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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Lemunda = Tiger Lily?




From J.M. Barrie's original Peter Pan novel (1911, courtesy Project Gutenberg):

"Marooners' Rock stood alone in the forbidding waters as if it were itself marooned. 

The boat drew nearer. It was the pirate dinghy, with three figures in her, Smee and Starkey, and the third a captive, no other than Tiger Lily. Her hands and ankles were tied, and she knew what was to be her fate. She was to be left on the rock to perish, an end to one of her race more terrible than death by fire or torture, for is it not written in the book of the tribe that there is no path through water to the happy hunting-ground? Yet her face was impassive; she was the daughter of a chief, she must die as a chief's daughter, it is enough.

They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her mouth. No watch was kept on the ship, it being Hook's boast that the wind of his name guarded the ship for a mile around. Now her fate would help to guard it also. One more wail would go the round in that wind by night. 

In the gloom that they brought with them the two pirates did not see the rock till they crashed into it." 

Compare with Lemunda in Room M (Sea Cave) in the Sample Dungeon:
"The [pirates'] prisoner is a girl, Lemunda the Lovely, whose father is a powerful lord in the city above. Lemunda is a good fighter in her own right and carries a concealed dagger in her girdle, but right now she is bound and gagged. She is lying in the bottom of the second boat, not the one occupied by the pirates. Her family would be very grateful to get her back."

It may just be a coincidence, but in each story the pirate's captive is the daughter of a chief/lord, is a warrior herself (proficient with knife or dagger), and is bound in a rowboat.

In Disney movie of Peter Pan (1953), Marooner's Rock becomes Skull Rock, and Tiger Lily is brought there by Hook and Smee to a location more like a sea cave. I came across the similarities between Lemunda and Tiger Lily, when reading about Skull Rock, which is one predecessor (among many) of the Great Stone Skull (aka Skull Mountain) in the Basic Rulebook.

For the full list of possible Holmes Basic Easter Eggs, see this post on OD&D Discussion.




Hook and Smee take Tiger Lily to Skull Rock

3 comments:

  1. Sounds plausible to me. Good catch.

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  2. Interesting. The more I read these ovipositional excavations, the more I think about my own consumption of stories in various media and how these go into the DM pot, both consciously and unconsciously. Keep 'em comin'!

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