Campaign Timeline

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White Doe | Jack Bishop

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Out of Character Commentary

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Latest Updates

• 1 March 11:33 AM EST – Added the ju-ju stick and updated the campaign timeline.
• 28 February 12:59 PM EST – Added a new OOC:”Reboot!”
• 13 February 11:08 PM EST – Added/updated place entries: Jamestown, Gathering Place, Burned Place and Plenty of Fish.
• 23 January 10:40 PM EST – A new OOC, this one from Giuli – about her character White Doe, and the myths she acts out in that character. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Dare?” Also, updated NPC’s.
• 23 January 10:06 PM EST – Added new character options: Knowledge (Mythos) and Learn Language.

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After learning some of the basics of the Savage Worlds system and the Solomon Kane setting, Mike decided he didn’t like his character, Jack Quick. Don’t let the similarities in the name fool you: Jack Bishop differs markedly from the old character. Bishop worked for Sir Francis Walsingham hunting witches and sorcerers. Mike first described him as “the Jacobean Solid Snake,” and I immediately thought of Sir Nicholas Fury in Marvel 1602.

We also got the character portraits I order from Storn Cook

Which meant rebooting the game once again. Our first session ended up rather lackluster, so I retconned the chapter I recorded here, and after making the new characters, we tried to start again, but that didn’t take. So, finding some new and interesting way to catch up the story seemed like an impossible task.

I feel pretty good about how it turned out, though. A little playing with the timeline, a little in media res storytelling, and a healthy dose of action gave us a truly kick ass session. I’ll post the narrative either tonight or tomorrow, and I look forward to playing session #2 on Saturday, when we’ll continue with the timeline craziness. But to spoil you, we’ve already killed off Solomon Kane again, and this time we’ll go back to Torkertown and introduce N’Longa!

So, for those following along, scratch everything you’ve read so far, it all starts from scratch!

As you may already have noticed, I’m playing Virginia Dare in this game. For those of you not familiar with early colonial American history (or certain racist anti-immigration websites I could name), Virginia Dare was the first English child born in the New World. She was born to settlers living in the first British colony in America, Roanoke, which was found to have disappeared about two years after she was born. No one knows what happened to the people of the Roanoke colony, although strong evidence (and persistent folklore) points to their joining a local Native American tribe. In all likelihood, Virginia Dare was raised, lived, and died among Native Americans with little understanding of her birth heritage–which only makes her all the more fascinating and mysterious.

The settlers at Roanoke were the first of many, many white people throughout American history to abandon their culture and join the natives–a tradition which continued until the American government ensured that there were no flourishing native cultures left to join, and a tradition which nonetheless was revived in the 60’s and clumsily continues today under such names as “dropping out,” “walking away,” and “rewilding.” For early European settlers in the Americas, the benefits of walking away were obvious: they were in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar weather patterns, flora, and fauna, which made it difficult for them to grow their own food; on the contrary, the natives had lived in that land for generations, knew exactly what was food and how to obtain it, and generally lived an easy and carefree life, especially compared to the settlers’ lives of hard labor, filth, and disease. (And if you don’t believe me, read about the early years of Jamestown. Then bear in mind that Roanoke was worse.)

Virginia Dare is the ultimate symbol of the assimilated immigrant; the first second-generation immigrant in the Americas since people first crossed the Bering Strait some 13,000-odd years ago. One of the myths to spurt up around her was the story of her becoming a white doe. Bearing in mind that deer meat comprised a large portion of the usual Algonquian diet, that image perfectly encapsulates what she represents: adapted to the New World, yet still different. With one foot in the Old World and one foot in the New, she is a figure literally otherworldly.

I can’t be the only one who finds it supremely ironic that she is now used largely as a symbol for anti-immigration advocates (as in the website VDARE, whose logo is a white deer) and North Carolina racists (as a reminder to “keep” North Carolina white). Because I’m fairly obsessed with politics, this was my first association with Virginia Dare. So when Jason suggested that I play her in a Solomon Kane campaign, I was hesitant because of these racist associations, but also intrigued both at the thought of “taking her back” and at the possibility to participate in American myth.

My Virginia Dare answers to the name White Doe, and is a powerful shape-shifting shaman–a career path not generally available to a culture more prone to burning witches than seeking them out for healing. So in one way, she is perfectly at home in her adopted culture. But she is also different in a key way: her parents and the rest of the colonists all had immunities to European illnesses. White Doe’s fellow tribespeople did not, and so diseases such as smallpox swept through them like wildfire, killing off whole villages in the blink of an eye. Neither the Europeans nor the Native Americans knew what was going on. The European settlers would later thank God for the mysterious illness that killed all the savages for them without them having to even lift a rifle, thereby effectively emptying out the continent for them to fill with their towns. They attributed this biological devastation to God’s will that they conquer the New World. In this campaign, many Native Americans (most notably Manteo) attribute it to a powerful and evil witchcraft that all white men possess; he helps White Doe learn to control her witchcraft through the perfection of the shamanic arts so that she won’t continue to poison more innocent people.

As a shaman, her power comes from the land. As a European, her power is destroying the land. This is the tension at the heart of her character, and in a way, it’s a supernatural, fictionalized reflection of the tension in any European-American’s attempt to live on this continent peaceably. As Vine Deloria has pointed out, the only difference between Native Americans and white Americans is that Native Americans made themselves native by learning to live with the land instead of fighting it. We can also choose to make ourselves native, and that’s ultimately what we’ll have to do if we want a world in which we can survive. (No, I don’t think that buying hybrids and fluorescent lightbulbs, and making other miniscule changes to our wasteful way of life is going to save us from global warming, overpopulation, species extinction, and pollution.) Virginia Dare–White Doe–is a mythical example of doing just that. It’s an example we desperately need to learn from.

While looking to see if, like so many other of the Kane stories, “The Right Hand of Doom” had made it into the public domain, I found a review titled, “The Racist Hand of Doom” which seemed to align well with my wife’s aforementioned misgivings about Kane, and Robert E. Howard in general.

All of the Big Three of the pulp fantasy market of the 1920s and 1930s – Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and HP Lovecraft – were a little racist, in their own way, and I’ve always found Howard’s racism, when it manifests, to be the most distasteful. ... It is in Howard’s fiction that I occasionally see real hatred; there’s a couple of Conan stories which degenerate into Conan slicing up dark people, or conquering a tribe (because a white outsider is clearly always going to be superior to a black person who’s lived in the tribe all their life). But it’s a curiously inconsistent bigotry, which sometimes isn’t even manifested.[1]

I have to take issue with this, firstly in the suggestion that Robert E. Howard’s racism would seem even more egregious than H.P. Lovecraft’s. Try reading Lovecraft’s poem, “On the Creation of Niggers,” and you’ll get more racism in a few lines than Howard wrote in his whole life. His Ukrainian wife, of Jewish descent, mind you, recounted that she often had to remind him of his company to restrain his constant flow of anti-Semitic remarks, and said he would become “livid with rage” at the sight of mixed-race groups in New York City.

S.T. Joshi, one of the foremost Lovecraft scholars, notes that “There is no denying the reality of Lovecraft’s racism, nor can it merely be passed off as “typical of his time,” for it appears that Lovecraft expressed his views more pronouncedly (although usually not for publication) than many others of his era. It is also foolish to deny that racism enters into his fiction.” In his book “H. P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life,” Michel Houellebecq argues that “racial hatred” provided the emotional force and inspiration for much of Lovecraft’s greatest works.[2]

By comparison, Robert E. Howard’s racism rarely rises above the level of stock imagery. Yes, he has the paeans to Conan’s Aryan virtues, and his descriptions of the Africans Solomon encounters certainly rely on stereotypes we’d have a hard time accepting today. “The Moon of Skulls” includes an ugly screed about miscegenation, but it also comes from a villain, a cruel, Atlantean sorcerer, bitter over the loss of their tyrannical empire.

We often forget, in a “the victors write the history books” kind of way, just how racist America acted in the 1920s. Yes, the civil war had freed the slaves decades before, but this era saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, not as the clandestine menace we think of it today, but as a genuine political force, fielding popular marches through Washington, D.C. and putting up political candidates with real chances. These days saw the passage of the first immigration laws, the first drug laws, the Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and other laws, all conceived of by their creators as a set package of legislation that would preserve the “purity of the White race.” America’s most popular radio show right before World War II took the form of a weekly, hour-long screed against the blacks and the Jews. That the Holocaust happened in Germany and not any other Western country, including the United States, in some ways seems like just a roll of the dice; “there, but for the grace of God,” if you will.

Robert E. Howard lived and wrote in the very middle of all that, in the deep south of Texas. Yet his stories form one of the main incarnations of the “noble savage.” N’Longa, first introduced in “Red Shadows” as a savage witch doctor barely able to speak (even the review quoted above admits, “he talked funny in his earlier encounters with Kane because he was speaking pidgin English (a patois which, to be fair, is pretty much designed to make the speaker sound retarded)”), becomes the wise old man or mentor of Solomon Kane’s own journey, and in all of his African stories, though Howard relies on stock imagery pulled from a flagrantly racist culture, he speaks of an intangible, undeniable power that Kane finds there.

Few would accuse Robert E. Howard of masterful writing. As a storyteller, yes, he told some of the best ripping yarns of the twentieth century, but as a writer–a person who puts words together to express emotions, themes, actions and depth–his writing lacks nuance, sophistication or subtlety. Howard’s stories rock out, hard, but no one will mistake them for a classical symphony. As such, he pulls on stock images, cliches, and stereotypes, and coming from the time he did, those stereotypes inevitably evince a deep-seated racism. But what themes his stories do return to, the things that Howard really wrote about, rather than the things that simply showed up because of his context and the kind of writing he did, always cut the other way. Solomon Kane has a great deal to learn from N’Longa.

In most adventures of the period, it is always just a matter of time before the Blacks are somehow shown the error of their ways by their white colonial masters. In white Solomon Kane, we see a superhero whose self-belief isn’t up to his physical prowess. Then, his Jewish name is destined to confuse.[3]

Indeed, he needs the guide and aid of an Africa “ju-ju man.” We forget that at the time, the controversies Howard raised came from the exact opposite camp: the suggestion that “primitives” might have something to offer, or that civilization might seem inferior to them. One of my favorite parts of Pinnacle’s Savage World of Solomon Kane comes in the first few pages, when it describes Kane’s world and Howard’s vision as essentially primitivist, and Kane himself as some manner of proto-anarchist.

Or, consider the ambiguous power hinted at in the last paragraphs of the very first Solomon Kane story ever published, first with the title “Solomon Kane,” and later, Red Shadows>

Afar the drums muttered: “The wisdom of our land is ancient; the wisdom of our land is dark; whom we serve, we destroy. Flee if you would live, but you will never forget our chant. Never, never,” sang the drums.

I agree with one online commenter who said:

[I]t’s interesting to see how forward-thinking these stories are for their time in a lot of ways. You gotta love N’Longa; his influence rocks Solomon’s world, makes him re-think so much of what he’d taken for granted, about people, about spirituality, about himself. I can’t help but sense that, as a Southern-born boy living in a time and place where racism was mundane and common as breathing, Howard was giving these issues some extra thought himself.[4]

Of course, we should hardly feel content. One of the things that really makes me love this game comes from the opportunities it presents to really go face-to-face with some of those elements that remain with us: the “Noble Savage”, the assumptions about civilization and the value of cultures, and so many of the assumptions and attitudes that seem as innocent to us today as the stereotypes Howard employed seemed to him in his day. Howard used his stories to explore his own feelings about civilization and barbarism and black and white. This game gives us a great opportunity to do the same.

« Previous | Summary | Narrative

Solomon Kane had to die. I really had no way around it. Would Solomon leave a task like this undone? By the same token, could I really leave a nuclear weapon of an NPC like that in my grubby hands? Writing down all of his edges on that character sheet gave me a cramp! I ran out of lines, and had to start doubling up! But more importantly, and the only reason that deserved real consideration, the story required it.

In the mythic journey through the Savage World of Solomon Kane, the eponymous hero plays the archetypal role of the wise old man or mentor, like Chiron, Merlin, or Obi Wan Kenobi. His obsessive example inspires the characters with the novel, paradigm-shattering notion that we should not simply accept the everyday injustices and iniquities of the world around us, but that we should expect a just world, and we should feel an incredibly keen sense of vengeance against even the most mundane violations of that expectation. Kane’s obsession makes the peoples whose paths he crosses wonder, if the rangy Puritan can dedicate so much to right even such passing wrongs, maybe they shouldn’t accept things the way they seem, either.

The mentor sets the heroes on the path to adventure. Merlin raises Arthur, sends him to the sword in the stone and then the lady in the lake, and fashions the Round Table; Chiron teaches the heroes of Greek myth; Obi Wan Kenobi takes Luke Skywalker from Tattooine and brings him into the Rebellion. In our case, Solomon Kane’s example turned Content Not Found: jack-quick from a fairly opportunistic treasure hunter, into a hero, and pulled both him and White Doe out of their normal lives, and into an epic adventure that would send them across the Elder Peaks.

But the mentor can’t stick around. To come into their own, the mentor has to go away. Nimue locks Merlin away; Heracles accidentally shot his old teacher Chiron with a poisoned arrow; Darth Vader kills Obi Wan Kenobi. The hero often needs a strong, wise elder to point him in the right direction, but the elder goes away, the hero never has the chance to prove himself—he just spends his whole life obscured in the elder’s shadow. Could Jack or White Doe ever really prove themselves, even with the epic adventure ahead of them, if they always have Solomon Kane to save them? He has to die, or they cannot inherit his mantle of heroism.

But how do you kill someone like Solomon Kane? Only an epic death would do. I wrote before about Kane’s wanderings, and how it had to end with him finally coming home, as Howard’s last poem, “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming,” implies. Coming home, as this campaign will dig into deeper later on, means finding a land that you connect to, and defend. Kane represents an American mythos, so he has to die in the New World, defending a new land where his wandering could come to an end.

I stand in a good tradition when it comes to the Howard/Lovecraft cross-over, dating back to Howard and Lovecraft themselves, who incorporated elements of each other’s stories in their own. Lovecraft did suppose a copy of the Necronomicon in John Dee’s possession; for my main villain, a connection to Kane (his mentor, Roger Simeon, from “The Right Hand of Doom”), and getting his hands on Dee’s Necronomicon, seemed essential (though I did retcon in the name of the specific great old one, Yig, later on—I think the Father of Serpents fits my requirements perfectly). But it also made the perfect adversary to kill Kane; not just because of the Howard-Lovecraft antecedent going back to the original stories themselves, but also the incredible ambiguity of it.

In Africa, Kane begins to discover himself. Or maybe it would be more precise to say that he begins to discover how little he knows himself. He is drawn to Africa and wanders it, but not as the self-possessed superhero of the European stories. He is, instead, treading into the Lovecraftian territory of the mind. Everything is weirder in Africa (to use the adjective favoured by both authors). Scarier. Older. No wait: more ancient. More vital. More primal. ...

Kane’s alienation from himself and self-perception are frequently expressed through his belongings. In one story, it is noted that he wears a dashing, green sash around his otherwise Puritan-drab waist. The most interesting example of this device, however, is his ju-ju stick. Kane is initiated into his African sojourn by the gift of this weird (there it is again), arcane item. What this thing really is remains a mystery (although one story purports to explain it). He never knows what is does or why. More importantly, he really doesn’t know why he carries it. Kane realizes that as a good Puritan, he ought to ditch the witchcraft-spawned, magic device, but he doesn’t.

And that’s Solomon Kane. A mystery. An powerful artifact with an imagined origin. Almost a void who tries to fill himself with zealotry and violence and never succeeds.

Ultimately, I think that Kane is a man at war with the emptiness of the cosmos. He repeatedly stares into the Outer Darkness to discover cold, empty stretches of Time and Space. Mankind’s journey is a cosmic accident; morality a sham; religion a play. What makes Kane intriguing is that he fights against this knowledge. He is a Gnostic who rejects the gnosis. He wears his black, Puritan garb against the emptiness of the universe. He risks his life to defend the innocent as a challenge to God and his absence, and then he interprets his own actions as proof of God’s existence. His fury and self-righteousness in the face of oppression stem not from God’s vessel (as his says repeatedly), but because God allows these things to happen by his absence.[1]

Kane doesn’t die in battle with a demon, nor amidst choirs of angels; he dies fighting a Lovecraftian abomination, a god of the outer darkness. The god swallows him, and by submitting himself to consumption, Kane succeeds in sealing it once again within the earth, inside the land he dies defending.

He had to die, and I can’t think of any better way to see him off.

Summary | Narrative | Next »

“What’re we going to listen to next, The Turner Diaries?” Giuli asked me. We had just finished listening to the LibriVox recording of ‘Red Shadows’ while we drove to Poughkeepsie. I readily grant that my dear wife thinks and acts like a total hippie, but she had a good point, Robert E. Howard can seem a little racist, at best (I plan a future OOC on the racist undertones of Solomon Kane, but more on that later). After listening to the story, we had a fairly heated argument, and she insisted that she would absolutely not play a game based on stories like that. Eventually, I prevailed upon her to trust me as a game master and storyteller, if not Robert E. Howard, but she still wanted to tackle that undertone head on, and I encouraged her to do so. As primitivists, we have to acknowledge the influence of the “Noble Savage” on our thinking and behavior. We can’t avoid it, we have to face it head on and own it, and Robert E. Howard did a great deal to create that image. More in Conan, yes, but also in Solomon Kane. But Giuli didn’t want to play a “noble savage,” not with anything that volatile. She wanted to play someone she could look up to, not someone she could appropriate. She wanted to play a white person who had rewilded, or “gone native.” So, she decided to play Virginia Dare.

Which naturally gave me the necessary first story for our campaign. In Robert E. Howard’s stories, Solomon Kane has few good friends; really just N’Longa, and Sir Richard Grenville. Grenville actually lived, and he played a major role in the history of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke, where Virginia Dare lived. Virginia’s grandfather, John White, held the position of governor, and had joined the earlier expeditions to Roanoke, including Grenville’s, as a scientific illustrator (a very new field that White got into from its earliest days). Lee Miller makes a good case that John White may have involved himself with the Separatists, the most politically radical sect of the Puritans, and surely the side of the spectrum that freedom-loving, nigh anarchist Solomon Kane would have most empathized with. So, if Solomon Kane joined Grenville’s expedition (which seems likely enough), he probably would have made great friends with John White and Content Not Found: manteo. I can also see, in the aftermath, the deaths of people like Ralph Lane and Simon Fernandez coming from the hands of an obsessed, vengeful Puritan stalker. Speaking of which, does anyone know how Sir Francis Walsingham died in 1590, the same year that John White found that Roanoke had become the “Lost Colony”? Because I may have a thought on that now…

We don’t know when John White died, we just know when we hear from him last: a letter to his friend, Richard Hakluyt, describing what happened to Roanoke, written about 1605 or so. By 1609, rumors circulated around London about surviving Englishmen from Roanoke, including a “young maid,” held by an Indian chief named Gepanocan. Yes, news takes time to travel in Kane’s day, but I imagine a year to reach John White seems plausible, and that puts it in the same year as Robert E. Howard’s last mentions of Kane, in “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming.” Wouldn’t the heart-broken grandfather undertake one last journey to find his missing family? Wouldn’t he call on his old, sword-slinging friend to help him? And would Solomon Kane, of all people, turn down anyone in need, much less an old friend?

The rest rather wrote itself. Unfortunately, while Giuli had a clear idea of what she wanted to do, Mike didn’t. He didn’t make a character until that day, so I wrote the original story in just ten minutes, and it rather showed in the gameplay. I had to extensively retcon the “official” story, recorded here, and I have no pretensions about its quality. I can see I got far too drawn into the historical mystery of Roanoke (Lee Miller may sometimes reach a little far, but she certainly writes good anthropological history with a real dramatic flair), and the story suffered. Way too much exposition. Well, lessons learned. I’ll do better next time!

« Previous | Summary | Analysis

I

27 July 1610

They slithered into her dreams, a cold, reptillian hate that hissed in her ear. She could feel their scales slide over her body, all over her, writhing and pulsing in a thick, knotted, orgiastic nest that kept her pinned and coiled. The hiss seemed to slither through her breath, cold and violating, with an ancient, primordial hate. “White Doe,” they hissed. “We have an offer for you, and for all the Hemp People. We have a mutual enemy, and we intend to move against him. We offer you this one chancccccce to earn our gracccce and join ussss.”

“No!” White Doe cried out in her dream. The snakes recoiled in horror.

“Very well, White Doe,” they hissed. “You condemn yoursssself, and all your people.”

White Doe woke from a bed of soft, cool moss, beneath the scented boughs of the Virginia forest. The fire had burned down to embers, and most of her companions slept. The coldest part of the early morning huddled around them. It took her a moment to notice that Manteo did not sleep, but sat with incredible stillness, staring into the embers. “What troubles you, little Doe?” he whispered after a few moments.

“The snake men,” she answered. “One of their priests slithered into my dreams, to … negotiate.”

“Negotiate?” Manteo asked. He looked disturbed. “What do those monsters want?”

“An alliance,” White Doe answered. “Against ‘a mutual enemy.’”

Manteo nodded. “They must mean the Powhatan. The snake men mean to move against the Powhatan Empire? How very odd … their power has passed. I would have thought they would need to concentrate on their enemies beyond the elder peaks.”

White Doe had no answers for him. She did not go back to sleep, but instead stayed awake near the fire like Manteo. As a few hours passed, first Solomon Kane, then Jack Quick and John White, roused themselves. Solomon completed his morning prayers as John and Jack readied themselves. “We should head into James’ Towne as soon as possible,” he said, “and confront the Baron.” Jack nodded his assent. As dawn touched the sky, the companions began to set out through the Virginia Wilderness, headed towards the sole English settlement in the uncharted New World.

At a sudden line, the forest gave way. The soft moss, the fragrant trees, the cool shade, all ended at a harsh perimeter. Beyond that, bare dirt baked in the sun; the trees had all gone; the only plant life at all took the form of virulent weeds. Beyond this expanse, the wooden palisades rose up sharply, surrounding a nest of impoverished, filthy hovels packed tightly together, guard towers and fortifications perched fearfully at every corner.

“Welcome to King James’ Towne,” Manteo smirked. They began to cross the fields, towards the palisade. As they entered the town, they noticed the colonists gawking in wide-eyed amazement, not at the treasure-hunting adventurer, nor the two Puritans, nor even the Indian. No, they stared at White Doe, dressed in the savage manner of the Indians, but with lily-white skin to match any of them.

The companions marched confidently into the Baron’s abode. As they entered, Baron de la Warr stood up in shock. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Jack seemed taken off-guard by the Baron’s response. “I, uh, am Jack Quick, this is…”

“The girl,” the Baron demanded. “Who is this girl?”

Jack recovered quickly. “Surely you have not forgotten the first English child of this land’s soil, governor,” Jack replied. “This is Virginia Dare.”

The Baron’s response perplexed the companions: not shock or wonder, but fear. “Take her!” he barked immediately to the soldiers. “Hand her over to Drake; cover her to make sure no one else sees her. We must get this situation under control immediately.” Two soldiers grabbed White Doe and began to restrain her.

Jack reacted quickly, grabbing the Baron, unsheathing his blade, and pressing the sharp, metal blade against the governor’s fatty neck. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jack told the soldiers. Solomon and Manteo took defensive stances, readying themselves for a fight.

“Do not let them go!” the Baron ordered. “Page! Send for Drake, quickly!” A young boy ran out of the room. Soldiers surrounded them warily, while Jack kept the blade to the Baron’s throat. They blocked exit from the room, refusing to let them leave. For several minutes, the tense standoff continued.

“I hope you know what you intend to do,” Solomon whispered.

“At best, trusting in Providence,” Jack answered.

“I have known men who would call that foolish,” the Puritan replied, “but in all my travels, I have found no greater wisdom.”

But then, the page returned, and behind him came a wretched man in a heavy cloak, clutching a terrible book close to his chest in bony, vise-like claws. “I cannot come scurrying to get you out of every little scrape, Baron,” a rasping voice spoke from beneath the thick darkness that gathered under his heavy hood.

“Drake, you villain, get me out of this!” the Baron roared.

“As you command, m’lord,” the figure answered.

“I wouldn’t,” Jack said, pressing the blade closer to the Baron’s throat. “Not if you value your liege’s life.”

“I don’t,” the man replied. “Not in the least.” Jack found his attention drawn to the tome the man held so closely, and somehow—he did not know how—he knew that the leather binding had come from the flesh of children. As he looked on it in horror, he saw what seemed like a face pressing against that binding, screaming a silent scream of eternal torment. Only Jack heard it, not through ears of flesh; no, it tore through his soul, and left a scar across his sanity. The blade clattered to the ground, and Jack fell backwards, screaming; he himself did not even know how he screamed. He heard no physical sound, only the unholy cry that in that moment shattered his mind.

The Baron lurched forward, springing away from Jack. “Capture them, I want them all to hang!” The soldiers closed in, as Solomon drew his sword.

“Ready to die, old man?” Manteo asked Solomon, as they closed. The soldiers outnumbered them greatly, and more would soon join them. They both knew that they could not win this fight, but to protect White Doe—to protect the granddaughter of their friend—they gladly, wordlessly moved forward to throw their lives away.

But the benefactor of that sacrifice would not have it. “No!” White Doe cried. “It’s … it’s all right. I’ll be all right. Don’t do it.”

“Are you sure, little Doe?” Manteo asked. “You don’t think I’m scared of these barking pups, do you?”

“Of course not,” White Doe answered.

“Very well,” Solomon said, throwing down his sword. Manteo followed suit. The soldiers closed and clapped them in irons.

“Lock them in the prison,” the Baron commanded. “And Drake—the girl is yours.”

White Doe could feel the man’s malevolent gaze upon her. He chuckled. “Delicious.”

The soldiers grabbed John White, Manteo, Jack Quick and Solomon Kane, confiscated their weapons and possessions, and marched them to the prison. The dark, dank cell offered little hope of escape. A small window let in only a few, meager rays of sunlight. Though the noonday sun heated most of Jamestown, the dungeon stank in brooding darkness. Manteo, John White, Solomon Kane and Jack Quick all hung by their wrists, shackled with steel chains to the cold, wet, stone wall.

“I don’t understand,” Jack muttered. “When de la Warr arrived, we constantly heard about the lost colonists; how the Powhatan had massacred the people of Roanoke, how John Smith himself had seen the proof. The rumors came in about survivors, and always it was about how they languished as slaves. I remember the Baron sending letters off to the king of the Powhatan, demanding the return of the colonists, or there would be war.”

“Of course!” White shot out with sudden revelation. “The letter on the officer, the kidnapped children, the ‘Irish tactics’—the Baron wants a war. To the people here, the fate of the colonists provided one of his best causes…”

“And then in we come with Virginia Dare, perfectly free and unharmed,” Jack completed, realizing the full measure of what had happened, “robbing him of his primary casus belli.”

“The Baron’s plans cannot allow any Englishman to know that Virginia lives,” Manteo said.

“And I fear,” John White added, his old voice trembling with terror, “that he lacks in scruples enough to see her dead, just to ensure his war.”

“No harm shall come to her, my friend,” Solomon promised.

“How can you know that?” White asked, a note of despair creeping into his voice. “We rot here in the Baron’s dungeons, powerless to stop him.”

“Though many think me powerful, in all my journeys I have not learned anything so acutely as my own powerlessness,” Solomon replied. “I am ever powerless. I have no strength in me, but by God’s grace to become an instrument of his justice. It is in Him that we must abide in faith. It is in Him that we must trust. And I promise you, the Baron shall not harm Virginia Dare.”

II

27 July 1610

Samuell Drake spent most of his time aboard one of the Baron’s ships, anchored in the harbor, with only a scant few soldiers to attend him. The Baron preferred to keep him largely out of view, for he had few friends among the colonists. During the Atlantic crossing, those coming to the New World—including John White, Solomon Kane, and Jack Quick—had noted the wretched shadows that haunted the Baron’s steps. His face bore a hideous brand, the scars left from the Inquisition in Spain. Rumors told how they had tortured him as a necromancer, and that he counted the illustrious Sir Francis as a cousin. But even so, his dark demeanor and his constant, maddened gibberings made him few friends. Many speculated as to why the Baron retained him. Most in Jamestown reckoned their governor a godly man, but suggested that the rampant sorcery and witchcraft of the heathen tribes he had to defend the colony against required him to retain a sorcerer of his own.

White Doe found herself shackled below decks, her chains riveted to the hull of the ship. She had waited there a long time, before she saw the cloaked figure descend the steps.

“So, you are … Virginia Dare?” he almost seemed to hiss.

“My parents called me that,” she replied.

“Gone savage. Fascinating,” Drake noted. “And you … you shape-shift, yes?”

“Shape-shift?” she acted. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Oh, but of course you do,” Drake answered. “You turn into a white doe—that’s what they call you, isn’t it? White Doe? I’ve heard that Turtle Island has many shape-shifters like you. I’d love to see how it works.”

White Doe stared at him, silently. Nervously, Drake set his book down on a nearby table and began to page through it. “They contacted you, didn’t they?”

“Who?” White Doe asked.

“The snake people, of course,” Drake replied. “With the offer of alliance?”

“No,” White Doe replied.

Drake laughed. “You’re a terrible liar, little one. They told me they would contact you, try to get the Hemp People to join us. They also said you turned down the offer. Tsk, tsk. Terrible shame, there. You could have been part of something.”

A look of horror crossed White Doe’s face as she realized what had gone on. “That’s why the Baron is so confident in starting this war against the Powhatan,” she gasped. “The snake people are helping him!” Drake simply laughed as he paged through his book. “But … why?”

Drake patted the pages of his beloved tome. “At Mortlake, John Dee kept the largest library the West has seen since the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Included among those volumes, this,” he caressed the page lovingly. “The Necronomicon. My master, Roger Simeon, knew of it, and among his clients he counted the late Queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, who sometimes had need of … otherworldly assistance. My master told Walsingham of this tome, and while Dee was in Europe, Walsingham arranged a robbery of Mortlake. This tome went missing, a crime that disturbed Dee greatly. He had begun a translation of it to English, and had seen what I have seen….”

“My master did not study it much,” Drake’s story continued. “He merely kept it, locking its power away, close at hand. When that vermin, John Redley, betrayed my master, the tome passed to me. And I, I have studied it. I have learned its secrets. Oh, what secrets, what secrets it has to teach!”

Drake turned to White Doe, his eyes wide with the fanatical gaze of a madman. “We tiny mammals, even our angels and gods, good and evil themselves are nothing before the vastness of the cosmos! Before time, before space, they ruled. They created all life, they rule all existence, gods of the outer darkness!” His rant took on a sing-song quality, and White Doe realized he quoted something, almost certainly his vile book.

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.

“The only value our transient, passing life can have,” Drake whispered now, “is in service to the outer gods. When the stars are right, they shall come and undo creation itself, not only the present, but the past and the future, all time and space. Our lives have meaning only as their food. In serving them, we might pass beyond the narrow concepts of good and evil, and achieve a significance otherwise denied to beings like us. Do you not understand? Can you not perceive it?”

Drake reached out his bony hand, and caressed the side of White Doe’s face gently. “Join me,” he hissed. “Stand at my side. I shall share with you the horror of reality. You shall stare at the stark, unyielding madness at the center of the cosmos, and we will revel in the shattering of mind and sanity together, rejoice in the madness that frees our spirits, and submit our flesh and our minds and our souls to become food of the great elder god, the Father of Serpents, great Yig!”

Excitedly now, Drake threw open his maps. “Beyond the elder peaks live a race of giants—you no doubt know more of them than I—who fixed a prison for Yig, binding him to the earth near the axis mundi. But with the magic of this book, we can free him once again!”

“That is why the snake men have agreed to aid the Baron,” Drake laughed. “He is but a pawn in this. I needed the means of getting here, and making my rendezvous with those still faithful to Yig, his children, the snake men. I needed a way to the New World, and the Baron needed allies for his war. The snake men were more than willing to kill some humans in return for the release of their god from the prison of their hated, giant enemies.”

“But you have a unique opportunity to atone for your previous sins of ignorance, little doe,” Drake added. “Have you ever seen a snake eat a little fawn? What an incredible sight. Just imagine the meal great Yig will make of you!”

“You’re insane,” White Doe answered.

“Yes,” Drake hissed. “Happily so. But I see you do not understand the glorious wonder of that. But you will. You will. We are all a feast spread out before great Yig, and you shall be food to him. Accept it willingly, and you may embrace the wonder of madness and submission before your end; deny it, and Yig shall break you first.”

Drake closed his book, tucked it under his arm, and marched up the steps again, leaving White Doe in the darkness below deck. Her mind reeled with the necromancer’s insane rantings. The book had shattered his mind, but it had woven his madness through with terrible truths she knew all too well, the darkest, most dangerous lore her people knew. Drake had encountered something that even the greatest shamans feared to face; what it could do to a mind like his made White Doe shiver with cold fear. Suddenly, the sufferings and injustices of Jamestown and the Powhatan shrank to details of a cosmic drama.

But first, she had to free herself from the ship, and from Jamestown.

White Doe looked about her, hoping to find some friend crawling about the ship. She had not learned much of the Englishman, but she knew they harbored some strange superstition that only human people could speak, or think, or might become one’s friend. White Doe had many friends who had never worn human flesh. Such forgotten friends might save her life now.

Rats scurried throughout the ship, but they could offer her little help. Then,she heard the quiet, distinct sound of termites running about in the wood. White Doe only knew the rudiments of the termite language, but she addressed them as respectfully as she could. “Little friends,” she asked, “since you’ve taken to eating this delicious wood anyway, might I ask for a small favor? Could you eat the wood around these bolts that hold me chained in place? I assure you, the wood here tastes as good as the wood you eat now, and it would help me greatly.”

She heard the clattering of insects in the wood, as if the whole swarm of the boat’s infestation had answered her call. Mere moment later, she easily pulled the bolts straight out of the rotted wood. “Thank you, little friends,” she replied. “I will leave an offering for your people, to repay your kindness.”

Her most immediate problem solved, White Doe looked about to find some way off the ship. Guards blocked her ascent up to the deck, trapping her below deck with the supplies; food, gear, gunpowder… She opened the keg of powder, and took enough to leave a trail, leading to the far end of the boat, where she took refuge. She still had her bowdrill. After a few moments, it sparked. The fire raced along the small trail of black powder, right into the keg of gunpowder.

A terrific explosion ignited, blasting apart half of the ship. Everyone in Jamestown and in the harbor could see it, as some colonists scurried to the boats to row out to help. The part of the ship that remained began to sink into the water.

With an agile dive, White Doe managed to survive the hail of debris that the explosion unleashed, but she now found herself trapped by the sinking wreck. She struggled to get free of the wreckage and make it into open water. Finally, she extricated herself, but her lungs burned for air. She pulled herself frantically towards the surface, feeling like she might drown. Finally, she broke the water’s skin, gasping frantically for air. After a few moments, she looked about, and saw the colonists rowing towards her. “There!” one shouted, pointing towards her. She panicked, and with all the strength she still had left in her, began swimming towards the further shore of the harbor, away from Jamestown and into the Virginia Wilderness. She felt weak already from her previous exertion; her muscles burned and her lungs ached, but still she swam. The shackles that still hung from her wrists with their heavy, metal weight dragged her down, making each stroke even more exhausting, but still she swam. Finally, she reached the shoreline and crawled up out of the water, her clothes heavy with their wetness. But she knew she had not yet reached safety.

Into the forests she had called her home all her life, she ran, and quickly disappeared from the colonists’ view, Virginia Dare once again lost to the wilderness that shared her name.

III

28-29 July 1610

The heavy door of the prison groaned as if in pain as it opened. Several armed guards entered, and two of them began to undo Jack’s bonds. “Careful with that one,” the officer instructed. “He’s the one what tried to take the Baron hostage. Feisty.”

They bound Jack anew in shackles, with a stiff pole behind his back and his arms looped and chained behind it. They moved him sideways up the steps and out of the prison, where Samuell Drake stood. “Yes,” he hissed to the officer. “He’ll do.”

“The Baron wanted to have you hung,” Drake told Jack. “But a public hanging requires public charges, and that would involve public knowledge of the one you brought back with you. And it just so happens I recently made some … hasty promises to our allies, which you can help me rectify.”

He turned to the officer and instructed him, “Take him to the same hilltop where you normally take the Indian children, and leave him there.” The officer nodded, and prodded his men forward. They pushed Jack out of the prison. After more than a day in that dank prison, the sudden glare of the hot afternoon sun in late July blinded him. He knew he could not hope to overcome the soldiers. They led him out of the colony, marching through the wilderness, until they crested a small hill. At its summit, the trees gave way to a circular opening of bare grass. In the center of the circle, a stone altar sat. Someone had bolted chain manacles to the altar. Jack noticed red stains on the stone.

“Where you brought the Indian children…” Jack muttered, and then exploded with rage. “You monsters! You’ve been bringing children here, to some kind of heathen ritual of human sacrifice!” The soldiers beat him and restrained him, and began transferring his bonds from those around him, to the ones binding him tightly to the altar.

“Of course we don’t like it,” the officer said. “But we have orders, eh? Jesus and all the saints preserve us, but I fear what kind of dark magic those heathens in the woods might yield. If a necromancer of our own needs an occasional criminal like you to counter that, well, it’s not like we weren’t going to kill you, anyway. All we know is we leave ‘em up here. What happens to them, we don’t know. We just know next time we come up here, they’re not here anymore. C’mon, men, let’s get back. Sun’ll set soon.” The soldiers marched off, leaving Jack Quick chained tightly to the altar, waiting for what might come.

The sun dipped slowly behind the trees, and soon Jack noted the first star appear—Sirius, the dog star, at this part of the year. The fading rays of sunset died away, and Jack watched the Milky Way come into view. The air grew cold, the world grew dark, and Jack expected he would never see the sun again.

Then, near midnight, Jack heard something approach. He strained his head to see, but they came from behind him. He did not hear footfalls, but instead, a sound like the slithering of several enormous snakes. When one came into view, Jack let out a scream of horror. Indeed, like giant serpents slithering out of the darkness, they reared up, but where an earthly snake would have its head, these extended into broad chests and shoulders, with arms like those of a man, though armored still in scales. Their heads again resembled the heads of venomous snakes. They adorned themselves with chains and plates of armor, and wielded scimitars. Such an abomination Jack had seen only once; horrible images like these raced through his mind when he looked too closely at Drake’s book, and now it shook him once again.

He saw one of the snake people emerge, obviously a priest to the rest of them. They settled into places, beginning to enact some terrible ritual. “Wait! Wait!” Jack cried. “Y-you weren’t promised me. He promised you Virginia Dare!” He made a bold assumption, but he knew that he would die in moments either way. Drake mentioned a promise he could no longer keep, and he had seen White Doe taken by the sorcerer. He did not know for certain that the promise Drake could not keep involved White Doe given over to these creatures as a sacrifice, but he had heard a great commotion through the tiny prison window the day before, one that might have signaled White Doe’s escape. At any rate, Jack reckoned it his best chance.

The snake man priest stopped for a moment. Jack heard his heart pounding in his chest like a drum, in a moment that seemed to go on forever. Finally, the priest spoke, “Yesssss. White Doe, the firssst of your kind born on thisss ssssoil. She belongsss to the Hemp People now.”

They seemed to know more of her, and care more about her, than Jack had thought. Can I use this? he thought. He decided to try—his ritual execution the only other option he could see. “I-I can take you to her.” He knew he might very well have promised more than he could deliver, but he had become desperate.

The snake priest seemed to think the proposition over. “Very well,” he finally said. “Though Yig will be mossssst disssspleasssed. I will sssssend word to Drake that our god will require two sssssacrificessssss for tomorrow night, both adultssss like yourssssself. Thesssse pitiful children have sssssuch limited capaccccity for ssssuffering. Ssssso much comessss from the anticccipation, yesss? Ssssometimesss, they don’t even know what’ssss happening until the knife cutssss. But an adult like you, oh, you sssspent the whole night here in agony, dripping with delicioussss pain.”

What have I gotten myself into? Jack thought. I have crossed the Rubicon. Alea iacta est, I suppose!

IV

29 July 1610

All the People of the village had gathered together to hear White Doe’s words. “The snake people stir,” she said. “They have made common cause with the Short-Lived People. A terrible sorcerer has brought them together, one who has glimpsed the outer gods and succumbed to madness. He seeks to unleash them upon the world. Our quarrels with the Powhatan shrink to nothing compared to this. I know it means aiding their empire, but this sorcerer’s madness threatens the whole world.”

Owl, one of the most respected of the People, pondered the question carefully. “The Powhatan have moved against us for many years; have they also moved against the snake people to raise this enmity?”

“No,” White Doe reported. “They hate everyone who walks on legs, and love only their own kind who slither on their bellies. Prompting them to kill Leg-walkers required little argument. They have joined the Short-Lived People’s fight only because the sorcerer promises to release their god.”

“And what of the giants?” Owl asked. “They have kept the snake people bound for a very long time, and they have always fought the snake people in the past. Where do they fit into all of this now?”

“I do not know,” White Doe confessed. “I have heard nothing from them. We should keep in mind the possibility that they do not even know of this yet. Perhaps these snake people have managed to escape the giants’ vigil.”

A murmur went through the People. If the snake men truly began to move, and the giants did not even know yet, then they would find themselves caught in a very dangerous spot, indeed.

Owl’s expression soured. “You bring us dire news, little Doe.”

Blue Jay stepped forward boldly. “I helped White Doe save our people, whom Gepanocan took as slaves. I have seen the power of her Song myself. If she says it, then I believe it. If she brings us dire news, then I say we prepare for the most dire.”

“Thank you, fearless Blue Jay,” White Doe smiled.

“I only speak the truth before our People, White Doe,” he replied. And the People, in turn, seemed impressed by his display. Owl even nodded.

“Very well,” he finally said. “The People will move against the snake men. Who among you will join White Doe in this?” Blue Jay stood up proud and tall, then Singing Stream, Owl Eyes and Jumper, the same four who had joined her in their raid against Gepanocan. Owl nodded. “Very well. If you told us the truth, White Doe, I suggest you move immediately; we may not have much time.”

Owl Eyes had found a hill, not far from the colony, where a stone altar, stained red with blood, stood on a bare hilltop. He knew of no other people who would use such a thing, and it puzzled him until he heard White Doe speak of the snake men. Then, he knew immediately who must have built it. He told White Doe about it, and led their war band directly to it.

“You riddled it out correctly, Owl Eyes,” White Doe said as they inspected the ground there. “Look here—tracks, Two-Leggeds, coming from the east (probably the colony) and going back; several groups, each more recent than the last.”

“Or, probably the same group, coming here many times,” Owl Eyes suggested.

“Yes,” White Doe replied. “I think you have that right.”

“And over here,” Jumper pointed out, “something similar, but instead of feet…”

“Slithering tracks,” White Doe pronounced. “Like enormous snakes.”

“They head west, into the trees,” Owl Eyes pointed out. They needed no instruction; as one,they all moved into the forest, following the trail. They followed it for some time, until Owl Eyes held up his hand, signaling them silently to stop. Ahead of them, they could see nearly a dozen snake people encamped, and with them, two two-legged people. White Doe recognized them: Jack Quick and Solomon Kane.

They prepared themselves for an ambush, hiding themselves behind trees, rocks and bushes. When White Doe saw them all in place, she gave the signal, the call of a snake-eating eagle. Five bows twanged, letting fly five obsidian-tipped arrows that broke the scales and buried themselves deep in the snake man priest’s chest. The priest died there immediately, while some of the warriors moved quickly into the trees, scimitars flashing. Blue Jay jumped out from hiding first, brandishing his spear and trying to impale one of the abominations. Four snake men closed on him, steel and scale on all sides.

“Blue Jay!” White Doe cried. The other warriors leapt from hiding, waving spears and closing with their enemy to save their fearless friend.

Meanwhile, in the camp itself, the first bow twang signaled Kane to his feet. Though manacles bound his hands, he still managed to knock one of the snake men to the ground with his shoulder, and seize hold of his scimitar. He could not move his hands, and the blade differed from the rapier he knew so well, but Kane’s lifetime of experience did not desert him. In the same movement that robbed the snake man of his weapon, Kane spun it around and cleaved the anthropoid snake skull in twain. Another snake man closed with Kane, and suffered a similar fate. When a second blade fell to the dust, Jack dove for it. Prone on the ground, he spun about to find two more snake men over him. Jack parried one away, jumped to his feet, and drove the scimitar into the serpentine chest, but in that moment the remaining snake man sliced his curved blade across the small of Jack’s back. Wtih a groan, Jack Quick crumpled to the ground. A moment later, the snake man fell in coils, half over top of him, cut down by Solomon Kane. “Jack, you are wounded!” Solomon cried.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Go … help them … I’ll be ….” Jack could not finish the sentence, but Kane knew how battle went. Their rescuers found themselves hard-pressed by the snake men, and they needed help. Kane dove into battle with a fury, cutting down the snake people as best he could. They had already struck down most of the warriors, and Kane found Virginia doing all she could to not join them, but she had suffered wounds, as well,and now the last three snake men turned all of their attention on her, and her alone.

From behind, Kane cut one of them down, drawing the attention of another. White Doe found herself fighting off a relentless attack; the snake man came out her with a savage ferocity, the curved blade slicing at her over and over. With each cut, she backed away, trying to give herself enough space to maneuver, but the snake man would slither towards her, closing the space with slice after slice. White Doe’s foot moved backwards, and caught a root that tripped her and threw her to the ground. White Doe thought she saw a smile on the snake mans’ scaly lips, but then, those cruel eyes went dull and glassy, and she saw the tip of a bloody sword erupt through the front of the warrior’s chest. His scaly body fell to the side, revealing the tall,rangy Puritan behind him. He threw down the blade, and with two manacled hands reached out to help her up. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’ve suffered worse,” she answered, taking his hand.

“I told your grandfather to have faith, that you would not be harmed,” Solomon told her. “I am glad that I have not had my faith tested once again. But come, you are an accomplished herbalist, are you not? Jack and all your men lie wounded, they have need of your skills now; mine will aid them not at all.”

White Doe hurried herself, binding wounds, collecting herbs and making poultices. She managed to save each of her warriors, but they had suffered grievously. Jack she bound up with poultices; he, too, had suffered some lasting hurts, but he could function.

“You … were with the snake men?” White Doe asked her two companions once she finished her work.

“Drake left me for a sacrifice,” Jack said. “I got myself out by agreeing to lead them to you. I never meant to actually go through with it, though!”

“As I hoped,” Solomon said. “I feared I had misjudged you when they told me.”

“Aye,” Jack nodded. “I was able to convince them that I needed some help, but they would only let me pick one. So, I asked for Solomon.”

“And what of my father, and … my grandfather?” White Doe asked.

“Still in James Towne’s prison,” Solomon answered.

“But not for long,” Jack said with surprise, the terrible realization growing upon him. “They said they would need two sacrifices to make up for me last night. Adults. They usually sacrifice some of the Indian children, the ones the Baron has been kidnapping, and Drake pointed out that a public execution for any of us would require public charges, and that would lead right to Virginia. He needs to erase all memory that Virginia Dare survived.”

“Then they will sacrifice John White and Manteo tonight,” Solomon summed up.

White Doe’s expression turned to stone. “Not if we stop them,” she said, with all the cold resolution of one of the Puritan’s oaths.

V

29-30 July 1610

With sunset nearing, the soldiers crested the hill, bringing with them two men this time: an Indian, and an elderly Puritan. They could not chain them both to the altar in the usual manner; instead, they used one manacle on each of them, binding them to the sides of the stone altar. Then, the soldiers left.

After just a few moments, White Doe and Solomon Kane emerged from the trees. “Little Doe!” Manteo cried out, seeing them first as they approached from his side. “And Solomon! You managed to escape!”

“Aye,” Solomon replied. “And they have left you….”

“I know,” Manteo nodded. “A sacrifice for the snake people.” John White’s eyes opened wide. “You told me they contacted you, little Doe,” Manteo reminded her. “And who else would build an alter like this?”

They worked the manacles loose, and took Manteo and John White into the safety of the trees, where White Doe explained everything to them.

“So,” Manteo asked, “where does that put Jack Quick? I don’t see him with you.”

“Right here,” a voice answered. A hooded figure cut through, carrying a small cart behind him. He pushed the hood back, revealing Jack Quick’s face. “I went into James Towne, in disguise of course, to procure a few supplies.”

“Supplies?” John White asked.

“Aye,” Solomon answered. “I must have my staff back, and there is still the matter of a villain we must dispatch.”

“So we’re going to plan a little surprise for them,” Jack grinned.

They set to work at once. Jack had brought them a keg of gunpowder, two muskets, and two strange metal canisters. He gave the muskets to John, instructing him to stay out of sight, and fire upon the enemy only from cover. The canisters he gave to Manteo, and the powder they spread upon the ground near the altar, leaving a trail leading off into the brush. Then, they waited. The sun set, the sky turned dark and the forest became cool, as the moon and the stars peeked out of the twilight. A little more than a quarter of the moon’s face shone, keeping the ambush in relative darkness. As that silver crescent rose in the sky, they prepared themselves. As expected, at midnight, they heard the rustling of the brush, and then the horrible sight of the snake men slithering into the clearing.

“Treachery!” one of the snake men hissed, as he saw the altar with no one there to sacrifice. “The Warmblood will have to account for this!” The snake people fumed with anger, but they waited in the clearing impatiently. After several minutes, the brush stirred again, and the wretched figure of Samuell Drake moved into the clearing, two soldiers behind him, carrying a heavy chest.

“Drake!” the snake man demanded, “what is the meaning of this!”

“I…” Drake began to say something, when Manteo stood up and threw one of the metal canisters into the clearing, and it landed on the ground amongst the snake men harmlessly with a thud.

They had anticipated that possibility. John fired one of the muskets, while White Doe crutched down in the bushes, where the trail of gunpowder ended, grinding furiously at her bowdrill. She saw smoke—and then, a spark! The fire ran quickly down the black powder trail, setting off the gunpowder-saturated ground, and the unexploded canister as well. The clearing erupted in an explosive inferno, like hell had suddenly burst through into the earth in a volcanic blast.

Into that hell waded Solomon Kane, scimitar slicing through the flames to cut the final cords of any snake men that still clung to life, striding with utter confidence through the burning field towards Samuell Drake like the fiery angel of God’s own vengeance. The two soldiers feebly moved forward to stop him, but not all of hell could stop him now; one slice, two, and two English soldiers folded in bloody piles on the ground. Drake backed away, then clutched his book tight against his chest under folded arms, and shot immediately into the earth. Solomon stepped back, eyes wide with astonishment. “What new devilry is this?”

“The necromancer’s making his escape through the earth itself,” White Doe answered. “We can no more track him like this than we might track a wojak.”

Solomon opened the chest the soldiers had carried. Lying on top, he saw the cat-headed staff. “I shudder to think what blasphemies he had in mind for this,” Solomon said as he took it back. “It was given to me by an African shaman, a man I am happy to say I finally had the wisdom to accept as a friend, named N’Longa. And it seems, before him, it once belonged to King Solomon, who used it to command demons and devils to build the Temple of the Lord. What a villain like Samuell Drake might have done with it gives me pause. I knew his illustrious cousin, once; once a friend, but in the end a petty dictator. There are times I pity that I did not kill him when I had the chance.”

Jack collected his things from the chest. Drake had obviously had some fell purpose in mind for Solomon’s staff, and simply brought all their belongings with him to be thorough, and not to arouse too much attention towards the precious artifact, but it benefited them now greatly. “But what do we do about stopping his sorcerous cousin now?”

“White Doe’s right,” Manteo said. “We cannot track him. But we know where he’s heading.”

“We do?” John White asked.

“Aye,” Manteo nodded. “The Elder Peaks. And I know how we can catch up with him.”

They needed no more explanation; they all ran behind Manteo, heading north and west. They ran for most of the night’s remainder, until the deepest cold and dark before dawn settled upon them, and they ran and scrambled over rocky outcrops and rising hills. Then, they saw a hooded figure ahead of them duck into a cleft among the rocks. They ran harder and faster then, turning hard to duck into the same cleft, and finding that it opened into a nearly perfectly concealed cave that slipped precipitously into the earth. White Doe took her ember from its protective pouch, and used it to set alight the pitch-soaked torches that Jack and Solomon carried, and with those to light their way, they descended into the darkness.

The saves twisted into the deep earth for a long time, until Manteo noticed a light ahead, not from their own fires. The cave opened up into a chamber carved out of the rock. Images of snakes adorned the walls and many, serpentine enclaves. The central chamber showed a magical circle carved into the center of the floor. Opposite, they saw Samuell Drake, paging through his book. He had set alight the ceremonial sconces, shaped like the open mouths of venomous snakes. He intoned ancient verses in some forgotten, blasphemous tongue.

He completed the incantation as they entered the chamber. He looked up then, and cackling madly, recited to them in English:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die.

The carvings of the magical circle glowed with an ethereal, purple light.

“Manteo!” Jack cried. “The other grenade!”

Manteo had forgotten about it. He pulled the metal canister from his belt, and threw it into the center of the magic circle. This one exploded the moment it hit the ground, bringing a hail of stones crashing down. The companions fell back, into the natural cavern tunnels, as the cave-in cut them off from the carved room. But the sound of crushing rocks did not stop.

The magic circle had topped off an enormous tube, one that Drake’s magic began to open. Manteo’s grenade had added a distinct note of chaos, but it had still unleashed the Thing Drake had summoned.

It burst through the rock moments later, rows and rows of teeth down a deep maw, now scarred with burn marks, smoke, and choked with chunks of rock. A hideous, worm-like abomination, one that had long eaten at the earth’s core, rotting it. It bored through nightmares. As Jack saw it, his mind snapped back to Drake’s book…

The others rushed at it, blades flashing and bows snapping. They sunk deep into the Worm-Thing, and though a terrible, black ichor oozed from its wounds, it did not stop or slow.

“It cannot die!” Jack screamed. “It cannot die!”

“Take Jack,” Solomon commanded the others, “and all of you, leave this place. I shall hold back this blasphemy against the Lord.”

“But Solomon!” John White called.

“Go!” he repeated. The iron in his voice left no doubt. Manteo and White Doe grabbed Jack, and hurried him up, out of the cave.

Solomon turned on the Worm-Thing with all his rage. “I have spent my life battling all manner of oppression—the oppression of hell, yes, and the oppression of men who do so much for hell’s cause. But now I have grown old and weary of my long wanderings, and I see that the Lord has marked the end of my long road, for thou art the very beast at the heart of all oppression; the terror of men’s hearts, wrapped in blasphemous flesh, the very fear that makes men surrender the will God gave them to the tyranny of man and Devil. Well then, Old Serpent, let us struggle now to the last!”

Solomon threw down the rapier with which he had battled the Worm-Thing’s myriad teeth, and gripped his staff with both hands, and with that strode boldly into the Thing’s horrible maw.

Above, his friends emerged into the first hesitant light of the new dawn. As they clamored free, Manteo looked back into the darkness, a solemn look on his face. “The Worm has been stopped,” he intoned. “And Solomon Kane has died.”

No one asked how he knew. If they could pay the same honest attention to the stirrings in their heart that he did, they would know, as well. “What do we do?” Jack asked.

“Solomon Kane gave his life because of the things he believed in, the things he spent his life fighting for,” John White answered. “To fight tyranny and oppression, and to leave a new world of freedom and friendship for us all.”

Manteo nodded. “Yes. What we do should be obvious. We carry on his work. We justify his faith. We make certain that his sacrifice was not in vain.”

Robert E. Howard frequently refers to Solomon as a “wanderer,” as in the most well-known, and probably best, description of the character, from “Red Shadows”:

“You-who are-you?” her words came in gasps.

“Naught but a wanderer, a landless man, but a friend to all in need.” The gentle voice sounded somehow incongruous, coming from the man.

In the earlier stories (earlier in chronology; Howard wrote “Red Shadows” first) set in Europe, Kane appears as a kind of Puritan superhero, but he cannot find his purpose. It ultimately drives him to Africa, where he begins to find himself. His adventures and experience throw his beliefs into question, and we see Solomon grapple with a world altogether more ambiguous and nuanced than the harsh, monochromatic outlines of black and white he finds in Europe. Though an Englishman, Solomon sums up an American mythos of where the country came from:

As we’ve been taught by the gods of our copybooks, the Puritans founded the first distinctly American colony, looking for religious freedom and creating a society distinct from the more typical Virginia colonial settlements. Kane might be an Englishman, but he was the sort of Englishman who would become an American: an expert swordsman and pistol-shot, a righter of wrongs, an explorer of new frontiers stalking terra incognita in his black clothes and slouch hat with a blade of Toledo steel in his scabbard, pistols at his belt. Tall and wolf-lean, grim and measured of voice, he was a proto-cowboy in hip-boots and cape, a plain man in a time of ruffed frippery.[1]

I agree, and I would take it farther, because the Columbian crisis threw two worlds together. From the European point of view, the New World offered a fresh start, new hope and new opportunities. Our campaign, beginning in 1610, takes place 20 years before John Winthrop would give his famous sermon about the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a “City Upon a Hill,” but the general sentiment certainly existed. As I usually do, I see this as a matter of ecological relationship. As William Catton put it in his book, Overshoot:

Discovery of the New World gave European man a markedly changed relationship to the resource base for civilized life. When Columbus set sail, there were roughly 24 acres of Europe per European. Life was a struggle to make the most of insufficient and unreliable resources. After Columbus stumbled upon the lands of an unsuspected hemisphere, and after monarchs and entrepreneurs began to make those lands available for European settlement and exploitation, a total of 120 acres of land per person was available in the expanded European habitat—five times the pre-Columbian figure!

Changelessness had always been the premise of Old World social systems. This sudden and impressive surplus of carrying capacity shattered that premise. In a habitat that now seemed limitless, life could be lived abundantly. The new premise of limitlessness spawned new beliefs, new human relationships, and new behavior. Learning was advanced, and a growing fraction of the population became literate. There was a sufficient per capita increment of leisure to permit more exercise of ingenuity than ever before. Technology progressed, and technological advancement came to be the common meaning of the word “progress.”

...

Most of the people who were fortunate enough to live in that age misconstrued their good fortune. Characteristics of their world and their lives, due to a “limitlessness” that had to be of limited duration, were imagined to be permanent. The people of the Age of Exuberance looked back on the dismal lives of their forebears and pitied them for their “unrealistic” notions about the world, themselves, and the way human beings were meant to live. Instead of recognizing that reality itself had actually changed—and would eventually change again—they congratulated themselves for outgrowing the “superstitions” of ancestors who had seen a different world so differently.

From the European perspective, the world suddenly opened up, and the stories of Solomon Kane focus on those empty spaces in the map, where any kind of wonder (or horror) might still dwell. But this also suggests something of the nature of our Wanderer, as well. Europe, at the time, must have seemed like hell. People died of old age in their 30’s and 40’s. The Black Death struck a few times during the span of Kane’s wanderings, and famine, war, torture and violent death marked regular parts of life. When Europeans encountered American Indians, they marveled that people could look so strong, healthy, tall, long-lived or clean. Your average European had never taken a bath in his life; many Indian tribes positively preened over their appearances. Charles Mann provides a stark contrast between the two in his descriptions in 1491, a book which simply demolishes many of our misconceptions about pre-Columbian Indian life.

In short, Solomon Kane wanders because he cannot find his place in overpopulated, polluted Europe. Most of the early colonists seem driven by the same desire: to escape a life of misery and squalor in Europe.

How does this connect with someone like me, trying to rewild, a process that positively despises wanderlust and preaches the importance of, as Kirkpatrick Sale used the term, querencia?[2] As the quote above suggests, Kane’s wanderings, pushing him ever over the next frontier, make him a prototypical American. In our national mythology, we value the frontier spirit and the wanderer. We make him a hero, like Solomon Kane. Simply repudiating this will do us little good; that myth strikes too deep into our mythology and psyche at this point. Instead, we need to see it through and reconcile that idea, creating a new mythology. My proposition simply insists that our story has not finished. Yes, when you see your home destroyed, you wander. But wandering must remain a temporary state. You wander to find a new home. So Solomon’s story did not properly finish. I think you can see a hint of it in the last Kane story, Robert E. Howard’s poem, “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming”, but at the poem’s end, the Wanderer finds that he still cannot rest in his beloved Devonshire. He still has no connection to the land of his birth; he may remember it fondly, but it has never become his home. So his wanderings begin again, and will continue on. Kane never knows what drives him, but ultimately, the drive comes from having no land to call his own.

That wanderlust comes from Kane’s mythic core as the prototypical American, because the American experience has come from that wandering. Europeans migrated to the New World to escape the increasing horrors of the Old, but they brought with them such prejudices and hatreds that they could not become native,[3] and so, though we’ve lived here now for five centuries, we still look to the frontiersman and the wanderer as our heroes, because we still haven’t come home.

For a short time in my youth, I live in Virginia, near Jamestown, but we’ve begun rewilding to western Pennsylvania. That journey illustrates not only our own personal and family journey, but in some way echoes a good deal of the American experience, and the American mythology that we’ve grown up in. The campaign begins with Jamestown and the lost colony of Roanoke, with Virginia Dare and the beginnings of English life on Turtle Island, but it quickly draws the heroes into the interior of the deep Virginia Wilderness. This follows the path of many of the Solomon Kane stories, but it also draws the story through our own lives personally, though our national mythology, and ultimately brings them to the important places of our own locale: the Elder Peaks, the Serpent Mound, the Place of the Ponkies, the Three Rivers. The heroes begin as wanderers who have lost their homes, seeing them destroyed, laid waste, or turned to ruin; they wander to find a new home, a new place they can connect to. Solomon Kane can begin them along that journey, but the challenge for our heroes will lie in finally closing the loop and completing that story, by finding a new home and becoming native to it.

Sgëno, Portalites! You may know me from the Forgotten Realms campaign I DM, The Crusade. For a long time, I’ve wanted to try out some new systems, particular in some real-world settings, and this Christmas I finally got my hands on one that looks like it will work: The Savage World of Solomon Kane, using Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds system.

You see, I rewild. Earth skills (a.k.a., “primitive skills”) play a huge part in that, but that only gives you a beginning. A huge part of rewilding involves becoming native to a specific place. And that, too, involves a lot of things you might naturally think of, like tracking and hiking and getting in plenty of “dirt time.” But ask any traditional person, and they’ll tell you that the most important things they have that connect them to their family and land come from their traditions, and the stories they tell.

RPGs can do more than simply emulate ritual they can become a ritual discourse. We use songs and stories to resolve questions and harmonize ourselves with the patterns and rhythms around us. Animists recognize how stories act like people, acting in accordance with the local land and the passing seasons like anyone else; they come and go as they please. Hence, why I have so long advocated for an RPG campaign in a real-world setting: so that I could use the RPG to begin the rudimentary foundations of a ritual and mythic discourse, and begin harmonizing with the legends, stories, rhythms and patterns of the land we’ve begun reconnecting with.

This presents a rudimentary and rushed summary; I wrote on this subject far more fully in “The Fifth World Manifesto,” declaring the RPG we still continue working on.

So, that gives me a few goals for this campaign:

1. Help my “tribe” begin to develop some personal myths they can connect through.
2. Use those personal myths to connect them to the myths and legends of our land.
3. See what I can do to weave stories that reflect seasonality and locality, i.e., play “winter stories” in winter, “spring stories” in spring, and so on.
4. Develop my ability to speak with E-Primitive. Robert Anton Wilson explained E-Prime admirably in “Toward Understanding E-Prime,” and David Abram described the ways in which native languages connect them to their place incredibly in Spell of the Sensuous, which I tried to capture some of in my review. So, what some rewilders have dubbed “E-Primitive” combines some of those ideas to try to rehabilitate the English language, and use our language to draw us deeper into relationship with the other-than-human world, rather than alienate us further from it. Breaking that down a bit, when I say I want to develop my ability to speak E-Primitively, I mean:
   1. Don’t use the verb “to be.”
   2. Use more verbs and fewer nouns.
   3. Emphasize synaesthetic description.
5. Rehabilitate my nigh-broken ability to tell stories. This one may not need nearly the explanation as previous points, but it still presses the point that I feel most sharply. I don’t think that I tell stories very well right now, and I desperately want to change that. The only way to do that, as far as I know, involves trying.

So, now you see what I hope to get out of this campaign. Hopefully next my players will write up what they hope to get out of it. The next OOC post will talk about the mythology we’ve started playing with here; the local legends we’ve woven in, as well as the stories of Solomon Kane.

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I

11 May 1610

“Les Sauvages sont véritablement noble,” Jack read from the book’s page. It took him a moment to translate it into English: “the Savages are truly Noble.” He smirked; a clever turn of phrase. Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle France, written just a year before, reached London quickly—as all things reached London quickly. He wrote here of the Mi’kmaq Indians, who could hunt as freely as any nobleman in Europe. The thought of it made Jack’s heart leap. Beyond the seas lay now a whole New World, where the corrupt powers, principalities, thrones and dominions of the Old held no sway—a world where men might live free.

Europe left more behind than it accepted. From the days of ancient Rome, land, honors, titles all passed from eldest son to eldest son. The world they knew had strict limits; it simply did not possess the room needed for such teeming throngs of humanity. Nearly everyone toiled and died in the harsh anonymity of serfdom; of the elite few born into the nobility, only the eldest held onto it. Most became disinherited, and Europe fought constant, brutal wars to give the rest something to do—a meat-grinder in which to dispose of the excess population. The Old World valued human life cheaply. Old men lived forty full years before they expired. Plague, or pox, or famine, or war would always cut life short.

For those like Jack Quick, for whom the Old World offered naught but grinding toil, filth, misery, and early death from either plague, or famine, or murder, or war, or torture, and who possessed some means by which to remove themselves, the New World sounded a clarion call, announcing that life did not have to follow that path. Beyond the seas, a New World waited. Jack closed his book and looked out over the waves. “Where even the savages are noble,” he thought to himself, and chuckled.

“Think you’re so clever, doncha?” a gruff voice sounded behind him.

Jack turned to see the hairy, greasy face of another colonist, his eyes glaring with accusation. “Generally, yes,” Jack smiled.

The man had a friend—two of them. “We know what you runnin’ from, Quick. And Jamestown don’t need people like you.” Jack noted the flash of light as the man pulled a knife. His friends did likewise.

Jack Quick leapt to his feet and unsheathed his longsword, swinging it in a brilliant arc that knocked the dirk from one of the ruffians’ hands. He knew that it would open his side to the other two, but what else could he do? He braced for the cut of cold steel into his skin, but instead heard a clang of metal.

Jack turned, and saw the tall, black figure that had moved between him and his assailants. He wore the somber clothes of a Puritan, and the rangy look of a hardened wanderer. His hair had turned white, but Jack could still see a steel behind his bearing that he did not dare to countenance. He spoke in a gravely voice. “This hardly seems a fair fight,” the Puritan said.

Jack recovered, and stood side-by-side with the tall Puritan against his assailants. “I think this about evens it up, friend.” The two assailants lost their nerve then, and broke away. Jack laughed; his companion did not.

“Oh, aren’t you a humorless fellow?” Jack asked. “Did you see the looks on their faces? Ah, well. But tell me, friend, to whom do I owe my hide?”

“You owe me nothing,” the Puritan replied. “I indulged myself, for the satisfaction of justice. But men call me Solomon Kane.”

“Solomon Kane, eh?” Jack extended his hand. “Jack Quick.” Solomon took his hand. “I’ve seen you about the ship before,” Jack mentioned. “You’re a Puritan, aren’t you? You and your companion, an elderly gentleman…?”

“John White,” Solomon replied. “Yes.”

“John White?” Jack turned the name over aloud. “I’ve heard that name before…”

“I should think,” Solomon said, as he bent over to pick up the book Jack had dropped. He dusted it off and handed it back to him. “You seem to keep at least a modest track of how things go in the New World, so the name of the famed illustrator and once-governor of the colony at Roanoke should sound familiar to you, I should think.”

Over the remaining weeks at sea, Jack became friends with Solomon and John. John told him what had moved an old man like him to take to the seas once more for a final voyage, one he did not expect to survive. Twenty years before, circumstances had forced him to abandon his search for the lost colony. What lingered in the myths of avid adventurers like Jack held a poignant, personal tragedy for John White. He had taken with him his daughter, Eleanor, and her husband, Ananias—and their unborn daughter, his granddaughter, known better as the first English person born of the New World’s soil: Virginia Dare.

Last year, rumors began to circulate about London, rumors of a chief called “Gepanocan,” who held four Englishmen and put them to labor working copper, including a “young maid.” When those rumors reached the aging John White, already all but forgotten, living on the former estates of his erstwhile patron Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland, John’s heart leapt. He sent word to his old friend, Solomon Kane, whom he’d met while they both sailed beneath Sir Richard Grenville, when the first colony at Roanoke failed.

“That is the sad tale,” Solomon said at its conclusion. “Beyond the tales of the lost colony, a man who wishes to know the fate of his daughter, and perhaps see his granddaughter one time before he dies. And what of you, Mr. Quick? Do you have the mettle to see a thing done, without promise of reward, glory, or even recognition—simply because it is the right thing to do?”

“On general principles, no,” Jack answered honestly. “I’m not what you call a good man. But …” his voice dropped, his heart touched by John White’s tragedy. “I will help you find Virginia Dare.”

II

23 July 1610

When the People come of age, their Song sings a dream to them in their sleep, showing them some token, a charm that held the rest of them and would make them a complete adult. When the strange little girl of Dark Water dreamed, though, she dreamt of a be