The Strategic Review by Winter 1975

Author:Winter 1975
Format: epub

THE STRATEGIC REVIEW WINTER 1975 TSOLYANI NAMES WITHOUT TEARS by M. A. R. Barker Illustration by the author from Empire of the Petal Throne “A High Priest of Durritlamish preparing to offer up sacrifice." He has removed his grey corpse-like face paint as a sign that he now stands before the Reality of Evil, and he has put on the “Drymial. " the surcoat of special devotion and sacrifice. " I hope I may be pardoned for inserting a bit of autobiography, but it will serve to provide a background for what follows below. I began my “wargames” in much the usual way: a little army of World War I toy soldiers lovingly assembled from the magic arsenals of the dime stores. My parents’ emphasis upon classical fairy stories, history, and literature rather spoiled my interest in the realities of present-day warfare, however, and this was reinforced by such books as J. A. Hammerton’s Wonders of the Past (a marvellous set of books for a child — if you want him/her to grow up to be an ancient history freak!). All of this was further influenced by such films as “Thief of Baghdad,” and, before I was consciously aware of it, Tsolyanu seems to have emerged. I have no really conscious recollection of this development. I remember telling my skeptical playmates that those rifles and bayonets were to be spears and swords, and that artillery piece was to be a mangonel from now on. There were very few mediaeval or ancient miniature figures in those days, and I still remember my joy at seeing the first plate-armoured knight at a Woolworth’s toy counter. Somehow, a bit from here and a piece from there, Tsolyanu grew and developed content; her hostile neighbour to the west, Mu’ugalavya, was added by a playmate, and Salarvya to the southeast soon followed. The rest, like Topsy, “just grew.” Sometime in my early teens I began to use woodcarvings of my figures rather than “store-bought” troops, and this went on until I had several hundred of these by the time I completed high school. During this period I also became interested in the ancient civilisations of Central America and in ancient Egypt, and elements from these cultures kept creeping into the mythos. Again, I cannot recall how the Tsolyani language first appeared. When I was quite small our neighbours were Basques, and their children had a built-in secret language in which to exchange confidences — and thus exclude the rest of us, the outsiders. My interest in ancient Egypt led me to take out Sir E. A. Wallis Budge’s First Steps in Egyptian Hieroglyphics (much to the total astonishment of the local librarian) before my twelfth birthday, and my parents were shortly forced to provide a copy of this book for me as a gift on that occasion — and were subsequently “hit” for further books on every such holiday thereafter. High school Spanish and university anthropology and linguistics added further dimensions to this, but the

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