Raiders of Estvyn's Tomb

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the fifth and final session of our adaptation of X2: Castle Amber.  After a sojourn in France, the party found themselves in Estvyn's tomb.  The way to his crypt was blocked at every turn by a guardian monster of some sort. They sneaked past a sleeping azure dragon on a treasure pile in the antechamber. They suffered some burns from the claws of fire crabs in a flaming hallway. They got bowled over by a rock creature (galeb duhr) in the next connecting room.

At this point, they decided to take a long rest, before preceding. A manticore greeted them in the next room. Having a prior disliking for his kind, thanks to their experience with Mortzengersturm, they attacked with such ferocity he was dead before he got an attack! To be fair, Shade the Ranger did try to get him to back down without a fight.

Next, they were asked to chose between a room full of water and a room full of mud. After fishing with the Waylon the frogling as bait revealed at least a couple of eel hounds lurking, they went with the mud room, where they slugged (and slogged) it out with a mud golem. Dissonant whisipers ultimately hurt his feelings--to death.

The final room held a barbed devil. Here, Astra's stellar radiant blasts and the Mace of Disruption they had gotten previously really came in handy.

Finally at Estvyn's crypt, they burned the tapestry and broke the curse. The Elf mage thanked his cousin Shade for coming to his rescue. He removed the lunacy curse from Kully and Astra, and unpetrified Dagmar. Finally, the part got a magic item each for their trouble. They were deposited back in the Land of Azurth in front of a now ancient and crumbling House Perilous.

Adventuring During Wartime

I watched You Can't Win Them All (1970) this weekend. It's a heist/adventure film set in Anatolia in 1922 during the Greco-Turkish War (a part of the Turkish War for Independence). While its era and location would mark its genre as "adventure film," in its plot, desert vistas, and horse caravans, it most resembles late era Westerns set in Mexico like the Wild Bunch or The Professionals. In fact, its plot is essentially a reworking of Vera Cruz (1954), with Turkey in place of Mexico, the Sultan instead of Emperor Maximilian I, and Turkish Nationalists for Juaristas.

While these sorts of heist-like films are often heavily plotted affairs with double and triple crosses, the mercenaries/adventurers in a not-too-heavy war zone seems like it would be an ideal setting for a sandbox hexcrawl or pointcrawl sort of game. (This is sort of the less post-apocalyptic cousin to the devastated city hexcrawl.) The breakdown of the previous society by Civil War provides virtually all the elements that a true Frontier has, plus it has the added wrinkle of powerful factions. Emphasis would shift a bit, so that resource management in the wilderness would take a bit of a backseat to social interaction and low level political maneuvering.

Weird Revisited: The Slime Emotional Spectrum

This post appeared almost five years ago to the day. Multi-colored ring wearers were a new thing in comics at the time. Since the time it originally appeared, I've wondered what infrared and ultraviolet slimes might feed on, but I haven't yet come up with a satisfying answer.

If power rings can come full spectrum, so can slimes.  Let's run the list:

Red: The color of blood, these slimes are drawn to violence or displays of anger. They show up just after battles to absorb victor and victim alike. As they dissolve prey, their color deepens.
Orange: In some ways, these slimes (which have the look and consistency of pulped oranges) are the most sinister. Drawn to cheerful moods, they wait to take adventurers leaving dungeons after successful delves. Chemicals in their substance cause uncontrollable laughter in those they attack.
Yellow: Timid in their movements, these slimes feed off cowardice and fear. Fleeing adventures or monsters will draw their attention.
Green: Greed and avarice bring this species oozing out of the darkness. They tend to lie in wait around treasure troves.
Blue: Sadness and depression are the lures for these. They tend to try to trap creatures in a room for which there is no escape. They move in slowly, seeming to savior the despair as it builds.
Indigo: More rarefied in their appetites than others (if a slime can be said to be rarifed) these slime seek to absorb magic-users and others seeking transcedence through knowledge. Magic tomes and ancient inscriptions draw them. They may wait quiescent for years for a victim in the right mindset.
Violet: These slime do something positive on their own perverse way.  As they flow over victims they bring calm and soothe negative emotions.  This is no doubt a solace to the person so consumed.

Big Fin & the Prismatic Hole

West of the Land of Azurth in the Boundless Sea, lie the Motley Isles. Polychrome, the pirate haven, is the most famous of the chain, but not the only one that draws visitors.

Art by Bill Peet

Big Fin is a long, narrow isle, but a short distance from Polychrome. The second largest island of the group, it is dominated by a fin-shaped limestone ridge with bands of color going from vermilion to pink to yellow. Few people live here permanently, owing to the difficult terrain, though some exiles from Polychrome squat on its shores. The rocks, however, provide nesting places for the iridescent red-headed gillygaloo, whose square eggs with large speckles are used in dice games and divination, and whose dodecahedral gizzard stones are sought as good-luck charms. The birds themselves are edible, but the superstitious egg-hunters will only do so in the direst of circumstances.

The Lurid Lair of the Froghemoth is a small, roundish cay and the most distant of the chain from the mainland. Its central lagoon is also known as the Prismatic Hole. It is a saltwater sinkhole with rainbow bands of color--indigo in the deep of its center. The legendary froghemoth has long been said to inhabit the depths of the Prismatic Hole, but the beast is seldom sighted. Still, most Motley Pirates avoid the area.

Wednesday Comics: The Chuckling Whatsit

Richard Sala's The Chuckling Whatsit is an oft-kilter, occasional absurdist noir mystery, like maybe something Tim Burton might do at his most serious or the Coen Brothers being a little Gothic. Of course. It's the story of an outsider artist, a doomed couple of escaped mental patients, a serial killer who may have started up again after more than a decade and is killing newspaper astrologers, mysterious assassins--and a hack reporter caught in the middle.

The dingus (to use Sam Spade's term for a particular MacGuffin) in this case is a missing manuscript, but the more iconic Maltese Falcon analog is the titular Chuckling Whatsit, a strange doll that laughs when shaken, and is either the creation of the deceased recluse Emile Jarnac--or something far older and more sinister, depending on which of the unreliable and eccentric informants you believe.

Sala deftly untangles what appears to be one incomprehensible knot of mystery into several throughlines that have only appeared to be the same thread by Chandler-esque serendity, then collapses them all for a climax that is satisfying, but still enigmatic. It's potrayed in Sala's cartoony but gloomy style, reminiscent of Edward Gorey or Charles Addams.

If you've never read any Sala, this is a good, meaty one to start with.

Mortzengersturm--Back from the Con and Back on Sale

Chris is unmoved by your attempts to haggle

We got back from the NTrpgcon last night. It was a good time as usual, playing some good games, putting some faces to some names of cool folks I know online, and getting to bang out with the Hydra partners and the usual suspects.

The Con ended on sort of a sucky note, though, as I left my swag bag at the hotel bar and it disappeared by morning. I lost my copy of Jason Sholtis's Eyebite, Gamesmen of Kasar, some Iron Crown supplement--and most unfortunately the remainder of the Mortzengersturm stock I had brought to the con. Luckily, I left some at home, but I now don't have as many to sell as I might have.

So, anyway, Mortzengersturm sales are open again, but supplies remain limited!

NTRPGCon and A Random Bit of Art

Commodore Cog art by Jeff Call, colors by me

NTrpgcon kicked off (for me anyway) yesterday. The Hydra Co-op booth is up and running, so if you're at the convention, come on by. The Hydra group plus some other guys played a game of Boot Hill last night, gamemastered by Chris Kutalik. It was my first time with Boot Hill and it was pretty fun, particularly with every body doing their best "Western accent."

Today, I've got Billy Longino's Halfling police procedural Southfarthing Confidential and tomorrow its my Mortzengersturm game.

Wednesday Mini-Comics: The Battle in the Clouds

This is the third mini-comic released with the Masters of the Universe toys. Like the rest, it was written by Don Glut and written by Alfredo Alcala.

We open on Eternia's tallest peak where Stratos is somehow able to hear the sounds of battle far below. He flies down and finds He-Man riding the Battle Ram is putting a beating on Skeletor near Castle Grayskull. Somehow, now Castle Grayskull is near the ocean, because He-Man is able to toss a defeated Skeletor into it.

As He-Man and Stratos fly away, Mer-Man  pulls Skeletor from the water and offers to make a deal with him. He'll help Skeletor defeat defeat his foe in exchange for He-Man's weapons. The two villains start blasting away at He-Man,

Stratos swoops in and gives He-Man a lift to get him out of danger quicker, but a "great gust of wind" knocks He-Man off the Battle Ram, he he falls--only his super-garment protects him. He's just knocked unconscious. Stratos doesn't realize He-Man's gone. He just keeps flying.

Skeletor and Mer-Man see He-Man's fall go. In order to get up the mountain to where he fell to snatch his gear, the evil warriors steal Teela's horse.

Mer-Man gets to He-Man just as he's waking up. He's able to over-power him and steal his super-strength suit. His next stop: the Battle Ram.

He-Man plans to stop him. He goes to the edge of the forest and calls Battle Cat. The two head over to He-Man's place to get his force field suit (Apparently separate from his super-strength suit. Pretty inconvenient.), then to Man-At-Arms' cabin. They decide to fly the Wind Raider up to where Stratos took the Battle Ram and thwart Mer-Man.

He-Man is impatient with the speed the Wind Raider is making and grumbles he could have climbed up himself if he only had his super-strength suit. Man-At-Arms opines that "brute strength must sometimes give way to science" and opens it up full-throttle, shutting up He-Man pretty quick.

Meanwhile, Mer-Man has found the Battle Ram. When the Wind Raider reaches the peak, he attacks them with a volley of ray blasts. Man-At-Arms falls out, and only his armor saves him from dying in the fall. Battle Ram and Wind Raider hit each other head on.  Stratos strikes the decisive blow, though:

The battle in the clouds won, He-Man and Stratos fly off to get back the super-strength suit from the defeated Mer-Man and then rescue Man-At-Arms and Teela.

The Power of Grayskull Compels You!

Dark Horse have been doing a great job with their series of Masters of the Universe reference works. The artbook was great, but for sheer information value and rpg inspiration James Eatock's He-Man and She-Ra: A Complete Guide to the Classic Animated Adventures and most recently He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: A Character Guide and World Compendium are goldmines.

The character guide and world compendium is so thick, I don't think I've given it a complete look through, yet. There is so much there! It covers ever continuity from the original minicomics through the on-going collector toy revival and the current DC Comics (though I don't know how up to date it is on the last group). It even has stuff from foreign comics and kids books. Major characters get much more extensive write-ups, and ever character or thing that has appeared in multiple media gets a discussion of the different portrayals.

At $35, some might balk at the cover price, but it's length and detail make it well worth it.

Anti-Elves

Drow as "elves but evil" has been done. Let's take a cue from Otus's ink-blot, living shadow rendition, and say that they are the arcane Evil Twins of evils. Maybe not quite Bizarro World duplicates, but close. They look like photographic negatives of some elf, somewhere, sometime. (It is quite possible that if a specific elf and anti-elf come into contact there will be an explosion, Or, they will untie into a single, transcendent being and leave this plane. In an explosion.)

Anti-elves live underground in ultra-controlled, industrial, technolgical environments because they hate nature. They want replace it all with a machinery hellscape like Apokolips. The only reason they haven't yet is because they hate the sun, too, and are forced to live underground. They're working on that one.

Anti-elves are profoundly unmagical. All those magical abilities listed in a drow stat block have a technological basis. No surface creature can steal a anti-elf device and make it work because their bio-energy polarity will just disrupt it and make it nonfunctional after a use or two.

Ant-elves don't believe in gods, meaning they accept the existence of tiresome things other races call gods, but they think them ridiculous impediments to their own purposes and would never worship them. All sacrifices you might see them make are strictly translactional. Any temples are really just fanclubs--an anti-elves are the sort of crazy, obsessive fans that are very likely to progress to stalking and murder.

Mortzengersturm Review on Gnome Stew

John Arcadian at Gnome Stew has a positive review of Mortzengersturm up today.

Here's a shipping update on the original batch of print copy orders: All U.S. orders here shipped as of Tuesday. The last two foreign orders I plan to put in the mail today.

OSR Extravangza

There's a sell going on on rpgnow/drivethrurpg it includes basically every OSR thing you can think of and a number of Hydra Co-op products including the Hill Cantons trilogy (Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Misty Isles, and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko) and also my very own Weird Adventures.

There are also some cool D&D megabundles (Known World Gazetteers and Planescape).

Check it out!

Wednesday Comics: Weird Stuff I Read Recently

Rock Candy Mountain #1
by Kyle Starks
This series scratched my Weird Adventures itch. It's the story of Slim (down on his luck even by hobo standards), who encounters Jackson, a hobo badass on a journey to find that hobo Shangri-La, Big Rock Candy Mountain--if he can stay ahead of the Devil. It's kind of like a combination of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and maybe a martial arts movie.

The Grave Robber's Daughter
by Richard Sala
This one's a little bit horror, a little bit black comedy. No-nonsense gal sleuth Judy Drood's car breakdown near the town of Obadiah Glen. The town is deserted except for a group of  ne'er-do-well teens, a little girl--and an abandoned carnival full of sinister clowns. Drood will face sideshow mutants and magic potions before she solves the weird mystery.

Twin Peaks and the Investigative Sandbox

Twin Peaks returned to TV last night, though I haven't seen it yet since I don't have Showtime. But hey, here's a map!

Also, check out this classic post on Weird Towns as "investigative sandboxes."

Prometheus Unhinged: The Dungeon Mad God Machine

Seeing Alien: Covenant yesterday, which (no real spoilers) carries a theme from Prometheus (and from Frankenstein, ultimately) of lesser beings meddling in creation of life, gave me an idea. I've written before (and it's sort of baked into the rules in any case, most explicitly in BECMI) about dungeons in D&D being an engine of apotheosis.

What if dungeons didn't just create gods or god-like being? What if they tended to create mad ones? All those weird D&D monsters are waved off as the products of crazy wizards, but maybe they're more specifically the product of crazy, god-level wizards?

In fact, it's possible dungeons weren't originally a tool of apotheosis at all. One made race, the Engineers (or Dungeoneers) did it all on their own. The first dungeons were their laboratories, their three dimensional journals of magical experimentation. A delve into one charts (and recapitulates) their ascension to post-mortaldom--and their descent in madness. A dungeon then, is a living blasphemous tome, recording secrets man was not meant to know.

It goes without saying that probably all life in the campaign world began their. Everything crawled up from the depths, evolving away from its original purpose to its current form. Unless of course, that evolution was the point. The Dungeoneers might have felt they would only have arrived at godhood when they could create beings that could follow in their footsteps--or maybe even challenge their supremacy. Perhaps there's another, higher level game and they need soliders, or experimental subjects, to win it?

Mortzengersturm Sales and Shipping

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My pre-convention stock of Mortzengersturm is out--but if you didn't get a copy yet, don't despair, I may well have some available after NTrpgcon.

Over half of the orders have shipped as of this week, so if you haven't gotten yours it may be coming soon. I am on target to ship the rest before May 29.

5e Race Creation

I've posted this link before, but it just keeps getting better, so I thought it was time to remind everyone.  JamesMusicus has developed a formula for creating "balanced" 5e races and tested it through all the published races so far. He's also got a catalog of a bunch of new races he created.

Check out the other stuff on his blog here.

Wednesday Minicomic: KIng of Castle Grayskull

Taking a break from Storm, let's consider the second Masters of the Universe minicomic packaged with the first wave of toys in 1982. The comic, like the rest, was written by Donald Glut and drawn by Alfredo Alcala.

We open on He-Man and Battle-Cat happening by Castle Grayskull. He-Man tells his mount that the castle was "built by unknown hands before the Great Wars" and "whoever controls the castle controls the universe!" He-Man doesn't know it but he's being spied on from a parapet by Skeletor, who apparently scaled the outside of the castle to get there because he's got no way inside.

Skeletor uses his mystic blade to spy on the doings inside the castle as well. He see's Teela (the warrior-goddess) summoned by the Spirit of Castle Grayskull to be its guardian. The Spirit tells her that one day a king will come claim the castle's throne, but only after he finds and unites the two halves of the Power Sword. Not knowing it's being eavesdropped on, the Spirit reveals the location of the halves.

Skeletor, feels like kingship would suit him. He comes to the highest peak of Eternia, the home of Stratos, and melts one half free from rock. Next, Skeletor takes Mer-Man with him to surprise He-Man at his homestead, and before the hero can grab his super-strength outfit, they blast him. They get the other half of the sword from the rock his house is built on. Given how easy these halves were to find and the fact that two heroic warriors lived close by them, one wonders why they weren't found before?

Anyway, Skeletor rubs some gray clay on his face to disguise it and opens the jawbridge with the united power sword. Teela might have been a poor choice as guardian because a little gray facepaint has her totally fooled. She welcomes Skeletor as the King. No sooner has he sat in the throne, than he triggers the trapdoor and drops Teela into the dungeon. Skeletor marvels at all the weapons and computers and what not and boasts the secrets of the universe are his to command.

Meanwhile, this all apparently happened so quick that Mer-Man is still fighting He-Man (apparently He-Man's house is next door to Castle Grayskull), who has now managed to get his force field suit on. He-Man suits up again to increase his strength and heads out to get Skeletor.

Skeletor sees him coming on a viewscreen. When He-Man arrives, Skeletor punks him by causing the jawbridge to flip him inside. He-Man confronts Skeletor in his throne room, but in the face of his threats Skeletor calls "oafish" and zaps him with energy.

He-Man wakes up some time later in the dungeon with Teela. He tells her "Skeletor has gone insane!' Given that this is the sort of shenanigans we've seen the Lord of Destruction get up to in the first mini-comic, one wonders what He-Man is passing that opinion on. Maybe it's that Skeletor didn't strip him of his super-powered duds, which clearly was a dumb move as He-Man rips the door off the cell.

Skeletor notes their escape and sends animated suits of armor to stop them. Our heroes keep smashing them, but more keep coming. Skeletor moves in to watch the victory he is sure is coming up close--and Teela knocks the Power Sword from his hand.

Skeletor figures its time to beat a hasty retreat. He runs to the roof with the heroes on his heels. He tries to blast them with the laser cannon, but then:

Both hero and villain survive the fall. Skeletor gets chased off by Battle-Cat before he can blast He-Man with his energy blade.

The Spirit of Castle Grayskull again takes possession of the Power Sword and, maybe realizing its previous hiding places left something to be desired, now sends one half into another dimension. He tells the heroes that it maybe centuries before the true King of Castle Grayskull comes to claim it. He calls them Masters of the Universe and bids them go fight evil. In a spoiler heedless moment, we are told the Spirit smiles as they ride away because he knows He-Man will one day become the King of Castle Grayskull.

Kreature Kompendium

Threat N Ink Issue #7 Kreature Kompendium is a zine-size monster book compiled by Jethro D. Wall available via mail order here. It's for old school D&D mostly, but the stat blocks are variable and haphazard, and the mechanical description of special abilities nonexistent. In other words, if you're looking for a meticulously table-ready collection of creatures with novel mechanics, this isn't that book.

This, instead, is one of the inspiration fodder monster books, where the mechanical details come second to having something really interesting conceptually to throw at players. The Kreature Kompendium reminds me a lot of goofy fun bestiaries of old, like the monster book of the Field Guide to Encounters, but at times it has a more modern and knowing absurdist streak like something from the literary New Weird.

In the former category I'd put the Blignag Cocksparrer which we are told "prefer to ride sweet Nash skateboards into battle" although some "have looted BMXs from human victims or received them as gifts from relatives for Christmas." In the latter category is something like The Painting that Paints Itself and the associated random table to determine the PCs reaction.

As those descriptions might indicate, the monsters are a varied lot, other than they are all what you would call "nonstandard." A couple of my favorites: The Charming Tongued Snuggler that thinks it's the Snaggle Toothed Charmer, but its poor understanding of human frailty causing it to suffocate humans with its tongue while trying to drink their blood; and the Destroyer Bitch Goddess whose special attack generates a time loop where that attack is repeated 666d100 times.

It's a lot of fun. The artwork by various artists is evocative, sometimes crude, and always not the sort of thing that would be used in a modern, corporate monster compendium--which is exactly from what you want from a book like this.

If the above sounds interesting, then you should definitely check it out.

The Mighty

Art by Jack Kirby

In the Country of Sang in the Land of Azurth, there are those born among the human tribes and city-states that have abilities beyond those of other mortals. These are the Mighty.

No one knows why the Mighty are so gifted. Some believe they bear the blood of the Ancients, who had mastered mastered sorcerery and science to make themselves superhuman, while others think that they are specially chosen by forgotten gods. Often Mighty individuals will appear as normal humans until some sort of fateful trial or challenge, but these experiences are merely the catalysts of change not the source of their power.

Mighty Traits:

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Age. The Mighty live somewhat longer lifespans as mundane humanity, perhaps a bit over a century, but the mature at the same rate.
Alignment. The Mighty may be of any alignment.
Size. The Mighty are powerfully built and generally tall (6 to 7 feet, or sometimes more). Your size is Medium.
Speed. Base walking speed is 30 feet.
Athletic Prowess. You have proficiency in the Athletics skill.
Superhuman Endurance. You can focus your will to occasionally shrug off injury. When you take damage, you can use your reaction to roll a d12. Add your Constitution modifier to the number rolled, and reduce the damage by that total. After you use this trait, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Strength Beyond Mortals. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Fearlessness. You have advantage on saves against fear.

Art by Bruce Timm

Weird Revisited: Five Million Years to Dungeon

The original version of this post appeared in July 2010. I had just rewatched Five Million Years to Earth the weekend before.



Five Million Years to Earth (originally known in the UK as Quatermass and the Pit) was a 1967 Hammer Film adapted from a 1958 BBC TV serial of the same name. This was the third Hammer Film adaption of one of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass serials, featuring the British rocket scientist, Bernard Quatermass’s encounters with X-Files-esque alien incursions.

For those who haven’t seen it, the film starts with the discover of an anomalous primate skeleton by workmen digging a new underground station in Hobb’s End, London. The large-brained primate is found in strata much deeper than it has any business being. If this discovery weren't enough, digging is halted again when what is taken for a unexploded German rocket is found nearby--only the so-called bomb isn’t magnetic.

Quatermass gets called in, and soon discovers the thing isn’t some V-rocket, but something far stranger--an alien spacecraft. The history of Hobb’s End as “bad place” plagued by ghost sightings and poltergeist activity, and a shape suggestive of a pentagram on the outside of the craft, leads Quatermass to link the presence of the craft with the human perception of supernatural evil. When they are finally able to get inside the craft and find tripodal, arthropod-like creatures with horns--suggesting the horn’s of the devil--Quatermass sees his theory as confirmed.

A few more experiments and a lot more ominous psychic phenomena later, and we find out the aliens are Martians who, like Lovecraft’s Old Ones, experimented on human ancestors and influenced our evolution. Their race dying, the Martian’s came to the “hostile” environment of earth and tried to turn humanity into a mental continuation of their race, if not a physical one. This includes, unfortunately, their violent attitudes about racial purity, which awaken horribly in London humanity in the film's climax.

It occurs to me that this might be a good explanation for dungeons, if one wanted to go in a weird science-fantasy direction, rather than a “mythic underworld” one.

Consider this: a spacecraft from a dying world crashes in the ancient past on a fantasy world. Their psychic power is considerable--maybe they're those perennial brainpower-baddies, the mind-flayers, or maybe they're the thri-keen (why not give those guys something to do for once?). This race goes about influencing the evolution of the world. Maybe orcs and other humanoids are derived from hominid stock, or maybe, in a twist, humans (the moral mixed-bag), are derived from goody-goody elvish or dwarvish stock. Unlike Qautermass’s Martians, maybe our hypothetical race doesn’t stop there. Perhaps a whole lot of dungeon monsters are part of their attempt to recreate all the flora and fauna of their dying world? Other things, like undead, might be manifestations of their powerful psychic residue lingering in their semi-sentient technology. You get the idea.

This would probably work best in a world with only one dungeon (a megadungeon, naturally) where this was the “ultimate secret” in its lowest depths. Who knows, after discovering the spacecraft in the dungeons lowest levels, and mastering (or not) the alien psychic-tech, maybe the PCs go on their own voyage of conquest High Crusade style?

Three Rooms in Amber

I've been running X2: Castle Amber for my 5e Land of Azurth game. As my session reports suggest, I've tweaked so things and changed other quite a bit. At times, I've got better ideas after I actually run it. I may post all my alterations at some point, but here are the the pertinent encounters in the "color rooms" in Castle Amber:

Overview: I envisioned these rooms as looking like more fanciful (maybe) version of the sort of rooms in Versailles or Schönbrunn Palace. I didn't have good reference in place to get that across to the players when I ran it, though, and it probably doesn't matter much anyway. I won't repeat everything Moldavy wrote that I kept, but only what I interpreted or replaced.

WHITE ROOM: The white carpet is crunchy underfoot with frosty. The walls are dusted with frost. Hard rime coats the furniture. In the center of the room, In the center of the room a giant salamander (over 10 feet long), white and striped with vein blue, lolls on a chaise longue. It's finned tail extends well beyond chair and lazy stirs up snowflakes from the carpet. 

I think actual salamanders are more interesting that lizards for magical creatures. 

GREEN ROOM: The room looks like it might be in an abandon home. The green wallpaper is peeling, vines are growing down the walls. The giant in the center of the room is entirely encased in armor with a vaguely floral motif, and that armor is complete covered in verdigris. He is easily mistaken for a statue until he moves.

I had in mind this image by Eoghan Kerrigan for the appearance of the giant, if it were patined. I want to put a little bit of distance from the Green Knight so it wouldn't be immediately picked up on, but the schtick was still the same.

RED ROOM: A large man (barrell-chested and bandy-legged) in crimson monk's robes over glittering, golden scale armor, sits cross-legged on the floor in a pose of meditation. His skin is charcoal black. His eyes appear to be windows into an internal furnace. His reddish blonde hair glows and smolders like coals.  The man has fallen from the sun; he's one of the countless throngs of dwarfs that make up the sun. They labor at the work of the cosmos and dance and sing radiant hymns to the glory of the gods. The man was into the void in a gout of ecstatic solar toil and fell to earth. 

I utilized the background of my reskins of the Azer here, since I had never put it in a game. I already had another celestial castaway in the adventure.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Labyrinth of Death

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues with his adventures in the world of Pandarve. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: The Labyrinth of Death (1983) 
(Dutch: Het Doolhof van de Dood) (part 4)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

The giant creature with the multiple jaws holds back from attacking Storm and his comrades. They surmise it must be afraid of the light still emanating from Storm. It's something the monster has never seen before.

The Theocrats guards charge into the chamber. They aren't so luck. The creature begins devouring them.

Storm and friends, while somewhat conflicted about leaving the guards to their fate, realize the distraction they provide is their only hope of escape. Marduk's lackey manages to get away too, by following them.

Next they come upon a chamber full of rotting monster skins. This must be where it comes to shed. Ember notices a whole far up in the domed ceiling. They surmise the creature comes to this place so cases from decay can escape.

Storm comes up with a daring plan. Maybe they can use the skins to create a hot air balloon to fly up to the opening and escape. They cut strips of some skins and wrap them around swords and a shield to make a basket. They attach a balloon made from a large skin with similar strips.

Just as the balloon begins to rise:

The creatures tendrils wrap around Brush-head's leg. Rather than let the creature drag them all to their doom, the rebel leader cuts herself free of the balloon.

As the others rise to freedom, Ember recreates she never even knew the woman's name.

The opening is (luckily) large enough for the balloon to pass through, They kick Marduk's lackey off as they rise into the skies of Pandarve on their way to their next adventure.

THE END

The Inn Between Worlds

Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night with the fifth session of our free adaptation of X2: Castle Amber. Last time, the party had opened the gate with the silver keys--and promptly been attacked by an amber lion statue come to life. Two shatter spells meant the end to that creatures, and a load of amber shards as loot.

The party passed through the gate and found themselves in a rather unusual French inn, Bonne Joissance. Unusually because the staff are all fae, including the all woman band. Each will show the party to a door to a different locale where they fight find on of the treasures they are looking for (the same door, but it opens to a different place depending on which band member opens it).

The harp player opens the door to the forest Sylaire and a half-ruined tower upon a tor. There they find Freydis, a faerie queen who sits a vigil waiting for her lover. She will exchange the Sword of Sylaire for the party subduing (but not killing) her lover, now a werewolf under the full moon. The werewolf and his pack attack the tower, but again the mages save the day with a barrage of scorching rays.

When the door is opened by flutist the party passes through a limpid pond and a lovelorn knight, Luc. He's being trying to find a feather to match the one he snatched (and then lost) from the cape of a swanmay as she fled their dalliance at dawn. He's certain he can find a substitute to present to her, but no mundane feather seems to match. He is willing to trade the Ring of Eibon for a feather from the fearsome jubjub that dwells in the nearby forest. Shade the Ranger tracks the bird, and (via speak with animals) she learns it is willing to part with two feathers for something shiny. The party offers up some amber from the statue and gives one feather to Luc, getting the ring in exchange.

The drummer ushers them the hall of Lord Huidemar. Huidemar is very pleased to see the party as their coming has been prophesied. He relates that he is widely known as a fool, but he will become a wise man when they give him the feather of the Simurgh bird. They give him the jubjub feather instead, but he doesn't seem to know the diffference. They get the Serpent Encircled Mirror in exchange.

The guitar player opens the door to the location of the potion of time travel--the dungeons of the debauched sorceress, the Lady d'Azederac. The party interrupts a ritual. Their coming exasperates her but is not unexpected. It has been prophesied that beings from another world would bring her an acorn of gold from Eden. The presentation of this relic would turn her from her iniquities and set her on the path of saintliness. The party presents her with one of their acorns (though not from Eden, of course) and get the potion in exchange.

Returning one last time to the inn, the party uses the items to summon the tomb of Estyvan.

The Weird and the Unusual

The difficulty with dealing with the fantastic is too-often repeated tropes/ideas become cliches, and kind of unfantastic. The D&D (read: prevailing) view of elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. has thoroughly mundanified and Gygaxian-realismed these things into yawns for a lot of people. Now, it's resonable to ask just how fantastic an element needs to be in a game about killing stuff and taking its treasure, but feeling burned out on the standard tropes has led to a lot of folks reaching for the Weird. It's funny that almost 100 year-old tropes can seem fresh and untrod territory, but fantasy is nothing if not a conservative genre, I guess.

The trouble is, those elements might get a little stale for some people, too, with repetition. So there's the New Weird or gonzo, of course, but I'd also like to suggest that maybe things don't have to be wholly "new." They just have to be a bit surprising, and those surprises can each be employed a small number of times so they stay fresh.

I think looking back to mythology and folklore helps a lot, because there are a lot of forgotten elements in those that make no sense from the modern perspective, and so have tended to be dropped from retellings. Medieval bestiaries are good, too.

Here's an interesting thing I came across a couple of years ago: "mundane" animals as treasure guardians:

Washington Irving notes the folk-belief that the spiritual guardians of buried treasure could take on the form of animals, such as toads. “Wild vines entangled the trees, and flaunted in their faces; brambles and briers caught their clothes as they passes; the garter snake glided across their path; the spotted toad hopped and waddled before them; and the restless cat-bird mewed at them from every thicket. Had Wolfert Webber [a man in search of treasure, but who was unschooled in folk-magic] been deeply read in romantic legend, he might have fancied himself entering upon forbidden enchanted ground; or that these were some of the guardians set to keep watch upon buried treasure.” Diedrich Knickerbocker (pseud.), “The Adventures of the Black Fisherman,” Tales of a Traveller (1825), 2: 356.

So replace a dragon or some other "fantastic" creature with just an animal, acting kind of strange and maybe able to talk. Adventure Time! sort of (I'm sure unknowingly) uses this trope with a frog that serves as a portal to lumpy space:

Monsters that want to chat, instead of kill the party immediately, are also a mythological staple that is not as often done in rpgs (though I try to do a bit of this in Mortzengersturm). This one can hard because PCs are a stabby lot, but it can help put them in the old school mindset of the goal being to get treasure, not necessarily kill things. A loquacious monster is a challenge, not an encounter.

Finally I would suggest the behavioral reskin (this is sort of a broader application of the talking monster principle). We're all familiar with putting new flesh on a set of stats, but a more subtler reskin will sometimes surprise players more. If goblins aren't following their Gygaxian role, but instead all consumed with building/repairing some ancient machine, maybe that hooks the PCs interest? Maybe it's only me, but I think backwards talking derro that can only be understood if you look in a mirror as they speak, move a known monster away from an evil dwarf back to the Shaverian paranoid weirdness.

Those are just some examples, which may or may not work for you, but I'm sure you can think of your own. Instead of trying hard to make things fresh and new, just make them a little odd.