Happy Halloween - A Couple Classic Cartoons

 Happy Halloween! 

 VIDEO: "Trick or Treat (1956)"
Kalle Anka & C:o (8 min.) 

 

 VIDEO: "Lonesome Ghosts | Mickey Mouse and Friends: Classic Shorts | ‪@disneykids‬"
Disney Kids (9 min.)

RPG Saturday: The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh

    The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh was the first of a series of three interconnected adventure modules for first edition AD&D--the other two adventures being Danger at Dunwater and The Final Enemy. The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh was first published by TSR's UK division in 1981.  It was resurrected for 5th Edition D&D, together with Danger at Dunwater and The Final Enemy, and collected together with some additional adventures in a volume entitled Ghosts of Salt Marsh. 

    I probably purchased The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh back in 1981 shortly after it was released. The primary appeal to me was the idea of exploring a haunted house--something very different from the standard delve into abandoned crypts, orc lairs, or fighting giants. In fact, the general setting seems more appropriate for something set in the past few hundred years rather than a Medieval setting.

Adventure Summary 

     The general scenario begins with the character party coming across the sleepy harbor town of Salt Marsh where they hear stories of a haunted mansion atop a seaside cliff outside the town. Either on their own, or with encouragement from the town leaders, the characters will then journey out to the haunted house to explore the house to drive out whatever evil is lurking there.  

  

    In true Scooby-Doo fashion, the mansion is not truly haunted--at least not in the sense that the town folk believe--but is being used by a gang of smugglers who are taking advantage of secret caverns beneath the house that lead to the bottom of the cliff. A ship is used to smuggle goods to just off the coast from the house, and then moved into the caverns by boat before being further distributed and sold off. 

    The characters are intended to explore the house. Unlike a Scooby-Doo mystery, however, there actually are dangerous creatures in and around the house. There is a poisonous snake in a well outside the home, and giant centipedes and large spiders can be encountered in the house; a group of small creatures called stirges lurk in the attic; some animated skeletons are locked in a crypt underneath the house; and, of course, there are the smugglers themselves. And there is the chance of randomly encountering giant rats, goblins, or a few other creatures in addition to those attached to specific locations. Additionally, there is a "prisoner" tied up in one of the bedrooms who actually is an assassin, hired by a merchant who works with the smugglers to infiltrate the adventurer's group to take appropriate action to prevent them from ever escaping the house. 

    And below the house, hidden behind a secret door in the celler, are the tunnels and caverns used by the smugglers, including members of the smuggling gang that are living in the caverns. 

    Whether from prisoners or clues found throughout the house, the characters will learn of the smuggling and the system to signal between the house and the smuggler's ship. This gives the characters the opportunity to then attempt to sneak onto the smuggler's ship and apprehend the leader of the gang and capture the ship and collect a generous reward from a grateful town council (or abscond with the ship and its cargo). 

     Aboard the ship, however, the characters will learn that the gang has not just been smuggling goods to bypass tariffs and taxes, but have been selling weapons to a colony of lizard men that have recently moved into the area. The adventure is continued in the next adventure, Danger at Dunwater. 

Influence

     The general scenario--the haunted house atop a cliff, hidden caverns down to the sea, and smugglers--may see familiar to those of you who were fans of the Hardy Boys mysteries as it is the basic premise used in the second Hardy Boys' adventure, The House On The Cliff. This was particularly apparent to me when I read the original 1927 edition of the book which emphasized the aspect of the house being haunted and decrepit, and I used some of the descriptions from the book when I last ran the D&D adventure. 

Additional Thoughts 

     This is a great adventure for low level characters (levels 1-3) and one of my favorites to run as a Dungeon Master. It is not too long and has a mixture of mystery and action. It also splits neatly into two parts (the house and the ship) so that it can be easily played over multiple evenings. The town can be used as a base of operations for additional adventures--something that naturally results if you use all three adventures in the original trilogy or use the adventures in the Ghosts of Salt Marsh book.

    I will note that the adventure as published in the Ghosts of Salt Marsh is not too different from the original 1981 adventure. The basic scenario is the same, although some of the monsters have been changed and few new surprises have been added. 

    When I purchased The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh in the 1980s, I did not get the follow up adventures. It may have been because I never saw them or lack of cash--I don't remember. The result is that the follow up adventure created by my friends was much different than that envisioned by the authors. The adventurers, as noted above, will discover on the ship that the smugglers have been selling weapons to the lizard men. If you continue with Danger at Dunwater, you will discover that the lizard men are mostly peaceful, but are under threat from yet a third group of creatures; which is why they need the weapons. Thus, in the final of the trilogy of adventures, The Final Enemy, the characters, the townsfolk and the lizard men all unite to fight this common enemy. 

    But my friends and I didn't know any of that. So we created our own follow up adventure where the lizard men were the enemy, gaining strength in order to attack the settlement at Salt Marsh, and it was up to our characters to stop it.  

    The original adventure booklet can still be found for sale here and there for exorbitant prices. If you don't need an original, you can purchase a PDF copy and/or a print-on-demand copy from DriveThru RPG. Internet Archive also has a PDF of it that you can download.

     If you are playing 5th Edition, you will probably want to track down a copy of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book (which is apparently out of print, although it is available to purchase in electronic form if you subscribe to D&D Beyond).  

    Additional resources--maps and suggestions for running the adventure--are available from the DM's Guild.

VIDEO: The Future Holds No Place For Ordinary People

Ben Shapiro's video discusses how horses were replaced by tractors, cars, trucks and various engines and motors; and suggests that the coming AI (and robotics) revolution will make most people irrelevant. The horses that remain primarily are used for recreation, which begs the question of whether that will be the fate of humanity absent divine intervention. The host suggest that the difference between the horse and people are that people can have an ownership interest (shares) in the new technology, but in reality what proportion of the population will be in that position? Or will the only "ordinary people" that are allowed to remain be only those for the amusement and recreation of the elites?

We seem headed toward a society similar to that predicted by Isaac Asimov in his novel, The Naked Sun--a world where AI and robotics have replaced all but a small number of elites.  The question is whether the top elites let the population naturally reduce itself, or work to speed up the process. 

 VIDEO: "You Are The Next Horse"
David Shapiro (11 min.)

What's Going On In The World's Oldest Black Republic

In a move that threatens Leftist cash flows, El Salvador has deployed thousands of troops to Haiti. Ostensibly, the operation is to rescue four El Salvadorian air force technicians believed to have been captured by Haiti's criminal gangs (assuming that the gangs haven't killed and eaten them), the host of this video sees it as part of a greater strategy of allying with Latin American governments to confront the drug cartels.   

VIDEO: "Haiti's Gangs Just Made a Huge Mistake"
Cappy Army (20 min.)

Diversity + Proximity: "South African farmer shot, had ears hacked off and almost castrated by barbaric robbers"

The New York Post reports that Donovan Marx, a white South African farmer, "had his ears hacked off by 'exceptionally brutal' robbers who had already shot and stabbed him — and even planned to castrate him, according to reports." Except, as you read the article, there is no indication that it was a robbery, but appears to simply have been pure terrorism:

    Two barbarians stormed into one of his barns soon after his wife, Louise, left, shooting Marx in the back and stabbing him in the leg to stop him from fleeing.

    As he collapsed in a pool of blood, they held him down and hacked off his ears — chopping them into pieces to make it harder for them to be sewn back on later, according to a neighbor and friend.

    “They also tried to cut off [Donovan’s] genitals but luckily a worker showed up and the [robbers] then made their getaway taking Donovan’s farm pick-up to escape,” the neighbor wrote online.

    The torturous duo fled the scene without taking any of the farmer’s possessions in what the leader of South Africa’s right-wing Freedom Front Plus party called an “exceptionally brutal” attack. 

The article notes that "[a]uthorities have not made any arrests and have not suggested race as a motive."

The Great Conformity

Echoing thoughts expressed byAngelo Codevilla’s seminal 2010 essay America's Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution, the video below discusses how society has fallen under the sway of a parasitic class of elites. From the description:

    Unelected networks of bureaucrats, corporate executives, think tanks, NGOs, and central bankers now shape policy with minimal public oversight, while Western institutions replace meritocracy with ideological conformity. 

    This is why our society feels like it’s run by an HR department: a bureaucratic priesthood of manipulators endlessly managing perception and emotion while producing nothing of substance.  

 VIDEO: "The West Has Become One Giant HR Department"
Liam Out Loud (12 min.)

Weekend Reading #78

Some longer or more involved reading:

•  First up is the latest Weekend Knowledge Dump from Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training. Lots of good links, but here are a handful that caught my attention in particular:
• The Concealed Carry's article on Halloween safety which I linked to yesterday--my thoughts haven't changed overnight.
• You've probably read that you are legally responsible for every bullet you send downrange, and Greg includes a sad example of a man who was found justified to shoot an attacker in his doorway, but then convicted of discharging a firearm into a habitation because a couple of shots struck a couple of houses across the street, earning the man prison time. Unfortunately, his conviction was probably because his attorney failed to raise the issue of transferred self-defense in the trial and didn't request a jury instruction on that issue.
•  An article from Massad Ayoob with tips on shooting micro pistols make a correlation I hadn't thought of before:

    I associate with a lot of genuine gun experts, and don’t know a single one who carries an optic-sighted pistol in their pocket. This is not to say that you can’t effectively carry such a gun concealed; it simply means that pocket carry and to some degree ankle carry are contra-indicated.

    It is not a coincidence that the increase in carry optics and the increased popularity of appendix inside the waistband (AIWB) carry occurred at the same time. When the gun is made higher top-to-butt with an optical sight, the broad expanse of the abdomen is a logical place to carry it, since there is more fabric draping down from the wearer’s chest.

•  On a related topic, Greg linked to an article on an article entitled "Carry at the Office," which begins with the author noting: "There are many options for concealed carry in everyday 'street' clothes, but the work environment limits the options for concealed carry in the office." After discussing how concealed carry entails trade-offs, the author makes another important point:

Active-shooter incidences are extremely rare, so that scenario should not be your primary concern. Rather, consider more common (but still potentially deadly) crimes like the armed mugger in the parking lot or an angry customer who chooses to commit life-threatening violence. 

•  An article discussing the five worst defensive rounds on the market. One of the rounds he mentions is full metal jacket (FMJ) pistol rounds. I would note a caveat with this which is that with certain low power pistols such as the .32 ACP, you can have either expansion but shallow penetration, or penetration but little or no expansion; and if the latter is your choice, you might as well used FMJ.
• The Tactical Professor discusses "Failing The Interview" with the interview being the evaluation that professional criminals make in picking a victim. 
• Greg has linked to the "James Bond Night School Reading List" which contains books to help you learn to be a "competent man" of action. I have to sadly admit that I've only read a handful of the listed books (but I consider each of them to be among the best on their particular craft or skill, which bodes well for the remainder of the books on the list).
• Greg links to a post entitled "A Glaring Evidence Gap" of which he warns: "Only click on this link if you are prepared to dig deep (170 pages deep) into the current prevailing conflicts regarding how best to teach the skill of gunfighting." It appears to address neurological based training systems for teaching shooting, which brings back thoughts of the system that Marcus Wynn (who sadly passed way several years ago) developed. 
• Another piece from this past week from Greg: "A Brief Encounter with Evil." An excerpt:

    He brought his eyes up to meet mine and grinned with a facial expression that exuded pure evil.

    I was a cop for 25 years.  I arrested murderers, rapists, psychopaths, armed robbers, and child molesters.  I encountered my share of evil in my former career.  Few of the seriously bad men I arrested in my police career had a countenance that was even remotely close to that of the young man I encountered on the trail this afternoon.

    His smile was so shockingly hateful that I actually caught myself recoiling slightly away from him.  That wasn’t the reaction I wanted to portray, so I stopped, narrowed my gaze, and gave him stronger eye contact without the normal friendly smile. 

•  For a change of pace, don't forget to check out John Wilder's latest: "It Came From . . . Halloween." John explains:

    Movies are our modern campfire tales.  Yeah, I know, not as good as real campfire tales, but here we are.  Given that, one of the things that humanity has shared around the fire since we first discovered fire was scary stories.  Sure, we heard about the events of the day, but the stories, the old stories that were passed down of tragedy and the supernatural were the ones that the kids really listened to.

    We’re not so different in 2026, we just lack the campfire and are distracted by the shiny objects that get put in front of us, like movies.  Since tomorrow is Halloween, based on publishing date, I thought I’d just run through a list of some of the Halloween movies that I thought were especially good.  As far as rules, I have once big one:  no more than one from a particular creator, otherwise my list would mainly be John Carpenter movies and Alien. 

As a general rule, I don't like horror movies, so I was surprised to see that I'd actually seen the majority of the movies on John's list. And to be clear, some of them are more fun than scary, such as the original Ghostbusters, The Addams Family, and Fright Night.

•  From the New York Post: "The AI jobs bloodbath is grabbing headlines — but there’s a hidden boom unfolding." The author reminds us that while AI is bringing downsides, there is a less discussed upside as well. An excerpt:

    That leaves two possible futures, and both are already underway.

    In one, AI helps established players like Amazon, Walmart and Google do more with fewer people.

    Productivity soars, profits accumulate among the richest, and the rest of us become better-equipped employees. Or we are laid off and hope for a basic income grant of some kind.

    In the other future, AI lowers the cost of expertise so far that one person with an idea can do what used to take a design firm, a factory relationship, a marketing agency and a warehouse to achieve. 

• "The Spy Who Exposed the Secrets of the Black Chamber, One of America’s First Code-Breaking Organizations"--The Smithsonian. The article notes: "In 1931, Herbert O. Yardley published a tell-all book about his experiences leading a covert government agency called the Cipher Bureau."

Long before the creation of the National Security Agency in 1952, the United States opened a top-secret Cipher Bureau known in government circles as the Black Chamber. Founded in 1919, the covert organization spied on American citizens and foreign nations alike. Its employees held no civil service status and were paid in cash from secret payroll accounts. Officially, the Black Chamber didn’t exist until 1931, when its founder, Yardley—bitter after an abrupt dismissal—decided to expose it to the world in a tell-all book titled The American Black Chamber. Eighty-two years before the infamous 2013 security leak by government contractor Edward Snowden, the U.S. was on the precipice of one of its first major intelligence scandals. 

 The surveillance state has existed for a long time. 

Oh, Look--Harvard Admitting More Indian Students

The Washington Free Beacon reports: "Asian-Americans in Harvard’s Incoming Class More Than Double, to 43.2 Percent." Seems part and parcel with the topic of the video below:

VIDEO: "Ben Shapiro Urges Republicans To Dump Young White Men and Focus on Immigrants"
Mark Dice (19 min.)

More Trans Violence

At least it wasn't a killing this time. From Campus Reform: "Trans student cited for assault after saying Republicans ‘should be shot’ at University of Utah." 

    A University of Utah College Republicans member was assaulted while tabling on campus after a trans student said Republicans “should be shot in the street,” video of the Oct. 27 confrontation shows.

    University police identified the student and issued two Class B misdemeanor citations for simple assault and property damage.

    The confrontation began at 12:52 p.m. on Marriott Plaza, where College Republicans were operating a table at the university’s Salt Lake City campus.

    The University of Utah said the individual wiped a College Republicans whiteboard with their hand before arguing with a club member about gender and free speech.

    “The visiting student then assaulted the tabling student, knocking them to the ground and tearing their shirt,” the university stated.

The attacker's name was not mentioned in the article.  

Obama Administration Knew Ilhan Omar Married Her Gay Brother

In yet another example of a conspiracy theory being proven true, the Washington Free Beacon reports: "After Shaming Conservatives for 'Seizing' on 'Rumors,' NYT Finally Concedes Ilhan Omar (Probably) Married Her Brother." The article relates that "[t]he Obama administration 'found evidence suggesting' that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) committed immigration fraud by marrying her brother, the New York Times revealed on Thursday." 

    Federal agents opened an investigation in 2016, the Times reported, and found reason to believe that Omar and Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who obtained a provisional green card following their marriage in 2009, were siblings. Prosecutors declined to pursue the matter because the alleged crime—federal marriage fraud—fell outside the statute of limitations.

    In a dramatic reversal based on the Times's past coverage of allegations, the esteemed publication conceded that "Several aspects of [Omar's] marriage to Mr. Elmi have long been murky." For example, the happy couple's marriage certificate was signed by a Christian minister rather than a Muslim imam—a curious detail that neither Omar nor the minister, Wilecia Harris, has publicly explained.

    This will no doubt come as a shock to loyal Times readers, who were repeatedly assured that Omar did nothing wrong. ...

I doubt it. The New York Times mostly appeals to party apparatchiks who can change their core beliefs on a dime if the party dictates it.

And as if to underline how fraudulent was the marriage, there is this from the New York Post:  "llhan Omar’s alleged brother she wed in ‘sham marriage’ says he is a gay man in academic paper."