The Weeping Branches Moon update is live!

[kebechet]

The Weeping Moon update is live at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and Black Phoenix Trading Post!

 

 

WEEPING BRANCHES MOON

The moon glimmers like bright snow, and plum blossoms appear like reflected stars

Ah! The golden mirror of the moon passes overhead as fragrance from the jade chamber fills the garden

 

Graceful, arching branches, heavy with plum and apricot blossoms, sweet ichigo, and a bouquet of peony, anemone, honeysuckle, spider lily, and hydrangea against a backdrop of luminescent, gently glowing lunar oils.

 

 

 

So much thanks to Julie Dillon for illustrating Weeping Branches Moon!

 

Weeping Branches Moon will be live on both sites until April 19, 2011.

 

 

 

Also live: a scent created to benefit the CBLDF's ongoing fight to protect First Amendment rights -

 

COHEN V. CALIFORNIA

In April of 1968, Paul Robert Cohen was arrested for wearing a jacket emblazoned with "Fuck the Draft" inside a Los Angeles County Courthouse. He was convicted of violating California Penal Code § 415, prohibiting "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] offensive conduct," and was sentenced to thirty days imprisonment.

 

The California Court of Appeal upheld the conviction, and the California Supreme Court denied review:

 

On April 26, 1968, the defendant was observed in the Los Angeles County Courthouse in the corridor outside of division 20 of the municipal court wearing a jacket bearing the words 'Fuck the Draft' which were plainly visible. There were women and children present in the corridor. The defendant was arrested. The defendant testified that he wore the jacket knowing that the words were on the jacket as a means of informing the public of the depth of his feelings against the Vietnam War and the draft.

 

In affirming the conviction, California's Court of Appeal held that offensive conduct translates to "behavior which has a tendency to provoke others to acts of violence or to in turn disturb the peace," and that "it was certainly reasonably foreseeable that such conduct might cause others to rise up to commit a violent act against the person of the defendant or attempt to forcibly remove his jacket."

 

However, the US Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari, and the case went off to the highest court in the land. In essence, the Supreme Court had to decide whether or not Cohen's unseemly speech was punishable or protected under the auspices of the First Amendment. The Court held, by a vote of 5–4, that "Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense." Cohen, by way of his "Fuck the Draft" jacket, was not tossing out "fighting words," and was not provoking violence through his sartorial display. The Court denied the State the broad power to censor its citizens in the name of creating a clean, civil society through the censorship of public discourse: "[T]he issue flushed by this case stands out in bold relief. It is whether California can excise, as 'offensive conduct,' one particular scurrilous epithet from the public discourse, either upon the theory . . . that its use is inherently likely to cause violent reaction or upon a more general assertion that the States, acting as guardians of public morality, may properly remove this offensive word from the public vocabulary."

 

The whole of Justice John Marshall Harlan II's closing arguments were eloquent and compelling, but there is one phrase that strikes to the core of what I feel is the essence of the First Amendment:

 

"For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric."

 

One man's vulgarity is another's lyric: black tea, apricot, honey, saffron, apple blossom, tolu balsam, ginger grass, white ginger root, and vetiver.

 

Cohen V CA is a charitable, not-for-profit venture: proceeds from every single bottle go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which works to preserve and protect the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

 

Beanworld art on the Cohen v. CA label courtesy of Larry Marder. Used with permission. Thank you so much, Larry!

 

 

 

Also new this month! -

 

The RPG Series is live!

 

++ THE RPG SERIES

"You all meet at an inn…"

 

Pen and paper role-playing games have been a tremendous influence in my life since my formative years. My parents bought me the magenta D&D boxed set back in 1982, along with the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual. My lifelong passion for fantasy, science fiction, war games, and mythology was well-channeled through RPGs, and I credit playing D&D with helping me sustain my imagination and sense of wonder through adulthood.

 

I played with one particular group through the bulk of my late teens and early 20s, and this series - along with the atmosphere tools that Black Phoenix Trading Post will be introducing - was inspired, specifically, by the time that we spent campaigning together. Our group was somewhat prop-driven in our gaming: we felt that setting a mood was conducive to our style of gameplay. Little things like changes in lighting, minor sound effects, and music made a world of difference, and we found that utilizing miniatures, model railroad scenery, and other tools in order to physically illustrate strategies and provide visual cues was tremendously useful. How much more immersive would it have been if we'd been able to smell the crypt we were crawling through? Or the stench of steel and blood that permeates a warrior's cloak? What do the wizard's spell components smell like? What does winter in the desert smell like? Or spring in a druid's sanctuary?

 

Pen and paper role playing games are, to me, dynamic stories that are propelled by the active participation of many individuals. You can't have a strong storyline without creating characters of some depth. When you create a character, you generally have their personalities, priorities, and history in mind, along with a clear vision of what your character looks and sounds like. But how does she smell? What does the world around her smell like?

 

In most pen and paper fantasy RPGs, three of the primary attributes that you must choose for your character are race, class, and alignment. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's RPG scent series was designed to emulate the character creation process, and are meant to be layered in order to create a character concept. In short: you layer your class, race, and the two fragrances that compose your alignment to construct your character scent. RPGs in all their myriad forms - CRPGs, MMOs, and old school pen and paper - have brought me immeasurable joy. This is my homage. This series is dedicated to my first DMs - my parents - for laughing off the nutter-perpetuated AD&D Satan Scare of the 80's. Thanks for taking the time to play with your little girl. I miss you, and I love you.

 

This series was illustrated by Julie Dillon!

 

+ RACES

In gaming terms, choosing your character's race means you will select which sentient species you would like to belong to.

 

DWARF

Iron filings and chips of stone, Styrian Golding hops, and soot-covered leather.

 

ELF

Pale golden musk, honeycomb, amber, parma violet, hawthorne bark, aspen leaf, forest lily, life everlasting, white moss, and a hint of wild berry.

 

HALF-ELF

White sandalwood, beeswax, white tea leaf, oud, and a hint of sophisticated urban musk.

 

HALFLING

Porridge, kukui nuts, and pastry crumbs.

 

ORC

Field grey courgette musk, roughly cured leather, and vetiver.

 

 

 

+ CLASSES

Class refers to your character's choice of adventuring profession.

 

CLERIC

Rose amber, frankincense, myrrh, champaca flower, Peru balsam, cistus, palisander, cananga, hyssop, and narcissus absolute.

 

FIGHTER

Leather, musk, blood, and steel.

 

MAGE

All mystique and thrumming power: gurjum balsam, Sumatran dragon's blood resin, olibanum, galangal, oleo gum resin, and frankincense.

 

PALADIN

Immaculate white musk, sweet frankincense, bourbon vanilla, white leather, and shining armor.

 

RANGER

Untamed wilderness: buckskin accord with Terebinth pine, Russian birch, black ironwood, elder bark, hay, armoise, juniper, patchouli, galangal root, Spanish moss, and cabreuva.

 

ROGUE

Soft, well-worn black leather, hemp, and rosin.

 

 

 

+ ALIGNMENT

Alignment refers to your character's ethics: which way does his or her moral compass point? There are two aspects to alignment: law vs. chaos, and good vs. evil. Does your character respect authority and venerate tradition? She's likely Lawful. Does she value personal freedom above all else? Chaotic. Does your character give alms to the poor and protect the innocent? He's Good. Is your character of a mercenary bend, willing and eager to step on others to get ahead? Evil. A character that is Neutral (or any combination of Neutral) either finds perfect balance in their worldview, or is apathetic towards the constraints of either good and evil or law and chaos. A lawful neutral character values the letter of the law above any concern for good or evil, and the chaotic neutral character is, generally, driven completely by a desire for absolute freedom. Sometimes they're just nuts.

 

NEUTRAL

A flawless skin musk.

 

LAWFUL

Rigid oak, blue chamomile, rhubarb, and fig leaf.

 

CHAOTIC

A whirling mélange of multicolored musks with wasabi, rooibos, heliotrope, and mastic.

 

GOOD

Shimmering celestial musk with vanilla, white honey, acacia, and sugar cane.

 

EVIL

Smouldering opium tar, tobacco absolute, green tea, black plum, kush, ambergris accord, ambrette seed, and costus root.

 

 

 

Gamers! Please take a moment and join our RPG discussion on the Gazette!

 

 

 

 

This month, Black Phoenix Trading Post is introducing Snow, Glass, Apples soap!

 

She said nothing. Her eyes were black as coal, black as her hair; her lips were redder than blood. She looked up at me and smiled. Her teeth seemed sharp, even then, in the lamplight.

 

"What are you doing away from your room?"

 

"I'm hungry," she said, like any child.

 

It was winter, when fresh food is a dream of warmth and sunlight; but I had strings of whole apples, cored and dried, hanging from the beams of my chamber, and I pulled an apple down for her.

 

"Here."

 

Autumn is the time of drying, of preserving, a time of picking apples, of rendering the goose fat. Winter is the time of hunger, of snow, and of death; and it is the time of the midwinter feast, when we rub the goose-fat into the skin of a whole pig, stuffed with that autumn's apples, then we roast it or spit it, and we prepare to feast upon the crackling.

 

She took the dried apple from me and began to chew it with her sharp yellow teeth.

 

"Is it good?"

 

She nodded. I had always been scared of the little princess, but at that moment I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked her cheek. She looked at me and smiled -- she smiled but rarely -- then she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of Venus, and she drew blood.

 

I began to shriek, from pain and from surprise; but she looked at me and I fell silent.

 

 

Black Phoenix Trading Post is thrilled to present a handcrafted soap inspired by Neil Gaiman's acclaimed short story, Snow, Glass, Apples. The soap was created by the fiercely talented master soaper Brooke Stant, and the label, designed by Kira Butler, includes one of Julie Dillon’s haunting illustrations from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's chapbook of the tale. The soaps are scented with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s 2008 Limited Edition scent, Snow, Glass Apples. In Neil's words, 'It smells like green apples and like sex and vampires, all at the same time. (Actually, it smells like sexy vampire apples.)' Snow, Glass, Apples will be available as long as supplies last.

 

These gloriously luxuriant soaps were created with the finest skin-nurturing ingredients. They are made by hand, from scratch, by Villainess, and are generously scented with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume. Each bar is at least 3.5oz (without any water weight), and are cut 1" thick from a 3" square block of soap. The faces of the bars are smooth and bear unique, undulating, surrealistically beautiful swirls and marbles - rivulets of blood swirling though snow - and the sides are textured and raw, exhibiting the complex landscape of unsculpted handmade soap.

 

As always, no animals were harmed during the creation of this soap, and all products were tested on friends and family.

 

This is a charitable, not-for-profit venture: proceeds from every single set go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which works to preserve and protect the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

 

A million thanks and all our love to Neil, and to Charles Brownstein and his staff at the CBLDF!

 

 

 

In other news, @EmpressPixie set up a great feed that you can subscribe to on twitter (@bpaletsyupdates) that'll keep you posted whenever the BPAL or BPTP etsy sites are updated!

 

 

We are grieved to announce that the Atomic Luau Lounge will be disappearing when next month's lunacy comes down. Any orders placed before the pull date will be honored.

 

 

And that's that!