"If anything has happened to one who ever yearned and wished but never hoped, that is a rare pleasure of the soul." - Catullus
I hope that you're all having as good an August Bank Holiday weekend as Epictetus is. Although there were some less happy elements - I was approached about a job which turned out to be in the Falkland Islands and the farmers market ran out of samosas before I got there - most of it was pretty good. There was walking in the dales, the big bouncy woman stopped by to nibble on my biscuits and I even painted some figures. Yes, having had to make some more markers (specifically those reading '3') at short notice the mojo settled on my shoulder and on my soldiers (1) and was inspired to make some progress on the Great War project. So it was with some shock that when retrieving the painting tray from the special drying cupboard under the boiler I discovered that I was in the middle of some Roman legionaries. I forget quite why, but no matter - Romans it is.
As it happens the walk took us in part along the Roman road between Olicana and Virosidum as it rises up out of Langstrothdale. This is precisely where my Romans in Britain rip off of Pony Wars is set so perhaps there is some synchronicity at work. I've been thinking of redoing the rules to make them hex based and perhaps amending the combat rules to steal those in Lion Rampant. Perhaps I'm being sent a signal. Funnily enough I've just been reading Mary Stewart's rather fine trilogy about Merlin and the fort at Olicana plays a role in the development of the plot. Stewart identifies Olicana directly with Ilkley; there is some debate, but I think it would be all too much of a coincidence if they weren't the same place.
As it happens the walk took us in part along the Roman road between Olicana and Virosidum as it rises up out of Langstrothdale. This is precisely where my Romans in Britain rip off of Pony Wars is set so perhaps there is some synchronicity at work. I've been thinking of redoing the rules to make them hex based and perhaps amending the combat rules to steal those in Lion Rampant. Perhaps I'm being sent a signal. Funnily enough I've just been reading Mary Stewart's rather fine trilogy about Merlin and the fort at Olicana plays a role in the development of the plot. Stewart identifies Olicana directly with Ilkley; there is some debate, but I think it would be all too much of a coincidence if they weren't the same place.
(1) I've been listening to Traffic's 'Hole in my Shoe' which uses that very rhyme, presumably because it was written under the influence of drugs
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