Intellects Vast and Cool and Unsymapthetic: Mind-Flayer Speculations

The Illithid came for Rellan today.

They stood in the entrance of the holding cell like wet, bruise-purple statues draped in funerary black. They were motionless save for the subtle, vermiform writhing of their tentacles, and the pulsing of the thick veins wreathing their bulbous skulls.

They had been taking us one by one from the holding cell, for whatever obscure need they had. I say need--though the very concept seems incongruous with the cold dispassion which characterized their actions. Their intelligence was apparent in their black eyes, but inhuman in its workings, and far beyond ours, and so unknowable.

The psychic buzzing that always accompanied their presence seemed to paralyze us at their will. Faintly, sometimes in these visits I thought I could hear their telepathic voices, like distant whispers, as they discussed among themselves which of us to select. These psychic vibrations I perceived as pitched something like the voices of old women, but alien in their lack of inflection or emotion.

Today, the deliberations were quick. The buzzing rose in volume, and Rellan was seized by the emanations of their mind and walked stiffly into the presence of our captors, face contorted with the agony of his futile resistance. In a moment, they were gone, and we were free from the effects of their overbearing psychic presence.

As with the others taken before, we never saw Rellan again.

- From a journal found in a cleared room in the Labyrinth of Ulthraun, delivered to Tuvo brek Amblesh, Magister of the Library of Tharkad-Keln.

Everybody likes Mind Flayers. They're one of the classic monsters of D&D, and have entered the culture of fantasy gaming, appearing in sometimes slightly camouflaged form (and sometimes not) in other tabletop rpgs and computer games.

One of the most appealing things about the Mind Flayers is their inherent alien and mysterious nature. Multiple origins have been given for them in various D&D products over the years and editions. These different origins are often irreconcilable, at least in part.

I see that as a design feature rather than a bug. Mysterious and compelling adversaries deserve equally murky and evocative origins.

In that spirit, here are four possible origins for the Mind Flayers. They're in no way completely "original" and that's purposeful.  They draw from a host of pulp, weird, and science fiction sources, as well as referencing, in some ways, origins offered in official source material. They also utilize modern terminology to help evoke a pseudo-scientific air, but also to help the modern reader come at these classic creatures in a new way.  They're are not necessarily intended to be used verbatim "in game." On the other hand, a dying astronaut whispering his last words, or an ancient, half-malfunctioning video screen relaying one of these origins would be just the sort of genre-bashing that classic D&D was built from...

• The Mind Flayers are abhuman mutants from a far future, dying earth. Endeavoring to save their civilization from extinction, they have been using all their failing super-science to cast as many of their dwindling number as they can back through the eons. In the current era, they are interested in humans as food--and as subjects for experimentation.  They hope to force-evolve mankind into their species, and restore a breeding population of their once mighty race.

• The Illithids are vampiric thoughtforms from a higher plane. If they can be glimpsed in their "true" form by magical or psionic means, they resemble translucent, glowing jellyfish. They descended into material forms out of hunger and curiosity millennia ago, drawn like moths to a flame by the psychic energy of nascent sentient life.

• The Mind Flayers hail from a planet destroyed by the gods themselves--either as punishment for their impious presumption, or out of fear of their developing power. Some illithid escaped the death of their world, and hide in subterranean enclaves, bidding their time, and planning their vengeance.

• The Illithid are but the drones or puppets of ancient aquatic, elder brains. Either these coral-like beings evolved here, or perhaps arrived from some alien world. Whatever their origins, they construct larva which infect intelligent hosts and transform them biologically into illithid, subsuming them in a group mind. The ultimate goals of these elder brains are unknown.

Maybe these aren't mutually exclusive. Or maybe they contain a kernel of truth, but aren't literally true. Mix and match, and use 'em as you like. The goal is to keep the Mind Flayers scary and interesting--and strange.

And Now....A Wolf-Man On A Motorcycle

More specifically, it’s a criminal lycanthrope--member of a rather unusual gang in circa 1913 Los Angeles--astride a 1911 Indian Motorcycle.

I offer this in lieu of the digression I was planning on my preparation for this weekend’s impending game session. I’ll save that for a post-game report.

The art is by the very talented Diego Candia.  It's a panel from a digital comic I wrote and created which hopefully will be appearing as a download for a new application for a very popular device. I say "hopefully," as all the details aren’t ironed out, as yet. Anyway, the story is called Hell-Bent: Infamous Monsters, and features freelance troubleshooter Sam McCord, and his “floating gang” of specialists, versus the aforementioned criminal enterprise.

Though this is the first Hell-Bent story completed, it wasn’t the first conceived. In trying to come up with a second entry for Zuda Comics (and maybe influenced by the research I’d done in making up my character for a sort of magic realism Boot Hill game I was playing in), I conceived a horror/action/Western story, set in Mexico during the Revolution of 1913. Sort of The Wild Bunch or The Professionals meets Army of Darkness, maybe.  That story still languishes, after a couple of artists, and a number of other set-backs.

But the eight pages of Infamous Monsters--which I wrote almost a year ago--have been penciled, inked, and colored, and are being lettered as I write this.  And that’s pretty cool.

Sword & Sorcery Heroes in the Bronze Age [Part 2]

This is the second part of an article originally written for my friend Jim's Flashback Universe Blog. It's part of a series called Bronze Age Spotlight.  This particular piece examines the S&S characters adapted to comics in the so-called Bronze Age, this time, those from DC Comics, in the main.

In regard to Part 1, I'm indebted to Marty Halpern of More Red Ink who pointed out an error: Effinger's When Gravity Fails was nominated for a Hugo and a Nebula, but unfortunately won neither.  The post was corrected accordingly, and in doing so I caught a few typos and cut-paste malfunctions which have also been corrected.  Dammit Jim,  I'm a Doctor not a word processor!

Hopefully, I'll be closer to error-free today...


DC's Sword & Sorcery: “TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE”

“At least we have something in common!—we’re all three crooks!”

- Catwoman (to Fafhrd and Gray Mouser) Wonder Woman #202 (1972)

Perhaps it was because DC didn’t have the works of Robert E. Howard to fall back on, or maybe it was a reluctance to delve into this sort of material, but for whatever reason, they didn’t adapt as many literary sword and sorcery characters as Marvel.

When they did, at least they got two for the price of one—Fritz Leiber’s sword and sorcery duo, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser.

Fafhrd and Gray Mouser’s prose debut was in Unknown in “the Year of the Behemoth, the Month of the Hedgehog, the Day of the Toad”—well, in story, at least. In our world we may reckon that as August 1939. Leiber chronicled the twain’s adventures off and on from that story until 1988’s “The Mouser Goes Below”—a longer span than the entire life of Robert E. Howard. Fafhrd was a Northern barbarian from Cold Corner, and Gray Mouser was a thief and one-time sorcerer’s apprentice from the urban South. They met in decadent Lankhmar, “City of the Seven Score Thousand Smokes,” and became lifelong friends and companions in (mis)adventure.

When Fafhrd and Gray Mouser came to comics, they did so in an unlikely place. They first appeared on the last panel of Wonder Woman #201, during her powerless, kung-fu-fighting, Diana Prince era. Issue 202 has them teaming up with Wonder Woman, her sifu I-Ching, and Catwoman, to thwart a wizard and save Jonny Double who’s trapped inside a mystic gem. In the words of Bart Simpson: “You can’t make this stuff up!”

The issue was written by New Wave science fiction luminary, Samuel Delany. Highlights include Fafhrd backhanding Diana, and Mouser and Catwoman having a totem-appropriate face-off, before they all decide to join forces. This all serves as a “backdoor pilot” for the twain’s run in the bimonthly Sword of Sorcery series premiering in 1973. It only ran for five issues, but featured original stories and adaptations, most scripted by Denny O’Neil (except for one by George Alec Effinger), and featuring art by Howard Chaykin, Walter Simonson, and Jim Starlin.

Fafhrd and Gray Mouser vanished from DC at the cancellation of Sword of Sorcery. The two were next sighted at a different company in a 1991 Epic limited series which reunited them with Howard Chaykin, who scripted adaptations of Leiber’s tales. All issues featured evocative art by Mike Mignola.

“Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

- Conan “Queen of the Black Coast” Robert E. Howard

Sword and Sorcery comics did good business in the Bronze Age, both with licensed characters, and original creations like Arak, Dagar, Wulf, Claw, Ironjaw, and the Warlord. It was a true Golden Age for comic book sword-swinging!

Today, Robert E. Howard properties are still appearing in comics, mostly from Dark Horse.  So far they've given us two successive Conan series and various limited series, a Kull series, and a Solomon Kane limited series. Image has given us a line inspired by some of Frank Frazetta’s great sword and sorcery-themed paintings. Marvel and DC, on the other hand, have concentrated on the mainstream superheroes that are their bread and butter; most of their sword and sorcery creations stalk only the back issue bins.  True, we have gotten a Showcase Presents: Warlord, but that's about it.

These things go in cycles, surely. Maybe one of these days will see Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, Charles Saunders' Imaro, or perhaps the outré exploits of Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean, realized on the comics page.