A Strange Sargasso Sea Appendix N

How's that for narrow focus? I've done a nautical fantasy inspiration list before, but that's no reason not to focus on a particularly weird subgenre.

Literature:
William Hope Hodgson has got a whole series of Sargasso Sea stories beyond his famous novel The Boats of the "Glen Carrig."  Here's "The Thing in the Weeds," "The Finding of The Graiken," and "From the Tideless Sea" online.
Kenneth Robeson. The Adventures of Doc Savage: The Sargasso Ogre.

Film:
The Lost Continent (1968).

TV:
Jonny Quest (1964), "The Mystery of the Lizard Men."

Roleplaying Game Stuff:
Dungeon #141, "The Sea Wyvern's Wake."
Islands of Terror (1992) for the Ravenloft campaign setting.

All in the Family

The monstrous crone that was once a pirate queen broods beneath the decks of her decaying flagship, Doom's Wake. Her many descendants, mutated by demonic taint, carry on their grandam's murderous trade:

Art by David Lewis Johnson

Perdita

Daring and cunning, she would also be beautiful if not for her green-scaled skin and the barbels drooping from the edges of her upper lip. Stats: As Bandit (Pirate) Captain, with the  +1 AC in light armor and swimming and climbing rates of the Mariner Fighting Style.

Squalo

His broad nose, gray skin, and finned head recall a shark--but no more so than his wide mouth full of serrated, triangular teeth. He is vicious, but is not as smart as Perdita and knows it. Stats: As a Sahaugin, but without shark telepathy or claws. Besides his bite, he wields a cutlass as a weapon.

"Handsome" Blut

Scarred, pale, hulking brute in a featureless wood mask, beneath the mask his mouth is a lamprey-like sucker with a circular array of teeth. Stats: As Berserker but with a bite attack like a Vampire Spawn, but necrotic damage and drain like a Wight's life drain attack.

Wednesday Comics: Escape from Apelantis

"Escape from Apelantis"

Weirdworld #2 (September 2015), Written by Jason Aaron; Art by Michael Del Mondo

Synopsis: Arkon, Lord of Warlords, has been captured by sea-dwelling ape-men and imprisoned in their underwater city of Apelantis. They've taken his dragon and his map. Arkon vows to escape, but it isn't clear how he's going to accomplish that.

Then, he finds there's another prisoner in the adjoining cave. The other prisoner knows a way to get out, but he can't do it alone. Arkon is in. The other prisoner introduces himself by breaking down the wal between the cells:

The two manage to bust out of the underwater city, but lose Arkon's map in the process. Warbow tells him not to worry. He's got a map. If Arkon helps him free his Prince he will give it to him.

Meanwhile, the dragon Arkon was riding has been delivered to Baroness Morgan le Fay is her castle. She plans to break the beast to saddle:

It's going to be a challenge.

When she flies out, Warbow and Arkon sneak into the castle by crossing a lava moat. They make it into the treasure room, where they discover Warbow's Prince Crystar.

Arkon realizes Warbow is completely insane. And then, they're surrounded by magma men.

Commentary:
The presence of Warbow is an unexpected surprise. He was one of the characters in Marvel's short-lived  1983 comic tied in with a Remco toyline, The Saga of Crystar, Crystal Warrior. Unlike most Marvel tie-in comics, this series was created and owned by Marvel.

The Crystar link connects the magma men here with that world as well, rather than Marvel's pre-existing lava men.

The Legend of the Pirate Queen

Art by Jez Gordon

Across the towns and villages of the Snarr Marsh they celebrate the death of the Pirate Queen Ylantha. From Grymchurch-On-Sea to Hobbsend, they commemorate the day when the folk of Old Raedel ended her reign of terror. They tried the dread pirate and burnt her at the stake for her crimes as she, unrepentant, spat curses at them. They left what charred remains their were of her for crabs to fight over on Perdition Reef. Never again would any pirate be so brazen nor as daring she.

There are other stories, not much repeated in Snarr Marsh, which tell a somewhat different version. They say that Ylantha only fell into the hands of the Raedel-folk through treachery. She was betrayed by the very town which had once fenced her plunder and grown prosperous, thereby. These stories say the pirate queen called out to ever dark god she could name for vengeance as she died, and one ancient sea demon was roused by her call.

The ancient goddess pulled the burned and mutilate body of the pirate queen down to the Demon Sea, where she lovingly remade her. And when she was done, she sent the pirate queen back into the world to again menace the seas with demonic powers at her command. That is the other tale. The one you will seldom hear in Snarr Marsh and never in the new town of Raedel that grew up after the ocean claimed the Old.


A little set up for the piratical adventure I'm running this weekend for a group that's never played 5e and wanted to give it a try.

Aquatic Elves for 5e

One of the player's in my opcoming 5e oneshot high seas based game requested to play an aquatic elf. Here's my version of them. These traits are in addition to the base elf traits in the Player's Handbook.

Aquatic Elf Traits
Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score by 1.
Amphibious. You can breath both air and water.
At Home in the Sea. You can swim at your full movement rate and rough waters only cost you 1 extra foot for each foot of movement.
Moisture Dependent. You require twice as much water as most races. However, submerging most of their body in water for 30 minutes or more daily reduces their requirement to standard levels.
Aquatic Elf Weapon Training. You have proficiency with the short sword, trident, light crossbow, heavy crossbow, and net.

Dungeon of Solitude

I've suggested turning Krypton into a locale for a weird hexcrawl. In that vein, it seems only natural to utilize that little bit of Krypton on Earth, Superman's Fortress of Solitude as the site of a dungeon. It's a bit high tech, true, so it would work best in post-apocalyptic or science fantasy games. Here are the floor plans.

Overview.

Level 1 (note the "save or die" disintegration pit):

Level 2:

Level 3's exact floorplan is unrevealed. You'll have to work that one out yourself.

The image at the top of the post is a conceptualization of the Fortress from a later era, but it gives some nice imagery for various rooms or areas.

Vampire Under Glass

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued this past Sunday with the wizard turned manticore, Mortzengersturm, giving the party a tour of his palace—really a series of caverns carved into the crystalline Geegaw Mountain. What Mortzengersturm has devoted his energies to is impressive, if a bit disturbing. He’s made a lot of hippogriffs (an “impossible animal” he keeps telling the PCs, since griffins like to eat horses) and other stuff like a horsefly (exactly what you think) and an ant-lion (that too). He’s also managed to “civilize” a goblinic slime pit to make proper goblin servants (blue, as a consequence).

Some of the party are a bit angered by slavery, even of goblins, but they’ve got a job to do. They need to capture some of the light from his wild magic crystal (“The Whim-Wham Stone,” he calls it) to repair the laterna magica they found a week or so ago.

Mortzengersturm without his cigarettes and magic hands

With the tour over, Mortzengersturm agrees to help, but instead springs a trapdoor. Nimble and suspicious Shae the Ranger evades it, but the rest are caught. She fights the manticore alone while the party tries to find a way out of a sheer, crystal-walled pit. It seems being a manticore has given the former wizard a powerful hunger for human flesh, and he wants the party on the menu. Then he throws a cloudkill at them! A well placed arrow spoils his concentration and ends the spell, but takes several tries before anyone gets out of the pit.

Ultimately, Mortzengersturm is taken down by force of numbers—about the time some of his loyal hippogriffs show up. Wounded and low on spells, the party retreats to a handy, hard to notice passage, too small for a hippogriff or Mortzengersturm. They’re too glad to be out of danger to question that.

After a little bit of healing, they decide to explore the rest of the tunnel. They find it leads out to an opening in the cliff face on the side of the mountain, about 40 ft. below the plateau where their flying swan boats (and only means of escape) are. They backtrack in the tunnel and take a passage to the left. There they find a velvet curtain and hear odd sounds beyond. A peek inside reveals a woman that they soon discover is a vampire when she drains Kairon the Warlock to unconsciousness.

Driving her back with lucky rolls and a bardic ability (shocking!), they manage to retreat into the sunlight. Climbing looks like a better option, now. Erkose climbs up and sneaks past the hippogriffs to retrieve one boat. Not wanting to press their luck, they all cram into that one and take off for Rivertown. Luckly, Waylon the Frogling had snagged the Whim-Wham Stone in their escape, so mission accomplished but no extra treasure.

Wednesday Comics: Cursed Pirate Girl

Cursed Pirate Girl written and illustrated by Jeremy Bastian starts in Port Elizabeth, Jamaica, in 1728 but quickly moves to the Omerta Sea, which is something like a marine Wonderland, where all manner of fantastical and eccentric people and creatures are encountered. The heroine apparent heroine is the titular Cursed Pirate Girl, who appears to be a plucky orphan living in a beachside shanty, but is actually (or additionally) the lost daughter of an infamous pirate captain. The only problem is figuring out which one. And so, the quest begins.

Bastain's whimsical and sometimes grotesque art is old school illustration in style and reminiscent of 18th century political cartoons, complete with period appropriate and hand-lettered word balloons. He often decorates the borders with banners and all sort of business.

Like Alice, Cursed Pirate Girl never seems particularly in peril, but there's a lot of fun in seeing the cheeky attitude with which she faces (and overcomes) all sorts of strange threats.

Strange Stars Without Number: Ibglibdishpan

Here's the ibglibdishpan presented in the general format that I'm using in the Strange Stars OSR gamebook:

Physical Characteristics: Biologic humanoid with little sexual dimorphism. Tall with gracile build. Skulls are somewhat ovoid vertically, though this appearance is accentuated by a shield-shaped "mask" of osteoderm.
Psychological Characteristics: Restrained in emotional responses and lacking in empathy in comparison to other humanoids. Viewed by others as pedantic and over-precise. Most are adverse to violence. They consider discussion of gender or sex as rude.
Names: Names of the ibglibdishpan are composed on two, monosyllabic elements that end in a vowel, n, ng, m, l, r, sh or more rarely b. Among themselves they employ numerical family designation that is placed before the personal name, but they rarely use these when dealing day to day with other cultures, except in formal situations. Examples: Chun Ri, Gan Yul, Ro Nar, Ang Tu, Tan Em, Ib Kan, Li Pan.
Backgrounds: Adventurer, Astrogator's Mate, Researcher, Scholar
Classes: Expert is the most likely class for an ibglibdishpan. Warriors would be rare and Psychics nonexistent.
Attributes: Intelligence of at least 14. Charisma and Strength no higher than 10.
Special Abilities:
Humanoid Computer: Ibglibdishpan gain an additional +1 to Skill checks based on Intelligence. They also have the power of Hypercognition; Once per session, the PC can ask the GM for a useful conclusion regarding a topic, and the GM will tell them what he or she considers the most useful fact the character could have concluded from analysis of the available data.

Mental Breakdown: Ibglibdishpan mental structure always has a chance of a cognitive glitch or breakdown. Any time an ibgliddishpan has to make an Intelligence related skill check of difficult of 11 or 13, fails an Intelligence related check of any difficulty, or uses the Hypercognition ability, a save vs. Mental Effects must be made. On a failed roll, a  negative effect occurs. The following table offers some examples:
1 Catatonic state, repeating the last statement made for d100 minutes. Hypercognition ability (if unused) is not available the rest of the session.
2 Screams for d100 seconds, then returns to previous activity as if nothing happened. Intelligence-related skill checks are at -1 for 24 hours.
3 Develops a severe phobia which lasts for 2d12 weeks. Every week, the character may make another Mental Effects save. 3 successful saves in a row means the phobia abates early.
4 Develops a reaction akin to Stendhal Syndrome (dizziness, confusion, possible fainting) for d4/2 hours. -2 to Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom for the duration.
5 Suffers a seizure lasting 1d4 min. -1 to all rolls until a period of rest of at least 8 hours.
6 Lose 1-2 points of intelligence for 2d10 days. Every 2 days, another Mental Effects save can be attempted. 3 successes means the return of the lost points early. Each failure adds an extra day.

Go to the Ants

Ant-Man opened this weekend and likely Marvel has another hit a hero, despite the wisdom repeated in even mostly positive review that the whole concept is ridiculously. Because you know, science fantasy Norse Gods speaking Renfair is gritty realism.

What a guy who shrinks and talks to ant is fantasy in a way super-soldiers, and capitalists in powered armor may not be. It's a a child-like fantasy; one where everyday items become hazards and improvised weapons. A running bath tube creates a tidal wave; a flying ant becomes a steed. It's ridiculous only in the way that Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz is ridiculous. Ant-Man is just a hero it's hard to grittify credibly. It's stuff too much fun.

if you like the Marvel films, you will like Ant-Man. Marvel Entertainment has their formula (for both better and worse) down to a science. The beats are similar and the humor is there. The review talking points (Perhaps passed out by the production company. They've done it before.) highlight how comedic it is, but I don't think it's really any more comedic than say Iron Man III. It certainly isn't a superhero comedy like The Green Hornet.  Likewise, reviewers will say it's different from the other Marvel films because it isn't about "saving the world"--which ignores Pym and Lang saying that's exactly what they're out to accomplish.

So ignore all that stuff and just enjoy. For the Marvel Comics fan, you get a hint of Hank Pym's Cold War secret hero career. You get to see the Wasp's finest hour. You get a glimpse of the Microverse--excuse me, Quantum Realm. A decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine any of that on the big screen.

The best stuff is the shrinking stuff, though. The special effects look really good and there are a couple of nice set-piece battles between shrunken combatants. The ants have character, too, even if the mix of species is a strange one for the film's location.

It's not perfect. There are some nonsensical bits in the script, that may have come from different versions being stitched together. Is Lang a recidivist criminal cat burglar or a mechanical engineer that burgled a dishonest company just once for revenge? Is Darren Cross made crazy by Pym particle exposure as everybody keeps saying even though we haven't seen him have any particular exposure until late in the film? And there is other stuff.

Fridge Logic, for the most part. These things won't bother you when you're watching one inch tall guys hurl toy trains at each other--and that's really for the best.

Azurthite Bestiary: Bad Seeds

Bad Seeds are made by evil magicians and the like out to undermind Good Azulina and the rightful order of the Land of Azurth. They are made from combination of a Green Man root, a moonless night, and an unwholesome ritual whose full details are regrettably quite easy to find in magical tomes. Depending on certain details of the rite and the place of planting, different types of Bad Seed are cultivated. 

 Twig Bad Seeds have the form of crude stick dolls or effigies. They wait at the side of lonely woodland trails or guard the abodes of witches in haphazard clusters. You must be very cunning and quick to see them move before they strike. There are stores of giant twig seeds that stride through the forest like wicker giants and throw victims in the cages of their chest. 

 Thorn Bad Seeds can stand upright if they wish, but mostly they roll like bramble bush tumbleweeds making rasping noises like the growl of a dog. The spilling of blood greatly excites them. They seem to be able to taste it on the air.

Vine Bad Seeds usually take the form of slithery masses and like to hide in dark places. Other than the susurrus of their movement, they make no other sound. They will often stalk prey, stealing small items and causing confusion before finally striking.

 Bad Seeds are statted like the comparable Blight in the Monster Manual.

Not a Bad Seed, but another plant creature: a Heap as rendered by David Lewis Johnson:

Wednesday Comics: Incredible Shrinking Heroes

Getting ready for Ant-Man this week? Here are a few comics to read to get into the mood for big superhero action in a small scale:

Know nothing about Ant-Man? This collection starts with the original character's first appearance (pre-superhero identity) back in 1962, then takes him through establishing himself as a hero, meeting his wife to be and helping her create a superhero identity, and giving up the ant thing to be a Giant-Man.

The Ant-Man of the film isn't Hank Pym, but Scott Lang. Ant-Man: Scott Lang will get you up to speed on the comic book version of Paul Rudd's character in the movie.

Marvel hasn't cornered the market on shrinking heroes. In fact, DC beat them to it in 1961 with the Atom. (Never mind that Quality's Doll Man had gotten there in 1944.)  Showcase Presents: The Atom vol. 1 chronicles the origin and earliest adventures of Ray Palmer, the Atom.

By the 80s, the shrinking hero just wasn't enough for the jaded fanbase, so Jan Strnad, Pat Roderick, and Gil Kane sent the Atom into a world Burroughsian lost world adventure. This wasn't the first time a hero had gotten to a lost world by shrinking: Ray Cummings had shrank his hero so he could romance the "Girl in the Golden Atom" in 1923, The Incredible Hulk had had a similar romance and adventure in 1971. But Sword of the Atom has guys riding frogs drawn by Gil Kane.

The Moving Pointcrawl

Over at the Hill Cantons blog, Chris has written a lot about the pointcrawl, which abstracts a map to the important points, eliding the empty places/boring stuff a hexcrawl or similar complete mapping would give equal weight. One unusual variation not yet explored is the crawling of moving points.

Admittedly, these would be pretty unusual situations--but unusual situations are the sort of stuff adventures are made from: Exploring a flotilla of ancient airships or the various "worlds" in a titan wizards orrery; Crawling the strange shantytown distributed over the backs of giant, migrating, terrapin. Flitting from tiny world to tiny world in a Little Prince-esque planetary system. Some of these sort of situations might stretch the definition of pointcrawl, admittedly, and to model some of them in any way accurately would require graphing or calculus, and likely both.

Let's take a simple case--something from an adventure I'm working on. Say the wrecks of several ships are trapped in a Sargasso Sea of sorts. The weed is stretchy to a degree, so the wrecks move to a degree with the movement of the ocean, but the never come completely apart.

The assumption (to make it a pointcrawl, rather than just a hexcrawl, where the points of interest move) is that there were pretty much only certain clearer channels a small boat could take through the weed--or maybe certain heavier areas that a person who wasn't too heavy could walk over without sinking in complete.

The map would look something like this:

Note that this map is pretty abstract, despite appearances. The distances or size of the weed patch aren't necessarily to scale with the derelict icons. Length of connecting lines is of course, indicative of relative travel distance. The colors indicate how "stretchy" an area is: blue can move d4, orange d6, and red d8 in feet? yards? tens of feet? Not sure yet. Anyway, whether this drift is closer or farther away would depend on a separate roll of 1d6 where odds equals farther and evens closer. Of course, they can't come any closer than the distance they are away on the map, so any "extra" distance would be a shift to one side or the other.

Zigzags denote a precarious patch, where there would be an increased risk of a sudden thickening (if I'm going with boat travel) or falling in (if I go with walking). Dots will denote an extra wandering monster or unusual event check.

So there are a lot of kinks to work out, but that's the basic idea.

Hyades Plains Drifter

Take McKinney's Carcosa, remove whatever homology to Masters of the Universe is there, replacing it instead with echoes of Bravestarr. For the more literary minded: take out some of the Lovecraft and replace it with elements of King's Dark Tower series. Now you've got a weird western on an alien world.

A Bone Man, probably

Drop those sorcerous rituals that upset some people and replace them with drugs. Now you've got an acid weird western on an alien world. That ought to be enough for any game, but you're a jaded bunch with a decadent palate so don't let the alien thing keep you from borrowing from Forteana related to the America West: tombs of giants, tiny mummies, underground lizard (or snake) men. Thunderbirds. Season to taste with Shaver mystery.

Saddle up, cowboy. Lost Carcosa awaits.

Here Comes the Moon Goon

I've blogged about these guys before--twice in fact. But I've never before had an illustration of their weird villainousness. Now I do, thanks to Matthew Adams.

Moon Goons get their name from their heads or masks, large, round, and faintly luminous like the Moon, and their vile behavior. The Moon Goons avoid the real moon, only striking when it is new. Their spindly, bone-white limbs are animated with odd gestures and faintly aglow despite the lack of moonlight. They are forever mumbling and conversing, but their lips never move and their speech is unintelligible.

Azurthite Bestiary: Heap

Heaps are lumbering creatures most commonly found in the bottomland swamps along the Yellow River in the Country of Yanth, particular in the environs of Lardafa, the Beggar City. They appear as anthropomorphic mounds of plant material, sometimes mixed in garbage.

Though only a few in the Land of Azurth are aware of their origins, Heaps are made when the process of generating a Green Man goes awry, leaving them unconnected to the spirits of nature, and dumb brutes, in the main. Heaps are nevertheless dimly aware of what their mission would have been and at least seem to intend to protect the forests where they dwell, though their means of doing so is not always effective.

Heaps are feared by most folk (and not without some reason),  but Lardafans view them with reverence and augur meaning from their mysterious comings and goings.

HEAP
large plant, neutral
AC 15 (natural armor)
Hit Points: 128 (15d10+45)
Speed: 20 ft.
STR 18(+4) DEX 8(-1) CON 16(+3) INT 8(-1) WIS 11(+0) CHA 7(-2)
Skills  Stealth +2
Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing
Condition Immunities blinded, deafened
Senses passive Perception 10.

False Appearance. A heap looks a mound of vegetation if it lies motionless.

Actions:
Multiattack. A heap makes two slam attacks per round.
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit 13(2d8+4) bludgeoning damage.

Wednesday Comics: The Spire

The Spire #1(July 2015); Written by Simon Spurrier, Art by Jeff Stokely

The Spire is a massive tower city in the middle of the desert of the Nothinglands. It's plagued by ethnic and class divisions and enemies on the outside. It's Baron has just passed away, and on the eve of it's new Baroness's coronation, a series of strange and grisly murders has occurred. There just may be a conspiracy afoot, and Commader Shå of the Watch, a "skew" (a slur for a nonhuman), has to deal with the prejudices of the people around her while trying to catch the murder and reveal the bigger picture.

The Spire (at least the first issue) has a bit of a manga/anime feel (mostly through the art) but the world itself, particularly the ramshackle Spire, its faux-Shakespearean street punks (antiki), and various nonhuman species, reminds me most of works of the New Weird, particularly Mieville's Bas-Lag novels and the Deepgate Codex by Alan Campbell.

It's only the first issue, so it's hard to say where it's going, but it seems like it's going to be well worth finding out.

The Beggar City

art by SkavenZverov

Lardafa, the Shanty City, the Beggar City, lies in the bottomland swamp along the Yellow River in the Country of Yanth. Its sobriquets are mostly accurate. It's buildings, plank and rope thoroughfares, and pubic monuments, are almost are of ramshackle design and built with salvaged or scrounged materials. It's people beg as a vocation, supplemented with "coney-catching," meaning thievery or small confidence games. These activities they practice outside their city, up and down the River.

Lardafans ape the political bureaucracy of other towns and cities, but in truth, this is mainly for propriety's sake. Lardafans look to their families (loose gangs where blood kinship is not required) and informal alliances between them for order and the mediation of disagreements.

This has not always been the case. In the past, Hobo Kings (perhaps Shagrick I the greatest among them) have arisen and set their people on campaigns of mass panhandling and cadging on the roadways around the swamplands, and even on the River itself, causing a great deal of bother to travelers. Such kingships seldom last long, the Lardafans being a people adverse to authority.

Lardafans are masters finding items of value, sometimes very unusual ones in the backwaters of their swamplands. Their stories say that those waters were once a dumping groups for failed experiments by Mirabilis Lum and his associates, but no one knows for sure. It is not advisable to attempt to search the Lardafan's lands without their permission.

The other strange thing found in the swamps are the Heaps, large creatures the Lardafans view with a certain reverence. These beasts or fae-creatures resemble roughly man-shaped, shambling masses of vegetation and detritus. Many stories are told by the folk along the Yellow River about the Heaps: that they've saved lost children, left flowers for pretty maidens, but also that they've drowned hunters, and over-turned skiffs and consumed the occupants. Despite these tales, Lardafans do not hold them to be creatures of menace, if left alone--though they superstitiously view the appearance and activities of Heaps as prophetic. Usually only one is seen at a time and they are seldom heard to make any sound. Lardafans believe they sometimes gather perhaps as many as a half dozen and hold primitive conclaves where they're low howls travel throughout the bottomland.

The Return of Hawk the Slayer

Long time readers of this blog are aware of my affection for the 1980s fantasy film Hawk the Slayer. Looks like the long-anticipated sequel, Hawk the Hunter, may come to pass via a Kickstarter campaign launching this August after a special screening of the first film at FrightFest in London. Writer/director Terry Marcel has cut a deal with Rebellion (game maker and publisher of 2000 AD) getting Kickstarter assistance and giving Rebellion game and publishing rights. Could Hawk be going multi-media in the future?

Anyway, a bit more information here.

Also, Hawk the Slayer is dropping on blu-ray tomorrow in the UK! I suspect this means a region B release, but hopefully a region A version for us in the Americas is in the works.

Forces are Joined

The Armchair Planet storefront on drivethrurpg and rpgnow are no more, but Armchair Planet lives on as an imprint in the Hydra Cooperative. Here's where you can find Weird Adventures, Strange Stars, and my upcoming projects. While I'm excited about the future or pooling capabilities and resources with the Hydra guys, there was a little sadness in giving up Armchair Planet's spot, still having everything under one umbrella is the best thing in the long run--synergy as the kids say, and all that.

So if you have a link on your site to one of my books, please update it, or let someone else know if you visit a page that does.

The Strange Stars game system books are the next things from Hydra from me. The Fate book is in the editing stage, so hopefully not too much longer, and the old school book is being written. Robert "The Savage World of Krul" Parker is lending me a hand on that one, which should speed up the process.

Hydra overall has a lot of cool stuff coming: Anthony's California Dunes (a weird, mythic California recasting of Slumbering Ursine Dunes), Chris unveils The Misty Isles with mo' Eld and mo' problems, Mike is working on the second edition of his Japanese-flavored old school Ruins & Ronin, and just over the horizon is Jason "Dungeon Dozen" Sholtis's weird underworld epic campaign setting Operation Unfathomable.