The Toymaker

One of the most enigmatic figures of the Anadem and Old Earth is the Toymaker. Hailed as a genius, albeit an eccentric one, his smaller creations are sought by wealthy collectors and his larger recreational devices, benevolently gifted to communities are sources of civic pride. Each of these is marked with a modest, but never-tarnishing brass legend proclaiming it "A Gift of the Toymaker."

A list of known works of the Toymaker would run too long, but I will remind you of but a few you have likely heard of: The Clockwork Courtesan of Yejem, the Arcade Spatterlight in the Pleasure Garden of Oressund Major, the Leaping Lepidopterists in the possession of the Pajandrum of Gloorb, and of course the Merry-go-Round Tower of Ooth-Ithrain,

The Toymaker's most commonly encountered creation are the Wind-Up Gnomes. Most serve their generally wealthy owners as servants, but a few have experienced some sort of damage and become freewilled.  Some localities are fearful of freewilled wind-ups, but in most places they are accepted into society. There are persistent rumors of isolated wordlets of wind-up beings that have become quite mad and constitute a danger to flesh beings, but these are no doubt just old space-sailor tales. Probably.

No one knows where the Toymaker himself resides. Some people believe the Toymaker to not be an individual at all, but rather a brand. They suggest that it perpetuates itself by the kidnapping of promising artificers and forces them to work on its factory world, guarded by ever-smiling wind-up soldiers. If such a world existed (and really, it is ridiculous to believe it does), it might even lie beyond the Anadem, perhaps in the wilds of the Belt.

The Anadem

Millions of years hence, when the technology and magic have long ago become one, the center of human-descended civilization will have largely forgotten the quaint backwater of its birth. Still, there  is much to recommend Old Earth as a diverting, if rustic, tourist destination.

The still-blue (or once more blue) world is garlanded with a  swarm of habitats and microworlds, aggregated in orbit over millennia. This curious and eclectic mixes of cultures and species is known as the Anadem.

Upper class youths of Earth have the custom of a the Grand Tour, a rite of passage where they visit worlds of the Anadem in the ships of alien, antigravity wood, brought to Earth in previous ages from some distant world. 

This is a Spelljammer campaign idea. Inspirational media include any number of bande dessinée from Barbarella to the works of Moebius, Don Lawrence's Storm, the works of Jack Vance including The Dying Earth and Planet of Adventure; Matthew Hughes' Henghis Hapthorn stories, and Rob Chilson's Prime Mondeign stories.

Wednesday Comics: DC, December 1981 (wk 1 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around September 10, 1981.

Jonah Hex #55: Hex and his pursuers, sent by Turnbull, are forced to work together to defend themselves against El Papagayo's men. One of the younger men begins to view Hex more positive after he saves the group's life more than once, but the leader can't let go of his hate, and in the a confrontation kills the younger man who is defending Hex. Hex then shoots him and is the only survivor.

In the Tejano backup, Mishkin/Cohn and Yeates have the ranger making his escape from the Mexican army and the Comanches, but his friend is killed by his own commander, and he has a show down with the Comanche chief he met in his youth.

New Teen Titans #14: Wolfman and Perez reunite the team. The whole group gets to hear the story of Steve Dayton--who proves to have been brainwashed by Madame Rouge. He attacks the Titans, but Raven manages to defeat him. The Titans track the villains' now-airborne headquarters to the island nation of Zandia,  The Titans are all defeated and captured and Changeling finds himself in the presence of the revived Brotherhood of Evil.

Secrets of Haunted House #44: Snyder and Rodriquez open this one with a topical tale of an unusually hardy plant found in the wake of the Mt. Saint Helen's eruption. A scientist hybridizes it, and it grows to control him, forcing him to feed it neighborhood children. The fire fighters discovering it set the house ablaze in horror, but the smoke only proves to spread the spores. The next story is a weird, sci-fi piece about a guy who's captured by the enemy and tormented by illusions, so even when he escaped he doesn't know truth from psychological warfare.

Kashdan and Henson present a future world desperate for energy whose problems get solved when explorers DNA gets altered on an energy exploration mission, and he and his wife produce an unhuman kid who generates energy. The final story is an EC-esque tale by Harris and Gonzales where a guy murders the owner of a wax museum and hides him in one of the displays. The perfect crime, until it melts the wax on the corpse and he drops his executioner's axe right on his murderer!

Superman #366: "Revenge, Superman-Style." Bates and Swan reveal that it is the alien Superman Revenge Squad responsible for the events of last issue. This issue makes it seem like that was revealed previously, but I took a look at last issue again, and it wasn't. Anyway, Superman says good-bye to everyone, then alters himself into a reptilian alien form to infiltrate the revenage squad. His plan works, and he's accepted as a member of the group. 

The the "In-Between Years" backup  Perry White proves that Superboy is in Metropolis when he secretly observes the Boy of Steel dealing with warring gangsters. He gets him to appear at the Daily Planet to prove to his editor, George Taylor, that the story is true.

Weird War Tales #106: Another War That Time Forgot yarn, another orange dinosaur. This time frogmen with a mission to sink a Japanese aircraft carrier wind up on an island, but one of them follows an alluring island woman to safety. Later he sees a mermaid, and the story never makes clear whether he is hallucinating or not. Barr and Cruz send a near catatonic German WWI vet on a mission to assassinate this Hitler guy that just became leader, but he's thwarted in the end. In a short by Kanigher and Talaoc a U.S. soldier is killed by the fixed bayonet of a dead Wehrmacht trooper. The final story by Kashdan and Ditko is some nonsense about Scottish clans with a feud lasting into modern day, and a witch's curse.

Wonder Woman #286: Kanigher and Delbo present an off-beat story, where it appears that Wonder Woman may be dying of cancer, but no, it's an aspiring actress going out for the part of Wonder Woman in a movie that is dying. Wonder Woman gives the chance to play her in real life, not knowing that the girl has only has a short time to live. Amazon science can't save her, but she dies accepted by them as one of their own.

In the Huntress backup, she tangles with a guy with the 90s name of Karnage who is trying to make a name for himself in the underworld by taking her down.

Star Child

Our Land of Azurth game continued last night, with the party trying to communicate with the child-like star being they had freed last session. The creature didn't know the language but was a quick study. Still, comprehension seemed to lag behind linguistic fluency. The being expressed and interest in a story, and Waylon decided to read from the Wizard of Azurth book.

Meanwhile, the void dragon is getting impatient and anxious for his meal. Kully tries to stall him.

As if they don't have enough problems, and amorphous shadow creature emerges from hiding. It's touch is necrotic and drains strength. The party defeats it, but is forced to take a short rest.

After that, they hatch a plan to make the star child invisible and create an illusion of it to fool the void dragon while they escape. The dragon sees through the illusion quickly, but is at first confused as to the whereabouts of the real creature. Waylon uses that opportunity to attack, and the party is in a fight they initially hoped to avoid.

Using the energy weapons they got in the future, the party gives as good as they get, though not before Waylon goes down. Still, Shade manages to revive him with goodberries while the others make the dragon beat a frustrated retreat to the heavens.

The star child is joined by friends: luminous fairy-type creatures from the stars. She asks for the story, and Wayon (somewhat reluctantly) gives her the book. All the star beings huddle around it, and a sphere of light seems to push the party away and back to their own time. They materialize in Lum-One's workshop.

Wednesday Comics: DC, December 1981 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! Today, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  September 10, 1981. 

Arak Son of Thunder #4: Thomas and Colon/DeZuniga bring Arak and friends to Charlemagne's court, where Arak's paganism and different appearance provokes Charlemagne's peers and leads to a dual between Arak and Rinaldo, which Arak wins. Later, a malign, living tree grows from the remnant of the Irminsul Charlemagne destroyed, so Valda and Arak must save the Emperor.

Batman #342: After Man-Bat's reform to a hero, then the effective resolution of his storyline in earlier this year, Conway and Novick reset him to adversary mode. After the encounter with Man-Bat in the Batcave last issue, Batman tracks down Francine Langstrom and finds out Kirk actually overdosed himself on his man-bat serum and thinks his daughter died of her illness and Batman is to blame. Batman tracks him down to cure him with the old antidote, but it doesn't work this time and Man-Bat gets away.

The Robin backup by Conway and von Eedon has Robin about to be burned alive on an upside down cross by a Satanic Cult. He manages to get free and takes the woman with him who was the intended sacrifice. They escape in the cult leaders big rig.

DC Comics Presents #40: Conway and Novick team Superman with Metamorpho. Simon Stagg duplicates the Orb of Ra in an attempt to cure Rex Mason of being Metamorpho, but Java the caveman, jealous of Sapphire's love of Mason, steals it and uses it to cause havoc. Our heroes join forces to stop him. It's good to see Metamorpho but this story doesn't really have any of the charm of his 60s run.

This months "Whatever Happened to..." feature we find out what became of the first Air Wave, Larry Jordan. Turns out he was shot and killed by a criminal, and his wife briefly took up the Air Wave identity to bring his killer to justice. 

Flash #304: Bates and Infantino/Smith bring the Flash into the digital age with the introduction of a new villain, Colonel Computron. Computron is out to get Willard Wiggins, the head of Wiggins toys, makers of the new, hugely popularly Captain Computron home video game. We're given two likely suspects--a disgruntled Wiggins Toys engineer and his wife, for Computron's identity, but the story tries to play a bit coy as to which one it is. There's a sequence where Computron digitizes the Flash and puts him in a video game where Infantino's presentation of digitization is pretty good.

In the Firestorm backup by Conway and Broderick, we get the origin of the Hyena, and Firestorm manages to keep her from attacking her family long enough that everybody gets to reconcile.

G.I. Combat #236: The first Haunted Tank has the crew sent on a hostage retrieval mission that seems more inspired by the recent Iran Hostage Crisis and other events of the 70s than anything World War II related. Arab allies of the Germans (called "terrorists" in the story) have kidnapped an American military officer. In the O.S.S. story, a German SS officer and chess champ gets a rematch with a Jewish champion turned O.S.S. operative after there match before the war end in a stalemate. The German officer wins the game--but the O.S.S. agent boob-trapped the board, and the German's predictable moves lead to both of their deaths in an explosion. The next story by Allikas and Rubeny has a G.I. faking correspondence to a dead buddy's mother--but it's okay because he turns out the mother was dead too and her friend from faking it. In a Kanigher/Carrillo story, a flight surgeon grounds a bomber pilot for several medical conditions, then has to help that same pilot fly blind so the surgical team can make a retreat from a Japanese attack.

The final Haunted Tank story is more ridiculous than most. When an explosion concusses Stuart's crew and leaves them acting delirious, Jeb ties them up in the tank and completes the mission solo rather than turn them over to the medics who might could help them because--well, it's not really clear, other than they never reported him for talking to ghosts no one else sees, but I don't think it's the same thing. In the end, Stuart prevails and the crew snaps out of it just in time to ride to the rescue.

Ghosts #107: I think this is the second themed issue we've had since I started this? Anyway, in the first story by Kanigher and Bender, a Welsh king takes his crown to the grave rather than pass it to one of his no-account sons. Which leads them to dig it up and generally engage in treachery and murder until all are dead, and the King's ghost sees it pass into the hands of a young shepherd boy. In the next story with art by Rodriguez, a circus acrobat murders his sisters lover, but then is attacked by a tiger and injured so the only circus job he can get is that of a clown. And he's going to lose that job too, until he steals a crown from a pawnshop and declares himself King of Clowns. That night, he drinks excessively in celebration near an oil lamp, and manage to catch himself, then part of the forest on fire. He dies in the blaze.

Finally, and most unexpectedly, the crown winds up with a chimpanzee who had been taught sign language then given an operation so they she could theoretically speak. The ghost briefly possesses the chimp and speaks through her, but then it winds up in the talons of an eagle who drops it out at sea.

Justice League #197: Hell hath no fury like super-villains scorned! The Ultra-Humanite's plan goes into its final phase with the 10 heroes captured in the previous two parts being banished to Limbo. All the heroes subsequently disappear from Earth-Two. Ultra reveals he knew this all along, and he and the Earth-Two baddies dismiss their duped Earth-One allies. Killer Frost ain't having it. She leads the Earth-One crew to the JLA satellite where they use the transporter to go to Limbo and rescue the heroes. The heroes return to Earth-Two and in a rematch, defeat their opponents, returning things to normal. 

Views on the Great Wheel

Intelligent beings of planar aware civilizations have attempted to conceptualize the meaning of the Outer Planes. Some of the these explanations are mutual exclusive, but that does not mean they are false. The planes are beyond human understanding in their totality. Or best theories are vastly simplified models.

Pseudo-Xrieixes in his frequently cited commentaries to the Analects of Law, proposed that the cosmos was in fact driven by seven syzygies, with the concepts in the pairs being conceptualized as planes, but unable to be fully comprehended in isolation. The earliest of the these was Law and Chaos, but others were elaborated in an increasingly complicated universe:

Community and Isolation
Abnegation of self and egotism
Willing service and imprisonment
Contentment and despair
The natural world and perversion of nature
Liberty and authority
Noble struggle and senseless conflict

Seswura views the planes are distinct entities. She is less concerned with their opposing planes across the wheel, and more concerned with the "major gravities" of concept in the local area. She states their various ethe in the following way (in Grelmarthan's translation):

Mechanus: The Program is All. Execute the Program and Unity will be restored.
Archeron: Law is what Authority makes it. An Army will be forged and subdue enemies without and within.
Hell: The Law must punish all transgression. If Unity cannot be restored we will fashion a new Order.
Gehenna: Nothing burns in Hell but Self-will, and we will immolate it for the New Order.
Hades: All that is left of self is Despair.
Carceri: The Demons of Self-Will must be chained and taught to self-confine.
Abyss: There is only Self and only ever was. All else is ugly falsehood and must be destroyed.
Pandemonium: Is there self? What are these voices that torment?
Limbo: Change is all. Unity is eternal and also never was.
Ysgard: All things are impermanent but the contest. We will harness chaos through noble struggle.
Arborea: Revel in freedom and passion, and let others do the same.
Beastlands: There is a cycle to all things. Be in the moment.
Elysium: What is the Godhead but Joy?
Bytopia: Be content in good works at the foot of the Mountain.
Heaven: There is a Mountain and at its Peak you may know the utter self-lessness of Unity.
Arcadia: Not all may scale the Mountain, but all can find meaning in Law at its foot.

The Known World in the Real World

I've previously re-imagined Karameikos as a state in the Balkans. I don't think it's the only D&D setting Known locale that would be easy to translate into fictional countries in the real world. Here are some others:

Darokin: An alpine microstate and republic (like it's larger neighbor, Switzerland), likely descended from the kingdom of the Lombards. It's a modern banking center.

Glantri: A city-state near the Italian-Slovenian border, landlocked, but not far from the Adriatic.

Ierendi: A volcanic archipelago, part of Macronesia, in the North Atlantic.

The Isle of Dread: A mysterious island in the South Pacific.

And here's a now a non-Known World one:

Barovia: A small region in the Carpathian Mountains in Eastern Europe.

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1981 (wk 2 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around August 20, 1981. 

Green Lantern #146: Following his defeat last issue, the Goldface has Green Lantern captive and shows him off to a bunch of criminals he invited over in his bid to become a crime boss. Then, Green Lantern remembers that he can effect things that are yellow indirectly and busts out them defeats Goldface. The cops show up and arrest GL, because he's in Goldface's house and the villain claims assault. It seems like Wolfman is trying to make Green Lantern seem like a loser, and the plot seems like something out of a Bronze Age Spider-Man story. I just don't see Green Lantern doing much crimefighting of the Earthly variety, but that's just me.

Infantino is handling pencils on the Laurie Sutton Adam Strange backup. Strange's defeat of the spider creature last time only led to it reproducing. Now it's kids are the problem. It turns out they aren't out to destroy, they just need to food to hatch from their larval stage and go home to space. 

Legion of Super-Heroes #281: Ditko is back on art. The Legion is trapped in 20th Century Smallville as they try to unravel this Reflecto/Superboy/Ultra-Boy mystery, and they have to contend with an android menace called the Molecule Master, the U.S. Army, and townsfolks' intense thoughts about Saturn Girl's outfit! Oh, and the Time Trapper shows up in the end.

New Adventures of Superboy #23: Bates and Schaffenberger continue their story from last month with Superboy, convinced that he's a menace due to some mistakes, deciding to travel into the past because he believes that's the only place he can't hurt anyone. (His reasoning is the past is immutable, so anything he is able to do had already happened anyway.) He winds up in the Old West and gets a job as a reporter, but eventually finds trouble in the form of outlaw Jess Manning and an alien outlaw, too. Superboy gets his confidence back, and the alien adopts Manning's son Toby who will one day become the Superman villain Terra-Man.

In the backup story, the President of the United States (who looks like JFK) has trouble getting in touch with Superboy to take care of an emergency, so the Boy of Steel creates the emergency signal lamp whenever the police chief of Smallville needs to reach him.

Sgt. Rock #358: Kanigher and Redondo again have Rock interacting with kids as he meets a group of war orphans playing at soldiers, but he when the Germans actually attack, Rock tries to save them. They end up saving him when a tank spoils his Molotov cocktail throw. Then we get a story that I feel like we've seen before where a German frogman kills an Allied one, but then is himself killed by a shark. Next is a story set at the time of the Norman Invasion of England where a young peasant becomes a warrior after being taunted and later wishes he had stayed out of the bloodletting. The last story is a "Men of Easy" focus on Jackie Johnson. He uses a grenade in a boxing glove to blow up a German tank.

Unexpected #216: In the cover story by Mishkin and Gonzales, a European vampire has landed in Japan and is preying about the peasantry in the year 1600. A young samurai defeats the creature with the help of a Christian priest. The samurai considers killing the priest and his feels the powerful magic (the Christian symbols) that helped to defeat the vampire are a threat to Japan, but ultimately he decides to leave it to fate. 

The next story is the worst of the issue, with the youngest of the three witches getting a criminal caught who displeased her. The Harris/Zamora story that follows it about a dream door and a fraudulent psychotherapist is only marginally better. It does poke fun at the disappearance of the ongoing features from the past year in the horror titles (like Mr. E, Dr, 13, etc.). The final story by Newman and Landgraf is a overly complicated sci-fi piece about aliens taking the form of robots in an orbital station, convinced they are the rulers of Earth when they are actually the servants.

Unknown Soldier #257: Haney and Ayers/Tlaloc have the Soldier turn the tables on the Nazis who tricked him into believing he had been in a coma and the war ended: he tells them there's a secret missile on the Scottish coast about to fire at Berlin. When they take him there to show them, he escapes and manages get to England to fool the Germans into thinking the Enigma Machine was destroyed.

The next story is a pessimistic tale about a racist  white soldier about the costs of prejudice by Kanigher and Sparling. It contains a couple of racial slurs that wouldn't appear outside of mature reader comics just a few years later. Kanigher is on the next one, too, with art by Gonzales: Captain Storm. I know Storm from the Losers, but here is his origin as a PT boat captain with a grudge against a Japanese sub with shark teeth painted on its bow that killed his crew and cost him a leg. There's a brief appearance by JFK.

Warlord #51:  The many story is a reprint of Warlord #1. The backup is the debut of Dragonsword by Levitz and Yeates. A young knight, Thiron of the King's Isle, accompanied by his talking chimp squire, slays a dragon, but finds that the dragon may in fact live on in his now-talking sword.

World's Finest Comics #273: In the Burkett and Gonzales/Smith continue the story from last issue with Superman and Batman trying to find out who sent the robots that stole some weaponry from the Fortress of Solitude. In a Chekhov's gun moment, Supes shows Bats his "Power Charger" that would restore a Kryptonian's powers temporarily if lost to Gold Kryptonite or give a non-Kryptonian powers--but them kill anyone that used it. They track the mastermind, called the Weapon Master, to his mountain hideout, but he shoots down the batplane, and defeats Superman with Kryptonite. The Weapon Master uses his devices to make Superman and everyone else mindless slaves--except Batman who is back at the Fortress, preparing to use the Power Charger to save the world...

In the Green Arrow story, Count Vertigo has launched a missile toward Moscow, forcing Green Arrow and his sidekick to sick the aid of a Soviet military officer and his troops to take Vertigo down and stop the missile. Pasko and Staton bring more Plastic Man goofiness with Plas taking down murderers in the fashion industry. Punny names abound. In the Hawkman story, the Hawks take a moment to taunt Hyathis before rushing back to Earth to take care of a Thanagarian spy which they deduce to be Byth. Hawkman finally gets him when Byth (disguised as Hawkwoman) calls himself "Hawkgirl." The Bridwell/Newton Shazam story is pretty good. Sivana is upset when he finds out he one a Nobel Prize and tries to turn his trip to the ceremony into another attempt to take over the world, but his efforts are subverted by Captain Marvel and he wins another Nobel Prize.

Weird Revisited: 70s TV Science Fiction Combined Timeline

Back in 2016, I was running a Planet of the Apes game that stole liberally from other science fiction shows besides PotA. In talking it over with my friend Jim Shelley of The Flashback Universe Blog, he hit on doing sort of trading cards of major timeline events. Here's my timeline, and what Jim did with it. I didn't use everything in the game, but it was a fun exercise.

An additional note: This is a TV timeline. A lot of dates in Planet of the Apes are given in the movies, so it doesn't so up in this version. The Logan's Run tv show and film offer different starting dates, but the show is being used here (though in my game, should the City of Domes ever show up, I'm using the movie date).

Creation of cyborgs (like the Six Million Dollar Man) may also rank among the late 20th Century's achievements.

Suspended animation was used in spaceflight in the 80s, so either a less developed version was already in use (as suggested by the POTA films) or data from Hunt's project  did lead to a breakthrough despite the loss of the team leader.

The actual date is August 19, 1980.

The Great Conflict is the name given this war in Genesis II/Planet Earth. These shows make it clear that the war occurred in the 20th Century, though it most have been after a subshuttle station we see in the Planet Earth pilot was built in 1992. The Planet of the Apes tv show suggests a later date. No never specifies, but this date fits with the POTA film series. The Logan's Run series sets the apocalyptic war in the 22nd Century, which is why I chose to go with the earlier film dates in my game setup.

This is also true of the 2nd Roddenbery pilot to deal with this material, Planet Earth. There Dylan Hunt is played by John Saxon.

No evolved apes are seen at the time of PAX (or even Logan's Run), true, but it could be the apes were confined to the area that once was California then. Neither of these shows necessarily covered a wide territory.

Astronauts Burke and Virdon arrive in a North America (or at least Western North America) controlled by apes in a well-established civilization in 3085, so the culture must have spread before that.

The Challenge of Ysgard

Ysgard in some metaphysical sense is found between the pure (or what passes for it in the current multiverse) chaos of Limbo and the pursuit of sensation and individual freedom of Arborea. Indeed, it may well be the ferment from which the heady wine of Arborea was born. Ysgard embodies conflict and striving. It is both the wanting and the expression of the idea that achieving the thing wanted often comes at a price.

In the belief of adherents of Chaos (or at least some of them), Ysgard was differentiated and divided from pure Chaos when the moment the schism between Law and Chaos was recognized. The Ysgard of today, however, bears little resemblance to that primal conceptual realm as it has been shaped by the minds of beings since. It is a realm of archetypes and story, in a myriad variations. The trials it subjects souls to are often of a violent and dramatic cast, with bloody, heroic battles played out on an exaggerated terrain. They seldom have a clear beginning and ending; there is a reason that Ysgard is often associated with the serpent devouring its own tail. 

In keeping with this essential nature of the plane, participants may come to violent ends, but these endings are never permanent, merely transformative. There are some souls, however, that come to perceive their experiences as imbued with profundity beyond that which is readily apparent in the events themselves, while others come realize they are mere shadows, lacking any substance. In the end, there may be little difference between the two positions, and souls achieving either sort of enlightenment are not seen again in Ysgard.

Quest for the Serpent Throne!

We gave Broken Compass a go last night, playing the adventure that appears in the Golden Age sourcebook for "classic" 1930s pulp. I've given me read through impressions of the system previously, but this was my first time running it.

The "Quest of the Serpent Throne!" brings our intrepid adventurers: hunter and sometime smuggler, Kerry "K.O." O'Sullivan, and archeologist, Margaret Stilton to Calcutta to meet with Stilton's colleague, Professor Upandra Ram. They bring with them an artifact known as the Naga Shell which is supposedly to be essential to finding the mystical Chintamani stone, and opening the temple where the stone can be used to summon the Naga back from their exile to the netherworld.

They head out in search of the lost temple in the Bengal Jungle, but on a steamer up the Hooghly River, they discover they aren't the only one seeking it: Sumar Nagarani, an arms dealer and fascist sympathizer also seeks the temple. He offers our heroes a lot of money to recruit them, and they agree, but refuse to give up the Naga Shell. What will the consequence be? We'll have to wait until next session to find out!

The system went pretty well in play or it being our first time with it. Overall, I was pleased with it, but I'm glad I chose to go with an adventure they wrote as it made up for some of the lack of examples of the mechanics in action in the book. Not that there are any, but I could have used more.

The Planar Grand Tour

I've been thinking about finishing this series on the Outer Planes. We'll see if that happens, but here's a review of where it's been so far.

The Planes of Pure Law
The Planes of Chaos
Hell
Carceri

Hades

Arborea

Elysium

Beastlands

Gehenna

The Layers of Heaven (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

Limbo

Weird Revisted: Cold War Planescape

"Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results."

- The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John Le Carre

This is what came of seeing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2016) and Atomic Blonde in the same weekend back on 2017.

Take Planescape's Sigil and re-imagine it as vaguely post-World War (it really doesn't matter which one) in technology and sensibility. It's the center of fractious sometimes warring (but mostly cold warring) planes, but now it's more like Cold War Berlin or Allied-occupied Vienna.

Keep all the Planescape factions and conflict and you've got a perfect locale for metacosmic Cold War paranoia and spy shennanigans. You could play it up swinging 60s spy-fi or something darker.

There's always room for William S. Burroughs in something like this, and VanderMeer's Finch and Grant Morrison's The Filth might also be instructive. Mostly you could stick to the usual spy fiction suspects.

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1981 (wk 2 pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around August 20, 1981.

Action Comics #525: Wolfman and Staton start this story a year ago, when Superman responds to a terrorist attack (courtesy of Luthor) on a nuclear power plant. Superman saves two of Luthor's hirelings, but they lie for some reason and tell him there wasn't anyone else, and Supes can't see the guy due to lead shielding I guess. The hireling, Nat Tryon (get it?) manages to survive and makes his way back to Luthor who puts him in a suit under a ray--and leaves him there for a year. Tryon is changed by a into Neutron, a nuclear-powered villain, and when released by an accident seeks revenge on his former buddies and Superman for not saving him. In the end, Neutron kills his former cohorts, but his fights with Superman are draws. If he can't kill Superman he decides to destroy him emotionally by striking at Metropolis itself. This a lot more action-y story than most in Action; Wolfman brings more of a Marvel approach.

In the Air Wave backup, Hal and his girlfriend science fiction art exhibit, encounters a costumed thief called the Cosmic Corsair and gains a case of amnesia. His girl has to cosplay as the Cosmic Corsair to shock him into regaining the memory of his superhero identity so he can defeat the badguy.

Adventure Comics #487: The cover blurb calls this "the most talked about new series!" I am skeptical. In the first story, Radiator and Crimson Star are working for the mysterious Master, but the Avatar (one of the more interesting IDs in this title) and Kismet stop them quickly. Chris and Vicki also patch up their differences (mostly) and decide to be friends and partners again. The second story is pretty silly with a scientist having turned himself into a giant snake. Our heroes have to save him from the police who plan to kill the monsters. 

Brave & the Bold #180: Fleisher and Aparo, the creators of the infamous Bronze Age Earth-1 Spectre, present this team of that character with Batman. An ancient Japanese relic is stolen from a Gotham museum and a guard is murdered. Batman discovers the item is part of a staff belonging to an evil wizard with the un-Japanese name of Wa'arzen. If the pieces of the staff are re-united, Wa'arzen can return. Jim Corrigan gets involved as well, bringing in his alter ego, the Spectre. The wizard achieves his power, and is strong enough to challenge the Spectre, but Batman uses a well-placed batarang to knock the scepter from his hand, so the Spectre can defeat him. Teamwork!

All-Star Squadron #3: Thomas and Buckler have the different groups of here defeat the disparate portions of Per Degaton's overcomplicated plan, and the team finally comes together! A lot of "business" goes on in this issue, and I'm going to go to the unusual step of linking to a detailed synopsis here, because the author humorless points out the plot goofs and continuity errors. As a kid, I would have eaten this up but as an adult I feel its a bit to jam-packed with stuff that winds up being not terribly entertaining. Some of it may be a consequence of having to juggle so many protagonists.

Detective Comics #508: Conway and Newton drop the ball here after the Manikin two-parter. Selena Kyle is missing. Batman finds dust that he realizes (somehow) is the same as dust from ancient Egyptian tombs. He goes the the museum for help from an expert, but resident Egyptologist, Geoffrey Griffin is also missing. It turns out, Griffin was obsessed a Egyptian Queen Kara (who happens to look a lot like Selena) and the pyramid at Giza. Bruce is off to Egypt and finds Griffin and Selena in a previously undiscovered room inside the Sphinx! Griffin thinks he's Khafre reincarnated, somehow has magical Egyptian artifacts, and wants to preserve Selena alive as his undying queen. Fight ensues, Batman defeats Griffin who then gets mauled to death by jackals. This is 70s cartoon level plotting.

In the Batgirl backup by Burkett and Delbo, Barbara gives an impassioned speech for prison reform. Meanwhile, a geologist who feels people are taking his discovery of an energized space rock seriously goes an mutates himself into a superhuman freak with it. Calling himself the Annihilator, he defeats Batgirl. When Supergirl shows up to save the day, he begins absorbing her power!

House of Mystery #298: The first story here by Harris and Sutton is okay. It's a Twilight Zone pastiche about a 19th Century looking settlement were an alien arrives and robs the grave of the recently deceased burgomeister--and is mistaken for the undead and attacked by the townsfolk until it's revealed the alien actually rescued the burgomeister from premature burial and cured him. The alien takes off his space helmet and proclaims he brings greetings from Earth.  

Next up, DeMatteis and Gonzales have the ghost of a blind bluesman get revenge by blinding the record exec who cheated him. Then there's an EC type story with an EC-esque exploitation of deformity, where an escaped robber on the run from the mob with money is drawn into a weird house for people with various gruesomely acquired deformities. When he see's their room full of money, he decides to rob them too, only to have a terrible accident like all the rest and wind up a hunchbacked, twisted, permanent guest. 

The last story by Jones and Infante exemplifies the principle of Chekhov's dynamite retrieving dog. A a handsome ne'er-do-well is caught dynamite fishing on the property of a reclusive, but wealthy young woman, who has a pure breed dog he is quite taken with. The man feigns interest in the woman to get her to marry him, and she has done so, he drowns her in the pond. He celebrates his wealth with a little dynamite fishing, but the good dog retrieves the dynamite and they both die in the explosion.

Superman Family #212: Pasko and Mortimer finally reveal what the deal is with Greg and his odd behavior: he's got a gambling problem. They leads to Supergirl tangling with Blackrock, who I only knew from the Who's Who before this. Also, Lena is having severe headaches. In Mr. and Mrs. Superman, a rival reporter plants a fake "Superman stops A Flying Saucer Story" but Lois and Clark but turn his lie into a staged reality. In the Rozakis/Calnan "Private Life of Clark Kent," a newsboy who wants really badly to be a reporter manages to actually help Clark on a story by being an eye-witness to a jewel robbery. In the Levitz/Oksner Lois Lane story, she tangles with yet another criminal who wants her dead. It involves a scene of Lois, undressing from the shower, when a hand grenade is lobbed in her window. She quickly picks it up and throws it back outside, then takes her shower. 

The Jimmy Olsen story by Pasko/Delbo is the wackiest of them all. After a visit to the dentist, Jimmy is plagued with insomnia and people keep trying to kill him. Turns out, the dentist and his nurse are both plants and working against him (though not with the same goals) and the fake distant has been broadcasting a high pitched signal into a receiver implanted in Jimmy's tooth to keep him awake.

Fire from the Void

Our Land of Azurth 5e continued to explore the tower built to channel the the wild magic of the fallen star. After damage from some traps, they found a room where the energy could be dampened by slowing the flow of energy to the spinning stone--which a wizard's notes was be used somehow to bore into realities.

After shutting off two dampeners, the power decreased considerably. They entered the room where the jagged length of obsidian-like star stone was slowly stopping it's spinning. In the distance sealing of the dark room a shadow shape spoke: 

"How long have I waited? Drawn here from the shadows, warming myself on this meager fire and hating the wan light of the young stars...And you, you come to extinguish it!"

"Once there were many of us. We were born in the first hot rush of the universe with the primal stars. We danced and sang amid the radiance. Now there are few, and the universe has creatures such as you things--cold and leaden. I will share with you the fires of the heavens!"

A void dragon unleashed it's star radiance breath weapon on them! Kairon was dying and none of the rest were feeling so good.

The dragon told them to bring it the creature that had been in the stone. It wished to consume it's celestial energy. It admitted it was unable to fit into the room where the thing was held. It showed them the door and again demanded they get it. 

Kully taunted the dragon that he was hardly afraid of a creature that could leave the room. It wasn't an accurate taunt, but it served for the moment, because the party was through the door before the dragon could react.

In the room there was a glass orb full of an energized arcane fluid. This was the source of the power for the entire place. Within, they saw the shadow of a slim, human hand beckoning them.

They debated briefly on what to do. Kully used music to attempt to communicate. The creature responded with something like ethereal, whale-song. The party decided to cracked the orb. A slim, strange being emerged.