One of the fascinating features of a table-top role-playing game is the freedom it gives you to go where you could never go in real life. In Dungeons and Dragons we have taken the campaign under the waves among the water-breathers.
Of course, it is a little daunting to venture into a place where you cannot even breathe. But this is fantasy we are talking about. So, the solution is… magic. A feet-to-fins spell can make you into a mer-person. You can not only swim with the fish, you can be one.
Nemo the water-breathing sea-elf is modeling how fantasy technology can aid with the adventure. Unable to breathe out of the water, Nemo has been able to adventure in the surface world by wearing a sealed sea helmet that provides the water he needs to breathe and keep him properly hydrated. Such a helmet, with an air-producing spell inside it instead of water-making can be used for air-breathers under the sea.
Under the sea things are different in fundamental ways. You don’t walk or tun, you swim. You don’t ride a horse, you are pulled through the water by a hippocanthus. You are not stuck to a two-dimensional plane. You can move easily through the water up and down as well as right and left, forward and back.
Sea captain Elora Bynam, gnome aquamancer, can take air-breathers where they want to go in her submarine. She knows the undersea kingdoms as well as any air-breather in all of the lands.
And, of course, there have to be villains. The arch-lich Orco is a good example (that is, good example of something evil).
This former Mer-king has been infested with dark magic since his death and re-animation. He holds sway now in the evil kingdom of Black Reef. Elora can take you there for a price.
But we had fun playing underwater campaigns in D & D. We spent weeks searching drowned ruins. We even found a sea ghost. Charlotte is a little girl drowned by evil pirates and changed into a ghost. She is bound to a magic jar and can serve as a guide through places where no living being dares go alone.
So we have spent all this game time in the depths of exotic seas. And the ironic thing is, we didn’t even get a little bit wet.
Naked Innocence
To be clear, I will have to write a post called Naked Experience to go with this post. It is a William Blake style of thing. You know, that English Romantic Poet guy who was into drawing naked people even more than me? The writer of Songs of Innocence and Experience? You know, this stuff;
Well, maybe you don’t know. But Blake gave the world the metaphor of the innocent lamb and the tyger of experience (tyger is his spelling, not mine, and it didn’t blow up the spell checker, even though it made the thing unhappy with me again). There is a certain something I have learned about nakedness that I mean to innocently convey. I learned it from anatomy drawing class and spending time with nudists. Naked is not evil. Naked is not pornography. Nakedness, itself, is a very good thing.
At this point the avid clothing-wearers among you are probably saying to yourself, “This guy is nuts! If God had wanted us to be nude, then we wouldn’t have been born with clothes on.” And I must admit, I cannot argue with logic like that.
But on a more serious note, I believe nudity is a fundamentally essential part of the nature of art. After all, pictures of naked people are a central part of what people have been drawing since they first started etching them with charcoal on cavern walls. And all art, including this blog, is about the human experience. What it means to be human. What it feels like to be alive on this Earth and able to feel.
And there is nothing sinister and immoral in drawing nudes to portray that fact. I am trying to show metaphorically the music of existence, the pace, the symmetry, the musical score… It isn’t focused on the private bits, what some call the naughty parts, even when those things are present in the picture. “How dare that naughty Mickey show the naked back end of that butterfly! It ought to have pants on at least!” Yes, I am making a mockery of that outrage itself. I am not a pornographer. These pictures were not created to engender any prurient interests. These pictures are part of Blake’s lamb. They will not bite you. Though blue-nosed people who wish to control what others think may very well bite me for daring to say so.
I have posted a lot of writing and artwork on this blog that I held for the longest time to be completely private and personal. I hardly ever showed any of it to anybody before I posted it here. But I am old. I no longer have secrets. I am capable of telling you everything even though I have never met most of you in real life. And I have no shame. I have become comfortable with emotional and intellectual nudity. And when I am dead, the body I have kept hidden from the world for so long will be no more. It’s just a thought. It’s a naked thought. And it is completely innocent.
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Filed under artists I admire, artwork, commentary, humor, nudes, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as art, literature, nudes, poetry, William Blake