GhostDancer

Re: Marco Polo campaign and/or convention game setting. I'd rename this, since it's a team game. How about Pax Mongolica, or The Silk Road, or Xanadu? Another name you like better? I'd start with the game being more historically accurate (no spoilers), then depart greatly, because, Player Characters and such. Pull elements from the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge- In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. An early adventure- recovering a Buddhist temple from Taoists who seized it,* recasting Hundred Eyes, the Taoist martial artist as the opposition leader. Late or last adventure- Marco Polo and company escort the Blue Princess Kököchin to Arghun Khan, in Persia, on his way home to Venice.* I'll continue to read, for more material. What ideas do you have, especially for a theme such as the Hero's Journey? *Historical

1811 After George III was declared insane, the Prince of Wales became Prince Regent of England, and later George IV. 1917 Congress passed the Immigration Act, which restricted Asian immigration, over President Wilson's veto. 1937 FDR proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court justices—"packing" the court. 1994 Byron De La Beckwith was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Medgar Evers, 30 years after the crime in Jackson, Mississippi. 1997 Under international pressure, three of Switzerland's biggest banks created a fund worth 100 million Swiss francs for Holocaust victims and their families.

I am enjoying the very highly rated Netflix series, Marco Polo. I've read fair criticism of it, too, such as this from Fei Fei Wang, Marco Polo's story doesn't have a “theme". Think about it, what did Marco Polo do? What was his impact on Mongolians or his native Italians? If his action doesn't make impact beyond himself, his story wouldn't matter all that much. For a Hero's journey to be successful, his action must benefit people beyond himself (short people with hairy feet destroyed the one ring and bring peace to the world; Luke destroyed emperor Palpatin, bring peace to the world; The Pevensie siblings cross over to Narnia, become the Kings and Queens and bring peace to the land…) There must be a payoff at the end. What is Marco Polo's pay off? Did he bring any European technology to Asian and benefit the people there? No. Did he bring any Asian technology back to Europe and benefit the people back home? No. Did his action changed anything in Mongolian empire? No. He's there, and record shows he had done nothing. ...the original Marco Polo story was never about a hero's journey. Marco Polo was indeed well traveled (it was disputed whether he actually make it to China, let alone the court of Mongol Emperor). And he got bored when he was put in jail, so he start telling stories. The the appeal of his story was never about what he did or his impact to the world. The appeal of his story was what he saw, his experiences in a far away land, and many wonders there. But in a modern world, when that part of the history is very well researched and freely accessible to anyone who's willing to do a google search, that appeal is greatly reduced. What would you do to make the story of Marco Polo a Hero's Journey, with a cast of Player Characters?

1468Johann Gutenberg, German printer and inventor, died. 1870The 15th Amendment (black suffrage) passed. 1913The 16th Amendment, establishing federal income tax, was ratified. 1917The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. 1959Rock singers, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and Big Bopper died in a plane crash. 1995Col. Eileen Collins became the first woman to pilot the space shuttle when the Discovery blasted off. 1998Texas executed Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.

1606Guy Fawkes, a co-conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, was executed. 1865The House of Representatives approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States. 1940The first social security check was issued to Ida Fuller for $22.54. 1958The first U.S. earth satellite, Explorer I, was launched. 1990The first McDonald's opened in Russia.

When Mongolian men wrestle in the Naadam games held annually since Genghis Khan founded the nation in 1206, they wear a particular vest with long sleeves but no shoulder covering and a completely open front exposing the whole of the chest, thereby allowing each wrestler to be certain that his opponent is male. At the end of each match, the winner stretches out his arms to display his chest again, and he slowly waves his arms in the air like a bird, turning for all to see. For the winner it is a victory dance, but it is also a tribute to the greatest female athlete in Mongolian history, a wrestling princess whom no man ever defeated. Ever since she reigned as the wrestling champion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, however, male wrestlers have only wrestled men. The princess, a great-great granddaughter of Genghis Khan, was born about 1260 and is known by several names: Khutulun, Aiyurug, or Aijaruc, all referring to moonlight. In opposition to her cousin, the emperor Khublai Khan, who enjoyed the luxury of the Chinese court, Khutulun rejected the temptations of sedentary civilization and sought to maintain the hardy Mongol way of life. She was a large and powerfully built woman, and she used her size and strength in the three Mongol sports of horsemanship, archery, and wrestling, as well as in the primary Mongol vocation of warfare. Mongolian wrestlers were not paired by size or weight, and the rounds had neither spatial no temporal limits. The two opponents grabbed the other’s arms or waist until one forced the other to the ground. If any part of the body touched the ground, no matter how briefly, that contestant lost. Smaller or less skilled wrestlers might be thrown in a few seconds, but evenly matched wrestlers sometimes locked their arms around each other and pushed other back and forth like two bull elephants for as long as necessary until one competitor dropped. Khutulun grew up with fourteen brothers and seemingly learned from an early age how to confront and beat them. As she grew older, she joined the public competitions and acquired great fame as the wrestler whom no man could throw. She became ever richer by winning horses from defeated opponents, and eventually her herd of ten thousand rivaled the herds of the emperor. Among the Mongols, athletic victory carried a strongly sacred essence, and the champion was considered to be blessed by the spirits. Therefore, Khutulun’s athletic triumphs made her the ideal companion for her father in battle. Her presence, mounted next to him on the battlefield, extended her reputation for past athletic victories into an implied guarantee of dominance on the battlefield. Throughout their lives the two constantly defied the efforts of Khubilai Khan to rule over the tribes of the steppes of western Mongolia and Kazakhstan and over the mountainous regions of western China and Kyrgyzstan. They resisted every army sent against them and kept their homeland permanently free of rule by his Yuan Dynasty. Khutulun followed an unorthodox method of confronting the enemy. She rode to the battlefield at her father’s side, but when she perceived the right moment, in the words of Marco Polo, she would “make a dash at the host of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father; and this she did many a time.” While such deeds of individual bravado held little strategic value, they certainly provoked discord and even panic in the enemy while enhancing her reputation as divinely inspired and blessed. Khutulun was unusual, but not unique. Mongol women rode horses as skillfully as men, often carried a bow and wore a quiver, and they repeatedly appeared in early reports as fighting alongside men. The ability of women to fight successfully in steppe society when they failed to do so in most sedentary civilizations derived, however, from the unique confluence of the horse with the bow and arrow. In armies that relied on infantry and heavy weapons such as swords, lances, pikes, or clubs, men enjoyed major physical advantages over women. Mounted on a horse and armed with a bow and arrows, a trained woman could hold her own against men in battle. Women fared better in combat based on firepower than in hand-to-hand combat. Although archery requires strength, muscular training and discipline prove to be more important than brute force. An archer, no matter how strong, can never substitute mere might for skill in shooting. By contrast, good swordsmanship requires training and practice, but a sufficiently strong person wielding a sword can inflict lethal damage without prior experience. Mongols, like their relatives the Huns and Turks, relied almost exclusively on the bow and arrow in warfare. Because archery depended so much on training, the ability of women to use arrows effectively in war depended upon their developing their skills as young girls. In the pastoral tribes, both boys and girls needed to use the bow and arrow to protect their herds. The boys would take the larger animals, such as camels and cows, farther away to graze, while girls stayed closer to home with the sheep and goats. Since wolves would more likely attack a sheep or goat than a camel or cow, the girls had to be able to defend their animals. With her success in battle and in sports, Khutulun refused to marry unless a man could first defeat her in wrestling. Many men came forward to try, but none succeeded. Her parents became anxious for her to marry. According to Marco Polo, a particularly desirable bachelor prince presented himself around 1280. Most opponents wagered ten horses, or at the most a hundred, to compete against her. This unnamed bachelor wagered a thousand horses, and Khutulun’s parents pleaded with her to take a fall and let him win. An excited crowd gathered for the match. In the desire to please her parents Khutulun agreed to let the prince win. In the rush of competitive excitement as she stepped forward to face her rival, however, her filial resolve to please her parents melted. She grabbed her opponent by the arms, and found him to be more formidable than her usual challengers. He struggled against her, and they pushed this way and that, but she could not submit and allow herself to be thrown. The match continued for an agonizing long time with neither able to dominate. Finally, in a great surge of energy Khutlun threw him to the ground. She not only defeated but humiliated him, and he disappeared, leaving behind the additional thousand horses for her herd but having shattered her parents’ hopes of marrying her to a worthy suitor. Khutulun’s colorful and unusual public life without a husband provoked much speculative gossip not only in her father’s kingdom, but also among chroniclers and envoys of the adjacent Muslim territories. Her political and military enemies who had not been able to defeat her on the battlefield alleged that she maintained an incestuous relationship with her father and thus would take no other man while he lived. Realizing the price her father paid for such malicious propaganda, Khutulun chose a man from among her father’s followers and married him without wrestling him. He was her husband, but he was the man of her choice. Even in submitting to marriage she remained undefeated as a wrestler. Khutulun consistently outperformed her many brothers, on the wrestling field as well as the battlefield. While Qaidu Khan’s other children assisted him as best they could, he increasingly relied on Khutulun for advice as well as for political support. She was unmistakably his favorite child, and according to some accounts, he attempted to name her to be the next khan before his death in 1301. Her brothers resisted. She may not have actually wanted to be monarch as much as to be the chief officer of the army. She placed her political support behind her brother Orus in return for a plan to make her commander over the military. The two maintained a loyal alliance for only a few years, and by 1306 Khutulun, about forty-five years old, was dead under unexplained circumstances that gave rise to stories of diabolic plots against her life. Although mentioned in a variety of Muslim sources as well as in the accounts of Marco Polo, Khutulun almost disappeared into the fog of historic myth. Only by chance was the story of the wrestling princess resurrected in a twisted way in the eighteenth century. In 1710, while writing the first biography of Genghis Khan, the French scholar François Pétis de La Croix published a book of tales and fables combining various Asian literary themes. One of his longest and best stories derived from the history of Khutulun. In his adaptation, however, she bore the title Turandot, meaning “Turkish Daughter,” the nineteen-year-old daughter of Altoun Khan, the Mongol emperor of China. Instead of challenging her suitors in wrestling, Pétis de La Croix had her confront them with three riddles. In his more dramatic version, instead of wagering mere horses, the suitor had to forfeit his life if he failed to answer correctly. Fifty years later, the popular Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi made her story into a drama of a “tigerish woman” of “unrelenting pride.” In a combined effort by two of the greatest literary talents of the era, Friedrich von Schiller translated the play into German as Turandot, Prinzessin von China, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe directed it on the stage in Weimar in 1802. More than a century later, Italian composer Giacomo Puccini was still working on his opera Turandot at the time of his death 1924. Unlike his other operatic heroine, Madame Butterfly who lived and died for the love of a man, Turandot rejected any man whom she deemed inferior to her. His opera became the most famous of the artistic variations of her life’s story. How a culture treats the past often tells us more about the people doing the remembering than about the ones being remembered. In Western culture the tale of Khutulun became a story of a prideful woman finally conquered by love. The Mongols kept her in their memory as a great woman athlete and warrior whose achievements are still remembered today in the open vest and the victory dance of the warrior. Every time a wrestler dresses for a match and every time he dances in victory, they honor the achievements of the greatest female wrestler in Mongolian history. Both the wrestling rituals in Mongolia and the diva on the opera stage preserve two aspects of the life of one of history’s greatest female athletes. CONTRIBUTOR Jack Weatherford Jack Weatherford is a former professor of anthropology at Macalester College and the author of several books, including Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America, The History of Money, and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

1649 King Charles I of England was beheaded. 1933 Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. 1948 Gandhi was assassinated. 1968 North Vietnamese forces launched attacks against the South Vietnamese, beginning the Tet offensive. 1972 British troops opened fire on civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland, sparking the "Bloody Sunday" massacre. 1979 The Iranian civilian government announced that the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini would be allowed to return.

1880Thomas Edison was granted a patent for his incandescent light. 1944The Soviets announced the end of the two-year siege of Leningrad. 1945The Russians liberated Auschwitz concentration camp, where the Nazis had killed over 1.5 million people, including over 1 million Jews. 1951The U.S. Air Force started atomic testing in the Nevada desert. 1967The Apollo I fire killed astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral. 1973Vietnam War peace accords were signed in Paris.

1788The first European settlers landed in Sydney, Australia. 1802Congress passed an act calling for establishment of a library within the US Capitol. 1837Michigan became the 26th state in the United States. 1950India, three years after gaining its independence from the United Kingdom, formally became a republic. 1979Former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller died in New York at age 70. 1988Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera opened on Broadway. It would go on to become the longest-running Broadway show. 1993Vaclav Havel was elected president of the new Czech Republic. 2001A magnitude 7.7 earthquake rocked the Indian state of Gujarat, killing more than 20,000 people. 2004President Hamid Karzai signed the new constitution of Afghanistan.

41Roman emperor, Gaius Caesar, better known as Caligula (meaning Little Boot—he used to wear military boots as a child), was murdered. 1848Gold was first discovered in California, in Sutter's mill. When President Polk announced the news in December, the gold rush began. 1908Robert Baden-Powell organized the first Boy Scout troop in England. 1943The Casablanca Conference with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill concluded. 1965Winston Churchill died in London at age 90. 1972Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi was discovered in Guam, having spent 28 years hiding in the jungle thinking World War II was still going on. 1986Voyager Two space probe passes within 51,000 miles of Uranus. 1993The first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, died. 2003The Department of Homeland Security, under Tom Ridge, became a cabinet department.

1915The electric neon sign was patented in the United States by George Claude of Paris, France. 1953Lucy Ricardo gave birth to baby Ricky on I Love Lucy. More people tuned in to watch the show than the inauguration of President Eisenhower. 1955President Eisenhower okayed the first filming of a news conference for television. 1966Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India. 1981The United States and Iran signed an agreement paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months. 1997Yasser Arafat returned to Hebron for the first time in 30 years, as Israel hands over control of the West Bank city to Palestinians. 2001President Clinton admitted he made false statements under oath about Monica Lewinsky.

1733The first polar bear was exhibited in America, in Boston. 1778Captain James Cook became the first European to visit the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). 1782Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire. 1788The First Fleet, carrying convicts and sheep, arrived in Australia's Botany Bay. 1912The ill-fated Scott expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover Amundsen had been there first. 1943The Nazi siege of Leningrad was broken. 1993All 50 states joined in the observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

1706Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston. 1806James Madison Randolph, the grandson of Thomas Jefferson, became the first child born in the White House. 1893Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate by a group of planters and businessmen. 1945Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. 1977Gary Gilmore became the first person executed in the U.S. since the death penalty was reintroduced. 1991Operation Desert Storm was launched against Iraq. 1998President Clinton became the first sitting U.S. president to testify as a defendant in a criminal or civil suit. 2001Gov. Gray Davis declared a state of emergency concerning California's electricity crisis.

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^ pandemonium

1935Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California. 1964The first government report regarding the dangers of cigarette smoking was issued by the U.S. Surgeon General, Luther Terry. 1973Baseball's American League adopted the "designated hitter" rule which allowed another player to bat for the pitcher. 2002The first al-Qaeda prisoners arrive at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 2003Outgoing Illinois governor George Ryan cleared the state's death row by commuting the sentences of 167 inmates. 2011The Arab Spring movement begins in Tunisia when demonstrators take to the streets to protest chronic unemployment and police brutality.

1540King Henry VIII of England married his 4th wife, Anne of Cleves. 1759George Washington married Martha Custis. 1838Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of the telegraph. 1912New Mexico became the 47th state in the United States. 1919Former president Theodore Roosevelt died in Oyster Bay, N.Y. 1987University of California astronomers first witnessed the birth of a galaxy that contained 1 billion stars. 1994Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan clubbed on leg by men including husband of rival skater Tonya Harding.

1492Muhammad XI, the leader of the last Arab stronghold in Spain, surrendered to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I. 1788Georgia was admitted to the Union as the 4th state. 1839Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre took the first photograph of the Moon. 1905The Russo-Japanese war ended. 1923The African-American town of Rosewood, Fla., was burned by a white mob. 1935The Bruno R. Hauptmann trial began for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby. 1959The first spacecraft to fly by the Moon and also to orbit the Sun, Mechta (Luna 1) was launched by the USSR. 1994Rudolph Giuliani is inaugurated as New York City's mayor.

1170Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by four knights acting under the orders of Henry II. 1845Texas became the 28th state in the United States. 1851The first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) opened in Boston. 1890The last major battle of the Indian Wars, at Wounded Knee Creek, took place with hundreds of Indian men, women, and children massacred. 1937The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect. 1940During World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London. 1989Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia. 1996A peace agreement was signed, ending 36 years of conflict in Guatemala.

1831 Darwin began his voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. 1900 Prohibitionist Carry Nation smashed her first saloon. 1932 Radio City Music Hall in New York City opened. 1945 The World Bank was created with an agreement signed by 28 nations. 1949 The Netherlands transferred sovereignty to Indonesia after more than 300 years of Dutch rule. 1979 The Soviet Union took control of Afghanistan, installing Afghan politician Babrak Karmal as president. 1996 Rwanda's first genocide trial opened for the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis. 2001 The U.S. announced plans to hold Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

1772 Construction of the first schoolhouse west of the Allegheny Mountains was started in Schoenbrunn, Ohio, by Moravian missionaries. 1807 The U.S. Congress passed the Embargo Act. 1864 During the Civil War, Union general William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln saying, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah." 1894 French army officer Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a court-martial. 1989 Playwright Samuel Beckett died at age 83. 2001 Hamid Karzai sworn in as president of Afghanistan. 2010 President Obama officially repealed the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy.

1620The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts. 1891The first basketball game, invented at Springfield College in Massachusetts by James E. Naismith, was played. 1898Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium. 1913The first crossword puzzle was printed in the New York World. 1937Disney's Snow White, the first feature length color and sound cartoon, premiered. 1970Elvis Presley met with president Richard Nixon in the White House. 1988A terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. 1991Eleven of the former Soviet republics form the Commonwealth of Independent States. 1995Palestinians took over the control of the city of Bethlehem.

1790Samuel Slater built the nation's first cotton mill in Pawtucket, R.I. 1803The United States purchased the Louisiana territory from France for $15 million. 1860South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. 1968Author John Steinbeck died at age 66. 1989The United States invaded Panama and installed a new government but failed to capture General Manuel Antonio Noriega. 1996Astronomer Carl Sagan died at age 62.

1732Benjamin Franklin began publishing Poor Richard's Almanac. 1776Thomas Paine published his first American Crisis essay, in which he wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls." 1843Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol." 1946War broke out in Indochina when Ho Chi Minh attacked the French. 1972Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, ending the Apollo program of manned lunar landings. 1984Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997. 1998President Bill Clinton impeached on two counts by the House of Representatives. 2003Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya announced that his country would discontinue development of weapons of mass destruction.

1737Violin maker Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona, Italy. 1787New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 1865Slavery was abolished with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. 1892Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" premiered at St. Petersburg's Maryinksy Theatre. 1944The Supreme Court upheld the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans. 1956Japan was admitted to the United Nations. 1957The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania became the first civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States. 1969The British Parliament abolished the death penalty for murder. 2000George W. Bush received 271 votes in the delayed Electoral College balloting.