Warlord Wednesday: Duel of the Titans

Here's another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"Duel of the Titans"
Warlord (vol. 1) #4 (December 1976-January 1977)

Written and Illustrated by Mike Grell

Synopsis: In the palace of Thera, Deimos gloats over his captive, Tara.  A guard rushes in to warn him of an attack--which a cannonball through crashing through the wall emphasizes.  Morgan and his army have arrived. 

Using siege equipment Morgan taught them how to build, his army is overruning the Theran forces.  Deimos is pleased, however, as he's counted on Tara being bait to draw Morgan to him.  Using the mysterious scrolls of blood he conjures up a giant, demonic creature.  When the creature begins to turn the tide of battle, Machiste suggests retreat.  Morgan instead climbs a seige tower to shoot Deimos, but the villain is using Tara as a shield, so he shoots the strange device from which the demon materialized.  The demon dissipates as the device shatters.  Morgan uses the self-destruct device from his plane, set off by a shot from his pistol, to blow open Thera's gates.  Morgan's army takes the city, and Morgan cuts through all who oppose him to get to Deimos. 

He finds his nemesis attempting to flee with Tara still captive.  Desperate, Deimos challenges Morgan to a duel for his freedom.  Over Tara's objections, Morgan agrees.  Morgan has them fight in darkness, and Deimos draws first blood, but Morgan's fury carries the day, and he kills Deimos with one blow.  The tyrant slain, Tara and Morgan plan to return to Shamballah, but Morgan urges his army to continue the fight for freedom.  Ignored by the victors, the tome known as the scrolls of blood lies next to Deimos' body.  Its cover reveals it to be the technical manual for a solid hologram projector.

Things to Notice:

• The deity Deimos served as high priest was the sun god.
• Deimos has apparently read Dante's Divine Comedy, or either he (and Dante) have actually been to the gates of hell.
• Despite the Skartarians having weapons suggestive of at least a Medieval European level of technology, they've never invented siege equipment dating from several centuries BCE in the outer world.
• Again Morgan foils Deimos' plans with a well-placed bullet through a technological device.

Where It Comes From:

This issue's title likely comes from the American title of a 1961 sword and sandal film (Italian title: Romolo e Remo) directed by Sergio Corbucci and starring Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott. Corbucci is better known for his Spaghetti Westerns, with Django (1966) probably being the most famous. Reeves is best known as Hercules in Italian sword and sandal films, while Scott played Tarzan in five films and three episodes of an aborted TV series.

Deimos' quote ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here") is a common translation of the Italian phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," which is the inscription over the gates of Hell in the Inferno section of Dante Alighieri's fourteenth-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy.

Deimos' use of the scrolls of blood demonstrates Clarke's Third Law: "a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Apparent magic actually turning out to be ancient technology is a common pulp fiction trope.

Post-Game Report: After the Wave

Uncertainty in the wake of a tsunami. The vague feeling persists that the party has missed something (and they have). When in doubt, seek out Magical Orders for answers. Renin’s prophetic dream is better appreciated post-disaster. Riches fallen from the sky are on everyone’s mind—but how to get to them? A ship is needed, but in a devastated port, none are available. Old enemies in the criminal underworld are approached, and agreements struck, but sea transport isn’t one of them. A detour to haggle with a magic-monger proves fruitful. On the other hand, smuggler kingpins are busy men and difficult to contact through strangely-accented intermediaries. A chance encounter offers a ship for hire within the week, and reveals the troubling history of the destination.

Sunday's installment of our Warriors & Warlocks campaign, freely adapted from Paizo's The Second Darkness, featured the usual cast: Zarac the acquisitive veteran, Renin the psionicist with the troubling dream, and Brother Gannon the thief in monk's clothes.  Apearances were made by the half-elf mage Samyrantha Bel-Tanis, their friend in the Esoteric Order of the Cryptograhers, and their enemy, crime boss Clegg Haddo, who's now their business partner in the gambling house they "inherited."  The party's new employer was introduced: merchant speculator Tavrem Kalus.

This session revealed one of the problems inherent in the the whole "adventure path" thing. The player's missed out on a major story reveal at the end of the first module, which was no big deal there--advice was even give on how to handle that--but module two begins with assumption that the player's got all the pertinent information from the last one, and offers no alternatives. It wasn't terribly difficult to work around--after all, the total of modules I've gamemastered in my whole career being somewhere short of ten, I'm used to making stuff up--but it seems an oversight.

So left in the limbo between the official end of the last module, and the vague beginnings of this one, the player's got a little time in the "sandbox" of the city of Raedelsport, which I worried might bore them, but apparently didn't.

Despite the over a month gap since we last gamed, the player's are actually beginning to remember stuff about the city's locations and personalities (or at least getting better at remembering where to find them in their notes). Everyone seems to be having a good time, though the two more novice players (one of them just started playing with this campaign) are a little tentative at times.

And we've finally arrived at a system to ensure the economic burden of the traditional game pizza order is shared fair and equitably by habitual cash carriers and non-carriers alike, so there's that.

Hateful Glare: The Beholder Examined

"Well, it was as I was sayin', sirs. Me and Ninefinger Nev had been hired to help this crew--out-of-towners, but experienced-like--for this smallish delve. Easy break and grab, it seemed.

And so it were. At first.

Their lockpicker was at work on a couple of Thystaran strongboxes, when a scout--Northern feller, Hrarn, was it?--comes back from checking down-tunnel a peice, pale as a corpse. 'Fore he can get a word out, it comes floatin' in. Never seen one before, but I heard plenty, and knew it for what it was soon as I saw it.

It comes in slow, unhurried-like--floaty--like its riding a gentle breeze, only of course there ain't no breeze and never would you get one big enough to move a monstrosity like that, anyhow. It's eyestalks are moving all about like its lost something and can't find it, and its one big eye is jerkin' and twitchin'. By the gods, sirs, it looked like it was nervous! Or maybe, paranoid might be more the like.

Anyways, it floats in bold as you please--unconcerned--paying us no nevermind, really. And its lips are moving like its talkin' to itself! Mumblin'. Couldn't make out no words, but it was like it was off in its own world.

Then, the captain calls for the mage, and that sound seems to snap the beast to. Its big eye focuses and the little ones quit squirmin'. The thing starts laughin'--gigglin'-like--high-pitched and crazy.  Then there's witch-fire 'round the eyestalks, and a cracklin' sound, and I dove for cover behind those strongboxes. And not a moment too soon.

I had my head covered, so I saw no more, but the screamin' started right quick..."

- Transcript of interview with Hout Gedry, conducted by Tuvo brek Amblesh, Magister of the Library of Tharkad-Keln.

"Exterminate, annihilate, DESTROY!!!"
- Doctor Who, "The Power of the Daleks" (1966)

By the standards of most intelligent beings, the creatures known as beholders are insane. They hold a hatred beyond reason of all non-beholder life, and spend their time either in gleeful murder and destruction, or in deep reverie, fantasizing about future horrors they might commit. A multiverse cleansed of every other living thing is their fondest wish.

Other beholders are not free from their violent proclivities, either. They hold strict and capricious ideas of racial and intellectual purity, which may lead them to turn on each either with little provocation. This leads to perhaps justifiable paranoia that any other beholder they may encounter is a would-be assassin. Only occasionally will a beholder emerge with the force of personality, intellect, and brute strength necessary to gain the temporary loyalty of others of its kind.

Beholders worship no deities. They refuse to acknowledge any power greater than themselves. The destruction of a vulnerable godling is one of the few tasks that have brought beholders together in the past. When confronted by higher order beings they may either become sullen and passive aggressive, or unreasoningly violent, and effectively suicidal.

Discussion of the biology of these beings is largely fruitless as their physiologies don't conform to terrene physical requirements. They don't appear to have organs in the usual sense, and sages believe that their substance my extend partially into other dimensions. Some have made the case that their peculiar mental processes may be a result of this.

Beholders have never been seen to reproduce. Some scholars hold that they propagate by budding, though admittedly with no evidence for this assertion other that some vague notion that their inner workings resemble animalcules writ large. Others theorize that they do not reproduce at all, and so there are only a finite number of beholders in existence.

If true, that perhaps provides a sort of twisted reason for their behavior. Unable to countenance lesser beings going on when their great race fails, they strive to bring an end to everything.