The Cultivating and Care of Campaign Mysteries

I wrote a post last week that was a follow-up to a previous posts where I outlined a few mysteries that had come up in our new 4 years-old Land of Azurth campaign. Anne of DIY & Dragons asked if I had in thoughts to share regarding who these mysteries developed and the development of this sort of stuff in general.

I should say this campaign is not an open sandbox. Most adventures come about by me as the DM laying out the particularly setting and situation, and the PC's confronting the problems as presented, or reframing the problem as something else and confronting that. The applicability of what I say here will of course vary based on how you run your campaign and the degree you care about such things, obviously.

Embed mysteries. I constructed the bones of the Land of Azurth setting to have some deep mysteries. I hinted at these but didn't strongly telegraph them, or push them on the players. They are to this day, not aware of most of them--though they have brushed against them once or twice, and are interested in things that connect to them. You have to be patient, but if you want the player's interested in the mysterious background of your setting it has to be there.

Don't make it all up. Some people feel like the fixed details of the setting are necessary for player's to make maximum meaningful choices about their actions. I advocate a more of a tv series looseness as I've discussed before. So, if one of my initial ideas was "the World Emperor is mad!" or whatever, but as I'm dropping hints to this, the PCs become convinced the "World Emperor is possessed!" well, you know, maybe he could be? Also, you have to leave room for the players' to become interested in things you hadn't thought of yet, and no need to waste all your good adventure seeds on fallow ground.

Recurrent NPCs with their own agendas. My players are suspicious that Viola, the Clockwork Princess of Yanth Country, despite most appearances as a benevolent monarch, may have a sinister agenda. What made them suspicious? Well, the Princess's somewhat callous behavior and general "need to know attitude," and conspiratorial musings of a pirate queen they once interacted with. These things would never have mattered if the PCs hadn't had frequently and suggestive interactions with the Princess for them to start wondering about her.

Treasures with a story. Magic items and treasure serves a utilitarian purpose, but it shouldn't just be --or even mostly--be that. In prepping for the session, I substituted the Book of Doors for a spell book in the original run of Mortzengersturm, and added a portal to 19th Century Earth in Mort's chamber. That has gotten at least one player very interested in portals and incursions from or too other worlds, and given me further references to drop in later adventures. The Projector to the Etheric Zone was another adventure seed lying in wait for the player's to take interest. And potentially valuable mysteries tend to get their interest first!

Work with the Players' creation. Most of my players came up with a little backstory at creation. No multi-page epics, but a paragraph or so, based on the map and campaign intro materials I gave them. Plus, I had asked them all at the outset, "Why are you in Rivertown?" Jim's bard, Kully, for instance had come looking for his missing father. He had initially told me a talking calico cougar had told him to seek his father in Rivertown. I suggested maybe it was a Calico Cat Man, and Jim agreed. Now, part of the setting intro was that their were no cat folk in Azurth. So, now we had a mystery--and a coincidental name connection to the mysterious crime lord I had already named. Then of course, there was the recent return of Kully's father to set off the recent adventure.

So that's it. Or, at least that's all I can think of at the moment. It's been gratifying to run a campaign where the players aren't just interested in the adventures, but in the world behind them.

Frozen Führer [ICONS]

FROZEN FÜHRER

Abilities:
Prowess: 4
Coordination: 4
Strength: 5
Intellect: 5
Awareness: 4
Willpower: 5

Stamina: 10

Specialties: Military

Qualities:
Needs the Cold
Ruler of the Abhumans
"Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold"

Powers:
Resistance (Cold): 7
Cold Control Gloves: 6
         Affliction (freezing), Blast (Ice), Binding (ice)

Background
Alter Ego: Arno Kaltmann
Occupation: Professional Criminal, Terrorist
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Hans and Ilse (parents, deceased)
Group Affiliation: Masters of Menace
Base of Operations: The Hidden City of the Abhumans
First Appearance: DOUBLE ACTION #30
Height: 6’ Weight: 180 lbs.
Eyes: Blue Hair: White

History
Arno Kaltmann was born from a eugenics experiment by the German Thule Society. His parents were selected for their “pure Aryan” heredity, and in the womb, he was exposed to chemicals synthesized from instructions found in a manuscript discovered in the Antarctic in what was believed to be one of the last outposts of the Hyperborean civilization. From birth, Kaltmann exhibited an unusually low body temperature and an aversion to warmth. He was raised in  a special cold room, which suited his metabolism, but kept him isolated.

When the Thule Society disbanded, the Nazi government took over care of the young Kaltmann. Hitler viewed him as embodying a rediscovery of the pure Hyperborean ancestry of the Aryan peoples. The Nazi leadership wanted a army of genetic Hyperborean soldiers, but the Allied forces defeated them before their plans could be realized.

Kaltmann was captured by the U.S. military and moved to a secret facility in Greenland. There he was studied with the goal of replicating his resistance to the cold. A secret prisoner of war, he was kept in a containment cell and given no contact with the outside world.

When Kaltmann was in his early twenties, he took advantage of the guards’ distraction and escaped, killing a particularly callous military scientist as he went. He yearned for revenge against the Americans who had mistreated him and robbed him of the destiny he was promised as the forerunner of a master race.

He escaped into the Arctic, where he believed his enemies could not easily follow. There, he was discovered by a hidden offshoot of humanity known as the Abhumans. Some of the Abhuman community worshipped the extinct Hyperboreans, and recognizing Kaltmann’s link to them, hailed him as a messiah of sorts. Opportunists used the cult to overthrow the Abhuman royal family and install Kaltmann, with the idea that he would be their puppet. Kaltmann carried little for ruling the Abhuman city, but saw the Abhumans as allies in his plan for revenge against the United States.

To this end, Kaltmann had a cryosuit and cold projectors built by Abhuman engineers. As the Frozen Führer, he and his lackeys attempted to gain control of an ICBM silo in North Dakota. He planned to start a nuclear war to bring about “Fimbulwinter” and a new Ice Age, but his scheme was foiled by Thunderhawk and the female motorcyclist troubleshooters known as the Avenging Angels.

Though defeated, Frozen Führer was not deterred and as clashed with various heroes in his attempts to start a new, cold Reich.

Mysteries of Azurth Report Card

Back in 2016, I wrote a post about mysteries that had emerged in our Land of Azurth 5e campaign in play. Let's look back and see which ones the PCs have answered in the years since and which they haven't:

1. Who is the man in the metal suit beneath Castle Machina?  The name "Lum" was thrown around, and Mirabilis Lum is said to have disappeared beneath the castle, but is the man in the metal suit him, who was he gaming with, and why does he stay down there? Updated. The party still doesn't know, but perhaps more information has come to light since, with the mention of a man named Loom living in a distant junk city.

2. What does Calico Bonny look like? The Queen of the Floating World of Rivertown tends to hide behind a folding screen if she bothers appearing at all. Is there a reason? Solved. Calico Bonny is a member of the so rare as to be believed mythical Cat Folk. The party has met her brother.

3. Who were the builders of the Cloud Castle? The scale of the castle indicates they most have been near giants, though the ancient images suggest they looked something like the Cloud People that live there now. Who were these people with a flare for Googie architecture and mid-Century design and what happened to them? Still unknown. This hasn't really come up again. Maybe someday.

4. What does the projector do? The Princess Viola says it can open a portal to another world once it is fixed, but what world? And who built it? Solved. The device turned out to be for opening portals into the Etheric Zone.  The party went there and was tricked into releasing the Super-Wizard criminal Zuren-Ar from the cosmic prison known as the Carnelian Hypercube. The repercussions of this act have yet to be experienced.

5. Where does the magic portal in Mortzengersturm's mansion lead? The frox thief Waylon saw an image of another world: people in unusual clothes in an impressive city, beyond the technology of the Land of Azurth. Where (or when) was this place and why did Mortzengersturm have a portal to it? Partially solved. The portal was actually a page from the Book of Doors. A book of magical portals that keeps popping up.

6. What was the deal with Mr. Pumpkin and his carnival? Since when can a swarm of rats manage a carnival, and what became of all those rats that got away when the carnival got destroyed? Do these events have anything to do with the giant rats seen later in the beer cellar of the Silver Dragon Tavern in town? (Probably) Partially solved by someone else. As revealed in the Public Observator, the new celebrity heroes of Rivertown, The Eccentrics, uncovered a plague of wereratism that was not explicitly, but quite likely, related. Read what is known here:

Ozoom

Art by Kyle Latino

Scott Martin can be blamed for this post for pointing out the similarities between Oz and Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom....

Mars is dying and has been for millennia. The only truly fertile land left in the squarish Land of Oz, surrounded on all side by the deadly desert.

Oz has four countries, each home to a different race of men. The east is the home of the Blue Men, sort in stature and friendly. It was once ruled by an ancient crone, but she was dispatched by a little girl from Earth. In the South is the Country of the Red Men, ruled by a benevolent queen. In the west are the Yellow Men, who are renowned for their technological skill. They are ruled by a metal man. The northern country is the land of the Purple Men. They have been ruled by a succession of queens with a mastery of powers of the mind.

In the center of Oz is the Emerald City-State, made entirely of crystal. Its true color is not one human (or Martian eyes) may see, but the people wear optics which convert the color to green. It was formerly ruled by a man of Earth, a charlatan and huckster, but the rightful queen has been restored, who had spent her young life disguised as a boy.

Young Dorothy Gale was transported to Mars by a strange storm that through her and her house and dog across the astral void. She killed a which, exposed a charlatan, and helped restore the rightful ruler of Oz. She didn't do it alone. She was aided by a Lion Man, exiled for his supposed cowardice, a an artificial man without the ancient brain that formerly guided him, and a Yellow Man who's mind was placed in a metal body. They took the ancient Golden Road that followed the canals that flowed from the hum of the great Emerald City, then undertook a quest to depose the witch that ruled the Yellow Men and forced them to use their knowledge to build an army for war.

This was only the first on many trips Dorothy Gale made to Mars. A younger farm girl became an dying world's greatest hero.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Living Planet (part 7)

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 Living Planet (1986) (part 7)
(Dutch: De Levende Planeet)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

Stom and Ember run to the forest with the monster on their heels. There guide--the Chesire Cat--appears in a tree nearby and prompts Storm to use the "weapon" (the little pair of scissors) he was given:

The nightmare monsters keep coming, though. Storm blasts away at them as they frantically try to find the Tree of Ignorance and its fruit. Finally...

Storm realizes the scissors are also hand for cutting the fruit from the tree. He gets two of the red spheres, which seem to hold the nightmares at bay.

The make it back to the pillar of light. Storm throws in the fruit--the egg of Pandarve--and it is cast forth from the center of the planet into the atmosphere-filled space. There it forms the seed for accretion of a new world.

With the other egg hooked on Storm's belt, he and Ember enter the pillar. They too are shot out into the clouds, luckily close to the gnome people's ship where their friend Nomad is being held hostage until their return. The big the little men the egg, and Nomad is freed, though he hardly seems to have suffered in his captivity:

The gnome's even give them a sloop. They set sail for the nearest planetoid. Storm receives a surprise message:

THE END

Lurking Shadows in Under Sea

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night. After hearing the party's story, the lovely Randa decides to take them to her father, the wizard Phosphoro, who she is sure will help them, though he tends to disintegrate most visitors. They travel the the innermost sphere of the sanctum to meet him.

To their surprise, the stern and imperious wizard does offer to remove the curse of wandering laid on them by the Sea King, point them in direction of Under Sea, and allow them to keep the magic items they have stolen, but they must do something for him in return. He wants a particular page from the Book of Doors (which they took from Mortzengersturm). After some debate, the party agrees to give him the page he wants, but Phosphoro explains he cannot take the page now, because he can't identify it. He needs them to bring him the page from the future. He also suggests that there Kully can get his wish to find out more about Princess Viola.

Not really understanding how this will work, the party nevertheless agrees since Phosphoro is allowing them to complete their quest to Under Sea first. With his magic staff, Phosphoro transports them back to the submarine and sets them on the path.

Within hours they descend into the depths, then come up in Under Sea, which is a land of a lazy river and Spanish moss in live oaks, that happens to have the shimmering sea forming a dome above it. The one frogling town in Under Sea is now under the thumb of the Toads and their Toad temple, which just appeared one day in a blinding flash. Frogling are taken to the temple for sacrifice.

Old Freedy, the ambassador, goes off to find out when the next sacrifice is likely to be, while the party hides out to formulate a plan. Shade and Waylon do some invisible scouting and see a toad priest and some acolytes going to a tavern. They seem less like toad people and more like people in toad masks. Before they can investigate further, Old Freedy comear tearing down street chased by an actual toad monster than seems to move in shadows.

They manage to pull Freedy into an alley and try to trick the creature with an illusion, but it doesn't work. Somehow, the thing moves through the shadows to end up behind them and uses its toxic tongue to yank Waylon into its mouth. Shade puts several arrows in the monster, but it only lets a near death Waylon go when Freedy escapes.

They return to the stable where the the party is hiding out. The monster attacks there too, somehow mystically tracking Freedy. Pummelled by spell and arrow, the thing eventually disolves into goo and a wispy shadow, but only after Kairon shrank it too small to swallow anyone.

Black Void [ICONS]

Art by Chris Malgrain

BLACK VOID

Abilities:
Prowess: 6
Coordination: 4
Strength: 7
Intellect: 5
Awareness: 5
Willpower: 8

Determination: 1
Stamina: 13

Specialties: Science

Qualities:
"All was born from us and to us it will return"
"I am what remains of Kolb...and more"
Corpse Animated by Protoplasm

Powers:
Energy Drain (Life Drain, Storage): 7
Life Support: 10
Armor (Containment Suit): 5
Telepathic Link (Black Mass only): 8

History
Ed Kolb was a petroleum engineer for Hexxon Oil tasked with exploring a pocket deep underground where a substance, dubbed the "Black Mass," with unusual properties had been discovered. Upon breaching the chamber, Kolb and his team found that the Black Mass was a vast pool of protoplasm with an alien intelligence. Telepathically communicating with them, the entity asserted that it was the oldest living thing on earth, and all other lifeforms were ultimately derived from its substance. With its pseudopods, the Black Mass absorbed the others, but left Kolb with part of his intellect intact and animated his partially consumed corpse within his environmental suit, so it could use him to explore the outside world.

  The Kolb-Black Mass hybrid soon came in contact with Subterraneans, whose civilization had long been aware of the entity they called the Black Void and had sought to contain it. The prince of the underground civilization, the Sub-Terran (see Sub-Terran), battled this new manifestation of the Black Void and forced him back into the chamber where the Black Mass resided then resealed it.

   Later, agents of Hexxon released the Black Void and brought him to Hexxon’s board of directors, who were all be members of a secret cult that worshiped the Black Mass and sought to use it to gain power. Black Void killed most of the board members and for a time took secret control of Hexxon.

See Black Void's FASERIP stats here.

Deep Pulp

Currently, I'm alternating my reading time between two pulp science fiction novels from the 1960s: Lin Carter's Tower of the Medusa and Gardner Fox's Warrior of Llarn. Neither writer is hailed for their great literary accomplishments, though Gardner Fox made substantial contributions to Silver Age comic book history. Both write in a style that harkens back to the days of the actual pulp magazines (which, in Fox's case is where he got his start) and whatever their deficiencies can occasionally turn out a serviceable yarn.

originally published in an Ace Double

Carter has a flare for world-building, if occasionally done in too formulaic and always pretty derivative sort of way. He has a "genius" of combining subgenres that no one had put together before: His Lemuria stories, for instance are basically Conan in a Edgar Rice Burroughs yarn. His Gondwane tales are a faux Vancian mix Oz, Flash Gordon, and the Dying Earth. Tower of Medusa here feels a bit like a C.L. Moore riff in conception: In a future interstellar civilization where less of old knowledge makes ancient tech seem as magic (or maybe it was a fusion of the two?) a tough guy thief and his side kick are coerced into a difficult job: the theft of a jewel called Heart of Kom Yazoth. The story reads more like Moore's husband Henry Kuttner in his early pulp stuff. It has none of Moore's atmosphere. Still, it's an above average Carter effort, I feel like.

Warrior of Llarn is a Sword & Planet yarn. Earthman Alan Morgan gets transport to a distant world by means as yet mysterious. He saves a princess and gets involved with a war between two civilizations. The level of technology of the world is a bit higher than Barsoom, and Fox provides a Dune-esque (a year before Dune) explanation for why people with energy weapons might still use swords. Like Fox's earlier Adam Strange stories for DC, the planet has suffered a nuclear war in the past, which is the cause of it's strange creatures and current lower level of civilization. Fox's story is old fashion, even quaint in many ways, but he's accomplished at delivering the goods. It is not boring.

Constructing A Dark Sun and A Dying Earth

Art by Don Dixon

Still ruminating on my Dark Sun riff, I figure first things first: that dark sun. Smith and Vance provide the prototype. As the Smith writes in the "Dark Eidolon": "...the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood."

Not that it needs to be even vaguely scientific, but the usual way people give this a scientific veneer is to have the Sun (or whatever star) have turned red giant in old age. In our solar system, current theory suggests the Earth will have been scorched by the Sun's increasing luminosity billions of years before it goes red giant and consumes the planet entirely, but again fantasy. Also, even a red giant star burns white hot, so would hardly be "tarnished as if with a vapor of blood," but that's seldom concerned sci-fi writers, and shouldn't unduly concern us.

Another option, rather than the very luminous red giant, is the small, dark, and cooler red dwarf star. It is true that our Sun (or any star) won't become a red dwarf as it's dying--in fact red dwarfs are very long lived--but hey magic or sufficiently advanced science, right?

A red dwarf wouldn't typically look red in the sky either, but it's light diffused through dust or clouds would definitely be more orangish, at least, and it would be dim enough that you could look at it and see flares and things on it's surface. Dim enough, and close enough, because the habitable zone of a red dwarf would be very close to the star, so an Earth like world would be huddled in like a person around a campfire on a cold night.

The thing about being so close to the star as that it would likely mean the world was tidally locked; It might well present the same face to the star at all times and have a dayside and a nightside. This could then be a world with a scorching day time desert and a freezing night time desert, but it also offers other possibilities. Of course, the planet could have a 3:2 resonance like Mercury, rather than a 1:1 tidal lock like the Moon, too.

So doing a little bit of calculation, and a little bit of making stuff up, here's what I came up with: An world tidally locked to a dwarf star. It's day side is a scorching desert, dotted with dead cities and desiccated sea basins from before whatever happened happened. On the day side over the equator, the sun would be white and a little over 3 times as large as the Sun is in our sky.  Further from the equator and the prime meridian (not as arbitrarily placed on a world where the sun doesn't move) the sun is lower in the sky and redder in color.

Moving toward the night side, the land would become a little less dry by stages until you reached the terminator (no, not that one) where there would be forest and jungle cloaked in eternal twilight and wracked by fierce storms caused by the meeting of the hot air from dayside and the cold air of the nightside. Here be monsters.

Most of the night side, lit only by the stars, is a cold ocean. As we all know places of eternal night are havens of undead, and so must it be here. And of course, sea monsters.

Wednesday Comics: Mike Grell

TwoMorrows just released a new retrospective on the creator of Warlord, Sable, and so many others, titled Mike Grell: Life Is Drawing Without An Eraser. The hardcover clocks in at 178 pages (full color) and is of course full of Grell art from his start on Brenda Starr, through his work for the Big Two and creator owned work.

There are chapters on all of his major works (the Legion, Warlord, Sable, Green Arrow, Shaman's Tears, and Starslayer) and own his work on the Tarzan newspaper strip and James Bond graphic novels. Interspersed are mostly reprint but still interesting interviews with Grell or collaborators. There's also a checklist of Grell's work in comics.

The hardcover has an additional gallery section in the back that the paperback lacks. This has several more Warlord images.

Weird Revisted: Clowns in the Clouds

This post first appeared in December 2012. I have sorted wanted to use these guys in the Land of Azurth, but haven't done so yet.

There is, they say, a wandering, cloud island, that is home to clowns. These are no mere performers but the thing the mummers ape, fey and changeable beings not of this world.

Where the cloud island passes in it's maundering way, the clowns come down among normal folk, dropping from the sky under motley umbrellas, or sliding down shafts of light. They put on carnivals, perform farces, and throw out candies. After they have gone, people are sometimes found missing, particularly children.

Sometimes when the island passes, the clowns don't come down but instead drop candies of preternatural flavors and small items imbued with magic: a hand mirror, a short sword, a jar of skin cream, a pack of gum. There are rumors that these come in trade--or are perhaps stolen--from the Moon. There are tales spun of daring thieves sneaking on to the cloud island to rob the clowns' treasure stores, but as far as is known, these are just stories.

Other tales purport to come from people who have visited the cloud island and returned. These seldom mention  treasure stores, but do describe colorful tents scattered among cyclopean stone ruins (that may predate the clowns) and the rare tree, strewn with mists and carnival lights. The anarchic clowns careen between merriment and slumber. No clown ever seems to die, no matter what sort of violence is done to them. 

Sometimes, for reasons unknown, a clown falls from the island. These strange,sad creatures become wandering tramps, losing much of their magic and too often turning drink.

One Weird Encounter After Another

This is a page from Mercer Meyer's Little Monster's You-Can-Make-It Book from 1978. I figure it would make a decent one of those "drop die tables" all the kids were going on about a few years ago. Or you could just roll 2 4-sided die for X and Y coordinates.

You are on your own for statting most of these beings, But Mayer's books do reveal that the Yalapappas eats paper (including, I'm sure, pages from spell books and scrolls) and the trollusk is a collector of stamps. I always thought it would make a good halfling reskin, but he is a bit goblinish in appearance.

Cactoid [5e Race]

I figure a desert world under a blood-red sun should have a cactoid race. This is based on the Cactacae from the Mieville's Bas-Lag novels as presented in Dragon #352.

Cactoid Traits
Ability Score Increase. A Cactoid's Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Alignment. Cactoid tend to be lawful and neutral.
Size. Cactoid are medium.
Speed. Base walking speed is 30 feet.
Powerful Build. Cactoids count as one size larger when determining carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
Plant Hardiness. Cactoids have advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance against poison damage
Tough Hide. Cactoids have a natural +1 bonus to their Armor Class.
Spines. The spines covering a cactoid's body allow them to do an 1d4 points piercing damage while grappling.
Languages. Cactoids speak Common and their own language.

Futura [ICONS]

Art by Agus Calcagno

FUTURA

Abilities:
Prowess: 8
Coordination: 7
Strength: 7
Intellect: 6
Awareness: 6
Willpower: 7

Determination: 1
Stamina: 14

Specialties: Linguistics, Martial Arts, Medicine, Science

Qualities:
The Hope of Humanity's Future
In A Time Not Her Own
Raised by Robots

Powers:
Aging, Damage. and Disease Resistance: 6
Flight: 7
Super-Speed: 3

History
In a possibly alternate future, a war among superhumans devastated the Earth and destroyed most of civilization. So massive were the energies unleashed, the Earth itself was damaged to the core and threatened to break apart.

Some time after the war, perhaps as long as a millennium, intelligent robots lived in a massive, enclosed city known as Eden-One. They had been the caretakers of the last humans they knew to exist, and now sought to preserve human history and knowledge. One of these robots, a bio-specialist named Maia-1A457, engineered a human embryo with superhuman attributes from stored genetic material. The infant was gestated in an artificial womb. Maia-1A457 named the girl Futura, because she hoped the child would provide a future for humanity.

Futura was raised by the robots, not knowing she wasn't one of them until late in her childhood. In adolescence, she ventured outside Eden-One with the reluctant acquiescence of her robot caretakers and encountered post-human beings and aliens, making some friends among them. Most of her time, however, was spent in training and education so that one day she could make a trip to the past and prevent her catastrophic future from ever occurring.

When she reached young adulthood, she asked for her final examinations and proved to Maia-1A457 and the others she was ready for her mission. Using an ancient time machine, she journeyed back to 20th Century San Francisco. Soon after her arrival, she rescued four young people from a mutant monster that had inadvertently been transported to the past with her. The four (Dean Hunt, Zelda Dunkel, “Crunch” Samson, and Cynthia Vandaveer) offered her a room in the house they were living in, and inspired by her story, changed the name of their band to The Tomorrows.

Futura assumed the identity of Eve Hope, and got a job at a record store to better observe the culture and way of life of the humans of the era. In her true identity, she became famous as she battled threats to peace and freedom, always staying vigilant for signs of the coming future she hopes to prevent.

See Futura's FASERIP stats here.

Art by Anna Liisa Jones

Wednesday Comics: Storm: The Living Planet (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 Living Planet (1986) (part 5)
(Dutch: De Levende Planeet)
Art by Don Lawrence; script by Martin Lodewijk

It turns out Alice has not arrived from Wonderland, but is instead a projection of Mother Pandarve, an avatar of the living planet itself. She shows Storm that she could appear as a devil--or as Marilyn Monroe. In surprising show of jealousy, Ember nixes that idea.

"Alice" wants to show Storm something, so she leads him and Ember away, much to the chagrin of her "unfaithful servant" the Theocrat. She takes them to an elevator to travel to her core, and she reveals what she wants from them:

It seems that Pandarve's prime intellect has been busy for a long time with a mathematical problem, and the Theocrat has used the oppurtunity to cease power for himself. He hasn't released the Egg of Pandarve from her subconscious with should grow into her progency, satellite worlds. It that's not done, her mind will splinter. Due to the unusual energy around him, only Storm can do the job:

Of course, there are nightmare monsters down there, too. "Alice" gives Storm a weapon:

Storm and Ember land in open land under a red sky, near a forest--not exactly what one would expect at the center of a planet. But then, there are the nightmare creatures Pandarve mentioned..

TO BE CONTINUED

Weird Revisited: Different Dark Suns

I thought this classic post from 2014 would be a good compliment to yesterdays....

Dark Sun is an evocative setting as is, but there's nothing wrong with a little variety. Maybe there are two great tastes that taste great together? Try these:

Art by Kevin O'Neill

Dark Sun, Red Sands
Killraven (and the War of the Worlds tv shows, and perhaps The Tripods series of novels by John Christopher) posits a world where the Martians from Wells's novel return and succeed in their conquest. The Masters would no doubt turn their vast, cool, and unsympathetic intellects toward areoforming Earth in the image of their homeworld. Desertification and cooling, accomplished by casting dust into the sky (making the sun appear darker and redder).  Over time, the Masters became decadent and lost the ability to produce much of their technology. They amused themselves with bloodsports and petty intrigues. The mutants and monsters they had bred for various purposes escaped into the wilds. Earth becomes almost Mars, and almost Mars becomes Athas, or something pretty close.

Art by Frank Frazetta

Dark Red Sun
Two ideologies fought a centuries long war, unleashing weapons they destroyed their world's environment, mutated its creatures, and cast both civilizations back to a more primitive state.Perhaps these competing tribes were called the Kohms and Yangs, but certainly the victors in their struggle flew a red flag (as ERB had it, in the original version of the book that became The Moon Maid). In any case, their former differences don't matter as much anymore in a harsh world where human and inhuman is a bigger distinction. Sometimes, though, the desert tribes still give the ancient war cry: "Wolverines!" though none remember what it might mean.

Art by Ken Kelly

Dark Western Sun
This riff is to BraveStarr what McKinney's Carcosa might be to Masters of the Universe. When galactic civilization tore itself apart in civil war, many frontier worlds, left on their on, backslide into primitivism. The strange, psionic races of Darksun left their reservations and remote hiding places and turned human habitation into settlements isolated by wilderness, where the only law comes from the barrel of a gun.

A Darker Sun

Brom

My idea for what to do with Dark Sun is more fully formed that my Ravenloft riff. Mainly, I would play up certain things that are already there:

Post-Apocalyptic Dying Earth. At some point in the future, the sun will sputter and fail, and the world will die. Civilization may not even survive until then. As in the Zothique, stories cities continue to die or be abandoned. However, the decadence and lassitude of the dying Earth genre is not as much in evidence as the grim struggle and sporadic madness of the post-apocalyptic story: the aesthetic and weird tribes of Mad Max, the savagery and cannibalism of the comic The Goddamned, and the horrifying monsters beyond the walls of Attack on Titan or zombie films.

Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri

Body Horror. Weird, disfiguring plagues; parasitic monsters; icky organic technology; body-warping magic/psi powers (Sorcerer Kings should be more Guild Navigator from Lynch's Dune) and drugs.

Weird Stone Age. No/few metal weapons; lots of tattoos and body paint; primitive tribesfolk. Clothing somewhere between Barsoom and 10,000 B.C. A light Masters of the Universe flourish, perhaps. Hok the Mighty as an HBO series.

Psychedelic Metal. Did I say no metal? I meant not much metallurgy, but there should be plenty of barbarian badassery. Also, though, there should mind-warping weirdness like strange monsters, drugs, and powers. It should be like Heavy Metal of the 70s-80s,encompassing the hypertrophic anatomies of Bisley and the trippiness of Druillet.

Simon Bisley

Castle Ravenloft

I've been thinking of maybe doing a series of posts on re-imagings of old TSR settings. First up is this admittedly not fully formed idea about Ravenloft.

I think it might be cool to make Ravenloft a little more Gormenghast: the castle is bigger and more dilapidated (visual reference: the castle in The Fearless Vampire Killers) and becomes more central to shrunken Barovia, which is maybe no more than a valley. The castle and environs would be a bit like Dark Shadow's Collinsport. There would be a lot of weird doings in just the house and area. Strahd would be perhaps a bit toned down in villainy, more like early, non-protagonized Barnabas Collins. Strahd should probably have some bickering, eccentric, and likely inbred human family inhabiting the castle as well.

The outside world would exist, but necessarily be vaguely defined. Barovia would be a hard to get to place, somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. The strange doors of Castle Ravenloft would open onto other Domains of Dread, though.

The play of the Gothic horror, I feel like it would work better with a funnel type situation, where characters of humble backgrounds either work at the castle and discover it's horrors or are visitors to Barovia.

Weird Revisited: Random Zonal Aberrations

This 2015 post was a follow-up to my recently ressurrected post about Zonal Anomalies.

Aberrations (not to be confused with the D&D monster type) are a type of hazard encountered in zones. The resemble mobile anomalies in some ways, but they exhibit wider patterns of behavior, resembling (at least in limited observation) living things. They are abiologic, however; their tissues (if they have them at all) appear undifferentiated to close inspection, or they may have simulacra of organs that are clear nonfunctional. They do not appear to eat, grow, or reproduce, though they sometimes mimic behaviors associated with these activities. They can not be destroyed or driven off by "wounding" them (in most cases, it's unclear if they can be wounded) but must be completely destroyed.

Aberrations have a substance (similar to the manifestations of anomalies), a behavior pattern, and effects/abilities. A lot of D&D monsters would make good inspiration for aberrations. So are some paranormal or folkloric entities but keep in mind in their game usage they are more like obstacles or traps than monsters to be fought. Slimes and oozes are good models. You could destroy them, but it's generally more fruitful to just avoid them.

Unlike most anomalies, aberrations can spot/notice things approaching them as well as being noticed themselves--though the sensory modality by which they do this isn't clear. They are not usually as tied to as specific an area as anomalies, but most will have a specific territory, in the way an animal might.

Substance
1  Apparition
2  Construct
3  Crystalline/Mineral
4  Flesh
5  Fluid
6  Gas
7  Growth
8  Light
9  Ooze/Slime/Gelatinous
10 Shadow

Behavior
1  Ambusher. Lies in wait, sometimes in a dormant or indolent state, until approached.

2  Builder. Involved in some sort of construction project like a nest or nonrepresentational sculpture.

3  Chaser. After detecting target, follows targets at a high rate of speed.

4  Collector. Forages for particular objects or objects with particular characteristics.

5  Follower. Loosely joins with the target, following at a respectful distance without overt hostility.
6  Guard. Only active in a certain area. Patrols and menaces those who enter.

7  Harbinger. Appearance precedes some other event.

8  Lurker. Follows targets, but furtively, as if shy.

9  Mimic. Seems to repeat the actions or behaviors of a target.

10 Ritualist. Performs certain fairly complicated but perhaps mundane actions over and over.

11 Swarm. Smaller entities surround targets.

12 Snooper. Curious, possibly annoyingly and intrusively so, but not threatening.

13 Stalker. After detecting target, hunts it over distances.

14 Watcher. Stays in plan view, but at some remove as if only there to observe. No direct interaction.

Effects: Use the table for Zonal Anomalies--or borrow from a monster.

Examples:
chasing shadow: Too thick and deep black to be natural, the chasing shadow is nevertheless able to lurk unseen in normal darkness. It slides out of hiding when a living thing draws near, and if not stopped, attaches itself to them at their feet like a normal shadow--though does not also flow out in the same direction as the natural one. It slowly begins to crawl up the victims body and if not stopped, will cover a person complete in darkness in 20-30 hours. Over the next 30-45 minutes it will contort and collapse their body until only the flat shadow remains. What happens to the victim is unknown. If caught early, the shadow can be removed but only if the victim is surrounded by bright light and a small laser (like a laser pointer, for example) is used carefully "cut" away from the chasing shadow.

grim: Something like the featureless, white quadrupedal shape, surrounded by blotchy redness, like the silhouette of a large dog outlined in red spray paint. Grims simply appear on high ground, never approaching, and retreating if they are approached. They usual appear after someone has been seriously wounded, and Zone hunters fear them as a harbinger of death.

memory flashes: Groups of will-o'-the-wisp-like flashes of light with colorful after-images. They move quickly to swarm around a person, typically for no more than a minute. After the flashes pass, a person so caught will have one or more new memories of things that happened to someone else instead of them. They will also likely notice at some point that one or more of their own memories are missing--always small, discrete things, but perhaps important (like a telephone number of the location of something).

Wednesday Comics: Atomahawk

Atomahawk by Donny Cates (script) and Ian Bederman (art) was first serialized in Heavy Metal, but has been collected by Image into a volume numbered "0" for some reason. Atomahawk is a very metal story, in fact it is more metal than story. This panel is representative:

I kind of goes on like that. I lot of threats with the evocation of Masters of the Universe or Kirby Cosmicism as interpreted in an Iron Maiden concept album. It tells the story (or part of the story) of a warrior of flesh and blood (perhaps a Neanderthal, but the story is set "millions of years ago") resurrected in a robotic body by a futuristic god. Now known as Cyberzerker, he wields the intelligent axe known as Atomahawk, powered by crystals left over from the war of the gods.

Cyberzerker goes through the story slicing away and robots and people who get in his way in an over-the-top way until the ride ends, with teh story unfinished. Hopefully, there will a a 1 to follow the 0.

Atomic Age Operation: UNFATHOMABLE!

At the close of World War II, captured German scientists revealed to both the Americans and the Soviets the existence of an unfathomable Underworld on hinted at in legend and folklore. Perhaps driven mad by experimentation with Underworld technology, the Soviet scientist Yerkhov, with the consent of his superiors, takes an artifact known as the Nul Rod and leads an expedition of crack Soviet troops into the depths. The exact fate of the expedition is unknown, but one of Yerkhov’s assistants emerged from a cave in the Nevada desert. His mind broken by his experiences, he gave revealed little reliable intelligence, but did have in his possession a rough map of the expedition’s journey.

Denying the Soviet’s the Nul Rod and establishing an American presence in the Underworld is now our strategic priority. We believe a smaller mission, attracting less attention from the hostile locals, might be able to succeed where Yerkhov failed.

So, I think it would be pretty easy to drop Jason Sholtis's Operation Unfathomable into a 50s sci-fi/monster movie sort of setting. It already has a lot of the right elements. I could see a TV show (by Irving Allen, naturally), something like a cross between Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Combat!.

Art by Jason Sholtis

Girlgantua [ICONS]

Art by Chris Malgrain

GIRLGANTUA

Abilities:
Prowess: 5
Coordination: 6
Strength: 6
Intellect: 3
Awareness: 4
Willpower: 4

Determination: 4
Stamina: 10

Specialties: Athletics

Qualities:
Spoiled and Rich
"It's not fair!"
Inner Monster Unleashed

Powers:
Growth: 8
Tail (Fast Attack 5)

A plane crash left college student Nicole Summers, her mother, and her mother's personal trainer/boyfriend on Isla de los Monstruos where an ancient Muvian device causes teratogenesis of earthly lifeforms. Blasted with its energies, Nicole is transformed into the rampaging lizard-woman, Girlgantua!

Wednesday Comics: American Flagg!

In a quick sketch, Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! might seem like some people's version of utopia: the Federal government is nonexistent, the coastal elites (indeed, the coasts) are gone, gun ownership (and use!) is unfettered. Of course, there's also a plan to sell whole states to the Brazilians by the U.S.'s corporate managers, prostitution is legal, surveillance is common, morning after contraceptive use is ubiquitous, and the lucky upper classes get to live in shopping malls instead of post-urban and rural wastes. Chaykin's 2031 seems to be his projection of where the unbridled capitalism and emerging media omnipresence of the Reagan era and the foreign policy of the American Century in general was taking us.

Enter Reuben Flagg, hunky, Jewish former actor (he lost his job to a CGI version of himself), turned lawman for the Plex (perhaps derived from "government-industrial complex," but this is never made clear). Raised by parents with unconventional ideas, he's got a rosy view of America. One he is soon disabused of when he arrives in Chicago and sees the televised firefights between legal policlubs and the illegal rampage of gogangs. A rampage, it turns out, is being fueled by subliminal messages in the hit tv show, Bob Violence. Thanks to Flagg's Martian diet and metabolism, he can see the messages others are blind to.

What follows is a satirical, sometimes farcical, chronicle of Flagg and his eccentric cohorts as they try to save America (metaphorically and Chicago actually) from threats both internal and external, including fascist militias, agents of Communist Africa, and the Plex's own incompetence and greed. Flagg has a noble heart, but he's sometimes distracted by his libido and inflated sense of self. By sometimes I mean quite frequently, at least in the former case.

American Flagg! pioneered a number of the storytelling techniques put to use in Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns a few years later, and if it wasn't an influence on Max Headroom and Robocop, it at least beat them to the punch. Its biggest flaw is that after the first "big arc" (12 issues) Chaykin's attention seems to wane, or at least he appears to be feeling the pinch of the monthly grind. What follows isn't bad, but it doesn't quite build in the way it seemed it might. 

The original issues suffer from poor color reproduction of the era, but the Dynamite two volume collections have thankfully fixed all that.