Wednesday Comics: Daredevil

Since about 1983, seems like everybody's Daredevil run has include angst, Catholicism, and probably ninjas and the Kingpin. There was a time before Frank Miller's seminal run where Daredevil wasn't like that. Where he smiled and fought guys like Stilt-Man. (Yes, Stilt-Man appeared in the Miller run, too. No need to tell me.)

Enter Mark Waid, who brings that more standard superhero sensibility back to Daredevil without jettisoning the character's history. The idea is that the reveal of Daredevil's secret identity (in a previous run) has not be completely refuted, leaving Matt Murdock too infamous to try cases in court. Instead, he coaches people no one else will represent to represent themselves, while solving the problem that makes it so hard for them to get a lawyer as Daredevil (because it always seems to involve super-villainy!).

In addition to restoring more of a early Bronze Age Daredevil, Waid also avoids the serious decompression that is too common in modern comics. Most of these cases take two issues. "B Plot" runs through the background, but it's along the lines of a network TV drama in terms of complication.

The art by Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin is great, too. They really try to find visual ways to represent his super-senses, which is not completely new to Daredevil, but appreciated.

Volume 1 contains issues 1-6. There's also an omnibus of the Waid run if you feel like going all in.

Whom Gods Destroy

Later she would claim to be named for a "cosmos-slithering dragon of interstellar legend" the hyper-Jormungandr of the time before the Old Gods died, but at first she called herself "Madame MacEvil." It had the ring of the menaces born in the fires of Apokolips: just ask Granny Goodness, Doctor Bedlam, or the Deep Six. Cosmic evil advertises and cares not if you think it banal. Madame McEvil, Moondragon, was not on the side of Apokolips, though. She mimed the madness of its minions as a sort of sympathetic magic, a way to bring down the dread Darkseid himself.

Or maybe she had just gone crazy. Being a mortal raised in a austere monastic tradition of the gods can do that. You cannot gaze upon the glory of Supertown and remain unchanged. Ask the boy who sampled the Forever Peoples' cosmic capsules.

"She Could Be You!"

That was the tagline on the later issues of the comic book based loosely on her adolescence and young adulthood that ran from when the actual Patsy Walker was barely in her teens until she was in her 30s. Her real life was far stranger than the fiction with time as a superhero, a second marriage to the literal son of the Devil (or a devil), mental illness, and then suicide (and then resurrection).

Viewed through the lens of the comics, Walker (who first appeared on the teen scene in the 40s) was a twenty-something when she and her best friend were at the front of the crowd to see Reed Richards and Susan Storm emerge as a married couple. In reality, she was in her early thirties, married, and dealing with an abusive husband. Buzz changed in Vietnam the comics said, but Vietnam was yet to come. Buzz's first war was Korea, and the truth is he didn't change much.

Buzz Baxter was mostly a nonentity in the Patsy Walker comics, but never one to let is girlfriend get the limelight ahead of him, Buzz had inked a deal for a comic based on him, too. Buzzy was even less truthful and only lasted half as long.

A chance meeting with the Beast would turn the abused housewife into a superhero, divorce Buzz Baxter, and expose corruption within the military contractor Brand Corporation. The early sixties were a different time.

Weird Revisted: Release the Hounds

This post from 2011 was one of a series on planar related stuff for the Weird Adventures setting. None of it saw publication other than on the blog..

Chronos hounds, or temporal hounds, are extradimensional beings who sometimes hunt the Prime Material Plane. Some ancient tomes hold that these creatures are benevolent, and defend causality and stability against horrors form outside spacetime. Observed behavior of chronos hounds is ambiguous at best, and those who may encounter them are urged to caution.

From a distance, a chronos hound has the silhouette of a large, lean dog. A closer look reveals that the body of the creature is actual more like a human's, perhaps specifically an androgynous youth's, twist and stretched to conform to a canine’s basic arrangement. It's front paws, for example, are slender, human-like hands. The heads of the hound is always blurred and indistinct, as if in constant motion, but there is the suggestion of toothy, canine jaws, and glowing eyes. Hounds appear to be able to speak by telepathy, but also make a garbled sound like the cough and growls of a pack of dogs, as if heard at the other end of long and empty hallway. Their skin is hairless, and the faintly luminescent blue-white of moonlight.

Only in the past decade, has metaphysics developed the proper theoretical framework to understand the chronos hounds--and even now those theories remain controversial. The most brilliant minds in the City hold the hounds to be a wave function which only observation causes to collapse into the form of the creatures described above. Thaumaturgic investigation suggests they serve an eikone called Father Time, or are perhaps extensions of his will. They act to prune "streams" of time and possibility--making reality from probability--toward some inscrutable purpose.

# Enc.: 1d6 (1d6)
Movement: 120’ (40’)
Armor Class: 4
Hit Dice: 4
Attacks: 1 (bite),
Damage: 1d6
Save: F4
Chronos hounds are only visible if they choose to be, prior to acting. Only some rare circumstance keeps a first attack from being by surprise. Their actions in this plane have a stuttering appearance, as if they are teleporting short distances rather than moving normally. Chronos hounds reduced to 0 hit points disappear entirely. Chronos hounds are able to pass through (or around) any physical barrier--or indeed temporal barrier. A combat with them may begin one day, only to have them break off the attack, and re-appear months or even years later.  A first encounter with a chronos hound, maybe not be the true first encounter, from the perspective of the creature's timeline. Whatever subjective amount of time appears to pass in combat with them, 1d100 minutes have based for the world external to the combatants.

The greatest enemies of the chronos hounds are the achronal hyperbeasts, which they will fight to the death when they encounter them. Thankfully, these higher order dimensional monstrosities are seldom encountered on this plane.

When The (Star) Man Comes Around

Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple.
Except that the planet of Daxam (or Dakkam in some dialects) wasn’t doomed, and the desperate scientist was wrong. He and his wife launched his last hope anyway, their son, just before government agents killed then. The tiny ship would carry this lost son of Daxam to earth where it crashed in the everglades. No kindly couple rescued the child, but he was safe there in the ship’s technological womb as he grew to physical adulthood over the next almost 20 years. When he emerged, he still had the mind of a child.

An encounter with the Man-Thing sent this strange visitor from another planet fleeing from the swamp. As fate would have it, he first encountered Superboy, Kal Kent, son of the original Superman. The alien clearly had abilities at a near Kryptonian level (in fact, the Daxamites maybe an offshoot of the Kryptonians), and Superboy assumed the newcomer was a refugee from that world. Remembering stories of his father’s encounter with the amnestic Halk Kar, Superboy called the alien “Mon-El” as his father had the last near-Kryptonian arrival.

Superboy lost track of “Mon-El” who eventually ended up in New York, just in time to encounter Ben Grimm leaving a showing of Five Fingers of Death. Grimm saved him from an attempted assassination by Daxamite agents. Ultimately, Grimm got the alien to Reed Richards who determined that Mon-El was sound of mind (though it was undeveloped) and that exposure to cosmic rays had altered his physiology in unforeseen ways, making him an energy dampener. He also noted lead levels building up within the alien’s system.

At Project PEGASUS (a military/industry partnership with the involvement of STAR Labs) for further testing, Mon-El encountered the Cosmic Cube, which sent him into a coma. When he emerged, he was no longer child-like. He was aware of who he was and his true name, Lar Gand. What’s more, he was spiritually transformed. He took the name Aquarian. He set out to wander the earth, bringing peace and enlightenment to the world. He gained something of a following, and more than one “spiritual program” arose in his name.

His ministry was cut short when lead poisoning began to kill him. Rather than some other form of suspended animation, he voluntarily chose exile in the Phantom Zone, hoping to bring some measure of peace to the criminals imprisoned there. He is said to have emerged again, after a millennium, a changed man, ready to embark on a new stage of his existence.

A Supers Campaign Idea from the Vaults

Re-organizing some old gaming stuff (i.e. moving from one closet to another). I came across a campaign intro document for a Mutants & Masterminds game I ran maybe 10 years ago. The idea was a universe where characters from virtually every comic book publisher existed in the same world and there was no "sliding timescale," so characters than first appeared in the 60s for example were in that era.

I don't have it in digital form anymore, but here's a scan of it:

Bootstrap Paradox

More than once, accounts blithely relate that someone or another built a time machine, yet we seldom are shown or given details about the construction,,and this achievement is notably beyond the greatest geniuses like Reed Richards, Lex Luthor, or Tony Stark. Rip Hunter is in possession of two time ships which he keeps in working order, but we have never been privy to their design or development. Victor von Doom claims to have invented one, but we only ever see the finished product, and the exchange depicted above with Rama-Tut suggests some doubt about its origins. Rumors swirl that Doom made a deal with the Devil, or a devil at least, for the secrets of time travel, but where did Mephsito get them?

Was it the nameless (or more accurately, variously but unofficially identified) Traveler whose account H.G. Wells edited? Or perhaps from it was an outgrowth of the Philadelphia experiment that transport the USS Eldridge through time and space in 1943. Nathaniel Richards (another man later said to have invented a time machine) seems to have been involved in the planning stages of that experiment. If so, he would have been aware—and possible even provided oversight—to the secret project that followed to develop saucer-like time travel craft, based in the Rockies and led by Eldridge survivor Reno Franklin. Franklin’s team definitely developed time craft of a sort, so are they the original source? Or is all time travel technology a causal loop and an example of the bootstrap paradox?

Operation Unfathomable Players Guide

One of the stretch goals in the Operation Unfathomable kickstarter was the Players Guide. Like all the other, Operation Unfathomable material it's nearing completion. It's one I've been involved with in some small ways, and I got a look at the rough layout of yesterday.

The guide will include:

• A compilation of the Operation Unfathomable one page comic strips that were created as promotional material
• New Races: Underworld Otter and Wooly Neanderthal
• New Classes: Citizen Lich and Underworld Ranger
• New Spells & Equipment

Alligator People

The script writers must have had a source pretty close to the events, because the 1959 film gets a lot of details right, though the names and locations are changed. There were experimental treatments for limb regrowth being used on a veterans in a secluded clinic in the swamps, and it all ended in tragedy.

Not enough of a tragedy that after a little more work on his formula, Curtis Connors didn't try again, this time on himself. The results, unfortunately, were similar. He got his arm back, and much more than he wanted

What the movie doesn't say, what the filmmakers possibly didn't know, was the amnesiac nurse was pregnant. She wasn't driven into a fugue state by the transformation and death of her lover, but by the birth of a son that carried similar disfigurements, similar reptilian DNA.

The child was named Waylon Jones but as a criminal and assassin he was known as Killer Croc. The doctor's told the aunt that raised him he had a peculiar skin condition. No one ever side just how peculiar.

The Trail to Gorilla City

It’s been nearly two decades since Gorilla City petitioned for and was granted United Nations membership, but still the colony of super-intelligent apes remains mysterious.

Some accounts suggest that the city’s inhabitants are actually aliens, inadvertently brought to Earth by the actions of Green Lantern Hal Jordan from a world where apes evolved from man. Either Pierre Boulle’s novel carries some degree of truth, or this is a telepathic fiction created by Grodd or another of the apes for some purpose. Other accounts suggest they are terrestrial hominids, evolved by the actions of an alien visitor. It is possible (and some of the depictions of their physical characteristics support this) that they are not actually gorillas at all, but rather evolved Mangani, their ancestors cousins of the tribe that raised Tarzan.

More intriguingly, there seems to be (or have been) more than one gorilla city. In 1931, Tarzan discovered a replica of London, peopled by gorillas uplifted by a mad geneticist who called himself and was thought of by the apes as “God.” “God's” notes on hybridizing gorilla and human DNA were sought (and possibly found) by both Robert Yerkes and Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (and possibly Ivanov’s protégé Ivan Kragov, the Red Ghost).

Perhaps twenty years later, Congo Bill discovered a more primitive city of intelligent gorillas who claimed to be from a world with two moons. Bill took this description to mean Mars (an idea perhaps supported by the existence of an alternate earth where Martian apes ruled and were opposed by Jonathan Raven, Ape-Slayer), though perhaps it was Calor. The link between the current Gorilla City and these others is unclear; they may represent periods in the evolution of ape society or purposeful obfuscation of the gorillas’ true nature and history.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Slayer of Eriban (part 6)

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 Slayer of Eriban (1985) 
(Dutch: De Doder van Eriban) (part 6)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Storm and Nomad race toward the royal box with the guardsmen on their heels. They effectively take the ruler hostage to get his attention. They are surprised to find young Tilio there--and even more surprised and he reveals himself to actually be Renter!

Storm tells Renter they've got him beat. One false move and they'll kill the ruler, depriving the young assassin of the ability to complete his graduation assignment. Renter, however, reveals a surprise:

Ember has been drugged and put into the Barsaman game!

Storm snatched two shields from the guards and improbably uses them as improvised "snowshoes" to cross the molten floor of the arena. He gets there just in time to catch Ember. His shoes begin to sink quicker with more weight, so Nomad is forced to relinquish the captive royal to help Storm out.

Renter takes over threatening the ruler to keep the guards at bay. One of teh guests in the bos has a surprise of his own. He removes his mask, revealing himself to be Renter's teacher. He delivers another revelation:

The royal family realizes this is the son stolen from them. Renter is in utter disbelief, but ultimately he can't bring himself to kill his father. His teacher reports Renter has failed his graduation exercise. As a horrified Renter is embraced by his mother, the teacher leaves. Storm, Nomad, and Ember make their escape, aided by both the turmoil in the royal box and the turmoil in the stadium caused by the escaped prisoners. The Barsaman games are suspended indefinitely.

They make it back to the ship. To their surprise, Renter is there waiting. He tells them he sent Tilio away with some money. Renter trained all his young life to be an assassin. He doesn't know what to do with himself now. He asks our heroes to place him in the regeneration capsule and set him adrift, where he can dream, maybe to the end of time.

THE END

Weird Revisited: Take the Subway to the Wizard's Sanctum

This post first appeared in January of 2012. It's still true today... 

You may have heard this one: A homeless newsboy in a nameless city follows a mysterious stranger into a subway station. 

The stranger leads the boy aboard "a strange subway car, with headlights gleaming like a dragon's eyes," and decorated inside and out with weird, perhaps mystic, symbols.  The car "hurtles through the pitch-black tunnel at tremedous speed."  Their destination:

And beyond, a cavernous hall decorated with grotesque statues of the iconic failings of man.  At the end of the hall, a hierophant sits immobile on a throne, a square block of granite hanging precariously over his head by a slowly unraveling thread.

The wizard is, of course, Shazam and the Boy is Billy Batson.  Billy is about to be given the power of six mythological figures. At that point this story becomes a superhero origin, but at all times it's a fantasy story, too.  Grant Morrison (in Supergods) sums it up like this:

"the train carries Billy into a deep, dark tunnel that leads from this world to an elevated magical plane where words are superspells that change the nature of reality."

My point is bringing up Whiz Comics #2, is that I think fantasy in an urban setting ought to have a bit more of this and a bit fewer succubus streetwalkers, werewolf bikers, or angels in white Armani suits.  Not that there's anything wrong with those things--but they've gotten commonplace.  Perfunctory.

There's no reason why fantasy in a modernish setting can't be infused with weird or wonder.  We've got plenty of examples: Popeye's pet jeep, the Goon's antagonists, or in a less whimiscal vein, VanderMeer's city of Ambergris suffering under occupation by fungoid invaders. I can't be the only one that wants fantasy in the modern world to be something other than 90's World of Darkness retreads.

What If?

This is an idea I had this morning, so I haven't thought out all the angles of how to operationalize it best. Comic books have traditional had stories where things they didn't want to institute in the primary continuity occurred: DC called them imaginary stories; Marvel placed them in the pages of What If?

I've usually run superhero rpg campaigns just like most rpgs. The past is immutable and a bad outcome for the PCs is a bad outcome. What if one borrowed a from What If? You could give the PCs a "retcon" session, beginning perhaps at the point of one pivotal change in events. After the retcon session, the group could decide which continuity the campaign would continue in. The other wouldn't necessarily cease to exist, but could be the sort of visitors from alternate timelines to interact with the PCs later.

Icon

The first Kryptonian arrived on earth as infant, crashing not into a corn field in Kansas around the time of the first World War, but in a cottonfield in the American South prior to the Civil War. The last son of Vathlo Island was taken in and raised by slaves.

The boy would grow up to be known as Augustus Freeman, once the war was over and that surname meant something. He would never be as public as his fellow Kryptonian, Superman. Like Hugo Danner (whose abilities might stem from his father's isolation of genetic material from a sample of Freeman's blood), Freeman would struggle to find his place in the world , where his powers, great as they were put still woefully limited, might have some purpose.

It may be that he woke up amnesiac in a hospital in 1931 and was given the name "John Hancock." He may have spent the next few decades wondering from place to place and trying to out-drink his superhuman constitution.

Some accounts relate that he eventually recalled who he was, or at the very least was given a reason to return to heroic action, a chance to become the icon he was destine to be.

Weird Revisited: Real Dungeon Hazards: Snotties & Slime

This post first appeared just about 8 years ago. It's as pertinent to dungeon crawls as ever.

Ooozes and slimes aren’t just the the subject of Gygaxian dungeoneering fancy. Interestingly, it appears they have some basis in subterranean fact. Ready for an introduction to the world of snotties, red goo, and green slime?

"Snotties" look like small stalactites, but have the texture of mucus and drip battery acid. They’re actually colonies extremophile archaebacteria that thrive in intense levels of atmospheric hydrogen sulfide produced by volcanism. They’ve only been found in a few places including Cueva de Villa Luz, southern Mexico, and Sulphur Cave in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Other unusual things have been uncovered in Cueva de Villa Luz by the self-styled SLIME (Subsurface Life In Mineral Environments) team. “Red goo” is an acidic (pH 3.9-2.5) breakdown product of clay, which also makes a home for bacteria. “Green slime” which may be decaying algal elements.

Sulphur Cave also sports the red worms which live off sulfur--the only such higher organism ever discovered residing on land.

Wednesday Comics: FF

Between having a plumber doing repairs to 9pm and taking care of the baby, the next installment of Storm didn't get written. Next week!

Today, here's a quick recommendation. I picked up FF (2012 series) by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred after seeing a panel from it on a blog with an intriguing explanation of Pym particles. It's just 16 issues and probably best read in tandem with Fraction's contemporaneous run on Fantastic Four. (I didn't read it that way, but I've heard that play off each other.) It deals with Ant-Man, She-Hulk, Medusa, and popstar Darla Deering agreeing to fill in for the usual FF at the Future Foundation, which is essentially a school for gifted youngsters (including familiar faces Alex Power, Artie, Leech and some new ones). They are only supposed to fill in for 4 minutes while the regular FF goes somewhere  off-world and does something, but plans, of course, go awry. The series has a fair amount of humor and a (mostly) light approach, but there is real danger and character stuff.

It's out in two trades.

It Was Never Pure

Art by Kyle MacArthur

D&D has always been a bit "gonzo." The internet era has pulled out all the stops for gonzo, so things are a bit more heightened, it's true, but if you believe Jeff Reints that "You play Conan, I play Gandalf. We team up to fight Dracula," is an apt description, then don't let the dry, wargamer prose and armchair Medievalism fool you, it's sorta gonzo.

Now, as a guy with a strong appreciation for pulp literature, I like my D&D (most of the time) heavily flavored with the likes of Howard, Smith, Leiber, and Vance. Of course, Saturday Morning cartoons, Bronze Age comics, and 80s barbarian films are in there, too, to one degree or another.

There are people only slightly younger than me for whom computer games and anime are a much bigger deal. There are even those unfortunates who could never get into Leiber or Vance, but read the hell out of some Drizzt novels. There are those for whom Harry Potter was their gateway drug and who think Tolkien is best appreciated as interpreted by Jackson at high frame rate.

My point is, whatever parts you use, D&D is always a Frankenstein bastard of lowbrow things that don't make sense together if you think about them too much. A lot of digital ink has been spilt analyzing the influence of Appendix N and the like, and that's fine, but D&D as written had Hammer horror vampire hunters, Vancian spellcasters, and kung fu film monks. It's a broad enough territory for a lot of structures to be comfortably built on it, and that's a good thing for its continued life.

Olshevsky's Marvel Time

To allow their characters to stay evergreen, both Marvel and DC have established "sliding timelines" so that the present is always today, and modern Heroic Ages of their respective universes are only 10 or 15 (or some less specified number) of years old.

As I've mentioned before, this was not always the case. George Olshevsky's Marvel indices argue that in the early years, Marvel seemed to preceded in real time. Will most are unfazed by this, at least this guy thinks it ruined the Marvel Universe. While I wouldn't go that far, I do think there are certainly tradeoffs. The eternal present comes at the sacrifice of allowing characters to truly grow and inevitably means big changes are impermanent.

Anyway, here are the "Marvel Years" as outlined by Olshevsky. He measures them by years in Peter Parker's life. The actual calendar years are my addition and relate the most likely real-world translation (if your were inclined to do that) based on the time of publication.

YEAR ONE [1960-1961] (PP-HS-SophY):
June*- FF spaceflight.
Sept. - Peter Parker is a junior in high school.
Winter – the FF #1.
(Hank Pym in the Ant-Hill) (The Hulk)
Spring (March-April) – Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man [Aug 62]
intro Thor
debut Ant-Man

YEAR TWO [1961-1962] (PP HS-JunY)
debut Wasp
Intro. Dr. Strange

YEAR THREE [1962-1963](PP HS-SenY):
Sept. – PP is a senior in high school.
Sept. – The Avengers form.
Oct. – The X-Men go public. [Sep 63]
November – Ant-Man becomes Giant Man.
mid-Dec. – The Black Widow first appears.
March – Iron Man fights Hawkeye and Black Widow.
May – Reed and Sue engaged. Johnny and Ben almost meet the Beatles.
June – Hawkeye joins Avengers. PP and JS graduate High School. Quicksilver and SW join the Avengers. Reed and Sue marry. Nick Fury named director of SHIELD.
July – Galactus arrives. Sentinels. Quentin Quire is born.

YEAR FOUR [1963-1964] (PP-CY-1):
Peter Parker’s freshman year of college.
Winter- Captain Mar-Vell arrives.
Feb. - Bobby Drake (Iceman) turns 18.
Late May-early June – 1: Lorna Dane
Summer. Franklin Richards born.

YEAR FIVE [1964-1965] (PP CY-2):
September. The Vision is created. Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne are married.
Late Sept-early Oct – 1: Sunfire
June-July: Hank McCoy goes to work for Brand Corp

YEAR SIX [1965-1966] (PP CY-3):
October – Beast gets furry.
May – GXM#1. The New X-Men

YEAR SIX [1966-1967] (PP CY-4):
Sept – Thunderbird dies.
Jan – Jean Grey replaced by Phoenix.

If Jean Grey was 24 when she is presumed to have died (based on the dates on her tombstone), and she is the same age as Peter Parker, then she must have died around 1968-69.

Get Ready for Operation Unfathomable!

Operation Unfathomable is drawing near! With text and art by Jason Sholtis and layout by Jez Gordon you will want to get in on this when it's available.

It's in the layout proofing stage now, but it shouldn't be too much longer. Here are two sample pages to whet your appetite:

Mondegreen's Mixed Up Magic

In the Land of Azurth, the wizard Mondegreen is infamous among magical practitioners, not because he was powerful (though he was) nor for his output of arcane scrolls (though it was prodigious) but because of his habit of misprinting magical sigils and formulae. He seems to have suffered some sort of malady in this regard, perhaps a curse.

A Mondegreen scroll will not contain the traditional version of the spell it appears to catalog at cursory examination. The subtle errors will either effect some aspect of the spell (50% of the time giving:

1 Advantage to the spell save
2 An increased duration
3 Increased damage (if applicable)
4 Decreased damage (if applicable)
5 A decreased duration
6 Disadvantage to the spell save

The other 50% of the time, it will not work as it should, but rather produce a magical effect from a roll on the Wild Magic Table.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Slayer of Eriban (part 5)

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 Slayer of Eriban (1985) 
(Dutch: De Doder van Eriban) (part 5)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

When Renter and Ember return to the ship, they find Nomad seemingly under assault by a gang. Renter jumps in to help, but Nomad bashes him over the head from behind, knocking him out cold.

It was a ruse. Storm hadn't returned to the ship yet, so Nomad paid the dock ruffians to help him stage a distraction so he could waylay Renter. Wanting to confine the young assassin, Ember and Nomad put him the one place they are sure he can't escape: the regeneration capsule.

Leaving Ember with the ship and Renter, Nomad goes out looking for Storm. He ends up finding him:

Nomad and Storm blame to escape. The prisoner the next cage over tells them the only way out is straight to the barsaman arena.

Meawhile, the boy Tilio happens by the ship. He tells Ember about his success as a chess entrepreneur. He asks Ember to marry him, but she demures. She asks him to watch the ship while she goes looking for her friends.

In the city, she discovers that Storm and Nomad have been taken prisoners as would be assassins. She returns to the ship to find weapons or maybe money to bribe the guards. Instead, she's attacked by Renter. Curious about the contents of the sarcophagus, Trilio released him. Renter chokes her to unconsciousness.

In two weeks, the fanfare sounds, announcing the Holy Barsaman game. The spectators file into the arena past the contestants. Some of the crowd carry miniature chess sets.

In the dungeons, on the eve of their execution, Nomad and Storm waylay a guard, steal the keys and make their escape. Storm still wants to warn the king of the assassination attempt--and enlist his help against Renter. The two steal guard uniforms and with a captured guard as an unwilling guide, they head to the royal box at the arena.

Within the arena, the game has begun:

TO BE CONTINUED

Weird Revisited: New Year's Day

And here's part 2 of a Weird Adventures New Year's yarn from 2012...

Then the weird codger just smiles under his beard and says:

“Take it easy, fella. It’s just a yarn.”

And that’s when you realize you were holding your breath. As you let it out slow, it occurs to you that there’s a murmur of “happy new years” around and somewhere the pop of a champagne cork, and there’s a dame standing close with a creased brow and disappointed pout because you didn’t kiss her at the appointed moment. The moment you just missed ‘cause you were listening to some old man’s story about the end of the world.

You take a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. The strange spell seems to be fading with the old year, but you still have to ask: “So what happened. How’d the world get saved, anyway?”

The old man strokes his beard. “It just so happens that Father Time prepares for this eventuality. He knows that the agents of entropy will try to take advantage of the changing of the year, to try and force a premature end to time. He has a plan...”

The new year is born at the center of a maze--almost a giant puzzle box, really-- outside of time and the material plane. Here the new born year can’t be strangled in its crib before temporal custodianship changes hands. All sorts of nefarious forces send their champions to seize it or kill it, true, but Father Time has his champions, as well. He can choose anyone, but it’s often adventurers that make his list. His temporal champions must brave the challenges of the achronal labyrinth and present Father Time's hourglass sigil to the multidimensional titan that guards the neonate year.

Finishing your second glass of champagne, you say, “Guess the good guys won again, huh? I’d be glad to meet one of those guys that saved the world. I’d by ‘em a drink.”

The old man shrugs and puts on his hat like he’s going to leave. “Well, the thing about that is, none of those brave souls ever remember what they did. The maze is outside of time. Everything that happens there occurs in less than an instant and outside of causality as we know it here. No, I’m afraid none of them has any idea what they accomplished.”

With that he turns to walk for the door. He’s only gone a couple of steps when he stops and half-turns. “Unless, of course, someone tells them.” And then he winks.

“Happy New Year, friend.”

Weird Revisited: On New Year's Eve

In the Weird Adventures heyday, I did a number of holiday posts. This is part one of a two-parter from 2011-2012... 

 

On New Year’s Eve, the people of the City prepare themselves for a celebration, unaware of the danger--never guessing that more than just a year might be ending.

The eikone Chronos, Father Time, lies near death. His hounds howl in their tesseract kennels and his imbonded servants, the bumbling giants of old chaos, Gog and M’Gog, blubber at his bedside. The old man--the old year--will die at the stroke of midnight.

In the Heavens, the angels gird for war. They double the host in shining panoply that guard the Celestial Gates and patrol the ramparts of paradise. They prepare for possible siege.

In the streets of the world, the soldiers and made men of the Hell Syndicate push bullets into magazines and check the action of their guns nervously. There’s the scent of blood and brimstone in the air. There may be war in the streets.

At the final collapse at the end time, the last singularity pulses omninously. It's vibration plays the funeral dirge of the cosmos; negative energy propagating backwards through time. The beat carries the slavering existence-haters of the Pit and the mad form-refuseniks of the Gyre dancing into the world for one last party.

The material plane draws, moment by moment, closer to the knife-edge of continuation and dissolution. And the clock ticks down.

to be continued

Holiday Haul

My holidays have not been exactly rpg-heavy, what with a new baby at home, but I did get a few rpg-related items around the holidays. I don't know how much table-mileage I'll get out of them, but each is cool in its own way.

My wife picked up Shogun & Daimyo by Tadashi Ehara way back at Gary Con and saved it until Christmas to drop it on me. This gamer's guide to the power structure of feudal Japan. If I ever get around to running a feudal Japan game again (and for more than a couple of sessions!) this will come in handy.

My wife also got me the only print item in the Exalted 2nd Edition line I didn't have: Return of the Scarlet Empress. While I've never played Exalted (and certainly I don't think I ever would with the Exalted system), I've gotten inspiration from the fluff. This book has a bad rep, but mainly because of what it did to the "canon," which is not really a problem for me.

Kickstarter Santa delivered the long awaited English version of the Trudvang Chronicles to me. At first blush, it seems very much worth the wait. It's a slipcase with 6 gorgeous books inside. I've gushed about the art before. I haven't read enough to say anything about the system yet, though.

Wednesday Comics: Back to Storm

Things have been busy around here of late, but I plan to get back to Storm: The Slayer of Eriban next week. Here's the first installment (of 4 so far) just in case you need a refresher on the story.

Have We Got a Deal for You!

Mortzengersturm is the Deal of the Day on Drivethrurpg/Rpgnow! Get the pdf for the low holiday price of 2.65 USD! Today only! 

World Guides

I do love a good guide to a fictional world, especially if it is richly illustrated. I even enjoy world guides to worlds in other media that I am not particularly into. I like these in and of themselves, but I also like them as inspirational material for rpgs. I tend to like world-related fluff in non-game books more than game books, not necessarily because it is better written (though, of course, it is at times) but because gaming fluff tends to always think in terms of the game. I would rather my inspirational material not be so bound to rules and conventions.

I enjoy the DK books for various fictional world, but the Star Wars books always showcase Lucasfilm's attention to design. This new Star Wars the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary is no exception. Even if you didn't like the movie, there is probably stuff in here that would interest you.

An older book, but new to me is The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia. I have never been a big video game fan, but I do like concept art and world-building and this has both, detailing both real world and fictional history of Hyrule.

Wednesday Comics: Holiday Special

DC Comics has a 2017 Holiday special out. Like most anthologies, it's a mixed bag: there's a pointless Batman and a ghost story, but also Sergeant Rock story in the classic style that shows nothing is ever easy in Easy, even during Hanukkah.

Anyway, if you really want to get into the season, check out these posts examining the DC Super-Star Holiday Special from 1980.

Weird Revisited: Noom the Ubiquitous

This petty god first appeared in a post back in December of 2010.

Symbol: A small statue, boundary marker, or herma with an head of an (often bearded) old man wth a bemused expression.
Alignment: Lawful

Noom the Ubiquitous, or Noom the Unlooked For, is the patron of the lost (both people and things), wanders, and things overlooked. For as long as there have been roads, streets, and trails, people have been placing crudely fashioned statuettes of this smiling godling along them. He oversees journeys that are not as planned. He brings the lost traveler to a place more interesting than where she intended to go, and insures that lost items wind up in the hands of those who might need them at a crucial moment.

In manifestation, Noom looks like a portly, aged, dwarf in bright clothing. The pockets on his clothes always look full, and he typically carries a peddler’s sack, fit to burst,on his back. He seldom appears though, preferring to act through his idols.

Noom has few if any worshippers. So ancient and forgotten is his cult, few even realize the small, roadside statues represent a god. Noom aides travelers not in exchange for their veneration, but out of whim. Anyone lost in the presence of a Noom statue has a 40% chance of attracting the godling’s attention. This increases to 60% if they sleep in close proximity to a statue.

Noom will not help a lost traveler find their destination, but will either subtly guide something interest their way, or guide the person to something of interest. “Interest” in this case, may be the threshold of adventure, but it will generally not be something immediately dangerous (like a wandering monster). Noom’s intercession will never be obvious. Events will always seem natural, if perhaps a little strange.

Other times, Noom’s influence will be felt in the finding of an innocuous, but ultimately useful item. These will seldom be magical, and will never appear to be particularly value at first (though they may actually be). These will be found in the dust or weeds around Noom idols. It will be strange in many cases that the item could have been lost where it is found.

Destroying a statue of Noom will bring the godling’s displeasure. Doing so may result (50%) in getting lost, at least for a time, in an unpleasant and possibly dangerous way.

The Last Jedi May be a New Beginning

To be fair, I guess it started with Rogue One, but that was a side story set in the past. (It had more of an EU feel than The Last Jedi.) Still, together they are a trend that will hopefully continue: the evolution of the Star Wars Universe.

Be warned, there will be minor spoilers here, though my definition of "minor" may not coincide with yours.

The Last Jedi is set both sequentially and script-wise to be the Empire Strikes Back of the new trilogy. Not even considering the homages and fan service that link the two, they have a lot in common. Despite their victory in the previous film, the rebellion (or Resistance here) is on the run. Our protagonists are split up, and perusing different goals. New wrinkles are introduced that change the stakes or our protagonists understanding of the stakes.  And, things happen that seem counter to what the first film set up.

Here is where TLJ gets controversial because some of the apparent mysteries dangled by The Force Awakens, come to naught here, rendered irrelevant. Who is Snoke? We may never know, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't appear to matter. He is another in what may be a long line of hubristic dark lords. Who are Rey's parents? The answer may surprise you, but only because you expect films of this sort to play out a certain way.

That gets to what is best about TLJ: it subverts tropes of Star Wars-type narratives while staying firmly rooted in that universe. Here the hero doesn't always know better than their older, more staid superiors, the odds of a harebrain scheme are important sometimes, the war may not be so black and white, and colorful rogues don't always harbor a heart of gold. These plot points aren't merely subversion for subversion's sake, they mostly lead to character development: heroes get galvanized to greater action; heroes become leaders instead of loners.

Along the way, the usual Star Wars stuff occurs. Lightsabers blaze. Ships blow up. Daring escapes are made, as are tearjerking heroic sacrifices. TLJ never stops being a Star Wars movie, it just broadens a bit what it means to be one.

It's not perfect, of course. The trope subversion means some actions of the protagonists are sort of wheelspinning, and you may not find them engaging enough on their own to warrant their inclusion. Luke's arc from RotJ to here maybe not sit well with everyone. It's believable, but perhaps less than ideal. Inter-Ressistance conflict may violate your view of Star Wars.

It's also saddled with the less than ideal choices made in the first film. How exactly the First Order came to such power is never clarified; in fact, this film doubles down on their puzzling rise. Captain Phasma got punked in TFA, and she does here, too. The relationship of Snoke, Kylo Ren, and Rey, just means that scenes that resemble ESB and RotJ occur, upping the fan service feel. The humor is at a higher level than in the original trilogy, but not (yet) to Marvel Cinematic Universe level.

I'm not sure about this, but my suspicion is that if TFA was everything you wanted in a Star Wars sequel, this film may frustrate you. If you haven't liked any film since RotJ (and you're iffy on that one) then you probably won't like this one either, and really what the hell are you doing wasting your time with modern sequels? Down that road is only heartbreak. If neither of those apply to you, I say check it out.