The Silver Labyrinth

Now that the textbooks in which they appear are out....

Chapter 11, baby!

Check the table of contents

They're listed in the Table of Contents under Arden Ranger, the name they originally appeared under when they were published in Teemings. But I'm assured the acknowledgments list my real name, so that should make Mom happy.

In case you're interested:

Hate Crimes.

A History of Angelo Saxon Wedding Customs.

Monteleone chariot

Zoomable Hi-Resolution Image

Monteleone

The controversy

Bah.

If they are interested in anything except the imagined tourist dollars, I'll eat my hat. They didn't start making noises until the restoration was well under way and the Met realized exactly what it was they had and announced it. That farmer knew he had something or he wouldn't have contacted anyone. Even dinky villages in Italy knew people were collecting old dug up things like crazy around that time. Those two cows probably meant more to the guy then cash would have. Italy's not crawling with cows, you know.

I am usually all for the return of stolen artifacts to their home countries. Most of the Egyptain artifacts scattered across the globe were stolen, and the Egyptians have been really good about loaning out collections for the rest of the world to enjoy, so there's no reason to not return them if they ask for them. In fact, just recently the Egyptians requested that some of their culture's artifacts in other countries be loaned to Egypt for a temporary exhibit. I believe that the British Museum should return the Parthenon Elgin marbles yesterday, and the Greeks should thank them profusely and reimburse at least part of what the Brits put into taking care of them.

But, and this is important, the Monteleone chariot was not stolen. Sure. I'll admit that the Frenchmen that bought it from the farmer should have paid more for it on moral grounds, because they knew more of what the find represented then the farmer. But they did pay for it. The export of the pieces was well within Italian Law at the time it occured. That a law that would have prohibited its legal export was put on the books six years later has no bearing on this case.

If these guys were clambering for it to be returned to the Florence Museum, or one of Italy's other museums, I'd be more willing to believe they were interested in their cultural heritage. I'd be willing to feel for them if they were offering reimbursement of some kind. But they want it back in that remote medieval village that's off the well worn tourist track where hardly anyone is going to be willing to travel for one artifact, awesome though it is. There's likely no one nearby that can even take care of thing, and I'll bet these people have no idea what it takes to maintain something like that chariot. You can't just stick it in a room and go "Ta-da!"

Sure, Monteleone has a few crumbling medieval churches, one excellent Gothic door, and a small lapidary mueseum. They even have a copy of the chariot. But that doesn't make them qualified to maintain the real one. Forget the security the thing needs to have on it.

Yes, it's part of their cultural heritage. It's also part of the cultural heritage of millions of people of Italian descent world-wide, and they - we - deserve to be able to access it too. Sticking it in a remote village in Umbria is the last thing that needs to happen to it.

The people of Monteleone need to get over themselves. The chariot is in the very best place it can be right where it is.

My vampire poem reminded me of one of my favorite Moments in LARPing from back in the dark ages when I LARPed Vampire. Back before they "unionized" it and formed the national Camarilla gaming group. Ya know, back when it was still fun.

As much as I enjoyed playing the game, some of the best moments came OOC.

The bar crowds that used to hit Denny's on Saturday nights/Sunday morn got used to large groups of oddly dressed people in their midst. But occasionally ya have to hit a 7-11 at 2am in the middle of a game where you've been playing a badass Brujah Sheriff, and you're dressed in leather pants and boots with spurs, and leather bustier and cowboy hat because, hey, your sire was Wyatt Earp, and some smartass frat punk feels compelled to ask if you aren't a little old to be dressing up like that, and well, you never really got out of character just to run in for cigs, and the guy behind the counter is used to your group, so you get right in the face of some college boy who could hurt you if he wanted to and tell him to learn some fucking manners before another of his betters comes along and does it for him, and his buddy finds it hilarious and a little hot that a short busty woman dressed like a gothic cowgirl just scared the crap out of his friend and he hits on you, so you have to sneer your very best Ventrue like sneer and tell him you don't have time to teach him what he needs to know to ride this ride or to explain to the coroner how a person can die of embarrassment when you laugh at his small dick, then you saunter off to your car and laugh at them before driving off.

And the storyteller who watched it all from your car gives you extra XP for making him laugh.

[The obligatory vampire poem, without which I would lose my Goth card]