Gloom, Rising from the Underground: The Derro

The derro, as presented in AD&D, always seemed a little superfluous. Okay, the original Jim Holloway art from S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth gives them a sort of Celtic twist (biker moustaches, spikey hair, and plaid pants), but essentially they're just evil dwarves--and that's the duergar's thing.

The derro are kind of bland, really. I'd expect more from a monster inspired by the delusions of a man likely suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

"They recognize no other living thing as friend; to a dero all new things are enemy."

- Richard Shaver and Ray Plamer, "I Remember Lemuria!"

"Dero" (only one "r" here) are from the stories of Richard Sharpe Shaver, edited by Ray Palmer and published in the pulp magazine, Amazing Stories. Shaver was a welder who had begun to hear voices being projected into the welding equipment he used, which he believed came from an underground civilization. These voices, visions he received, and ultimately memories he began to recover from his past lives revealed to him a secret history. He learned of the Elder Race from another world, who had been forced underground by increasing solar radiation. Over time, the elder race degenerated into the "teros" or integrative energy robots, who were helpful to mankind, and the "deros" or detrimental energy robots, who were sadistic and tormented humanity. Robot, it should be noted, doesn't mean a mechanical being in Shaver's terminology. Both races were biological, presumably.

Shaver sent a letter to Amazing Stories detailing his discovery of the ancient source of all human languages, which allowed him to pick out the hiding meanings in English words. This interested Palmer. He claims to have applied Shaver's formula to samples of other languages with "interesting results." Palmer published the letter in the December 1943 issue, and got a big response from readers.

Palmer contacted Shaver for more, and Shaver responded with a 10,000 word manuscript entitled "A Warning to Future Man." Palmer edited Shaver's work and added more of an actual plot, producing the novella "I Remember Lemuria!" published in March 1945. The Shaver Mystery series had begun, and for the next two years, nearly every issue of Amazing Stories featured a Shaver story.

Shaver's deros kidnapped humans for sadistic torture, or for food. Using ancient ray machines, they surveilled surface dwellers and projected tormenting thoughts and voices into their minds. They could also cause all manner of misfortunes, from illness to natural disasters.

It seems to me that something more akin to Shaver's deros would be more interesting than simple evil dwarves. Maybe the two "r" derro could be encountered as a mysterious evil afflicting a village or town. Villagers might disappear, others would be driven to suicide or homicide by tormenting voices. Bizarre events--anything an enterprising gamemaster might wish to borrow from paranormal or ufo lore--would have everyone in town on edge. Eventually, of course, the PCs would venture into previously hidden caves to confront the menace (and take its stuff), but until then the adventure could proceed in something of a "horror" mode--or at least a "weird" one.

The derro are no strangers to madness, and its about time they shared it.

Sword & Planet Hulk

Last week I watched the blu-ray of the animated Planet Hulk feature from Lions Gate. It’s an adaptation of the 2006 storyline in The Incredible Hulk, written by Greg Pak with art by Carlo Pagulayan and Jeffrey Huet. Having not read the comic, this was my first exposure to the material, and I found it pretty enjoyable, and one of the best of Marvel Animation's direct-to-video efforts.

The plot, in brief, goes something like this: the Hulk is rocketed into space by a group of Marvel Universe big-guns who think he’s menace. He winds up going through a space-rift and winding up on one of those mostly barbaric worlds with elements of advanced technology here and there—this one being named Sakaar. There, he’s put into the arena by the forces of the planet’s tyrant, the Red King, with sort of an eclectic group of other aliens. He proves himself in brute strength, but must overcome his sulkiness and stop being a loner. Then, he bursts his bonds to fight for justice (as it were) and takes a page from the Spartacus revolutionary handbook. Ultimately, the Hulk gets a love interest, defeats the Red King, and proves himself to have been the prophesied messiah of Sakaar all along.

The story is pure “sword and planet” or “planetary romance”—which is to say the subgenre of science fiction (or fantasy) that features an earthman (or woman) engaging in heroic adventure on other worlds. Generally these worlds are primitive—or have strange primitive elements—which is where the swords come into play. The prototype of these sorts of stories is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, but the genre has had many adherents, particularly during a revival in the late sixties.

Planet Hulk isn’t the first fusion of superheroica and planetary romance—it isn’t even the first starring the Hulk. Harlan Ellison’s “The Brute…That Shouted Love…At the Heart of the Atom” (The Incredible Hulk #140, 1971) had the Hulk romancing a queen and winning a kingdom in the subatomic world of K’ai—most likely inspired by Ray Cummings’ 1922 novel The Girl in the Golden Atom. The X-Men’s Nightcrawler got into otherworldly swashbuckling in his 1985 limited series. He also got to stand-in for John Carter in a one-off send-up of the genre in Excalibur #16 (December, 1989).

Is there any gaming value here? Well, I think that for those playing superhero rpgs, a sword and planet sojourn might be a welcome respite from slogging it out with super-villains. My personal favorites for something like this would be the old Marvel Superheroes rpg (or maybe one of its retro-clones), or maybe Mutants & Masterminds, utilizing the Wizards & Warlocks supplement (which doesn’t offer a Sword & Planet setting per se, but does swords and lost worlds, which ought to be close enough).

The other possible inspiration would be for a Sword & Planet game with more over-the-top action and power levels than traditionally found in the literary genre. In other words, maybe something analogous to what Exalted is for fantasy --at least in terms of power level, not necessarily flavor. I don’t off hand know the best system for this—though either of the two suggested above could do it, and HERO System no doubt could as well, depending on the level of crunch one wants.

Warlord Wednesday: This Savage World

Continuing my examination of DC Comic's Warlord...

"This Savage World"
Warlord (vol. 1) #1 (January-February 1976)

Written and Illustrated by Mike Grell

Synopsis: In the jungles of Skartaris, Morgan trains in use of the sword with Tara. He recalls the events that led to this point--giving a recap of 1st Issue Special #8. After completing their practice, the two continue their journey to Tara's home city of Shamballah. Morgan tries (again) to explain to Tara about the hollow earth, but she still doesn't believe him. In their travels they glimpse a coffle of slaves being taken to Bal Shazar, and Tara is mesmerized by a satyr--who Morgan knocks out with one punch. Unfortunately, the smoke of their campfire draws the slave raiders, and the are ambushed. Tara and Morgan are chained with the other slaves and marched out across the desert. Unwilling to give up, Morgan begins to saw through Tara's slave collar with the titanium chain of his dog tags. After some time, he manages to free her, but not before they're noticed by the guards. Tara is able to escape on horseback, while Morgan fights off the slavers. Eventually, he's brought down by a blow to the back of his skull. When he regains consconsciousness, he's tied hanging from a tree by his arms, where the angry slavemaster leaves him to die.

Things to Notice:

• The recap gives the name of the Theran king (Baldur) which wasn't given last issue.
• Neither Tara or Morgan understand gravity. Tara has no conception of it, and Morgan gets it wrong.
• The leader of the slavers wears a winged helm much like the one Morgan will eventually adopt.
• The worst invective Vietnam vet Travis Morgan can hurl at the slaver who just crucified him is "stick it in your ear!"

Where It Comes From:
Tara and Morgan are on their way to Tara's home city of Shamballah.  The name comes from the Tibetian Buddhist tradition, where it came to be seen as a earthly paradise of sorts. It enters into the Western occult lore through the theosophist writings of HP Blavatsky. Grell probably encountered it in the Three Dog Night song of the same name ("Shambala") from 1975.

Tara's Skartarian cosmological mythology snippet is a nice bit of color.  Her giant is the Skartarian equivalent of Atlas, the titan who held up the heavens from Greek mythology.  The Atlas Mountains of North (western) Africa are named for him. The name of Tara's giant is "Ashanti" which is the name of a Western African ethnic group, who ruled a pre-colonial empire in what is now Ghana.

The slavers and their hapless captives are on their way to another Skartarian city, Bal Shazar--which is only a slight modification of Belshazzar (Akkadian Bal-sarra-usur meaning "Bel (lord) protect the king"), the name of a prince of Babylon according to the Old Testament Book of Daniel.  Grell probably uses it for its ancient Middle Eastern sort of sound which fits thematically with the slave coffle's trek across the desert.

The satyr sequence drives home the fantasy elements of Skartaris, which serves as a counterpoint to the dinosaurs and other lost world trappings.  The satyr is from Greek mythology, though his protrayal here shows that Grell follows the tendency--present since the Roman era--to conflate them with the god Pan, himself. The specific events in the story may have been inspired by a sequence from the 1964 film, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, where Barbara Eden's character suffers a similar musical seduction.