Warlord Wednesday: The Price of Change

Let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"The Price of Change"

Warlord #85 (September 1984)

Written by Cary Burkett with Deryl Reinhold; Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Steve Mitchell.

Synopsis: In Skartaris, Jennifer Morgan, Ashir, and Faaldren call for Tinder around the entrance to the cave where they took refuge last issue. Tinder however, is crawling down a narrow passage after what he saw in the back of the cave. He comes into an opening an finds a gold-furred monkey-like creature trapped in a spider’s web.

Tinder cuts the monkey free with his dagger. Then he sees the creature that made the web:

Tinder and the monkey run, but Tinder trips over a skull in the dark cave and gets knocked out. The monkey (surprisingly) calls his name. The spider-thing approaches...

In 2303, Morgan is hot-dogging in one of the saucerships with Reno with him. The ship is inertialess due to its null-time drive. It does have its limits, however, as the controls start to blow when Morgan pushes it to Mach 95. He barely brings it into the hangar in one piece. The strange chronal energies almost cause one of the mechanics caught near the ship to start to slip away into the timestream. The others manage to pull him back.

Later, Morgan addresses the soldiers. It seems the scientists have told him that the nuclear war has destroyed the Earth’s ecology and will soon leave it uninhabitable. To travel back in time and prevent the war is their only chance. Morgan explains the plan:

Morgan has had a saucership cartridge key made with his rank of colonel on it rather than president. As he explains to Reno: “If this works, I won’t be President.”

Everyone climbs into the timeships and they fade away in the swirling eddies of time. In the hangar they left behind, something unforseen has occurred--a rift in spacetime itself has formed.

In the past, the saucers fly into the path of the Russian missiles that started the war. They use chronal rays to age the missiles into falling apart. Once that’s done, they fly over and do the same thing to the American missiles in the counter-attack. In the oval office, the president and his staff think aliens have intervened.

The Russians send futuristic fighters after them. Morgan has the others cloak themselves, while he distracts tha attackers. Unwilling to shoot them down, Morgan tries to outfly them. His craft is damaged and he crashes. He and Shakira briefly have to fight off Russian soldiers before rescue arrives.

Since both sides think aliens have attacked, they begin to join forces. Morgan decides to encourage that and has the saucers fly in formation around the globe to be seen by millions. With an outside “enemy” mankind will stop fighting each other.

An unforseen problem occurs. The ships flying so close cause a null time field too strong for their chronal dampeners. The ships are thrown wildly through non-space and non-time.

Things to Notice:

• The cave entrance seems smaller this issue than it did last.
• In this future the Cold War seems to have re-established itself.

Where It Comes From:

The fake alien invasion helping avert nuclear war occurs in a famous comic published a couple years after this one. The plot goes back to The Outer Limits episode "Architects of Fear." The saucerships flying on formation is reminiscent of similar scenes in the 1957 film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.

Weird Adventures at Gen Con

Weird Adventures will be on sale at Gen Con 2012.  I've joined up with the gang at the OSR booth headed up by Bill Barsh of Pacesetter Games.  So far, other participating groups include Expeditious Retreat Press, Black Blade Publishing, Faster Monkey Games, Center Stage Miniatures, Frog God Games, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and Henchmen Abuse.

In some form, I imagine there'll be some Gen Con exclusive Weird Adventures material, as well.  More on that to come.

Mention My Name in Wermspittle

Or maybe it’s better if you didn’t. I’m not sure I want my name on the twitching lips of a drug-addled veteran of the Sewer-Militia who has “seen the elephant” (and never recovered), or spoken in the harsh rasp of plague-ravaged refugee right before he chomps down on a gore worm sausage.

If you haven’t been following the fecund imagination evident in Hereticwerks then let Wermspittle be your first introduction to it. The titular Wermspittle is a dark fantasy city that burrows beneath the Dung Age right into a trippy world of parasites and pathogens--something like a Cronenberg film version of Warhammer Fantasy as written by William S. Burroughs. Oh, and build that decaying structure atop a foundation of public domain weird and scientifiction (fun and educational!).

If that sounds good to you, let me just say my high concept summary doesn’t do the depth of the setting justice. Check it out, and all the other cool stuff at Hereticwerks.

In Arcadia

Astral travelers sometimes finding themselves passing through a veil of mists and arriving in the apotheosis of sylvan settings, the realm of Arcadia. In this plane dwell forgotten woodland spirits and pastoral gods and creatures out of myth.

Arcadia is hyper-real; it seems more vibrant and alive than the material plane. Smells and tastes seem directly drawn from the most vivid examples in memory; everything is in technicolor and imbued with a faint glow. The world itself is alive--with potentially communicative spirits in everything. Night and day and shifts of weather are sentimental things, sensitive to the meaning of events or the mood of powerful beings.

Arcadia borders other related realms. The Land of Faerie emerges from it (though this realm also has tunnels linking it to the Lower Planes). There is also the Land of Beasts, where the iconic animal lords dwell, ruled over by King Lion.

Despite it’s ties to age-old fables, the Land of Beasts keeps up with the expectations of modern visitors. Adventures from the City have found there home mirrored there in a city of anthropomorphic animals who frequent nightclubs and drive cars. The Cat Lord can often be found here, in the swankest of night-spots.

Magical practitioners view Arcadia and its neighboring realms as places to salvage materials and items out of myth and legend, and to parley with powers that--though perhaps consciously forgotten--still retain great mythic resonance in Man's unconscious.  As with all extraplanar dealings, caution is warranted: These primal beings have agendas of their own.

Tagged

Mark, the self-styled evil DM, over at The DM's Screen (check it out) tagged me in one of these blog questionaire sort of things. I'm not going to tak part in the chain-letter part, but I will be a good sport and answer Mark's questions

1. What made you decide to write a blog?
A friend of mine who got tired of listening to my game-related ideas suggested it.

2. What would you say has been the highlight of your blogging career to date?
Publishing Weird Adventures. Get your copy today!

3. Name your favourite animal.
A liger. Ok, not really.  I don't know that I have a nonextinct one.

4. What has been the best thing to ever happen to you?
Answering the next question. Seriously though, I don't know how to compare various good things on the same scale.

5. You are in a lift with a Nun, a middle-aged business man, a Karl Marx look-alike, a twenty-something female charity worker and Stephen Hawking. The lift shudders to a stop, the lights go out. There is a high-pitched scream followed by a thud. The lights come on and the Nun is lying dead on the floor with a knife in her chest. Who did it and why?
Is she actually dead or does she just appear dead? If she's not faking, I would say they're all in on it together.  It will sound more plausible when I'm wearing a deerstalker cap and smoking a pipe.  Which, of course, I would be in the elevator.

6. Name your favourite colour.
To wear: gray.  Just as a color: orange.

7. What has been the scariest thing to ever happen to you?
Automobile accident.

8. You are about to break the world record for the tallest house of cards in front of a crowded room of onlookers and world press. All of a sudden, some idiot parent allows their errant child to charge over, knocking into your table, sending your world record beating attempt crashing around you. What do you do next?
Shake my fist in impotent rage and scream to the heavens.

9. If you had to spend a month on a tropical island, what four luxury items do you take with you?
Internet access.

10. Once on your tropical island you are allowed to have one person of your choice to stay with you. Now this can be anyone famous, living or dead, fictional and from any period of time/history - loved ones are not allowed - who do you choose and why?
Someone with the power of teleportation so I could leave the island when I wanted.

11. What has been the worst impulse purchase of a totally useless item (one you convinced yourself into believing you needed, but didn't)? What was it, and do you still have it?
About the worse impulse purchases I've ever made are books I probably won't read.  I guess I'm either pretty frugal or either I just don't regret much.

What'll It Be?

For a little brand name flash, here are some alcoholic beverages consumed by denizens of the City:

Spirits:

Albecoeurl: A moderately expensive brand of gin imported from Grand Lludd.  It's bottle is decorated with the image a panther.

Brown Jenkin: A whiskey brand from New Lludd.
Caballero: A tequilla imported from Zingaro.
Dyer Corbie: A brand of light overproof rum.
Gentleman Loser: A sour mash whiskey emblazoned with the image of a smiling "gentleman of the road." The brand is nearly a hundred years old, but was marketed in its native South as a "medicinal" for much of its history.
Storisende: A Poitêmien brandy. Expensive.

Beer:
Cold Iron: A light lager brewed in Yronburg.
Eschenbach: Another prominent beer from the Steel League.
Green Griffon Ale: Sometimes just called "Griffon."  It's symbol is (appropriately) a green griffon rampant.

Mushrooms, Pigs, and Cold Light

The thaumaturgic forces unleashed by the Great War have left much of Ealderde strange. For an example of just how weird this transformation can be, one need look no farther than Lumière,the former capital of Neustrie and the Gallian Alliance. Once Lumière’s lights were emblematic of a city that never slept, a place of art and culture. Today, Lumière is a bombed out ruin, and the amber luminescence that crawls or flows through its streets and buildings is something of another world.

The thing is alive; almost everyone agrees on that, but little they agree on little else. Is it matter? Some gelatinous substance similar to the strange denizens of the underground? Or is it pure energy, somehow thickened and held? If it’s the latter, it’s light with no heat.

In the day, it seems to hide in the skeletons of buildings, perhaps fearing the sun. At night it pours forth and spreads out over whole blocks. Rats and vermin flee it. Living things it touches develop strange tumors or growths. When it first rose, victims caught in its path were left rooted to the spot, transformed into masses of cancer.

The glowing touch of the thing seems to have created at least one mutant species. The wild swine that moved into the city to root and scavenge after the devastation of the war have been changed. They've grown large, and bloated and pale as grubs, with eyes that glow with a paler yellow that the thing. Though they can’t speak, they seem to have evolved an evil intelligence. They roam the streets in herds, seeming to take pleasure in spoiling what remains of the works of man, and looking (though they're hardly picky eaters) for their primary form of sustenance: fungal spores.

The Mushrooms, the swines' unrelenting foes, resent their progency being consumed by the swine with a displeasure that's more cold practicality than horror. These fungal sapients likely lived beneath the city even in previous times (certain legends hint at their presence) but when the humans fled they saw an opportunity. From their inhuman alchemical laboratories they create structures from fungal stock and weaponize molds to strike at the swine and keep humans away.

Looters and treasure seekers make forays into the ruin of Lumière, but it's a dangerous undertaking. Even if the poured-honey creeping of the luminescent thing can be avoided, there are the packs of hungry swine to be outwitted, and the silent and dispassionate Mushroom scientists to be dealt with.