X is for XENOPUS LAEVIS

Xenopus laevis.  A biologist immediately knows the importance of that name, but perhaps many mythopoets do not, as I did not.  However, our fellow rambler and Holmes expert is happy to help you, as he did me, here.

Holmes on Alignment

Alignment Diagram from the Second and Third editions of Holmes.

Above is the alignment diagram from Holmes' rulebook, in which the interstices between four forces produce five alignments.  The only hint of a continuum here are those segments of the alignment that approximate more closely to Neutral.  (This spacial element may help us interpret the table below.)  Holmes' monsters (p.22-34) appear in the chart below according to the alignment he assigned them.  Surprisingly, the majority of these monsters are Neutral.  At times, a number of LE or CE monsters occur in a row, alphabetically.  While I noted below the order in which Holmes indicated a divergence in a population's alignment by 1st or 2nd, in the absence of a percentage breakdown, I assume that a 50/50 division is indicated.  In one case, we are told merely that "some" elves are neutral (less than 25%?) and that the Displacer Beast, though neutral and not listed as belonging on under one or more of the evil alignments, merits the parenthetical comment, "evil."  (Is this an indication of evil tendencies within a broadly Neutral alignment, heralding the complications to come in AD&D? Or is it an unresolved editorial issue, and later percentages between Neutral and evil displacer beasts, exact alignment to be decided, never came to pass?)  Link to document with table below.

Holmes Monsters

Lawful Good	Chaotic Good	Neutral	Lawful Evil	Chaotic Evil
Blink Dogs Dwarf (25%) Pegasi Unicorn	Brass Dragon (2nd) Elf Storm Giant (2nd) Gnome (75%) Wereboar  (2nd) Werebear (2nd) Pixie (2nd)	Bandit (50%) Basilisk Berserker Carrion Crawler Cockatrice Displacer Beast (evil) Djinni Doppleganger (2nd) White Dragon (1st) Black Dragon (2nd) Brass Dragon (1st) Dwarf (75%) Elf ("some neutral") Hill Giant Stone Giant Frost Giant (1st) Fire Giant (1st) Cloud Giant Storm Giant Gnome (25%) Griffon Hippogriff Hydra Lizard Man Wereboar (1st) Wererat (1st) Werebear (1st) Weretiger (1st) Werewolf (1st)  Nixie Owlbear Pixie (1st) Purple Worm Rust Monster Skeleton Stirge Zombie	Bandit (25%) Gargoyle Fire Giant (2nd) Hell Hound Hobgoblin Kobold Wererat (2nd) Manticore Medusa Minotaur Mummy Shadow Spectre Vampire Wight Wraith	Bandit (25%) Bugbear Chimera Doppleganger (1st) White Dragon (2nd) Black Dragon (1st) Red Dragon Ghouls Hill Giant Frost Giant (2nd) Gnoll Goblin Harpy Weretiger (2nd) Werewolf (2nd) Ogre Orc Troglodyte Troll

None: Black Pudding, Fire Beetle, Gelatinous Cube, Giant Ant, Giant Centipede, Giant Rats, Giant Tick, Gray Ooze, Green Slime, Horse, Ochre Jelly, Shrieker, Spiders, Yellow Mold.  (“If the monster’s alignment is not given, it may be assumed to be an unintelligent beast that will attack anyone who comes near,” p.22.)

     Holmes Alignment Diagram from First Edition. If anyone has a bigger scan they can send me, it would be much appreciated.

Holmes and 4e
I am not very familiar with fourth edition D&D, but I note right away a structural similarity between it's alignment system and Holmes.  If we follow widespread assumptions hinted at in D&D materials before 2nd edition, and list the alignments from LG (purportedly the most good) to CE (purportedly the most evil), we see a striking structural (and terminological) similarity.  This is complicated only slightly the fact that Holmes also left a number of monsters without alignment -- one might be tempted to say, unaligned -- thus hinting that perhaps Holmes saw Neutral as a substantive alignment.  However, since intelligent creatures, including humans and superhumans, are unaligned in 4e, it may be that there is still no significant difference, and that Unaligned may simply cover more alignment landscape, but broadly of similar make-up.  I wouldn't be surprised if 4e's simplification of the two-axis, nine alignment system were directly inspired by Holmes.  The five alignment system does not come naturally to me: from experience, I am much more comfortable with either Law-Neutral-Chaos or the more baroque Gygaxian Nine that went forth and conquered the gaming world,  However, setting the five out on a continuum as below, and assuming that there is an indication of movement from most good to least good/most evil (left to right), then that might make more sense to me than four forces (or dimensions) producing only five alignments, rather than nine.  I'd be happy to hear from anyone who has additional information on Holmes and alignment or on alignment in 4e.

Comparison of Alignment Systems

Holmes	Lawful Good	Chaotic Good	Neutral	Lawful Evil	Chaotic Evil
4e	Lawful Good	Good	Unaligned	Evil	Chaotic Evil

Holmes' Underworld: A Prelimary Sortie

Flimsy Excuse for Kate B. Picture, Accepted

One of the things that struck me as I read The Maze of Peril was Holmes' regularly referring to the realms of underground dungeons that are the destination for his adventuring characters as the Underworld -- complete with capitalization and definite article.  This fits with the terminology of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Eric Holmes, 1977-79, where he uses the term, though uncapitalized.  I haven't counted, but I believe that he actually prefers "the Underworld" to the term, "dungeon" in the novella.  I am curious if his adoption of the term simply reflects passages is his source materials (Men & Magic, Monsters & Treasure, The* Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch Wizardry), or if it occurs at a statistically higher rate.  If the latter is the case, and if this usage tracked with his usage in other writings, we would reasonably conclude that the preference in usage here is deliberate, and that in works where he reflects his own judgments rather than summarizing those of others, he prefers to the more game-bound term, dungeon, the traditional term that evokes mythic works and themes.  But to what extent and with what confidence we could assert that Holmes preferred the Underworld to the dungeon, and whether it seemed to be more a matter of his continuing the earlier verbal practices of D&D (pre-AD&D) or more a reflection of his conception of the presumed setting of D&D adventures, could only be asserted through more careful investigation.

I am, of course, not making any claims to any originality in my discovery that Holmes likes to call to our minds the Underworld.  I am, rather like Chesterton, the yachtsman who went off on a voyage, only to land on a shore where was raised a fantastic fane.  Raising my flag of discovery on what is so obviously a foreign shore, I learn that I am merely in Brighton.  Maybe everyone is tired of me fanning on Zenopus, but I'm not done: Note the subtitle of his Archives is Exploring the Underworld of Holmes Basic Dungeons & Dragons, playing on his usage and the other meaning of "underworld."  (When you are not reading Zenopus or Holmes, feel free to take a break with Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which you can read online for free if you don't want to get out to the library.  This isn't the first time I've had occasion to point it out.)

The Implication
With my predilections, which I assume are pretty clearly on display in the name of the blog as well as in various posts, I resonate to Holmes' continually referring to the Underworld.  In the novella, the party of Zereth, Boinger**, Murray, and their various allies and hirelings initially enter the Underworld because it is the legendary treasure house of ancient riches and magic (cf. "The party then enters the underworld, tries to capture the maximum treasure with the minimal risk and escape alive," p.41 in the rulebook.) They return due to complications of their first visit, which leaves them with unfinished business: including not only personal business, but the classic trope of a threat to the surface world uncovered through their adventuring.  But broadly this fits the pattern of characters going to the Underworld because that is where the treasures are.  In the novella, the treasures end up being more varied than the gold and magic that is initially the object of the venturing.

The Paradox
As D&D's identification of the planes evolved, multiple Underworlds took shape: Hell, the Abyss, the Underdark, and so forth.  These Underworlds might have little or nothing to do with a dungeon, depending on the location.  This is so much the case that a child of Moldvay+AD&D such as myself, familiar with a good deal of D&D that is post my formative experiences, had to be have someone actually draw my attention to the dungeon-Underworld connection.  (As I have previously indicated, the pieces by Philotomy, found here and here.)  In retrospect, it seems incredible that someone had to suggest this to me, and that it was not something simply and consciously apparent.  That someone who's academic field is not unrelated to mythology had to have this pointed out to them, is indicative to me of how disconnected what I take to be a relatively unexceptional D&D experience became from the stories of Persephone, Orpheus, Odysseos, and Aeneas.

Underworld as Antithesis
Though the party of adventuring characters is made (at various points) of the diverse races of human, halfling, dwarf, and elf, the Underworld is not the home of any of these races.  This point is driven home by the fact that one of the main characters, Zereth, is a dark elf.  Unlike the Gygaxian dark elves (=drow), Zereth is not an inhabitant of the Underworld (or what Gygax named the Underdark).  Apparently what constitutes a dark elf for Holmes is not moral darkness concomitant with a cosmological unnaturality that has a magical expression in an unnatural skin color (like obsidian, not a mundane dark skin tone like we associate with Africans) that belongs in the Underworld, but merely mundane skin color.  (This reminds me of Peter Griffin in the Family Guy episode who, upon being told he cannot play a paladin and use a helm of disintegration responds, "Oh.  Then I'm a black guuuuy...")  Again, the point is the otherworldliness of the realm of adventure, over against the home of the heroes who, despite all their diversity, belong together as members of the same world, not with the monsters of the Underworld.

The Takeaway
Reading Holmes has reaffirmed and encouraged my decision to always think about any specific dungeon in terms of its relation to the Underworld.  Even if a given dungeon is not strictly a planar location, it is somewhere on the planar continuum: a locale that is not strictly mundane, but at least in the process of crossing down into the Underworld and hence populated with monsters, perils, and treasure that indicate an environment whose characteristics are increasingly uncanny and supernatural as one descends.

Genesis: The Gift of Life by Miguel Covarrubias, 1954.  The Dallas Museum of Art.

* See Zenopus A's comment below.  Also, this image.
** I hope no one actually pronounces the name as Boing-er in their head as they read.  Bo-in-ger or -jer allows one to not be distracted by a silly halfling name.

Am I Just Being a Stickler?

While looking back over the Holmes' edited blue-book for Mythopoeic Monday's Holmesian Meditation, I do not find that it anywhere calls itself Basic D&D, as a title.  It is titled simply, Dungeons & Dragons, and the title Basic seems to have been added to the box of the Basic Set; keeping in mind that the box and rulebook were available separately and that originally Holmes conceived of the idea of a clear, introductory book to D&D (not AD&D, which is inserted everywhere in the book later by Gygax as a marketing move), keeping, as Holmes says in the preface, to the basics.  That makes me want to be a bit of a stickler and not refer to Holmes' book/rules as Basic D&D (which is now freed up to specifically refer to Moldvay's explicitly titled Basic Rulebook), but as Dungeons & Dragons edited by Eric Holmes, or simply, the Holmes edition -- which could be abbreviated happily as D&DH.  Thoughts?  Or am I overlooking something?

Holme Boys

The Sources of Holmes in Fantastical Fiction

Wymondham: Where the Holme Boys Are?

I continue my ruminating on the Holmes rulebook and have begun reading the novel, Maze of Peril.  For the first in my series of Holmesian Meditations, I wanted to draw attention to the literary source material that he explicitly mentions as the notional horizon of his fantasy.  In the section on Dungeon Mastering, we find the following:

The imaginary universe of Dungeons & Dragons obviously lies not too far from the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien's great Lord of the Rings trilogy.  The D&D universe also impinges on the fantasy worlds of Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Gardner F. Fox, classical mythology and any other source of inspiration the Dungeon Master wants to use (41).

Maze of Peril is given a threefold dedication by Holmes:

1. Gary Gygax (singly credited as the game's creator, unlike the rulebook)
2. His sons (and their fellow unnamed players) who invented the characters, and
3. (in order) J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, and L. Sprague de Camp

I first note the congruity between the two: Tolkien is named first among the inspirational luminaries in both works.  For a full exploration of Tolkien in Holmes, see the work of Zenopus Archives. I like to think that Holmes and Tollers have already met in the original, heavenly Green Dragon Inn and hoisted a pint to those of us mythopoets still on our earthly rambles.  (Interestingly enough, Holmes' fiction is much more Lewisian than Tolkienesque in at least one important sense: Crom, Dagon, Mithra, Ammon, Christ, and other figures all inhabit the same story world.  I'm not aware of Holmes ever mentioning Lewis, but maybe Jack would need to sit between them to keep Tolkien from being to annoyed by this approach.)

While Holmes does not name Lovecraft in his edition of the rules, Lovecraft comes to the fore in MoP.  This is not surprising, given Holmes' Lovecraftian enthusiasm which bore fruit in both Dragon Magazine and Deities & Demigods (for which, again, see ZA.  Seriously, the guy is amazing: his blog and his website are major -- as far as I can tell, unequaled -- repositories of JEH scholarship and game aids).  In particular, Dagon and his cultists provide the main antagonists in the Underworld of MoP, introducing the possibility that the local town (Porttown, but not named?) could have been in danger of becoming another Innsmouth, someday.

By the way, assumption of Christian clerics and the Christian religion operating in a pagan fantasy setting is everywhere in MoP.  (Though I cannot find that Fr. Dave of the Blood of Prokopius blog treats the novel anywhere, it is full of material for his religion & RPG reflections.)  Christian names, the sign of the cross, and the invocation of St. Swithin (an alternative spelling for St. Swithun -- an alternative to St. Cuthbert?) abound.

St. Swithun of Winchester - from here.

I can't say much of anything about his naming L. Sprague de Camp, as I believe I have only read his S&S anthology and his Compleat Enchanter.  Others may have more to offer here, although, an obvious connection to be made is that both men were avid fans of Howard and Lovecraft.  Perhaps there is something about de Camp's attempts to combine the zany and the scholarly in his work that attracted Dr. Holmes?  Further, they have in common the effort to keep dead authors' universes alive by penning new (or finishing incomplete) works set within them.

I hope this glimpse into Holmes' inspirations will spur further rambles on my readers' parts, and highlight one direction the D&D pastiche takes in one of its practitioners: in particular, the desire to mash Lovecraft and Tolkien, different as they are, is far from new. That's the installment for this Mythopoeic Monday.  Don't be confused, however: I will produce these Holmesian meditations as they come, so don't look for them to be the regular Monday feature.

Holmes for the Holidays

No, not this Holmes...

This one.

I am far from an authority on Dr. John Eric Holmes' blue rulebook, and in the face of such authorities, perhaps I should keep any thoughts about it to myself.  However, I have been re-reading it lately and struck by various thoughts.  Add to that today's mail: a friend and fellow Rambler -- Capecodmonkey, thanks! -- sent me a copy of Holmes' novel, Maze of Peril.  So perhaps foolhardily, I have decided to adopt the reading of Holmes for this Advent and on this basis offer some occasional Holmesian posts in appreciation.  Be on the lookout!

My Orientation
Just as a reminder, I am a Moldvay kid that quickly went on to AD&D.  (Hey, I was always in the A class at school, so clearly I should be playing Advanced!)  Most of the guys I played with were a little older than me and they were introduced to the game by Holmes, even though we never played his rule-set together.  I remember seeing their box with the red dragon on it and its unfamiliar blue rulebook.  I had to account for yet another D&D book that I wasn't familiar with, and I remember looking it over until I figured out to my satisfaction that it was an earlier version of what I had in my red Basic D&D book.  Ever since then, Holmes' book represented an Ur-D&D to me: somewhat similar, somewhat strangely different and unknown.  And so it has remained, attractive to me in a way the little brown booklets have never quite equaled.  Of my game purchases in the past year, the one I count as the greatest steal was finding the copy above, in good condition, at Half-Price Books, and getting it (Third Edition, Dec. 1979) with my educator's discount for under two bucks.

Hey, in Sarum, blue is the color for Advent.  See how I tied all that together?