Everyone knows it and everyone has known it for a long time.

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It will happen tomorrow, Saturday 28th September, at 9pm Rome Italy time (3pm EST; 2pm CT) on my livestream.
This post will introduce the setting and situation and the player characters too. Because we plan to play for only about an hour tops, I am placing the situation here. it is assumed the characters already know each other and are familiar with the situation, so that (rural internet permitting) we should be able to just start off and get with it. Some players were a little scant on their character’s description, but these will be added when they send them in.
Each player should have his character in front of them, a pencil and eraser to keep track of things like health points, ammunition, or make general notes, and two six-sided dice to roll for various situations or task resolutions they will need to perform.
If you want a copy of the rules, it’s only £5 as a PDF and you can get your copy here and print it (31 pages).
Below, the map showing the area and below that, the situation as our heros find themselves in.
Area Map
The Player Characters
Jack O’Trady (aka Jack O’Trades)
Equipment: Shotgun +10 rounds, .45 Colt +12 rounds, knife, bedroll, satchel, $10
Height: 6’1″ Age: 28
Appearance: sandy blonde hair with a scraggly reddish beard. Twill pants with suspenders and a waist long coat with belt on the outside it that carries his sixgun, ammunition for it, knife and flint and steel kit. He is broad-shouldered and thick at the waist, sure footed.
Bio: A Catholic Irishman, not in search of gold, but freedom. He fled his motherland to escape the ravages of the English – “famine, me arse!” – after politely expressing his disagreement with a couple of the red-coated twats (in Old Testament fashion, anyway). He landed in New York, immediately headed West in search of purpose and modest work and hasn’t stopped for 6 months. Each town showing more disdain for his kind than the last. He’s a simple man, though not as dumb as most. He has a strong will for survival and a moral compass with a needle that could use tightening.
Leroy Gray (aka The Gray Gunner)
Equipment: Winchester rifle +15 rounds, .45 Colt +30 rounds, knife, bedroll, satchel, $10, Horse (named Whiskey)
Height: 6’4″ Age: 27
Apperance: brown hair, moustache, grey overcoat (confederate style)
Bio: Leroy fancies himself a bit of a gunslinger, having survived one duel that was deemed legal but the local sheriff a couple of months earlier and he is partial to wearing the same grey coat he had on during the civil war.
James (aka Just James)
Equipment: Rifle (Winchester) +15 rounds, .45 Colt +24 rounds, knife, bedroll, saddle bags, Horse (named Strider), $10
Height: 5′ 8″ Age: 22
Appearance: beard, the build of someone who is used to riding a horse.
Bio: born in the Shenandoah Valley and Civil War veteran (Confederate). James joined the army around the age of 16 and mustered out sometime before the official surrender at Appomattox. He had grown up around cattle but after the War, decided that rather than continue being a cowboy at home, he would try his luck out west on a ranch.
Habits: Smokes a pipe and appreciates whiskey. He always remembers to say his morning and evening prayers that his mother taught him. He’s an Anglican, but maybe he’ll start to think differently out west. He keeps a clean room but is forgetful on food, which is curious for a man who is in the saddle herding cattle. He can read.
Philo Jurament (NPC)
Equipment: Shotgun +50 rounds, Whinchester +50 rounds, pair of ivory handled converted Colt Dragoons to take ammunition in gun holster (right and Belt (left) +24 rounds in the belt and another 56 in his saddle bags, Tomahawk, Matches, Cigarillos, Saddle bags (with other basic equipment), Horse (named Horse) Bowie knife, bedroll, Small metal container with strong tequila in it, $10
Height: 6′ 2″ Age: 26
Appearance: Sandy-Brown hair, blue eyes, about 6’2″ he wears a sort of trapper jacket. One of his large .44 calibre six-guns on his right hip in its holster, and the other Mexican style in a front/left holster that is cut down so the gun basically looks as if it’s just held by the belt. He also has a bowie knife on the gun belt, on his left side.
Ex-Indian Scout for the Confederate army. He was raised by Apaches after being sold to them as a boy by his own alcoholic father. Generally ornery and laconic. He smokes cigarillos but only a couple a day.
The Situation
It is 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War. The small town of Silver Hole is a mining town with some small silver deposits, on the edge of the frontier. The mine is not large enough to make the town prosperous, but it nevertheless provides enough to make the place tolerable, with all the basic amenities, two hotel/saloons, a local bar, various shops, a regular stage coach that goes to snowdrift falls twice a week, passing by Fort Bellamy and Lookout point, both army outposts that keep the occasional Indian raids at bay in the general area.
Snowdrift Falls is about 400 miles by stage coach and the nearest actual town served by railway. To the North is a mountain range, the south being gradually drier and more despotic and canyon-like. The Takumseh bridge being a case in point, straddles a canyon of over a dozen metres in height and about twice that in length, in order to allow the stage coaches to cross the river on the way to Lookout point, a small army outpost that is basically an extension of Fort Bellamy, a larger and better equipped Army location.
Last night, a very strange situation took place. Emily Lightfoot, the local hat-maker, went to deliver her latest order to the farmhouse of John and Mary McMasters, but when she arrived there, a large rabid bear had broken into the farmhouse and killed some animal in it. Mary managed to run out of the house just in time for Emily to see her and get her aboard her one horse carriage. The two women rushed back to Silver Hole, abandoning John McMasters to his fate, because he had been ill with a fever upstairs.
In the morning, fearing the worst, the ladies had returned with two deputies (Jim and Bob), but when they arrived at the farmhouse, they found John still with a heavy fever upstairs, alive and otherwise unhurt. The main room of the home was half-destroyed and had a large pool of blood and blood spatter in it, where the ladies assumed the mad bear had eaten the buck they had seen it drag in. However, no part of the dead animal, or the bear, could be found. They took John back to Silver Hole in a carriage as he was delirious.
The local doctor, explained worriedly he did not have the skills to cure the man and they should immediately make for Snowdrift falls.
James, being an adept coach driver volunteered to run John to Snowdrift falls, a trip of at least three days even if one rode hard all the way. Leroy Gray also volunteered to ride shotgun in case of bandits or marauding Indians, and as Mary McMasters offered pay, so did Jack O’Trady, a recent arrival, and an irishman to boot, however he had been in town long enough for people to know aside occasionally needing a bit of “hair o’ th’ dog” in the morning, he was a good worker. As far as irishmen go anyway.
When everything was set and the men were about to set off, a young private came thundering into town to say that the Takumseh bridge had been burnt down by a band of Indians and possibly Mexican. There had been a fight with a patrol from Lookout point, and he had barely got away to this side of the bridge, before it collapsed. The route was impassable.
The local old drunk at the saloon where all this was being discussed mumbled something about the old Indian trail of Frozen Tears, that was a more direct route to snowdrift falls but had not been used by anyone in living memory as far as anyone knew. There was a number of legends that no one who tried survived it and that giants lived in the snow-capped mountains in that area. As the conversation as to what to do carried on, a man known as Philo Jurament, an Ex-Scout in the Confederate Army stood up, walked over, and said he had come to Silver Hole via that path and it was passable for a carriage. The saloon went silent as people wondered if he was just lying or if he had actually done it. The man tended to be a loner and kept to himself, he had not long been in town, and other than playing the occasional hand of poker in the saloon he didn’t mix much with the locals. Even so, Mary McMasters was desperate and offered to pay half the man’s salary on the spot, and a more generous half on the delivery of her husband to the doctors in Snowdrift falls. The man accepted and also said the trip could be done in only two days if they pushed hard, as it was only 200 miles or so by going this route. As afternoon was already fast-approaching, the men all decided to leave forthwith.
They left on a covered carriage where John was bundled into a bed in back of it, Jack rode in the back with him to ensure John was as comfortable as could be, and tending to his need for water, food and so on. James and Leroy rode up front, James driving the carriage and Leroy with his rifle across his lap. Philo out front on his grey mottled horse (which he called horse) leading the way to the path no other man had used in living memory.
They had basic equipment, bedrolls, food and water for four days journey, although they expected to be able to make it in two by keeping up a blistering pace throughout.
If you are new here, the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy (which only applies to men) explained by Vox Day has had a lot of controversy around it and has been criticised, lauded and everything in between.
To be fair to Vox, he was always clear that his SSH was essentially a tool for generally understanding and predicting male behaviour in a social context and that it was fractal; which I think is a word that confuses most people and he might have got the point across somewhat better if perhaps less accurately by saying that it was contextual.
The point is that a guy who is generally an Alpha in most social situations might become a Delta in a situation that is totally unfamiliar to him.
The designation of Sigma has also gone viral to the point of almost absurdity, right up to people trying to ban the use of the word in schools.
There is a fairly exhaustive overview of the whole concept done by Sigma Frame that has some overall decent points to make, even if in some respect they miss the point, due to trying to retain a strictly “Christian” (still heretically Churchian to people like me) perspective, when in reality, the SSH is essentially silent on the topic of religion. The archetypes exist in any religious denomination of any religion under the sun you might care to imagine.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make here is that although it has already been noted that completely “pure” versions of each archetype don’t exist, because humans are messy, there is one aspect of the supposed would-be Alphas/Sigmas that I have noted over the years that is essentially the “chink” in their self-deluded armour.
What I mean here is that genuine Alphas, can and do have various weaknesses, and this is not news, everyone does, but there are certain types of “Alphas” that although would indeed be deemed to be alphas by most people, are in fact, mostly playing a role. A role they have convinced themselves of too mind you, to the point where they may even react unconsciously as the supposed Alpha they are; nevertheless, there remains an undercurrent of self-doubt.
I was recently asked by my friend Tony why I had referred to various people as Sigma-Gamma, Alpha-Gamma, or Omega-Gamma, and so on.
It is a difficult concept to get across, but he understood my attempts and defined it beautifully. Referring to two of these people, who may as well be polar opposites in many ways, yet also share some similarities he said:
It’s like they are both somehow performative caricatures of something… like their own, idealized versions of great men
And that hit the nail on the head.
Now, it was not performative in the rather obvious ways that someone trying to impersonate what they think is an Alpha, or whatever, can be. It was a subtler thing, like for example having a rule about never smiling in photographs taken in public. Or, on a recent podcast I saw, a rather well-known podcaster that seems relatively unassuming and calm, as he espouses relatively hardcore traditional values for men and women, stated he simply does not cry pretty much, ever, even when someone close to him dies. And yes, of course, that is generally true of men, but something about the way he said it set off my “this guy is forcing himself to try and be what he thinks the peak manly-man acts like” radar. I am sure he wasn’t lying, that he does not in fact cry, almost ever. Partly it can also be cultural, but there was an element there of insincerity. Some lack of real connection with his deeper self.
Of course, you can just think I am full of shit and just making assumptions without evidence, but that is not what I am doing. I come to these conclusions only after years of observation and confirming my observations to the point I can predict how these people will react, and do so in a way that goes “off-script” for their supposed archetype (which they tend to be very invested in.)
So, while I may not be able to give you a concise explanation with all the evidence, if you had 30 hours to review events that a specific person took over years of time, and then I can predict for you how they would react to X, Y, and Z in ways that contradict what most people would assume would be their reaction based on all the observations, and if I can do that repeatedly with different people claiming Alpha, Sigma (or more rarely Omega status) Or even who have just been labelled as such by others, then I would say that would be some solid evidence. Of course, I can hardly demonstrate that to you in a blog post, but I live that experience, and have been able to transmit it to others who bothered to try to confirm my observation, and they noted my predictions as correct too, so I know it is valid.
The difference, between what I would call a more genuine, or perhaps more “total” Alpha or Sigma, is a deep level of self-knowledge.
You know how Gammas inevitably recon they are anything BUT Gammas? That’s because at heart, the Gamma is the very antithesis of self-knowledge. These are men who avoid the truth about themselves the way most people would avoid pools filled only with radioactive, rabid, giant eels.
Sigmas in general are the ones with the most self-knowledge, which is why the opinions of others generally do not affect them very much, if at all. However, when you note a Sigma that repeatedly tells you how much the opinions of other people don’t affect him (and they generally don’t) but then has an obvious reaction when a specific point of fact about him is pointed out, accurately, mind you, not merely accusatorially, well… he may still, generally speaking be a Sigma, but let’s say he’s not a 100% DOC (Di Origine Controllata – That is, of the true 100% quality). And the same goes if he also pretends to not be affected by anything at all, ever, because pretty much everyone has something that pisses them off.
For me, especially 30 years ago, it was mostly being accused of holding views, or internal concepts that I absolutely did not, by people I generally viewed as at least moderately intelligent and/or capable. Today, 30 years later… eh, I realise the stupidity factor of even moderately intelligent and capable people is still waaaaay higher than my young and optimistic self used to hope for. And then Covid, and then the Ukraine war, and the Gaza genocide, and, and, and… has just made it very clear that the fault in my getting upset at their tragic misjudgment of my character or intentions, was the fault of my very own rose-tinted glasses, wild, wild, optimism about humanity as a whole, and some misguided desire of wanting to believe that, surely, if only I could lay out the facts before them… they too would be able to see…
So, today, if they are too stupid to figure out the basics, I will not waste any time trying to correct them or “help” them. But that is not to say I am unreactive to almost everything.
My daughter tells me enthusiastically about some absolutely trivial thing she did, or found out, or thought of at school, or some observation she makes that is probably obvious to bacteria on Mars on some level, and it could be easy to simply let it wash over me and not respond or react to any of it.
However, doing so would crush her enthusiasm for life, and as such would be a bad thing. I try to put myself in her young mind and think, why would she find this fascinating or interesting, and how did I think about it at her age? And as she is on the cusp of becoming a young woman, the pattern it paints is mostly still rather… well, as man, imagine being in a giant shopping centre of just women’s shoes. And having to follow your female relative around as she waxed poetic about every pair she wanted to try on, and did. It’s kind of like that. About 3rd level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.
So I amuse myself by seeing if I can at all nudge her train of thought into something mildly more interesting.
“Oh you like the lacquer on those? I see… I think lacquer used to be made from tree sap. And possibly bug paste to give it colour.”
“What?!??!”
“Yeah, shiny bug guts under polished resin. Phenomenal stuff.”
“Wait… I don’t believe you, I’m googling it!”
“You know google is just a CIA Psyops to keep the truth from you, right? The truth is not in google. You need to find a book on lacquer printed before 1842. Original only, because they corrupt the digital and new print versions. Like Roald Dahl’s books.”
“I Don’t care about lacquer that much dad, and I don’t care who Rodney Doug was, or whatever.”
“Roald Dahl. He wrote Little Red Riding Hood, the story. You know, where she has a pistol in her knickers.”
“Oh DAD! Little Red Riding Hood didn’t have a pistol in her knickers! I know that story, remember, I used to tell you about it, when I was little.”
“Google it.”
“Oh come on, I…”
“Google it.”
(huffs, types in phone… reads…) “Wait… what?”
“See? Now what pistol do you think it was? Probably a low calibre, right?”
And so you see, terminal brain death narrowly avoided once more.
Of course, that’s my daughter and I love her. 99.99999% of the rest of the planet that tried to subject me to that, I would find an excuse to get away, or possibly murder them and get rid of the body, if they insist.
But my point is that Self-Knowledge is ultimately the total measure of a man. A man that truly, deeply, knows himself for example to be a coward, and say, accepts it, is someone that I have more respect for than one who fancies himself a hero, maybe even acts as one in many situations, but in reality, perhaps even not fully known to what extent even to himself, he is, in fact, a coward.
It’s not that I necessarily think of him as evil, or intentionally deceitful (though some are) it’s just that I can’t take him all that seriously when he clearly is not even familiar with himself at any real depth.
So, when considering the SSH and what generic category a man may fall in more than another, remember that not only is that archetype at least partially and sometimes almost wholly, contextual, but just like there are always more stupid people than you can possibly imagine, there is also just a lot more Gamma fragments in far more people than you imagine. Including… terrifyingly… possibly… yourself.
But the only way to know for sure, friend, is to actually look under the proverbial bed.
Then get under there, armed with a sharp knife in your teeth, swim down to the monsters under there, and face them.
I did not know this, and I am not sure who this guy is or where the data comes from, but if true, he is saying it’s less than 0.5% of humans.
https://youtube.com/shorts/-YROPMit1yw?si=qHHZDF7oKWxRy-iJ
In which case… I guess I am in that category.
I can literally go weeks with about 4 hours sleep even now. About ten years ago I did it for a couple of months or three at a time.
There is impairment and over time it adds up, but if I got 6 hours of decent sleep a night I am considering myself very lucky. I always have been a terrible sleeper unless I am out in the bush like an animal, getting up with the sun and camping out, whatever the weather. Even then, I almost never sleep more than 8 hours unless especially exhausted.
I can definitely go months with only 6 hours sleep. After that I usually do need a day or two of down time, but even then I am not really sleeping more than maybe 8 or ten hours max, but split into different times during the 24 hours, and generally just chilling and vegging out with a TV programme, or a book, or just staring at clouds and contemplating life.
If anyone has decent data sets on this I’d be interested to take a look.
Cool! I’m going to go to Wyoming and become Town Sheriff!
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By G | 29 September 2024 | Posted in Social Commentary