Something Completely Different- Gameable Samurai Jack 2

The second half of Gameable Saturday Morning's discussion of Samurai Jack is out now! Our conversation continues with a thorough examination of what characters we would want to play in a roleplaying game, the tonal extremities of the show, and how best to emulate Samurai Jack stories at the table. 
I loved being a guest, and I strongly encourage you to listen through the Gamable Podcast's previous shows. They've gone through every Disney and Pixar movie with the same thoughtful probing.

Episode 44: Samurai Jack

City of Countless Names- Orta Keui p1

Orta Keui (Orta Kui, Ortaköy ,Orta-kioy, Ortakoi, St. Phocas, Messochori)

West of the palaces and gardens of Beshiktash, the pastoral and elegant waterside village of Orta Keui marks Constantinople’s north-easternmost extremity. Its name means “middle village” in Turkish, perhaps because much of the Orta Keui sits in a valley between two great hills north of the shore. A stream runs through the valley right down the center of the village, into the quickening current of the Bosporus. Due to the constriction of the strait, the current runs stronger as it passes Orta Keui than further downstream when it widens toward Stambul and Scutari. Because of this narrow point in the Bosporus, Sultan Abdulmejid and a team of Turkish engineers plan to soon build a bridge in Orta Keui terminating in the village of Beyler Bey to connect the strait’s northern bank to its southern.

Nearly seven miles away, Stambul’s dirty streets are only a memory on Orta Keui’s halcyon shore. The finest flowers in Constantinople grow in the village’s gardens watered by the stream.  Orta Keui’s orchards grow beautiful fruit and its strawberries are in particular demand all over the city.

Back when it was an outpost of the Byzantine capital, the village’s name was St. Phocas for the eponymous monastery and church dedicated to the martyred St. Phocas. These buildings once housed many relics associated with the saint, but only the Church of St. Phocas remains. It’s oddly appropriate that a monastery dedicated to the patron saint of gardeners and sailors once existed in Orta Keui where plentiful flowers and fruits grow and ships passing  to the Black sea get a last glimpse of Constantinople.

At the encouragement of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the mid-1500s, Turks from Constantinople moved to Orti Keui, which had been primarily a Greek village until their arrival. As Constantinople’s metropolis expanded into the hills of the surrounding countryside, the wealthiest denizens of all nations built summer mansions in Orta Keu for relaxing holidays away from noises and smells of city life. The grandest are the waterside mansions built on the Bosporus’s bank called yali’s belonging to Ottoman officials.

The Jews of Orti Keui live gathered together around the Bosporus’s bank, Greeks and Armenians live on the valley slopes further north, and the Turks live through the whole village. Recently, the village gained an influx of Greeks wanting to leave behind Turkish repression in Stambul.  Orta Keui’s heterogeneous population is evidenced by its collection of cemeteries devoted to the departed of each religion, and the close proximity of the Church of St. Phocas, Etz Ahayim Synagogue, and the Orta Keui Mosque near the stream’s outlet into the Bosporus.

In 1854, a devastating city fire incinerated most the buildings in Orta Keui along the Bosporus.  A year later, streets full of half burnt homes and shops still deface Orta Keui’s landscape of mansions and gardens. Merchants sell and conduct business from tents until they can afford to rebuild. Feral dogs scavenge from the ruins. The streets smell of smoke and ash.

City of Countless Names- Kassim Pasha p4

Today, we finish in Kassim Pasha, and next week we move into the center of European life in Constantinople, the neighbohood of Pera.

The Bagnio

Northwest of the Admiralty, behind a second low stone wall, the prison known as the Bagnio securely incarcerates the northern shores population of debtors, thieves and prisoners of war. Inside the cramped enclosure, the prison is a cluster of connected wood and stone dormitories with a windowless central hall running through the buildings. The dark hall as serves a sort of prison bazaar, unscrupulous merchants sell incarcerated a few of the comforts and vices of the outside world, such as wine or raki, by lamp light.

A ball and chain secured around the ankle impedes the movement of most prisoners, but the more notorious criminals, such as the few surviving Janissaries or Greek revolutionaries, live connected by leg chains to a fellow prisoner. The Bagnio’s prisoners come from all nations, but the Russian prisoners of war get the worst treatment. Most of the guards are burly Greeks armed with clubs. They choose which prisoners are chained with which walk freely across the yard. The families of the Bagnio’s inmates often bribe the guard to look favorably on their loved ones and free them of their chains.

The Bagnio used to house three to four-thousand galley slaves (many taken from captured European ships). Roman Aluminat priests from the Genoese settlement in Galata used to visit the slaves to serve however they could.

 In the 1590s, one priest, later canonized as St. Joseph of Leonissa, served the slaves so charitably the Sultan had him arrested and ordered his execution. The guards hung St. Joseph from hooks piercing his right hand and thigh over a smoky fire to slowly suffocate. Before he died, an angel freed Joseph and returned him to Italy.

The Admiralty

At the eastern end of Kassim Pasha’s shore, near the cemetery in Pera known as the Petite Champs De Morts, a small peninsula cuts into the Golden Horn, upon which stands the Admiralty. The Admiralty serves as the headquarters for the Ottoman Ministry of Marine, which administrates the Ottoman Navy, the construction in the Arsenal, and the traffic in its docks. The Kapitan-I Derya or Minister of Marine, Damat Gürcü Halil Rifat Pasha, leads the ministry with the experience earned from his three previous terms serving the Sultan in this position.

This handsome building sits so close to the shoreline that it seems to float in the water when seen from far away. Its bright paint and graceful neoclassical style further distinguish the Admiralty from the industrial maze of Tersane west along the shore. The porticoes on its exterior bear decorations unusual among the Ottomans. Halil Rifat Pasha ordered small gilded eagles and lions to be added as decorations to the exterior’s wooden columns, but Nithamiyeen tradition forbids sculpted images. Some sailors mock the decorations claiming they are dogs and seabirds sent by the Russians.

The upper floor contains naval offices and the residence of the Capitan Pasha. Another richly decorated suite of apartments on the upper floor remain ready at all times for the Sultan’s frequent visits to observe the progress of his navy’s construction.

Something Completely Different- Gameable Samurai Jack!

This past week, I had the honor of appearing as a guest on one of my favorite podcasts: Gameable Saturday Morning. Each week, Kris Newton and a guest dive deep into a different Saturday Morning Cartoon and pick every last morsel fit for the gaming table out of the show. I had the pleasure of talking for 5 hours with the delightful Kris about Samurai Jack. The conversation was rigorous and joyful as we dug into a show ripe for GM theft and PC inspiration.
This episode is part one, where we discuss four episodes from across Samurai Jack’s five seasons.

Episode 43: Samurai Jack

City of Countless Names- Kassim Pasha p3

This week we stick close to the shore as we explore the naval buildings of Kassim Pasha, the largest neighborhood on the norther shore of  Constantinople.

The Arsenal

A mile and a half of dry docks, wet docks, shipyards, ship stores, barracks, and workshops devoted to the maintenance of the Ottoman navy covers the shore of Kassim Pasha. The neighborhood surrounding Kassim Pasha’s docks is called Tersane (from the Italian word “Darsena” meaning “Shipyard) or the Arsenal. Both names refer to the expansive complex of naval buildings. Further inland, the streets around the Arsenal are as rough and filthy as those in Galata with only the occasional handsomely appointed home of an officer to break up the sprawl of warehouses and barracks. Hulls of old ships run aground serve as cheap warehouses for supplies and raw materials.

For most of the year, the Ottoman fleet docks in the Arsenal’s harbor for refit, repair, and resupply. The depth of the water in the harbor safely docks even the largest vessels. Since the mid 1500s, sheer stone walls with a pair of gates protect the naval complex’s secrets from curious land-bound eyes, while a line of guardhouses built on wooden rafts anchored to the shore permit no boats to approach the harbor. Two armed guards keep watch on every raft ready to call out the alarm. The Minster of Marine, the Admiral of the Ottoman Navy, oversees the Arsenal’s activity from the Admiralty building on a promontory southeast of the Arsenal.

After the fall of Constantinople, Sultan Muhammad II needed to replace his ships damaged or destroyed during the siege. In 1455, he started the construction of a shipyard on the northern shore of the Golden Horn. Succeeding Ottoman sultans expanded the Arsenal further. When the Arsenal shipyards overshadowed in number those at Gallipoli, the Ottoman navy changed their headquarters from the harbor in Gallipoli to Constantinople. In those days, the Ottoman navy was the scourge of European shipping and one of the most powerful navies in the world.  Nithamiyeen magicians bound a mighty jinni to the Arsenal’s harbors. The jinni controlled the tides with her magic, moved heavy ships to and from their docks, and guarded the harbor.

As the empire declined so did it’s navy.  The Arsenal’s shipyards produced fewer ships, and those completed were of lesser quality than their contemporaries in other naval powers. Like other powerful jinn, the bindings restraining the Jinni of the Arsenal faded and she disappeared during a city fire in 1792.

Sultan Selim III funded the Arsenal’s modernization in the 1790s, with the help of French engineers. The sultan brought vital improvements to the Arsenal, such as a naval hospital and a magnificent three hundred and fifty foot long dry dock, but after his reign the Arsenal fell behind again. Sultan Abdulmejid continues the modernization of the Arsenal’s facilities. Now faced with war, the sultan pours out the treasuries’ money in the hope of revitalizing his failing navy. Convoys of wood, metal, rope, provisions, and other materials vital to shipmaking pour into the Arsenal, but some suspect valuable components are diverted from their destination by greedy pashas.

City of Countless Names- Kassim Pasha p2

As we move deeper into the naval quarter of Constatinople, Kassim Pasha, we get a closer look at some locations of note.

Piyale Pasha Mosque

After his father-in-law, Sultan Selim II, named him vizier, Admiral Payale Pasha turned his attention to improving Kassim Pasha. He planned a grand canal connecting the quarter’s northern end to the Golden Horn with a mosque at its head. The excavation for the canal never started, but the construction of his mosque finished in 1565 overseen by Sinan, the great Ottoman architect.

Piyale Pasha Mosque sits surrounded by a charming grove of tall cypress trees in the most northern end of Kassim Pasha, near Tatavla. Its distance from the Golden Horn leaves it unknown to most touring sightseers. The neighborhood surrounding it is often referred to as Piyale Pasha after this unusual mosque. Piyale Pasha is the largest mosque north of the Golden Horn, and only one of two in the whole city to have more than a single dome.  Six domes of equal size ordered in two rows and a single tall minaret on the mosque’s northwestern side crown its white rectangular edifice. The mosque had a much larger complex of buildings, but now only the mosque and the octagonal tomb of Piyale Pasha and his family remains.

Inside, two slender pillars rise from the center, supporting the complex of domes. Intricate stain-glassed windows and Iznik tiles with bright blues and oranges give the interior a dazzling beauty.

The irregular absence of the large lunnette (a French term describing their half-moon shape) tiled panels above certain windows tarnishes the sanctity of the mosque. Art collectors and souvenir hunters took most of them, and a few recently appeared in European museums.

Taskizak Shipyard

Taskizak Shipyard, the most innovative and marvelous shipyard in Constantinople, sits near the eastern edge of Has Keui’s shore, just south of Aynalıkavak Palace. Since the days of Sultan Mahmud II’s attempts to modernize the Ottoman navy, Taskızak Shipyard has been a cradle of new methods, machines, and magics. Among its innovations are: Constantinople’s first floating dock (1827), the first steamship built in Constantinople (1830), the first ship’s engine powered by a jinn (1836), the first jinn-powered ship destroyed by a jinn (1836, same day), and the first submersible of the Ottoman Navy, Mahmud II (1840). Although Taskizak’s shipwrights strive to provide the Ottoman navy with superior ships, the Ottoman treasury cannot afford the replication of their complex machines and enchantments on a large scale at this time.

Taskizak’s shipwrights busily work under a veil of secrecy on a new project. A massive metal frame takes shape, and a few French Thaumaturgists have been spotted inspecting the work.

The most famous feature of Taskizak Shipyard is its massive crane with a scaffolding of strange black metal. The shipwrights call it Kara Bazarlu because of its dark sheen and the unnerving way it sometimes seems to move of its own volition.