Sunday, 24 February 2008

Heir to the Throne

It is with the greatest Pleasure that we announce our Heir, Francis John Joseph Williams (affectionately known as 'Frankie').



After a very long Labour he was Born by emergency caesarean weighing Eight pounds Fourteen and a half ounces, at four minutes past Six in the evening of the Twentieth of February two thousand and Eight.


The Grand Duchess and young Frankie are making good progress after a difficult start. The Grand Duke is feeling exhausted but elated.


We send our grateful Thanks to the representatives of the various Imagi-Nations for their messages of Concern and Goodwill.

P.S. Whilst still on the operating table, the Grand Duchess asked the midwife what would have happened in this situation years ago. The midwife asked if we really wanted to know, and Judy said yes. The midwife told us that the baby would have died, and that the mother usually died too. Then the anaesthetist interrupted saying 'Happy stories!' and began cracking jokes to distract us. How amazing it is to benefit from terrific advances in medicine! As if Frankie is not miracle enough, I am very thankful to the brilliant staff of Nevill Hall hospital that, unlike our Lace Wars analogues, we are all very much alive and healthy, and the worst thing we suffer is being sleep-deprived.

Thursday, 14 February 2008

The Wars of the Himmelbad Succession

After the disastrous intestacy of Alberich III, Himmelbad initially splintered along the following rough lines:



At first, none were overtly hostile to any other, but certain allied tendencies were already apparent. Kitschberg and Friedwald had affinity as Siegfried and Gustav were close as brothers, and Bohesia gravitated towards them under its loyal Warden. Meanwhile Angstlust under Ferdinand exerted significant pressure on the weak Isabella's Beringia, and Saxestadt's Warden remained loyal to Ferdinand, as surprisingly did the Warden of Hanemia, who declared for Ferdinand 'for the good of Alberich the Great'.


Busenwald was initially neutral, as Ruprecht the bastard took some time in assuming control of his inheritance, for reasons we shall discover.


Only Ostwald and Warzenhof remained truly neutral: Ostwald because it was a particularly dense and swampy forested region, and Warzenhof because it seized the chance to be a nexus of trade for the entire kingdom, hoping to become independently wealthy out of all proportion to its size.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Painting

The only painting I'm doing at the moment is varnishing and staining the wooden floor of the cottage extension, but that did not stop me creating my own painting backlog by acquiring a couple more sets of miniatures today.

Another box of Revell 1/72 Prussian Cuirassiers, a box of French Line Infantry, Cossack Cavalry, British Hussars, a round tower, three square towers, plus a couple of HaT miniature sets that I'll catalogue later after the floor is finished.

All in all I'm accumulating a nice waiting list for the old paintbrushes. Baby has still not arrived yet, (and if it's anything like its old man will be two weeks late!), leaving me time to draw tentative maps, design rudimentary family trees, and rough out some details of the various warring states in The War of the Himmelbad Succession. Perfectionism was tending me towards waiting until they were done before posting, but where's the fun in that? I'll post up some basic and rough bits and pieces later on today and tomorrow, to expose the process and record how things evolve.