Warlord Wednesday: The Secret of Skartaris

Let's 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 Secret of Skartaris"
Warlord (vol. 1) #5 (February-March 1977)

Written and Illustrated by Mike Grell

Synopsis: Morgan and Tara bid farewell to Machiste, and head out for Shamballah with other homeward bound former freedom-fighters. An encounter with a tyrannosaurus forces Morgan and Tara to climb a cliff in hopes of escape. They manage to dislodge a boulder, which crushes the carnosaur, and in the process, they discover a hidden doorway.


Inside, they find a massive computer which, when accidentally activated, reveals the history of Skartarian civilization. Before the sinking of Atlantis, many fled the impending disaster, and one expedition finding its way through the arctic to the entrance to Skartaris. There the Atlanteans built a new civilization, which in time surpassed their previous one, due to eternal daylight unchaining them from sleep/wake cycles based on the sun.

Unfortunately, the city-states they built went to war. In only minutes, their civilization was in ruins. Generations later, the Skartarians began to climb back to "various stages of barbarism," but there also emerged bestial humanoids that had been mutated by lingering radiation. The computer discovered by Morgan and Tara had remained dormant until Deimos' use of the hologram apparatus had activated it.

Further explorations are cut short by the sudden attack of a pack of hyenadons. The animals are dispatched, and the melee leads to the accidental discovery of another tunnel--this one containing a train or shuttle. Morgan theorizes that it once connected all the Atlantean city-states and wants to investigate, but Tara is afraid. Morgan steps inside the train and the door shuts behind him. Neither he or Tara can open it.

The train pulls away, and Morgan is knocked unconscious. When he awakens, the shuttle has reached his destination. He stumbles out...into moonlight. Travis Morgan has returned to the outer earth!
Things to Notice:

• Machiste makes a sly hint as to his fame in Kiro.  This will be dealt with in future issues.
• The Atlantean computer has apparently been recording history since the fall of the civilization that built it, and making a nice documentary on it--for whom?
• Like a lot of pulp heroes, Morgan is easily knocked out, but never has any lasting neurologic damage.

Where It Comes From:

In a way, this issue marks the end to the first "book" of Travis Morgan's saga. Warlord, at least at first, is an adventure narrative following very much in the footsteps of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The usual plot outline, as established in A Princess of Mars, has a hero from our world meeting a princess from the fantastic world where he now finds himself, losing her, then regaining her after overcoming the villain(s). Just as their about to settle down as a happy couple, circumstances contrive to take the hero back to our world, separating him from his love. Burroughs uses this outline again in the first Pellucidar novel, At the Earth's Core. It's repeated in heavily Burroughs-inspired works like Warriors of Mars and Tarnsman of Gor, too.

The next "book" on the Burroughs map will have the hero returning, probably meeting new companions, and questing to find his lost love again. Which is exactly what happens in Warlord.

Returning to the details of this issue, the design of the Atlantean computer center seems to be inspired by some classic film and TV science fiction. Some of the details in the first panel echo the set design of Star Trek: The Original Series and Forbidden Planet. The computer core on page 8 seems an homage to this scene from Forbidden Planet:

The fall of Atlantean society and the degeneration of some of its descendants in non-human forms, echo themes found in pulp fiction, but also common to the post-apocalyptic genre in films (the Planet of the Apes films, Teenage Cave Man), and comics (Mighty Samson).

The dog-like animals that attack Tara and Morgan are referred to as hyaenadons. Grell is correct in dating them, as animals in the hyenadon family were extant from the late eocene. However, he suggests that they were the ancestors of wolves, which is incorrect. Hyaenadons belong to an extinct order of mammals known as creodonts.

Scum and Villainy

"She had to remind herself that he was not much more evil than most evil men."

- Fritz Leiber, "The Cloud of Hate"

Here's a hand full of villains involved in criminal enterprise from the streets of Terminus, last outpost of the fallen Thystaran empire, in the south of the continent of Arn:

Pnathfrem Lloigor: Vintner and boss of dives on the east of the city, between the River Fflish and Lion Street. He’s immensely fat, and balding, but also a dandy, given to dressing in ostentatious silks and gaudy jewelry. His high-pitched voice leads to rumor that he is a eunuch, but it’s an affectation. He enjoys putting off visitors of both sexes with leering glances, and suggestive quotes from his extensive collection of Zycanthine erotic literature.  Physically weak but shrewd, Lloigor might have long ago been displaced, except that he has a cousin in the Thaumaturgists Guild who has been known to come to his aid.

Sodmos Jasp: Bald, jaundiced, and skeletally-thin but for a pot-belly, he suffers from a metabolic malady no doubt caused by alchemical experimentation. He owns fourteen brothels and six pleasure dens on the west side, south of the river and north of Courtesan Street. His hated enemy to the east is Pnathfrem Lloigor. He made his start as a back-alley alchemist, and still carries on a side business selling cheap poisons, noxious contraceptives, and dubious aphrodisiacs. He is protected from enemies real and imagined by his dear, deadly, Saatha.

Saatha: An Amazonian woman in a silken veil and little else. The greenish tint to her skin and the vertical slits of her pupils in her jade eyes suggest otherwise. She wields twin, ornate scimitars which look like they're made of bronze, but are not. Their swift and deadly in her hands. It has been said that she is from a distance world--the Place of the Blood Red Sun, and that she has been bound to the service of Jasp. That's what rumors say. Saatha never speaks.

Tyrus Vaanth: Prominent slaver, and sophisticate. He's well-dressed, cruelly handsome--and just cruel. But never should it be said that he's impolite--unless one's at the end of his rapier. He's called "Whitehands" after the pristine white gloves he habitually wears. He fears contagion and sickness of all kinds. In times of stress he holds a perfumed cloth over his mouth to ward off miasmas. He seldom goes anywhere without his personal physicker, Doctor Panggiss.

Elrood Panggiss: Serves Tyrus Vaanth as both physicker and torturer. He's accent is foreign, but vague. He's rumored to be exiled from the court of some foreign potentate for unspecified crimes. His usually rigid and controlled demeanor hides a heart of sadist. He's addicted to analeptic zauphur which he carries in a silver snuff-box. His use of the stimulant feeds his growing paranoia, and fuels his cold depravity.  He's as proficient with a dagger (always envemoned with an exotic and efficient poison) as he is with scalpel, but considers it beneath him to use it except in direst need.

Handsome Sclaug: Half-ogre enforcer whose scarred visage is the opposite of his nickname.  He made a name for himself as a pit-fighter, but gave that up for for a more lucrative career working for various crime bosses.  He disdains weapons, preferring to use his ham-sized fists, augmented by (perhaps ensorcelled) cesti.  He does talk much, but is said to a pleasant singing voice.

The Gnoll Truth, or, Yeenoghu Looks Like a Lady

Maybe OD&D gnolls were a cross between trolls and gnomes, but the gnolls that have entered the collective gaming unconscious are the anthropomorphic hyenas from AD&D.

It's not a big leap to think that hyena-like qualities should therefore inform gnolls' characteristics. It's been done to varying degrees before, starting back in Roger Moore's article in Dragon #63. I've never seen anyone work through all the implications of this, though. Certainly, it doesn't seem that's anyone's ever given much consideration to the folklore and historic beliefs regarding hyenas.

There are four species of hyena, but gnoll art tends to most commonly make them resemble the spotted hyena. Maybe there are more than one gnoll species, too? Perhaps there's a rare, gentle and insectivorous humanoid aardwolf. Or maybe they're not so gentle and they dine on formians?

Anyway, spotted hyenas are hunters and scavengers. They have powerful jaws and specialized dentition to crush bone--they are reported to outclass brown bears in this regard. They bring down game in packs, but they also follow other predators and steal their kills. They've also been known to dig up recently buried bodies from graves. Hyenas possess the ability to digest all the organic material in a carcass, including bone.

Male spotted hyenas are slightly larger than females, but otherwise there's very little to distinguish the sexes. Interestingly, even the external genitalia is similar due to the female's clitoromegaly (How's that for a conversational factoid?). Hyena clans, in fact, are matriarchal--led by an alpha female with high levels of androgens (male sex hormones).

Hyenas compete from birth. Particularly in same sex litters, neonatal fratricide (siblicide?) is common. Clans are hierarchical, with the pups of dominant females outranking the adult females subordinate to their mother--unless she dies.

Study of the spotted hyena gives us gnolls in matriarchal clans, who are fairly indistinguishable in terms of sex. There are probably some unusual--uh, physical characteristics of female gnolls--I'll leave it to individual GMs to work out the implications of those and how much game time they gets. On firmer ground for a game about killing things and taking stuff, gnolls probably eat their slain foes--bones and all. Also, competition is fierce within the clan, and only the strongest make it to adulthood.

So that's the current state of hyena knowledge, but there are some interesting things to be gleaned from outmoded/folkloric ideas. Take a look at this quote from T.H. White's translation of a twelfth century Latin bestiary, The Book of Beasts:

"[the hyena] is accustomed to live in the sepulchres of the dead and to devour their bodies. Its nature is that one moment is that it is masculine and at another moment feminine, and hence it is a dirty brute...it frequents the sheepfolds of shepherds and walks around the houses of a night and studies the tone of voice of those inside with a careful ear for it is able to do imitations of the human voice."

Again there's the link between hyenas and the dead; between gnolls and ghouls, both under the demon-lord Yeenoghu's purview. But how do we make sense of the rest of it?

Well, maybe all gnolls are skilled vocal mimics. Perhaps their shaman's are gifted by their god to imitate the voices of others?

And the sex switch? Given the unclear separation of sexes among his people--and their matriarchal nature--I suspect Yeenoghu is a hermaphrodite, or perhaps genderless, but probably referred to by gnolls with a feminine pronoun (if their language has such a thing). Yeenoghu is a consummate trickster then, not even willing to stick to one gender. Possibly, gnoll shamans follow their god's/godess' lead and go by the pronoun of the other sex, symbolically becoming like their deity. Maybe hermaphrodites are especially holy?

There you have it: gnolls informed by hyenas in fact and folklore. Who'd of thought hyena-men could so easily out weird troll/gnome hybrids?