Last week’s post covered most of the silly names in Power Behind the Throne, and sharp-eyed readers called out a few more in the comments. This week, I’m moving on to the adventure itself.

The first thing I noticed, looking at the adventure content, is that there are an awful lot of minor NPCs with names that probably bear investigation. Like those in last week’s post, they are probably the result of Carl’s sense of humor and his German dictionary. But I don’t want to present another list of names and translations here, so please, feel free to call them out in the comments.

The section on the Major Attractions of Carnival Week includes quite a few jokes, starting with the fake postcard by Paul Bonner on page 23. If you went anywhere fun in the 1980s, you sent picture postcards – there were no selfies, and no socials to post them on – and many postcards were multi-image jobs showing off the main attractions of the seaside town or wherever else you were staying. I thought it would be fun to spoof one of those, as well as an opportunity to illustrate multiple events in a limited space. Luckily, Paul Bonner agreed.

The flying displays at the Great Park are obviously inspired by the RAF’s Red Arrows and other aerobatic display teams. Actually, I’m rather surprised that Carl didn’t give the flying wizards a pun name referencing them directly.

The Black Pool Illuminations are a reference to the English seaside town of Blackpool and its annual festival of lights, which has been running since 1897 and remains the high point of the town’s calendar.

Image from Wikipedia. No challenge to rights holders intended.

Snotball is clearly a reference to football (soccer to American readers). In the first draft the sport used actual Snotlings, whose life among Orcs and Goblins had so inured them to all kinds of cartoonish abuse that being used as a ball didn’t seem that bad to them. Bryan Ansell did not like this at all, telling us that it was basically “tying up a small animal and kicking it to death.” In the final draft, this barbaric version of the game was placed in the distant past, and a ball was used instead. Carl’s writing often had to be toned down in this way.

Carl’s humor shows very clearly in the titles of the various plays and operas: The Barbarian of Seville, The Ring of the Nibble Unger Lied, and A Knight’s Midsummer Dream. I’m sure Rossini, Wagner, and Shakespeare would not have found Carl’s tribute as funny as we did.

The Dwarven Valley Choirs are a reference to Welsh male voice choirs, for which the nation is famed to this day. (In Love Actually, the policeman who makes Hugh Grant jump when he joins in the Christmas carol is Welsh.) According to English prejudices of the time, Wales was populated entirely by coal miners and shepherds, with the former providing an easy satirical jump to Dwarves.

Another instance of Carl sticking one toe over the line of good taste was Guiseppi Pastrami’s Luccinian Liturgical Castrates Choir. This is a clear reference to the 16th-century Italian practice of castrating choirboys to prevent their voices deepening with puberty, and frankly I’m surprised it made it into print.

Finally, there are the Ice Dance Championships. The favorite, an Elf named Torvyll Undean, is a reference to the record-breaking duo Jayne Torville and Christopher Dean, who were the pride of Britain throughout the 1980s. Little-remembered today, they were household names at the time and to make any reference to skating without mentioning them would have been unthinkable.

Image from Wikipedia. No challenge to rights holders intended.

It’s well known that the Purple Hand storyline comes to a screeching halt after the defeat of Karl-Heinz Wasmeier, their supreme leader or Magister Magistri. At the time, we intended that the cult would retreat, regroup, let people think it had been destroyed, and return later under new leadership, but that never had a chance to happen. Something Rotten in Kislev took the campaign in a completely unexpected direction, and Empire in Flames was rushed out to bring the campaign to an end after GW management lost interest.

Heinrich Todbringer was nothing more than a name at the time Power Behind the Throne was written. The intention, as far as I remember it, was to have him come back and possibly become Emperor in the conclusion to the campaign, ushering in a new age in the history of the Empire. I’ll have more to say about that when I cover Empire in Flames.

In general, the major NPCs were set up in such a way as to offer the GM a series of “gotcha” moments to spring on their players. Most of them were so flawed, or so fundamentally unlikeable, that it would be easy for a party to dismiss or offend the very character who was their key to unlocking the next part of the social puzzle – leaving them with some serious groveling to do, or the need to find some other way around the difficulty. The whole adventure is an elaborately-constructed social minefield, as generations of players have discovered.

Much has been made of Golthog, the Ogre mercenary in the “Chaos Strikes by Night” section – especially the fleeting suggestion that he might be used as a replacement PC if needed. That was me. As I said in an earlier post, I had a bee in my bonnet at the time about making Ogres available as player characters, and this was my way of trying to force the issue by stealth. I wanted players to spot this and start demanding to play Ogre characters, so that GW would have to green-light my proposed supplement. It didn’t work.

…and that’s everything I can remember, at least for now. If anything comes up, I’ll drop it in a comment, and if you spotted anything I missed, or if you have any questions, let me have them and I’ll do my best to answer.

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