized.  They set up a rotating guard in the night, while the cleric stabilized the two wounded House Stryker guards and managed to revive them.

From them the learned that a small caravan had sought refuge here a week ago, just as Sten Goodcellar had told them, but had been sequentially attacked. The party had just arrived in the very nick of time to save the three of them.

The next morning, they put everything into two wagons, harnessed up one oxen each to each wagon, and headed again upriver towards the settlement of North Reach.   Moving steadily and warily with their steadily rumbling trade wagons, they headed along the path to the next camp.

Things were uneventful with their trek until they reached a wide meadow later the next afternoon.  Suddenly umping up out of the tall grass and running towards them a high speed another gnarled dark-skinned creature they’ve dubbed a ‘goblin’.  Only this ‘goblin’ had a strange flaming sword brandished in its arm!  The goblin was accompanied by an equally rapidly moving four-footed lizard-turkey creature almost as tall as it was!  And the two of them were charging right for them!

Scar fired his bow and hit the goblin with the flaming sword, winging him.  Orion’s own bow hit the running lizard-bird thing, drawing blood and scream of outrage.  Memory the Mage flung her Sleep spell at the pair of them, but the two creatures kept on coming right for them!

Before he could react, both enemies attempted to flank Scar, who had no time to duck or dodge the fiery blade of the goblin’s bizarrely flaming weapon.  But Orion suddenly stepped forward and flanked the goblin.  This distracted it just long enough to for Scar to slash with his weapon, causing the Goblin Mage to fall dying.  As he fell to the ground, the goblins’ flame blade went out.  Scar ducked back between the two oxen, and Orion stepped forward in his place, and with a single blow killed the other lizard-bird creature. 

Panting, Scar noticed he was leaking crimson from a charred and aching wound on his arm.  Fair Light attended to the wound with her divinely enhanced healing powers, while Memory and Orion searched the dead goblin.  They found on its person a piece hide some unusual tattoo-like writings that may have been a scroll or spell book for making friends with animals. 

Fair Light cast a spell to seek out any attendant magic’s, and identified some oddly carved sticks with fetish symbols may have been magic wands; they decided to keep the hide with writings and the possibly magic wands and try and puzzle out their precise identity the next day.

The afternoon wearing on, they quickly packed up and headed their two wagons up towards North Reach, not wanting to be caught out in the open when dusk and nightfall arrived. 

::B::

Link Denham awakens after a magnificent drinking binge to discover he’s on a ramshackle starship owned by a peevish and paranoid crackpot explorer named Thistlethwaite who refuses to tell Link their destination, only that while drunk he signed on board as Astrogator for his ship, the Glamorgan, and must obey his orders. 

Figuring out their destination to be Sord III with a bit of subterfuge using the ship’s hard-copy of The Practical Astrogator, Link is nonplussed to read among the terse description of the world in this otherwise sober reference work the following lines: “The last report on this planet was from a spaceyacht some two centuries ago. The yacht called down asking permission to land and was threatened with destruction if they did.  The yacht took pictures from space showing specks that could be villages or the ruins of same but this is doubtful.”

Within minutes of landing on this unexplored world Link is left alone inside the Glamorgan, with Thistlethwaite beetling off to meet an unknown partner. Link’s feeling of being left utterly alone doesn’t last long, however, as  Link has a a strange welcome by a pair of pig-like uffts and a more sinister one by a group of five human riders who seem to be riding unicorns and are wearing pieces of Thistlethwaite’s clothing!

The Duplicators is a humorous, tongue-in-cheek SF novel that still has some well grounded SF ideas. The ‘mystery’ at the heart of this planetary story is well exploited by Link, and reminded me how much I liked 1960s SF. The novel itself reminded me as a cross between another Leinster novel I read and enjoyed, The Pirates of Zan (formerly the Pirates of Ersatz) and H. Beam Piper’s A Planet for Texans. My copy was part of an Ace Double (No Truce with Terra by Philip E. High on the other flip side).

Murray Leinster (whose real name is Will F. Jenkins) is an unjustly forgotten SF writer that fans would be amply rewarded by tracking down his works. Despite being one of his minor efforts, The Duplicators is still highly recommended for Murray Leinster fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of fast adventure, political intrigue, and a just touch of romance.

::B::

We three of Chateau Mystery spent most of an overcast Friday mid-afternoon and evening at Canada’s Wonderland, a seasonal theme park just north of Toronto and about an hour away by car where we live.

I hadn’t been there for nearly 25 years (I was one of the chaperones for a group of kids affected by the 1985 Barrie Tornado who were bussed in one day to the theme park), and since the last time

mrs_dm

  was there two years ago it’s changed hands and names once again (being formerly named Paramount Canada’s Wonderland).

We spent much of the afternoon period at Splash Works, a large water park located within the park boundaries of Canada’s Wonderland.  The weather was very chilly when the sun was clouded out, but quite nice when it reappeared again. The Girl-O had fun with us in the Lazy River, and several of the water slides, and had to be dragged away before she wrinkled up into a giant pink raisin.

We next spent a lot of time in the Kidzville and Hanna-Barbera Land.  We all went on a ride on Scooby’s Gasping Ghoster-Coaster,  a junior coaster where I sat in the very front row with the Girl-O,

mrs_dm

 seated immediately behind us.  Big mistake for me; I repeatedly banged my poor knees against the metal front of my car as I held on for dear life as the Girl-O screamed merrily along. You can see a souvenir snap of us below:

After that very long wait in line for just over a minute of heart-stopping roller-coaster action, we spelled off with each doing other rides, games, mini-putt and other activities with our hyper-kinetic 5 year old. At one game the Girl-O won a plush purple duck which she proudly showed off to one and all, and she had fun on the merry-go-round, and other kiddie rides.

By 8 pm, what with the over-cast skies it started getting dark, and after wandering around a bit more, we finally left a half-hour before closing, ~9:30 pm, making a fast getaway from the park, and then an hour’s drive home.

My thoughts about Canada’s Wonderland after all these years?  It’s certainly not Disneyworld, and the service (mostly goofy and clueless teenagers) and amenities (too few and far about bathrooms) left a lot to be desired. The food was very pricey and pretty lackluster, and it cost a small fortune for us all to get a day pass, or even pay for a day’s use for very tiny lockers in the water-park area.  One small relief was that package park photos were 50% off, and we got a few souvenir snaps and photo-magnets through them today.

Despite all this quibbling from her parents, the Girl-O had a tremendous blast, loved everything, and is eager to return to go on more rides and play more games. I really think her mission in life it to become a theme park commando, as she didn’t once stop all day!  From her point of view, the day was a tremendous success!

I’d imagine if you were a person of a certain age living in the Toronto area, you could go far worse than getting a Season’s Pass or Family Pass to Canada’s Wonderland. Bring lots of cash if you don’t plan to smuggle bring some of your own food / drinks into the park.

::B::

mrs_dm

  somehow heard about a very large bowling alley in Burlington (naturally, it’s called Burlington Bowl), and convinced the Girl-O and I to go and play a game of 10 pin. While the balls are larger sized than the Girl-O is used to, there were some available that were very light (4 lb and 5 lb balls) and the three of us had a fun time playing for about an hour or so.

While the others were in the washroom washing off bowling ball hole grime off their hands after we finished our game, I wandered over to the black-lit arcade area  (filled with billiard and foose-ball tables).  I stopped, stared, and luckily had my camera handy to capture these shots :

Festooning the walls was the most gorgeously cheesy display of 1980s SF van-art I’ve seen in some time, and I’ve taken some pictures to share with you all. Also on the wall, were some bizarre silver Tron-like mannequins, and I took a few shots of them too.

You can view such fevered SF visions yourself at Burlington Bowl (on Harvester Road, just off the QEW at Walker’s Line) for the admission price of a bowling shoe rental!

::B::