Munchkin Learners

[Joerg]

12 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

While there remains doubt that the abbot said these words – also paraphrased as "Kill them all; God will know His own", "Kill them all; God will sort his own", or "Kill them all and let God sort them out" – there is little if any doubt that these words captured the spirit of the assault,^[24] and that the Crusaders intended to slaughter the inhabitants

Quoting Wikipedia's article on the Massacre at Beziers.

I can easily see them working in the same manner, sadly.  Why bother waiting for confirmation when you can slaughter everyone and burn the village to the ground?

Often said village (or nomadic clan) will be where they were supported. Chaos slaying doesn't really pay well, unless you create communities who become indebted to you. Killing these at the slightest suspicion soon leaves you starving and out of resources.

[mfbrandi]

On 9/30/2023 at 4:37 PM, Zac said:

[T]he God Learners … as a metaphor for RPG power gamers

Is it, perhaps, time to steer the battleship back to the declared topic?

I am sure we can find connections between that and what we have innocently drifted into. Presumably, the Storm Bull cult is one of Glorantha’s tools for reasserting the “agreed” — by an “Orlanthi all”? — way of doing things: (poly)theism; no chaos; no thoroughgoing application of means–ends rationality; no quibbling. (Adjust/correct the list to taste.) I am guessing that the Storm Bulls would not have been a threat to the Godlearners, but you get the idea.

The Godlearners fall into the quibbling, rule-bending, and rule-breaking camp along with the Chaos fiends and the illuminates — let’s just call them collectively the dissidents. The dissidents periodically get squished, and we are to understand that many PC groups approve of the squishing, but what are we, the players, supposed to make of it? Surely, we are not supposed swallow “there are things mortals were not meant to know” hook, line, and sinker — to accept it without question. Do the Godlearners stand for the wrong-but-tempting (as one might think power gaming is, in some small way), the right-but-dangerous, or something else?

That is my “straight man” duty done: the dull feed line fed. Now you lot can dazzle with your punchlines.

[Ali the Helering]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Often said village (or nomadic clan) will be where they were supported. Chaos slaying doesn't really pay well, unless you create communities who become indebted to you. Killing these at the slightest suspicion soon leaves you starving and out of resources.

Often, but not always.  Also there may well be rootless wanderers as a chaos-killing warband, whose morality I would never bet on!

[g33k]

On 10/4/2023 at 11:52 PM, Joerg said:

Storm Bull's Sense Chaos is not directional, and neither that reliable. Do you see these berserks systematically isolating everybody they suspect of being the source of their Chaos headache, and then parade enough of their detectors past the isolated individual to see whether someone's sense gets tickled? And then there is a 2-3% chance that the Sense Chaos gets fumbled, and a false positive result keeps the subject under surveillance until the next false positive result occurs...

SB is explicitly enjoined to always fight Chaos; it seems to be as absolute as CA's pacifism.
They are not allowed to just say, "huh, can't track this one down, oh well, guess I gotta move on..."

Exactly how that plays out -- and whether it involves atrocities -- is going to be a table-by-table decision.

The Berserk runespell doesn't incline me to think the SB's will often take a rational, careful approach.

@mfbrandi is correct to point out that this can very-easily be (or become) problematic; my response is that we (the players) should notice this, and take steps to handle it before it gets problematic.

Same is self-obviously true for the "psycho man-hating BG," for the "rapey broo," & for some other "of their time" elements.

But:

21 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Is it, perhaps, time to steer the battleship back to the declared topic?

This too is an excellent point!

21 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

... The Godlearners fall into the quibbling, rule-bending, and rule-breaking camp along with the Chaos fiends and the illuminates — let’s just call them collectively the dissidents. The dissidents periodically get squished, and we are to understand that many PC groups approve of the squishing, but what are we, the players, supposed to make of it? Surely, we are not supposed swallow “there are things mortals were not meant to know” hook, line, and sinker — to accept it without question. Do the Godlearners stand for the wrong-but-tempting (as one might think power gaming is, in some small way), the right-but-dangerous, or something else?

...

Honestly, I think the GL's are both "wrong-but-tempting" and "right-but-dangerous."

Chaos and Illumination are each a bit different, in their own ways.  I'm not sure lumping the three of them together serves either the player-base, or the lore.

Chaos is known to have come very close to destroying the entire world.

The GL's didn't do anything similar (that we know of)... but what they did do caused the world itself to react with rejection, revulsion.  So we suspect very strongly that it's Not Good.

"Illumination" is relatively rare, but incredibly widespread, not limited to any cult, any pantheon, any tribe, any nation.  As best we know, "Illuminates" have no agenda (as a unified group), and their main "danger" (in the sense that the GL's and Chaos represent "danger") is their Industrial Strenght Nondetection:  you can't tell if they ARE chaotic/godlearner-ish/etc, but you know Illuminates are infamous for an "accept everything" attitude that can include Chaos.

Edited October 6, 2023 by g33k

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, g33k said:

SB is explicitly enjoined to always fight Chaos; it seems to be as absolute as CA's pacifism.
They are not allowed to just say, "huh, can't track this one down, oh well, guess I gotta move on..."

Exactly how that plays out -- and whether it involves atrocities -- is going to be a table-by-table decision.

Possibly. But sometimes a migraine is just a migraine.

When (almost) all bullies in a band detect Chaos, they are going to try and track down the culprit.

Still the (cursed) Telmori and the Bullies used to be able to enter Boldhome at the same time without bloodshed in the streets.

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Still the (cursed) Telmori and the Bullies used to be able to enter Boldhome at the same time without bloodshed in the streets.

Which is as it should be: what your cult rules tell you you must do and what you actually do should often come apart. This — I reckon — is good for “story” and for player autonomy.

If we have too much of “if you step out of line, then cult, spirits, middle-sized gods, or Cosmos personified her-own-bad-self will slap you down,” then PCs will become automata endlessly repeating cult-approved action for fear of becoming an embarrassing stain on the kilim. We can have myths saying it will happen — and ruins in the desert to point the lesson — but it shouldn’t actually happen in play every time there is an “infringement.”

13 hours ago, g33k said:

The GLs didn’t do anything similar ... but what they did do caused the world itself to react with rejection … So we suspect … that it’s Not Good.

[bold emphasis mine]

But who was to say the world was right? If the Spider has the power, the morality of the matter doesn’t come into it. (Obviously, it sounds better in German.) Arachne can be cruel … and hungry. She is not righteousness personified. The world gives and the world takes away. Who can demand a reason and expect to get one? 😉

[g33k]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

... We can have myths saying it will happen — and ruins in the desert to point the lesson — but it shouldn’t actually happen in play every time there is an “infringement.”

...

Indeed; the historical world demonstrates that such universal consequences are NOT an "every time" sort of thing.
The GL's pursued their own brand of hijinks for centuries before anything so untoward happened!

So surely the PC's will be safe in any piddling little "infringement" they undertake... right?  ...  Right??!?

<GM replies with the Mona Lisa Smile they've been practicing for weeks, since the players came up with this scheme> ... "Let's play to find out what happens."

 

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

...

But who was to say the world was right?

Well, to put it bluntly:  the world.

Two points to notice, here:

First:  this was the moment when the fundamental Godlearner error was proven to be an error.  They had discovered sorcerous (mechanistic) ways to enage with the Runes as insensate tools, amenable to any use, at the whim and will of the sorceror.  No personified "deities" to get in the way, to moralize, to... ethicize? (somehow picturing 80's Big Hair, leotard, leg-warmers here; never before saw the GL's that way!) ...  "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

Having bypassed the Gods and found these tools, these levers of Power... the GL's then presumed it was "insensate tools, young man... all the way down."

And they were proven to be -- disastrously -- wrong.

Second:  when you have one party exploiting and abusing another party, and the victim protests & fights back... you don't call the victim "wrong" for doing so.

When Glorantha proved to be sentient, and said that the GL's were doing something intolerable... then yes, the GL's were doing something intolerable.

And philosophical "but who's to say that's right" questions seem disingenuous, at very best.

Edited October 6, 2023 by g33k

[Akhôrahil]

Some of the Storm Bull rules don’t really make sense and we must imagine that they’re interpreted in creative ways. For instance, you must seek places of Chaos out and attack them, but clearly not all Storm Bulls just always charge off to Dorastor/Snake Pipe Hollow/Larnste’s Footprint/Devil’s March/[Insert local Chaos nest here] to get themselves quickly killed.

In Talastar, Storm Bull is probably the premiere warrior god, and this plain doesn’t work if they have to charge Dorastor all the time as this would mean every Storm Bull initiate’s life would be counted in weeks.

Edited October 6, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[Richard S.]

25 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Some of the Storm Bull rules don’t really make sense and we must imagine that they’re interpreted in creative ways. For instance, you must seek places of Chaos out and attack them, but clearly not all Storm Bulls just always charge off to Dorastor/Snake Pipe Hollow/Larnste’s Footprint/Devil’s March/[Insert local Chaos nest here] to get themselves quickly killed.

In Talastar, Storm Bull is probably the premiere warrior god, and this plain doesn’t work if they have to charge Dorastor all the time as this would mean every Storm Bull initiate’s life would be counted in weeks.

"Initiates are required to investigate any hints or rumors of
Chaotic presence personally and to rouse all local lay members,
if possible, to deal with the threat. They must also report it and,
if they did not kill it, lead the next party to the site." CR:L132 (SB Initiate requirements)

I think this could be interpreted as "destroy it if you're able, if not just be vigilant and help others to do so." And if the chaos presence is already widely known about, like Dorastor or Snake Pipe Hollow, it probably doesn't count as a rumor or hint to be investigated.

"If they learn of or sense the presence of Chaos, they must
leap up, shout for their god, grab their weapons, and set off
to destroy it" CR:L133 (SB Rune Lord restrictions)

I think the same thing goes for the rune lords - if they learn of any new chaos they are required to go deal with it, but established problem spots can be dealt with more rationally. Of course, the priests would probably like it if all the bulls decided to go storm Dorastor one day, but even they're smart enough to know that it probably wouldn't do much good. YGMV.

In any case, Storm Bulls are definitely not munchkins or god learners.

[mfbrandi]

21 minutes ago, g33k said:

“[D]o what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

I always imagined the Godlearners to be the sort of uptight protestant imperialists that Crowley was reacting against.

I get that there is a lot to hate about the Godlearners — I did compare the empire they served to the British Empire, after all — but what I don’t buy is that divine will is correct moral thinking backed up with nukes. If we buy Arachne Solara as a personality — not just a face we have painted on an impersonal universe (which theory I think also has legs) — then I will grant her the nukes, but why the ethics, the unqualified good will (of the cruel, hungry spider–god)? Can we not see reasons for AS to have beef with the Godlearners without bringing morality into it?

Of course, there is the whole “hubris clobbered by Nemesis” thing going on — but arrogance before the gods is practically compulsory, right? Who do these deities think they are? Real-life religions can support traditions of arguing with God, and the game can, too. (I believe it already does.)

[g33k]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I always imagined the Godlearners to be the sort of uptight protestant imperialists that Crowley was reacting against.

I get that there is a lot to hate about the Godlearners — I did compare the empire they served to the British Empire, after all — but what I don’t buy is that divine will is correct moral thinking backed up with nukes. If we buy Arachne Solara as a personality — not just a face we have painted on an impersonal universe (which theory I think also has legs) — then I will grant her the nukes, but why the ethics, the unqualified good will (of the cruel, hungry spider–god)? Can we not see reasons for AS to have beef with the Godlearners without bringing morality into it?

Of course, there is the whole “hubris clobbered by Nemesis” thing going on — but arrogance before the gods is practically compulsory, right? Who do these deities think they are? Real-life religions can support traditions of arguing with God, and the game can, too. (I believe it already does.)

Crowley?  ick.  Crowley was a child of wealth & privilege, born with a silver spoon and sent on to Cambridge.  His pursuits were largely within the "rich idle Englishman" vernacular:  globe-trotting, mountaineering, writing, painting, etc.  Far from rejecting the "imperial" outlook, he founded an entire religion just so he could be in charge of it.  As best I can tell, his only objection to his upbringing was the idea that he might thus bear any sort of responsibility to go with his privilege, any noblesse oblige.  He was all about rejecting all those obligations, but he was happy enough to take all those benefits.  It's like he hit the "spoiled teenage rebellion" years and just stopped growing, emotionally.

Meanwhile, in Glorantha...

I do not think Arachne Solara's web (nor AS herself) is responsible for the downfall of the GL's.  The web is just a bandage on a cosmic Chaos-Wound.  I suspect AS is wholly-involved with it.  After all:  the Chaos-Wound is still there, threatening to rip the world asunder; if it weren't so -- if the Wound were healed -- then the bandage could come off, and all the Gods could loose their strands of the Web, let Time dissolve, and go back to the good ol' Before Times.

But Chaos still oozes in through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of little flaws in the Web, and the Gods are still wholly-involved with the Cosmic Compromise, holding the world together.

Who, then?  Who struck at the GL's?

I think it was Glorantha herself; I know "She" is supposed to be dead, but... well, lots of beings have "died" at some mythological juncture, but are not "dead" in Modern Glorantha.  And something we know about coming back from Death:  it changes the one who has died.  The fact that nobody "sees" or "notices" Glorantha isn't actually evidence...  If there is an "Invisible God" perhaps there is an "Invisible Goddess"?

But, manifestly, Glorantha (the world) is vividly and vibrantly alive.  In my Glorantha (ygwv) this is a pretty strong indication that Glorantha (the entity) is also alive.

Edited October 6, 2023 by g33k

[mfbrandi]

15 hours ago, g33k said:

Crowley?  ick.

I was merely commenting on your use of one of his slogans to characterise the Godlearners. “Sex magick,” “erotocomatose lucidity,” and all that jazz didn’t sound very GL to me. They are surely much more buttoned-up — like AC’s parents.

The Great Beast was surely an influence on RQ and on everybody’s favourite JC author, ALM. Me? I am just waiting for the Jack Parsons rocket cult.

[Rob Darvall]

 

On 10/7/2023 at 1:43 AM, Richard S. said:

"If they learn of or sense the presence of Chaos, they must
leap up, shout for their god, grab their weapons, and set off
to destroy it" CR:L133 (SB Rune Lord restrictions)

Rather answers:

On 10/4/2023 at 8:04 AM, mfbrandi said:

This is the dilemma as I see it:

• we have Gloranthan groups — possible PCs — who think even peaceful Chaos/illuminates must die
• we don’t want PCs to be evil

If you want to play a homicidal lunatic you can, but the system gives the GM the capacity to measure your life expectancy in game weeks, I.E. less than a session.

This also answers (for my table at least) the original question. Yeah you can play a techbro munchkin, but the system is created in ways that will foreshorten that experience if the GM wants their table to be free of it.

This ability to squash arseholes with universe-defined but mechanically vague consequences (Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods, Ralzakark, etc.), serves to keep the setting both nuanced, and remarkably ethno-nationalist free. It's just too hard to munchkin effectively (I've tried), and the setting is too CA hippy to bigot well.

[John Biles]

10 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

 

The Great Beast was surely an influence on RQ and on everybody’s favourite JC author, ALM. Me? I am just waiting for the Jack Parsons rocket cult.

There is a great scenario for Trail of Cthulhu set in the 50s connected to Jack Parsons (with various famous sci-fi authors of the period as PC options)

The God-Learners would have totally tried to build a rocket to get to the Moon, the Stars, the Skydome, etc.

Probably powered by an imprisoned diety.

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by John Biles

[Nell]

On 10/3/2023 at 3:50 PM, g33k said:

Given the resurgence of real-life white-supremicist / neo-nazi / alt-right groups over the past few years, I'm more than a little unhappy with explicitly casting one of the PC'able options explicitly as them.

I understand why you do so -- I think -- but IMHO it's better for us to work on differentiating SB's from KKK/etc, than to just see a first-glance similarity, and jump on that train to help shovel coal...

I'd hate for that crowd to come to Glorantha in droves because we're that sort of game.  That's already happened, a bit, with WHFRP (some of whose communities can get pretty vile). 

And just an insultingly inaccurate analogy the vulgarly uses references to very real atrocities. SBs are violently intolerant bullies, but they aren't genocidally racist or attempting to uphold a racial hierarchy. 

[Nell]

On 10/5/2023 at 3:57 AM, Joerg said:

Often said village (or nomadic clan) will be where they were supported. Chaos slaying doesn't really pay well, unless you create communities who become indebted to you. Killing these at the slightest suspicion soon leaves you starving and out of resources.

This is the lesson. Uroxi are, and have always been really, mafiasos, not Klansmen. 

[mfbrandi]

On 10/9/2023 at 5:48 AM, Nell said:

Uroxi are, and have always been really, mafiasos, not Klansmen.

Thanks for your comments, Nell. As you might imagine, I have come to regret the comparison. Mostly because it triggers people (not you) to justify Storm Bull killings. I should have seen that coming. I am an idiot.

However, because I never learn: isn’t the mafia primarily motivated by money — with a side order of “honour” — while the Storm Bull cult is seemingly more ideologically motivated (the world must be “cleansed” of Chaos — a different rôle for De Niro, perhaps)? The Urox cult is disorganised crime with a mission, the mafia is organised crime with no mission beyond lining it pockets. Roughly right?

As for Storm Bull and racism, I see no reason to think that — for example — the cult has a particular animus toward people of a certain skin colour. I think it probably is safe to say that SB cultists are xenophobic: “[they] will distrust strangers and their odd gods” (Cults of Prax Classic, p. 19) — but that would hardly make them unique in Glorantha. If the Uroxi wanted to slaughter all broos, scorpion men, and ogres, would that make them racist? Technically, I guess it would not, but is that a distinction which matters? Do they — in fact (yeah, I know) — want to do this … on the basis that these peoples are tainted by Chaos at the level of blood or inheritance? I am not going to try to answer that.

Isn’t the (possibly misconceived) “point” of fantasy species — or “races” — that they stand for different tendencies in us? If that is a correct interpretation, then the question becomes whether killing those species — individually or in pogroms — stands for eradicating those tendencies in us (individually, via self-reflection, say) or for eradicating those of us with those tendencies (killing stands for killing). Possibly neither, right? But the question arises. I am not going to try to answer that one, either.

Edited October 10, 2023 by mfbrandi
italics

[Akhôrahil]

On 10/9/2023 at 6:48 AM, Nell said:

This is the lesson. Uroxi are, and have always been really, mafiasos, not Klansmen. 

I always compare them to outlaw bikers, if outlaw bikers were out fighting monsters.

[g33k]

21 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

...

Isn’t the (possibly misconceived) “point” of fantasy species — or “races” — that they stand for different tendencies in us? If that is a correct interpretation, then the question becomes whether killing those species — individually or in pogroms — stands for eradicating those tendencies in us (individually, via self-reflection, say) or for eradicating those of us with those tendencies (killing stands for killing). Possibly neither, right? But the question arises. I am not going to try to answer that one, either.

There are some instances within the fantasy oeuvre where the "fantasy races" (or just fantasy beings) are indeed stand-in's for elements of the self; and fighting with them (or reconciling with them) are about changing the self.  I don't think most of fantasy is this, however; mostly, it's simple adventure-yarns (particularly when it comes to the media that has inspired most RPG's).

(I guess, more broadly, we see the same for all of "speculative fiction," not just "fantasy.")

I don't know of any RPG's where a whole race is meant to be "a part of us we haven't faced" or the like.
Sounds like it'd be at least interesting... if you have any pointers, I'd love to see such (a) game(s)!

Rather explicitly, the OP is talking about the GL's as representing "munchkin" player tendencies; but the GL's are largely not present as "foes."

However:  the leftover GL magic's / items / etc can be made available to the PC's to "munchkinize" with... or to rise above, and say "no, through us they would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine."

Edited October 11, 2023 by g33k

[FlamingCatOfDeath]

On 10/5/2023 at 9:25 AM, mfbrandi said:

The Godlearners fall into the quibbling, rule-bending, and rule-breaking camp along with the Chaos fiends and the illuminates — let’s just call them collectively the dissidents. The dissidents periodically get squished, and we are to understand that many PC groups approve of the squishing, but what are we, the players, supposed to make of it? Surely, we are not supposed swallow “there are things mortals were not meant to know” hook, line, and sinker — to accept it without question. Do the Godlearners stand for the wrong-but-tempting (as one might think power gaming is, in some small way), the right-but-dangerous, or something else?

On 10/1/2023 at 11:30 AM, JRE said:

In my interpretation, and I only talked with Greg a couple of times in the 90s, rather than powergamers in general, they represent the people that confuse the map with the territory, so they believe that because they have a rulebook everything is explained and fixed, and anything with stats can be killed or controlled. 

I think that, in a roundabout way, the latter comment provides the answer to the former comments question. They are the academics who are so attached to their paradigm that they refused to abandon, or even significantly revise it when faced with significant contradictory evidence. They are Einstein refusing to accept quantum mechanics but with much higher stakes at a much grander scale. When Ernalda and Dendera refused to admit identity with each other they didn’t seriously consider that their model of the nature of the gods might be significantly flawed, instead they preformed the goddess swap to prove the interchangeability of earth goddesses with the same runic association and similar domains. When the godsworld started changing outside of heroquests the dominant faction ignored it and “dealt with” the faction that wanted to address the problem. They treated the gods like they are the Cosmic Court when one of the defining feature of the CC is that they were mechanistic and they died because of it. If the gods were like the CC the lords of terror would have won.

Edited October 16, 2023 by FlamingCatOfDeath

[Darius West]

On 10/4/2023 at 7:25 AM, EricW said:

Argrath cheated 🙂

Yes. He's illuminated.  Illumination is indeed cheating.  This was Arkat's fundamental point, and it broke Nysalor/Gbaji.

[EricW]

20 hours ago, Darius West said:

Yes. He's illuminated.  Illumination is indeed cheating.  This was Arkat's fundamental point, and it broke Nysalor/Gbaji.

Argrath was pretty open about his draconic connection and other odd affiliations. I’m surprised the Lunars didn’t try to stir up old ways divisions.

Edited October 14, 2023 by EricW

[Erol of Backford]

On 10/3/2023 at 3:37 PM, mfbrandi said:

as a metaphor for the British Empire, using empiricism and the industrial revolution to make life miserable for the rest of the world

Reading this thread today has helped me make up my mind to purchase Ghosts of Empire... I was going to read the Mitt Romney book next but this must be better....

On 10/3/2023 at 1:19 AM, EricW said:

Every encounter where the PC uses their illicit or forbidden power game skills will increase the attention they attract.  

Somehow this made me think of the character Joerg linked that Martin Laurie posted in the past, "an extreme Humakti by the name of Onslaught in the old days of the Digest who had the charming feature of having iron teeth (much like Richard Kiel in those Moore Bond movies)." 

Not illicit powers so much as a power gamer PC who's lowest attack or parry is his bite which is 160%!? Most attacks and parries are over 200%. I don't know much background but assume he joined the Berserker and was one of his lieutenants?

I don't think we had any character long term who had more than 2-3 stats over 100% gained through normal game experience in many years of gaming. Some came from Yelmali gifts to 100% but I don't recall any over say 110-115. Those were the power PC's in the old days in our campaigns.

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol02/3103.html

On 10/5/2023 at 1:52 AM, Joerg said:

Storm Bull's Sense Chaos is not directional, and neither that reliable. Do you see these berserks systematically isolating everybody they suspect of being the source of their Chaos headache, and then parade enough of their detectors past the isolated individual to see whether someone's sense gets tickled?

The 1999 scenario by Peter Maranci To Kill a Monster seems to have been prescient:

Spoiler

A young Storm Bull worshipper who has mistaken a horribly burned woman for a Chaos monster has been laying a one-man siege to an isolated village. He attempts to enlist the adventurers to aid him in Chaos-killing.

 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Erol of Backford

[Darius West]

On 10/14/2023 at 12:11 PM, EricW said:

Argrath was pretty open about his draconic connection and other odd affiliations. I’m surprised the Lunars didn’t try to stir up old ways divisions.

I'm sure they will try.  

[mfbrandi]

On 10/23/2023 at 2:00 AM, Erol of Backford said:

Reading this thread today has helped me make up my mind to purchase Ghosts of Empire

This is the same Kwasi Kwarteng who was Liz Truss’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), right? So not a man of rock-solid judgement. 😉

If you want a maximally skeptical view of the British Empire, I suspect this won’t be it. Do we get a book report?