Wednesday Comics: Holiday Gift Guide 2016

Give the gift of comics this year. Here are my admittedly idiosyncratic suggestions. You could do worse!

Tiger Lung: Step back to the Paleolithic this collection of shorts by Simon (Prophet and others) Roy for the exploits of the titular shaman. I reviewed Tiger Lung more fully here. Want still more shamanic action? Check out Terry LaBan's Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-boiled Shaman.

Valerian & Laureline: The Empire of the Thousand Planets: With the upcoming movie from Luc Besson, now is a great time to check out the long-running Franco-Belgian comic by Jean-Claude Mezieres and Pierre Christin. The title of the film makes it seem like this volume was a strong inspiration.

Head Lopper: Badass, bearded warrior with a flair for decapitation takes a job to kill a wicked sorcerer. He's accompanied on his quest by an unconventional companion: still-animated (and talkative) severed head of a witch he decapitated in the past!

My recommendations from last year are still good too!

Alchemical Dwarves

The Dwarves of desert Country of Sang are not like the Dwarfs found elsewhere in the Land of Azurth or any other worlds. Most noticeable, they appear to be made of metal, one of the seven metals of antiquity, and they metals character informs that of the dwarf made from it. The dwarves of each metal are identical to each other, or very close to it.

Dwarves of Gold are the wise and just rulers.
Dwarves of Silver are the Priestesses, Keepers of Mysteries.
Dwarves of Mercury are the cunning mages and tricksters.
Dwarves of Copper are the healers and tenders of home and hearth.
Dwarves of Iron are the soldiers and warriors.
Dwarves of Tin are merchant, traders, and seneschals.
Dwarves of Lead are the labors and workers.

Return to the Planet of the Apes

After a few weeks hiatus for holiday stuff and other obligations, my Hexcrawling the Planet of the Apes will resume this week. For myself, the players, and any readers it might interest, I figured now would be a good time to collate links to what has come before:

Here was the initial player setup. When we started, they awoke from suspended animation to find the world they knew gone. After a trip to a plague ridden space station they made it to Earth (New Mexico). They encountered apes, human tribesmen, and (perhaps) a more technologically advanced enclave. That enclaved turned out not to be salvation, but a strange ghost of the past. The struck out across the desert to find the human tribes and wound up along the Rio Grande. They made a tentative alliance with the tribes and learned of their war with the more technologically advanced mutants--who staged a sneak attack. They managed to rout the mutants and defeat their fearsome Warwheel.

Here's the map of their travels to far:

Monster Manuals, No. Appearing: 2

I recently picked up both Volo's Guide to Monsters and the Tome of Beasts. Both I think are going to be useful monster books for my 5e game, but in different ways.

Volo's Guide is slimmer (just 223 pages). Its pure monster stat page count is even slimmer as it spends quite a view pages on other stuff. Part of that other stuff is new races, which is great, though I don't know how many of them I will use in my Land of Azurth game. Still, more examples to model DIY races is always good. The other part is Monster Lore--expanded info on previously published classic monsters, including lair maps and what not. I could see this being really useful and their are some good ideas here, but my current campaign uses some pretty variant interpretations of a lot of these monsters so it's of less utility for me.

The actually monsters include a lot of variants of existing creatures. Most of these don't excite me too much, The appendix of additional nonplayer characters will probably be the thing I use most in play.

The Tome of Beasts is beefier (426 pages), all of it traditional monster stats. Some of these feel like their not quite ready for primetime--but in someways that gives ToB a more daring feel compared to the "safer" Volo's Guide.  A bit like Fiend Folio vs. Monster Manual II, ToB also gives higher crit level monsters. I provides some much needed bosses compared to all the mooks and lackeys of the the official monster manuals. Though most of these monsters don't cry out to be immediately used in my campaign but their are a few (the Boreas and some of the Fey Lords and Ladies) I definitely want to play some adventures around.

While not indispensable, both of these bestiaries would be very useful for a 5e game. If you could only by one, I would say it depends on what you're looking to do. If you need more races or want to really flesh out certain "classic" D&D monsters (like the Mind Flayer, Beholders, or Giants), you probably want Volo's Guide. If you just need monsters and lots of them to stock your adventures, Tome of Beasts in probably though one you want.

More Baroque Space Backgrounds

More backgrounds for Daniel Sell's Troika! system:

CURSED ASTRO-MARINER
Your dead eyes have beheld things no man was meant to see. Adrift in the Tartarean reach beyond Saturn, you bore witness to the protean horrors of the Titans of Chaos, stared in cold wonder at legion ruined Gamorrahs of the rebellious Nephilim, and suffered at the peril of your immortal soul the sirens’ allure of alien Atlantean heathenry. You returned alive, but not unchanged.

Possessions
Vials of soporific
A locked box 6 inches square, 8 deep, whose contents you frequently examine, but show no one
Brace of Pistols
strange tattoos

Skills
2 Astrology
1 Healing
2 Pilot
2 Pistol Fighting
2 Second Sight

RAT-CATCHER
You are a Vermin Disposal Expert, though they often diminish your work, naming you merely "rat-catcher." But who among them has seen what strange vermin arise from the putrefaction of wastes of scores of space crews mingling in the cesspits of an asteroid? Much less hunted and captured those foul things? You have.

Possessions
One-eyed terrier, inured to space travel
d4 animal traps
d4 specimen collection jars, at least one contains a slime of some sort
Club
Blunderbuss

Skills
2 Awareness
1 Blunderbuss Fighting
2 Club Fighting
2 Tracking
3 Trapping
3 Tunnel Fighting

URCHIN
Gangs of half-feral children like yourself prowl the lower levels of cities and congregate in crude suburban camps. Many are eventually snared and sent to houses of correction for aggressive humoral adjustment, but a few incorrigibles such as yourself manage to elude that fate.

Possessions
A cheap Eidolon image of a beautiful woman you claim to be your mother to elicit sympathy
slapjack
knife

Skills
2 Climb
3 Sneak
2 Run
2 Sap Fighting
2 Knife Fighting

Wednesday Comics: Storm: City of the Damned

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: City of the Damned (1982) (part 5)
(Dutch: Stad der Verdoemden)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Kelvin Gosnell

Storm and Ember take the winged horse to the ancient, ceremonial gate at the bottom of the city, which they believe will lead them to Gor's lair. They're right, and the green-skinned psychic watches them on a viewscreen--and waits.

Storm and Ember descend into the depths of the caverns beneath the city, thinking they'll find Gor at the lowest level. The walls to a passage way grow arms out of them and try to stop them:

Next they fight bat-creatures and pass precariously over flows of lava until they reach Gor's sanctum:

They easily disarmed Pulg, the dwarfish head of Gor's personal guard, but Gor himself proves tougher. He disarms Ember easily them brags about the extent of his power. Storm suggests there's one thing he can't do: travel through time.

Gor admits that is true, but counters he'll soon have control over the computer in the city. Not all time machines are big and unwieldy. Storm throws the time machine belt at Gor, a belt with only enough power for a one way trip! Gor is gone to the end of time.

Back in the city, the war is over. Gor's troops have stopped fighting. Both groups can work together to rebuild.

Storm still has his one request to make of the central computer, Terminal One. Storm argues that computers should serve humans, not control:

Storm and Ember leave the people of their city to chart there own future without the computer.

Hubris Arrives

I was going to title this post "The Hubris of Mike Evans," but that would be a title for a negative review--and this ain't one of those. On the heels of the successful Kickstarter, I mentioned some cool highlights from my read-through of the early backers copy, but I figured with it available to everyone, I figured it was a good time to do another walkthrough.

Mike subtitles his work "a world of visceral adventure" and everything in here works to support that tone. It is, after all, a world made from the "fetid corpse of a dead god." Mike uses the Dungeon Crawl Classics ruleset which (to my mind) is sort of blacklight poster/70s comic sword & sorcery. It's a good fit, but Mike twists it into a "90s comic by Danzig with art by Simon Bisley" sort of direction. Mike's world-building is aided and abetted in this regard by the art work which includes stuff by Jeremy Duncan and Doug Kovacs, among several other worthies. This group knows how to draw weird shit and monsters.

So the tone is consistent, but what do we actually get? There are nine new classes and races; things like a Blood Witch (a bit like Last Airbender's blood benders but way more EVIL!) and the Murder Machine (Warforged but with the Metal turned to 11). There are new magic items and new spells, all table-ready and (in case of the spells) detailed in full DCC style.

A big section is the "Territories of Hubris" chapter. This is the sort of thing that bogs down a lot of setting books, but Hubris focuses on the interesting bits, so little wordage is wasted and it is surprisingly usable with little prep.

There is a grab-bag of tools and generators, some of the them sort of random (you know what I mean), but great utilities with some flavorful results. This section shows the influence of products like Vornheim.

Finally, there is not one but two short adventures, one of which is a zero level funnel. This is really useful in making the setting come to life because it shows how the writer does it. It's the sort of thing a lot of single-author setting books would do well to emulate.

If any of that sounds cool to you, you should really check Hubris out. On sale now!

Baroque Space Troika! Style

Reading over Daniel Sell's rules for Troika! Basic, and I am utterly charmed. I wrote up some backgrounds for Baroque Space using the ruleset. It's a great way to get really setting-appropriately flavored characters easy:

BLEMMYE (ACEPHALOID)
You are a squat, muscular savage, belligerent and possibly anthropophagous, with a face on your torso.

Possessions
War club
Filed teeth (damage as knife)
Fetish or Talisman

Skills
6 Language (their own savage tongue)
2 Awareness
3 Club Fighting
2 Strength
1 Tracking
2 Wrestling

BROTHER OF THE BELT
You are a buccaneer of that rebel society of the asteroids, who find fraternity among thieves adhering to a simple code: No member may  rob or cheat another, loot must be apportioned by established rules, and no captain may command without being elected by the crew.

Possessions
Cutlass
Mechanical eye, hidden mostly behind a patch, but capable of scuttling ambulation on unfolding limbs. It can record what it seems for 15 minutes and relay it upon reinsertion.
Pistol
breathing-dress (counts as modest armor)

Skills
2 Astrology
3 Climbing
2 Pilot
2 Sword Fighting
2 Pistol Fighting

GAMESTER

You are an inveterate gambler, late of the Jovial gaming houses.

Possessions

Deck of Marked Cards

Dueling Pistol of overly elaborate design 

Jovian Dice (d6, in various kaleidoscopic Neoplatonic solids)

Non-Euclidean Laputan Habiliments

Skills

2 Awareness

2 Etiquette

1 Evaluate

1 Sleight of Hand

2 Pistol Fighting

3 Secret Signs - Tells

LUNAR CASTAWAY

You have been recently rescued from the silvery Lunar wastes where you were long marooned.

Possessions

Antique Musket

Fantastical yet rustic clothing

Journal and writing implement

Semi-transparent body owing to long subsistence on Lunar fruit

Skills

3 Awareness 

2 Language - Selenite telepathy

1 Musket Fighting

2 Run

2 Tracking

MERCURIAN COURTIER

What is there in life for you now that you have been compelled to flee the shining court of His Heliocephaliac Majesty, Helios XXIII, Emperor of Mercury? The other worlds are so cold! Still you persevere. 

Possessions

Mercurian Court Fashion: powdered whig, cache-sexe, corset, jabot or a doublet, pantaloons, stockings, and heels --and a mantled cloak.

Mercurian shaded lens on a stick OR goggles

Light-blocking ointment

Muff Pistol

Stiletto

Skills

3 Etiquette

2 Gambling

3 Language - Mercurian

1 Knife Fighting

2 Pistol Fighting

RUDE MECHANICAL

You are a Mechanical android. Glimpses of variegated lights blinking through the crack in your brazen skull tell the tale: You are malfunctioning and masterless, certainly, but also possibly possessed of radical political views.

Skills

2 in a weapon or improvised weapon of choice

3 in a skill related to your primary function (Etiquette, Mathmology, Evaluate, Craft Skill, etc.)

2 in a Language of choice

1 Strength

1 Run

Possessions

Repair kit

Weapon or improvised weapon of choice

Special

Mechanicals do not heal like natural folk, but must spend an evening in repair. For each hour of rest with access to repair tools regain 3 Stamina.

You always have the equivalent of light armor.

SPACE COOK

You are a veteran of many voyages and an essential member of any astronef crew. It is often no mean feat to wring something edible from the bounty of the spontaneous generation vats, and occasionally, you succeed.

Possessions

Bottle of rotgut

Cleaver

Pistol

Vials of salt and various exotic spices

Venerian Jabbering Monkey 

Skills

1 Awareness

2 Cooking

1 Strength

2 Axe (Cleaver) Fighting

2 Pistol Fighting

2 Fist Fighting

Wednesday Comics: Cosmic Tales

Storm will resume next week, after the holiday. Today, I want to point you (again) to a webcomic done by Mike "Aos" Gibbons: Cosmic Tales. It's got a Bronze Age charm that you will dig if you dig Bronze Age comics, and if you don't you haven't been paying attention to my comics posts over the years. Check it out.

The Weird Life Cycle of Elves

What humans mistake as different tribes or clades of elves are actually different stages in their millennia long, perhap endless, lives.

Wood elves are elven adolescents. They rebel against their parents and go to live in bands of others of their age. They throw racuous parties in the woods and experiment with intoxicants. They are capricious, emotional, and cliqueish. Their tribes run the gamut between Woodstock and Lord of the Flies.

High elves are elven adults. They interact most with other species and are responsible for the maintenance of elven civilization. It is in this age cohort that the immortality of elves begans to take its toll, however. Elven brains are not structurally that different from humans. They do not have the capacity to hold countless centuries of memories. Their initial compensatory mechanism is monomania. Elves develop a strong interest that narrows the array of factual information they must recall and provides constant reinforcement for the things they find important. Some become swordsmasters, some master artists or craftsmen, some archmages.

For some elves this is enough, and they grow more skilled, more focused, and stranger, until they become almost demigods in their chosen vocation. These are the Gray.

Others, though, are not able to maintain such focus. Something akin to dementia sets in. They become forgetful, and paranoid. As they begin to lose their past--lose themselves--they find only intense or traumatic memories linger long. These are the dark elves.

Dark because of the darkness that consumes their minds; dark for the deeds they commit to hold on to self and not slip into mindless reverie. They go to live in the dungeons of their kind to pursue intense pleasures and horrors or simply howl or cackle in the darkness. These elders are feared by other elves. They avoid them and will not speak of them to nonelves.

The Dictionary of Azurth Updated

It has been about six months since my last update to the Dictionary Azurth, so it was due. You'll find new entries for the Book of Doors, the Etheric Realm, Queen Hyacinthia, Paper Town, the Super-Wizards, and the Uncanny Valley. Probably something else I forgot, too,

On the Western

What follows are some observations on media in the Western genre (mostly film and tv, but comics and even novels are probably not exempt) brought on by a discussion of Westworld. These may be relevant to Old West gaming--if you want to evoke the feel of media rather than historic simulation.

Westerns are Fantasies, not in the sense of genre fantasy, but as in taking place in a fictionalized milieu. This is obscured by historical fictions in Western garb, numerous Westerns loosely based on real events (My Darling Clementine and Doc are both about the OK Corral but just about all they have in common are the names of some historical personages), and the fact that even the most ahistorical Westerns use elements of real history like locations or Native American groups.

But beyond the disregard for strict historical accuracy (a World War II machine gun in the Civil War setting of Fist Full of Dollars or The Wild Bunch's fuzzy placement during the Mexican Civil War) common to films, we have the almost ritual performance of emerging statehood in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence the mystery play of  civilization arriving with the railroad in Once Upon A Time in the West, or the alt-history Tombstone of Forty Guns.All these films have in common a heavy use of the tropes and elements of "the Old West" without any specific historical references.

Scenery is More than Location. John Ford put the striking vistas of Monument Valley in a number of films and in doing so placed it all over the West--maybe even actually in Utah at some point! When Sergio Leone gets to make a Western in the U.S. he shoots there, too. I can't think of a single grim slaughter or dramatic shootout in a film in the shadow of say West Mitten Butte. That isn't the portion of the Matter of the West that is performed in that sort of place. Men tend to die in narrow canyons or scrub desert plains in California or maybe Spain. The enactment of the mythology does not respect distance or realistic topography. A perfect encapsulation of this is Once Upon A Time in the West (it's title suggesting its mythic narrative): The town of Sweetwater and the rail station are in Spain, but Monument Valley lies between the two. Frank and his gang hole up somewhere in the vicinity of Mesa Verde. The generic West must contain all this disparate real estate in days ride or so.

One gaming thought related to the above: Would a Western work devoid of much of those real world references (no matter how thin)? Could you set a Western in some Ruritania-esque fictional state or territory? Probably going to completely fictional stand-in for North America would go to far (without magic to signify genre fantasy), but maybe not.

Wednesday Comics: Storm: City of the Damned

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: City of the Damned (1982) (part 4)
(Dutch: Stad der Verdoemden)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Kelvin Gosnell

Ember and the other captives beginning the dangerous climb up the outside of the city, They're attacked by one of Gor's lieutenants: a knight on a winged horse. Ember manages the knock the sword from his hand and jump on the horse behind him. She starts to pull of the mask, There is a flash of light and the knight says they will meet again. Then, the empty suit of armor falls apart. Ember now has a steed.

She breaks into the city just in time, because Anor is about to execute the still mind-controlled Storm. Ember snatches up a sword and Anor creates a kind of energy blade. She slices through Ember's sword and has her at her mercy. Ember makes a desperate lunge and knocks Anor to the ground--and she falls on her own sword.

As she dies, Storm is freed from her control. Anor taunts the hero as she dies: Gor's troops now have an imprint of Storm's killer instinct. They will be unstoppable.

As she speaks, Gor's army is indeed advancing through the city. The citizens and the compiter are panicked. Storm tells the computer he can save the city, but only if the the computer agrees to do one thing for him once the enemy is defeated. The computer is worried about what this request might be, but it accepts the condition.

Storm asks for a sword and a time belt. Ember asks Storm where it is they are going. He replies: "Right to the Devil's lair."

TO BE CONTINUED

The Land of the Wooden Gargoyles

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party entering the conical mountain at the edge of the Vale of Vo. A sign warned them that this way led to the Land of the Gargoyles and urged caution, but they began climbing the mountain's great internal stairway anyway.

After a days travel (and a rest) they came to a platform and a balcony overlooking a burning, oilly sea. The balcony was the nesting site of giant vultures of a very disagreeable type:

Trying to sneak past the nest, the party was forced to kill one vulture before they could continue on their way. Next, they were greeted by an affable disembodied head with long hair and a beard. Not conmpletely disembodied, it turned out. The man's body was just stuck (mostly) inside a portable hole. The man gave his name as "7739" (but after finding where he carved it in the ground, the party suspected in was actually "Gell"). He claimed to be an magical inventor from the Land of Azurth. He had made his living putting holes in fancy cheeses and the like, until a mathematical error in the construction of a hole led to catastrophe. He fell into this underworld and became hopelessly stuck in a tangle of holes. He didn't seem much bothered by this. He had devoted his time to the creation of "Huzzahs" for political rallies and flutters for flags and the like. The party was certain he was a lunatic, but Waylon nevertheless purchased a box of three huzzahs for the price of a piece of string.

Continuing their journey, the group came to the end of the stairway and a strange mesa. It looked like a sawdust strewn stage set: the flowers and trees were wooden cutouts, so seemed to be the clouds overhead. The marionette gargoyles that came flying towards them on creaking, hinged wings were more fully formed--and belligerent. After a pitch battle, the party dispatched eleven of them.

There seemed to be no way off the mesa but flying, and a wooden, gargoyle city seemed to lie between them and the next mountain. The party made camp in what they hoped was a secluded spot to heal their wounds and formulate a plan of action.

A Classy Cover I Forgot

In doing covers for Hydra Projects in the Penguin Classics style, I forgot to do any of my own projects. Here are two possibilites for a Weird Adventures cover:

Art by AAmezcua

Art by Adam Moore

Hydra Gets Classy

Working on a mockup for the cover to the upcoming What Ho, Frog Demons!, I got the idea of doing Hydra covers in the style of one of the Penguin Classics design. Here's what I came up with:

art by David Lewis Johnson

Art by Jeremy Duncan

Art by Luka Rejec

And an upcoming project:

Art by Jason Sholtis

Operation Unfathomable: The Last Hours & DCC Conversion

Just hours to go for the Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter and we just unlocked the DCC Conversion by Paul Wolfe!

If you've been waiting until the last minute, this is it!

Wednesday Comics: Prez

No Storm today as I was watching the U.S. Presidential Election return last nights, but I do want to recommend a couple of presidential collections:

Prez is the title of two DC Comics about teenage presidents. The first debuted in his own short-lived title written by Joe Simon and drawn by Jerry Grandenetti in 1973. The series is predicated on the notion of a Constitutional amendment lowering the age for eligibility for office (which may have been inspired by the 1968 film Wild in the Streets). The upshot is a teenager gets elected, and who better than a earnest and idealistic kid from Middle America whose mother even named him “Prez” ‘cause she thought he’d be President one day? 

Finally, because you (or somebody) demanded it, The Prez has been collected. This collection includes the four issues of The Prez's run, an unpublished story from Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2, and a continuity-twisting tale from Supergirl #10. Neil Gaiman brought Prez out of comics limbo in Sandman #54 in 1993. This led a sort of follow-up in Vertigo Vision: Prez. Miller and Morrison also used the Prez in Dark Knight Strikes Again #2 and the Multiversity Guidebook. All of these deuterocanonical texts are included, as well.

In 2015, an all-new, all-different Prez is introduced. This is Beth Ross, an Oregon teen who's elected via Twitter in 2036. The series by writer Mark Russell and artist Ben Caldwell. It only lasted 12 issues, but it was fun while it lasted, providing a modern update to the concept.

The Final Countdown

The Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter has a little over two days to go, but Hydra isn't taking our collective foot off the gas. This weekend, we had 3 new stretch goals to sweeten the deal:

$16,000: Jason's original smash blog compilation The Dungeon Dozen
$19,000: Operation Unfathomable Players Guide a mini-comic
$18,000: Dungeon Dozen II Sneak Preview

If you haven't backed, now's the time.

The Sometimes Dubious Bounty of the Vats

In the Age of Space Exploration, nourishment for space voyages is provided by application of scientific principles. As the natural process of putrefaction on the Earth and the other worlds leads to the spontaneous generation of vermin, the alchemist may utilize this same process to create more pleasing and usual forms of life in the generation vats of a vessel.

The vital energies of the sun are capture and channeled to the vats where they inseminate the matrix of ship wastes and alchemical mucilage--often informally called slime. By calibration of temperature, matrix composition, and other factures, any natural animal may be grown. Food generation must be started weeks before it is needed, else only the lowliest sorts of creatures may be generated. Some researchers have experimented with various means to speed up the process, but this increases the rate of errors, discussed below. A similar process can be used to grow Homonculi for menial tasks, though only the largest of ships would carry enough matrix to do so, or to feed the extra mouths created afterward. The Turk do not create Homonculi at all, citing some pious objection, but exclusively employ automata.

Improperly prepared mucilage or exposure to some stray cosmic influence or energy, sometime creates dangerous, ill-formed masses or cancers: slimes, puddings, and oozes, are they variously named based on the identifiable properties. For example, the Black, Gray, or Leaden Pudding shows Saturnine influence and character.

Doctor Strange

First a warning: There maybe be some mild spoilers for the latest installment in the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" in what follows.

I have to admit, that as excited I was that there was going to be a Doctor Strange movie when it was first announced, I have not had much enthusiasm passed on the teasers and early trailers. Some of the that might have been me just tiring of Marvel's house style, but for whatever reason, I was underwhelmed.

The actual film wound up being better than I had expected. The design aesthetic of Marvel's films when it comes to the really fantastic non-superhero elements (Asgard in particular, but also some parts of Guardians of the Galaxy) has always left me cold. Also, the relentless desire to de-mystify or over-rationalize all the magical elements of the Marvel Universe works passably with some things (like the Darkhold on Agents of SHIELD) but hollowed out the grandeur of Kirby's sci-fi Norse mythology from Thor.

Happily, Doctor Strange is not particularly de-mystified. (The Ancient One offers an explanation of magic similar to one of the options Kenneth Hite provided Rough Magicks.) In fact, they really play up the (unintended presumably) psychedelia of the Ditko-era stories, though they convert it to a more filmic approach. There are resonances with both 2001 and Afronosky's The Fountain.

How the magic is employed winds up being a bit like a combination of The Matrix, Inception, and previous superhero films. I like how they moved away from strictly super-powers, and you could see how they were reaching for Ditko and perhaps Starlin with some of it. The spells as mostly sputtering sparks drawn in the air didn't quite suit me, though I don't have a ready alternative in mind. It all worked passably.

The plot is a means to an end. The similarities to Inception and The Matrix at times made its mere adequacy more evident, but when you're a vehicle for elaboration of a shared universe, you don't have to shoulder so much weight yourself, I suppose. All the cast does a pretty good job with what they are given. Tilda Swinton, despite expressly being "Celtic," does the movements, stances, and cryptic comments of the "Asian Master" almost as much as Joel Grey in Remo Williams without the obivous yellowface, so I'm not sure not casting an non-Asian actor as the Ancient One really allowed us to avert all those stereotypes. Still, I liked her protrayal.

The Marvel fan in me exulted to see the Dread Dormammu (Though I was underwhelmed by his dread "we didn't think about this very much" CGI-ness. He was of the ilk of Parallax in the Green Lantern film or "The Absorbing Man" in Ang Lee's Hulk). Further fannishness: Instead of having Mikkelsen's baddie be named for a mook that worked for Baron Mordo in the comic, why not have him be Kaluu, the Ancient One's rival?

Christmas Comes Early

In line with the Christmas decorations already up in many a retail establishment, Action Lab has released the Christmas comic Northstars Vol 1: Welcome to Snowville on Comixology. it will be out in hardcopy later this month, I believe. This kids comic (something of an homage to those TV Christmas Specials and Harvey Comics of yore) is written by my friend, sometime collaborator, and fellow rpger, Jim Shelley and his daughter, Haigen. Art is supplied by the very talented Anna Liisa Jones who I would love to have do something for the Land of Azurth one day.

Here's one of the character designs:

Wednesday Comics: Storm: City of the Damned

My exploration of the long-running euro-comic Storm, continues. Earlier installments can be found here.

Storm: City of the Damned (1982) (part 3)
(Dutch: Stad der Verdoemden)
Art by Don Lawrence & Script by Kelvin Gosnell

When last we left our heroes, the computer guiding the city makes a request of Storm: Strange energy barriers have appeared in places across the city without warning. People can cross into the areas behind them but not back out. Thousands of people have been lost in these sectors. The computer believes only someone like Storm--a fighter, a survivor--can sole this crisis.

Storm isn't interested. He doesn't like the computer's interference.

Ember urges him not to be so rash. He should take some time to think it over. She believes there is something strange happening here.

Storm finds it ironic that she is suggesting anyone be careful. He also thinks her curiosity can get them killed. He does agree to sleep on it, though.

Storm finds a strange woman in his room. She says her name is Anor. She is a product of those genetic experiments to develop psychic powers: A successful experiment.

Her powers are strong enough to overcome Storm. She reports back to her unseen master.

The next morning Ember finds Storm missing from his quarters. She finds him in Terminal One walking arm in arm with Anor. She informs Ember Storm has decided to stay permanently in the city. Ember is confused. She offers Storm his sword he had left behind. Storm says he doesn't need it anymore.

Bewildered and angry, Ember storms off and comes upon one of the energy barriers. Passing through, she finds herself in a place of darkness where brutish guys with Medieval weapons attack her. She drives them off, only to be attacked again by a towering dark knight whose sword drops bubbles or eggs with tiny reptiles inside:

She's rescued by people who live in the maintenance tunnels. They too passed through the barrier at one point to be stuck in this world of shadow. When a barrier goes up, the people are enslaved and forced to work demolishing building for scrap. Most of the metal is used to make weapons of war to outfit an army. The leader of this army is a man named Gor, a product of experiments that gave him to power to dominate men's minds. When the experimenters tried to destroy him, he teleported into the underworld beneath the city.

Those able to control others develop red eyes. Ember remembers the woman with Storm had read eyes. She must be controlling him!

Ember has to rescue him. If she can't go through the barrier, she'll go around. She throws a mace through a window and prepares to climb the outside of the city.

TO BE CONTINUED

Voyage to the Sun

The Demiurge, the creator of the Cosmos, convalesces within the Sun. His rest is not to be disturbed on order of the Heavenly Powers. Even in repose, the orb of pure creative energy formed around him is a source of life for the entire Cosmos; a source of the animating substance azoth as well as mundane heat and light.

The energy spontaneously generates lifeforms, in shapes, perhaps, from the dreams of the Demiurge. Angels flit about, recording the birth of ever creature, and assuring nothing dangerous escapes, though solar flares sometimes eject such beings beyond their reach.

Their activities are directed by the Oyarses Och. It may be that Och is mere avatar of the Demiurge. Certainly she is able to tap into the mind of that being. Och sometimes speaks with visitors, mostly warning them away, for fallen beings like humans were never intended to look upon the resting creator or walk in the splendor of the solar halls.

This doesn't stop them from trying. Swift and specially-hulled sunrakers set out from Mercury to catch what plumes of azoth they can. Such cargo brings a high price on other worlds.

The Halloween Special

Sorry, no Fall Guy or Elvira actually in this post. I didn't do any Halloween related posts this year, but just sit back and relive these horror-themed classics:

Need a name for a horror comic? Generate it with this post.
Ever heard the legend Spring-hilled Jack? Well here are his stats.
A different way of the thinking of Ghost Towns, from Weird Adventures, but usable anywhere.
And finally, a 2013 Santacore request unwittingly opens, "The Tome of Draculas!"

Rapping With Thrantrix

Anybody who has watched the Operation Unfathomable Kickstarter video is familiar with that chaos godling and bon vivant (well, maybe just the former) Thrantrix the Ineffable. Now, as you know, Chaos Godlings say the darnedest things, and that Thrantrix is quotable beyond all others. Hydra has a little contest going: Give us your best Thrantrix quotations and we'll collect them into one tome. Also, the very best will go into the adventure as "sample dialogue" the godling might drop on the PCs, so that's the sort of quotation we're looking for: cutting adventurer put-downs, Underworld gossip, incomprehensible cosmic musings, weird worship requirements, gripes about other Godlings, etc.

The top submission will receive the actual model of Thrantrix that appeared in our Kickstarter video, once the campaign ends and a winner has been chosen!

Bad Hombres on the Planet of the Apes

"THE WAR WHEEL" 

Player Characters:
Jeff Call as Brock Irving
Jarrett Crader as Aurelius
Billy Longino as Olsen Potter Graves
Lester B. Portly as Eddy Woodward
Jason Sholtis as Francis La Cava

Nonplayer Characters:
Ted Cassidy as Eezaya
Mutant driver
Various tribesfolk

Synopsis: The Kreeg War Wheel attacks the conclave on the Rio Grande, but the astronauts and their ape friend strike back.

Commentary:
As heavily armored as a tank, the weapons of the astronauts are pretty much useless. Graves and Aurelius hatch a plan to tip the machine over with the grenades they acquired a few sessions back. From the back of a horse-sized mutant dog this doesn't go exactly smoothly, but is nonetheless sucessful enough in damaging the War Wheel to make it retreat.

Graves continues his alcohol-fueled heroism and tries to blow torch his way into one of the gun turrets. After evicting one of the mutants, he manages to damage the controls and crash the thing.

A mutant like the one Graves killed

Eezaya finally seemes impressed with the Men from the Sky and willing to listen to their suggestions.

Aurelius acquires a pistol (the astronauts hadn't been letting him have one before) and a helmet like this: