Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1980 (wk 2, pt 1)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around July 24, 1980.

Action Comics #512: I have to hand it to Bates and Swan on this one. Here's one of the Bates "conundrum" plots where the ending works just as well as set-up. In fact, I think this is the sort of story (in basic concept) I could see someone like Grant Morrison doing (in their more Silver Age homaging moments), though the execution would have been different in their hands. Anyway, Luthor's reform is a ruse, as we knew all along. When Luthor's new bride asks to give Superman a kiss at the wedding, Luthor's robots show up and whisk him away. They take him back to the Nefarium where they remind him of the plan he made himself forget: Luthor cloned a dying woman in an overly elaborate plot trap Superman forever in the Phantom Zone. He even excised his own memories of the plot to pass any test Superman applied. Callously, he "disposed of" the young woman and cured her clone of the disease. Luthor sits impassively as these memories are returned to him and the robots explain to the reader. We do not see his expression.

Superman comes busting in, of course. He had seen through Luthor's plot when he noted the cells encoding Luthor's memories of his marriage to Ardora of Lexor were severed (so Luthor's a bigamist too!). Supes played along in the hopes that the young woman might still be alive, but when he heard she wasn't, it's time to end Luthor's game. In the end, we find that Luthor played himself. When we finally see Luthor's expression, he is in tears as he watches his clone bride forever trapped in the Phantom Zone--his sacrifice to trap Superman. He's forever separated from the woman he tricked himself into falling in love with.

Adventure Comics #476: DeMatteis and Giordano have not yet hit their stride (I'm being optimistic that they have one). Aquaman is still, I guess, on a quest to find Mera but he continues to he get sidetracked. This time he tangles with Neptune-or as he insists, Poseidon--merely so DeMatteis can give the story a clever title. It turns out that Poseidon's power to control sea creatures comes from his trident. When it's destroyed, he disappears without us finding out whether he was really Poseidon on not. The point of this story seems to be contrast Poseidon's manipulative control of sea life (including Aquaman) with our heroes friendship and cooperation. Considering the last two issues, the point of these stories seems to be rehabilitating the idea of Aquaman. A laudable goal, but it would be nice to have a better story as its vehicle.

In the Starman feature we reach a sort of climax with our hero confronting the throne-usurping Oswin. He's in a bit of a bind, though, because if he wins his sister the Empress (unaware of his identity) wants to marry him. When he reveals his identity, she might order his death as a threat to her throne. Starman makes a shrewd move and fakes his death after defeating Oswin. Plastic Man's goofy adventures from Pasko and Staton continues as he tangles with Cheeseface who has been killing execs in companies that manufacture nondairy creamers for revenge. 

Brave & the Bold #167: Wolfman teams up with Cockrum for what the splash page calls a tale of the "Golden Age Batman," which means a tale of a Batman active in WWII, because he meets the Blackhawks. It's interesting they say "Golden Age" instead of the diegetic "Earth-2." Is this indicative of Wolfman's dissatisfaction with the multiple Earths idea he'll get rid of in Crisis, or merely him not wanting to pin himself down since the most commonly appearing Blackhawks are the Earth-1 version? Regardless, the story is fun with Batman entering a boxing match as it's being broadcast over the radio to ruff up and interrogate a German boxer. There's also an appearance by the Hidalgo Trading Company of Doc Savage lore. Cockrum draws a good Golden Age Batman and Bruce Wayne that pays homage to Sprang's without aping the style. He also is good with the Blackhawk planes.

Detective Comics #495: The Crime Doctor story by Fleisher and Newton continues, picking up with Thorne realizing that Batman is Bruce Wayne. Batman gets knocked out by one of the thugs, but Thorne keeps them from killing him because "he's still a doctor." The cops are on the way, so they all run out, leaving Batman to wake up and rescue a doctor before a bomb goes off. Later, the thugs fill in crime boss Sterling Silversmith that the Crime Doctor may know Batman's identity and Sterling decides to have a chat with the doctor. Thorne is in disguise and trying to get out of the country, but gives himself away when he can't help but save a woman's life. Silversmith forces Thorne to drink some mercury ("quicksilver"--it's thematic!) and won't get him to a hospital if he doesn't give up Batman's identity. Thorne won't break confidentiality. Batman shows up to save him, but not before Thorne's mind is completely destroyed by mercury poisoning. A good, solid story.

The "Tales of Gotham" feature by Rozakis and Spiegle has a numbers runner desperate to get his mattress full of money out of a burning building. It's sort of clever, but I wonder who the audience was for this sort of thing? Burkett and Delbo continue the adventures of Batgirl, or the "Darknight Damsel" as this story puts it. This storyline isn't bad, but it suffers a bit by comparison to the better stories around it, which include the DeMatteis/Forton Black Lightning yarn. "Animals" has Black Lightning trying to resolve a hostage situation with a teen gang within the school without any of the gang members loosing their lives. It's 70s heavy handed, sure, regarding life in the ghetto and how it shapes youth, but it works pretty well. In the last story, Robin takes down a drug ring that is shipping the drugs to the campus under the guise of being an academic book publisher in Gotham. I bet the pricing was ridiculous.

Green Lantern #133: Wolfman and Staton get Carol and Hal back together around their mutual desire to not see Ferris Aircraft go under after several mysterious plane crashes. Things are complicated by Dr. Polaris whisking Green Lantern to the North Pole to try and kill him. Based on the trouble Polaris gives GL and the dialogue about the ring's power and magnetism, Magneto would be a deadlier foe for Jordan than Sinestro! The backup story by Laurie Sutton and Rodin Rodriguez has Adam Strange and friends fighting to save Ranagar from Kaskor the Mad. There's a lot of action, but it still feels kind of dull.

House of Mystery #285: Great cover on this one courtesy of Joe Kubert. I don't think any of the stories live up to it. The cover story by Wessler and Henson (in that it has a clown, otherwise it's unrelated) is sort of a Murder on the Orient Express riff set in a circus where the clown arrested for stabbing the lousy circus owner was actually the only member of the circus that couldn't have killed him because she stabbed him after he was dead at the others' hands! Kupperberg's and Cruz's "Cold Storage" has a soldier freaking out due to isolation in the arctic and committing murder, only to wind up infected by a deadly disease careered by a quarantined astronaut that will keep him isolated and in the extreme cold. Barr and Patricio deliver a tale of an overzealous vampire hunter who, after the accidentally murder of a boy just pretending to be a vampire, has a curse put on him by the child's mother. It causes him to develop a phobia that leads to his death when it manifests at a crucial moment: a fear of pointed objects.  Barr takes another swing, this time with Garcia, in a slightly better story of a robber and who plays his boombox at an annoying volume. The music allows the woman he injured in a jewelry store robbery to guess his identity. The woman's husband ultimately traps him in a basement under debris--and turns up his radio so that no one can hear his cries for help.

Random Dying Earths

Here are a few random tables to create the barebones of your own Dying Earth setting.

What's happening?

1 The Sun is going dark

2 The Sun is becoming a red giant

3 The Earth is just worn out

4 The universe is ending (the Big Crunch)

5 The universe is just worn out

6 Reality has changed in some way

What's the environment like on Earth?

1 Ok for now

2 Desert or becoming desert

3 Frozen over in ice

4 Dark and mostly barren of life

5 heavily polluted

6 overrun by some new/mutant lifeform

Art by Darrell Sweet

Earthly civilization is:

1 Dependent on magic

2 Post-technological and primitive

3 Primitive

4 Utterly reliant on machines they don't understand

Prevailing mindset?

1-2 Decadent and cruel

3-4 Fatalistic and world-weary

5-6 Innocent and ignorant

Dark Sun: The Pristine Tower

"The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you."

- Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

The Pristine Tower is a mysterious structure in the deserts of Athas. It is first mentioned in Denning's novel Amber Enchantress, but later figures into an adventure Dregoth Ascending. I'm going to ignore for this post what the Tower is and the roll it plays in the history of Athas, as that's something one might or might not want to use in there own campaign, but I think the Pristine Tower as enough interesting things about it, it's worth including even without the backstory.

Tower is at least mutagenic, perhaps reality-warping. While the novel is disappointingly bland in the description of its environs, I think you can easily borrow strange details from Annihilation (the film or the novel) or perhaps Roadside Picnic, though with more emphasis on the biological rather than the technological.

We are told that anything that bleeds within the zone around the tower (perhaps anything that is injury) begins getting remade as some other creature. This is the source of the "new races" of Athas--like the nikaal or the humanoid baazrag. Also it creates unique mutations like Magnus, who was born of elves but looks nothing like one, and the half-human, half-insectoid Prince Dhojakt.

The fact that mutation only seems to occur after bleeding (or perhaps injury) is interesting. Is the Tower exerting some sort out of control healing field? Or is it trying to produce lifeforms better suited to survival on Athas and just needs better access to genetic material than intact skin provides? Or perhaps it's just a mutagen changing everything in range slowly, and natural healing just gives a more rapid avenue for that process?

In the novel, the area around the Tower is inhabited by rather normal creatures, but I think the chimeric creatures of the Annihilation film are more appropriate. You could also use my Random Zonal Aberrations tables. Of course always keep in mind that "weird for Earth" isn't necessarily weird for Athas.

Weird Revisited: Aboard Aureate Majestrix on the Occasion of the Panarch's Anniversary

The airship Aureate Majestrix is a wonder, even by the standards of airships. It was carved by the hands of the Ancients from a single, massive stone of an unknown variety. Fitted with mirrors which serve as sails, it is pushed to its destination by concentrated magical energy beamed at it. Long ago, it was claimed by the Panarch, and now it is operated mainly to transport those of means from Imbis to the Panarch's capital. Today, it carries various dignitaries, courtiers, and seekers of influence to the celebration for the anniversary of the Panarch:

by Jason Sholtis

A hohmmkudhuk stone-shaper whose name is actually Mmungmatukt but he is not offended when called "Mung Matuk." His clan wishes to send a new Princess to establish a descendant warren in wilderness controlled by Omunth-Ech and wishes the Panarch to support their settlement. Mung Matuk bears a tableau vivant in stone that enacts a fanciful version of the Panarch's victory over the Great M'gog and the Gog Horde as a gift.

Yreul Dahut, Galardinet Officer of the Daor Obdurate armed with customary punishment rods. Her presence suggests there is a defector from her city-state's tyranny among the celebrants, and one formerly highly placed, as the Obdurs are notoriously frugal with state funds and disdain public spectacle.

Pwi dwek Abth, hwaopt senior scholar sent by the Library to record the events in that pedantic and overly detailed way hwaopt are famous for. He wears heavy perfume to mask his odor in deference to the "simplistic and unrefined" olfactory preferences of humans, but it is not quite sufficient to the most sensitive noses.

Zira Si, ostensibly a demimondaine in the entourage of--well, one noble or another, depending on who you ask. She is actually a powerful Green sorceress and prized agent of secretive Yzordadreth, Mountain of Wizards. When her mission is done, her confederates will swoop in under cover of darkness and spirit her away on a swift-winged and silent thrykee, and no one will remember she was ever there.

(more from this world.)

Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1980 (week 1, part 2)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm continuing my look at the comics at newsstands on the week of July 10, 1980. 

Justice League of America #183: This issue is mostly setup--but it's an enticing setup! Conway and Dillin have the JSA and JLA getting together, only to be whisked away to an empty New Genesis. It seems that Apokolips is ascendant and the remaining free New Gods (Metron, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, and Orion) need the help of the greatest heroes of two Earths. The end reveals Darkseid (presumed killed at the end of the Adventure Comics revival of the New Gods) to be back amongst the living. While Superman has interacted with the Fourth World mythos before, this is the biggest step to integration in the wider universe DC has taken since the New Gods' creation. It's the harbinger of what's to come.

Secrets of Haunted House #29: The first story here illustrates the sort of "twist that doesn't really work" ending that these horror stories sometimes fall prey to. An old magician, angry at the praise being given a young upstart, reveals that he truly possesses magical powers by kidnapping the young magician and his girl and putting them in the grasp of a demon he summoned. The young magician defeats the demon who seems to declare the young magician really has magical powers too before taking the old wizard's soul. The girlfriend queries the young magician about his powers, and he sort of shrugs it off with a vague answer. The second story by Gill and Henson has a classic suspense radio program vibe. A nephew ingratiates himself on his elderly uncle, then once he discovers the old man's secret vault, kills him for the inheritance. A police lieutenant knows the nephew is guilty, but can't prove it, so harasses him for years hoping hill slip up. He assumes the nephew got away with it, until when the old house is demolished and his corpse is found in the vault. He knew how to get in but not how to get out!

Lasky and Rubeny's "Master of the Double-Cross" has a tabloid reporter stealing the typewriter of a deceased mystery author after a seance and finding out it will magical type manuscripts in the vein of its previous owner. He uses this to get fame and fortune, but then the seance crowd discovers a cache of unpublished manuscripts of the deceased author and the former reporter gets arrested for fraud (?). It appears the ghost double-crossed him. The last story by Kellay and Henson has nice art, but that art doesn't convey some of the story beats it was supposed to, I guess. An aspiring model is snooping around the chateau of a reclusive, but very successful modelling agent and discovering--well, something that shocks her about the models, but there are a couple of panels where I can't tell what they are trying to convey. It's clear it has something to do with plastic surgery, though, and the young woman begs to get in on it. The agent and the surgeon agree, and the woman is transformed into their star model. Apparently, the surgeon somehow did his job too well, because all the assembled press rush up to touch the woman and all the rough handling makes her dissolve into a "putrescent," "crumpled mass." I don't think that's how plastic surgery works, but the story doesn't explain any more than that. 

Superman #352: Wolfman and Swan bring in Destiny (later "of the Endless," but in 1980 he's just a horror host) for a guest appearance, and he drains Superman's powers and restrains him by mystical means to keep him from helping people. Superman even goes on TV to announce his retirement to the world. This is all to teach Superman a lesson to let people save themselves from time to time so they don't become dependent on him. A dubious moral makes for a bad story. 

The backup introduces the "World of Krypton" feature. It has the simple but more reasonable moral of "stay in school, kid." Newman and Buckler have Superman relating the story of Kandorian citizenship classes to a potential high school dropout. Based on the story, Kandorian citizenship classes teach an unusual amount of wilderness survival, but then Krypton can be a pretty harsh environment so maybe that makes sense. It did cross my mind that Superman was just making up this story to keep the kid in school, but surely he wouldn't do that, right?

Weird War Tales #92: The first story by Burkett and Sutton is set during the Crusades. A Christian knight and a Muslim warrior must put aside their hatred to defeat the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The second story by Kashdan and Redondo is the obligatory World War II piece. Here a Nazi experiment that turns soldiers in giantish, purple troll sort of creatures is uncovered. So has not to leave the Allied troops at the mercy of the monster, an American soldier bravely volunteers to have the procedure done to him. Neither of these stories are spectacular, but they're also not notably bad either. Meat and potatoes Weird War stuff.

Wonder Woman #272: Conway and Delbo reset Wonder Woman in the last issue and the cover to this one trumpets: "A brand new start for the amazing Amazon--against her greatest foe!!" Which is Angle Man. A brand new start to just to fight Angle Man? He's her "greatest foe?" It's not a bad Angle Man story, but it's an Angle Man story! The Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton features Solomon Grundy, and is pretty good.

World's Finest #265: Five features, and none of them particularly good. The Haney/von Eeden is the best of the lot, though it has an over-complicated plot involving roses, an obscure point of Star City history, an evil twin, and the kidnapping of Dinah. Equally confusing but less enjoyable in the end is the Superman/Batman and Robin cover story. where old JLA villain Simon Magus returns with a plot to siphon science energy to bolster his power in Earth's universe as well as the magical universe he comes from so he can take over both. Maybe he's siphoning magical energy from the other universe too? I don't know. Anyway, it's got Superman fighting what he calls a Balrog, for what it's worth. The Hawkman story by DeMatteis and Landrgraf works a Star Trek-esque "alien rebels with a legit grievance but deplorable immediate aims/methods" plot, but with less skill. The Red Tornado tale by DeMatteis and Delbo is just a recap of his story thus far to set up conflict with a new villain" T.O. Morrow, who has now transformed himself into a buff, nongreen Leader-type with bulbous cranium and moustache. Bridwell and Newton continue their Marvel Family yarn with conflict with Kull (not that one, the other one) and Mr. Atom is sort of a modern take on the Monster Society of Evil, I think. 

Dark Sun: The Shadow King of Nibenay

The original Dark Sun campaign setting calls the Sorcerer-King Nibenay "a bizarre and enigmatic
figure." He is seldom seen by his people--to the degree that rumors sometimes spread than he has died. All his Templars are women, and they may or may not all be his wives. By the 4e version of Dark Sun they were definitely his wives, though the marriage is "purely ceremonial."

In the later versions of the setting, Nibenay is seldom seen because he looks like a humanoid dragon. But in the novel Amber Enchantress, Nibenay is inhuman, though more of a mollusk-arthropod creature. I like this version better for reasons I discussed in an earlier post.

Nibenay is called the Shadow King because he's so reclusive. I think we could do better and have him typically giving audiences from behind a screen so he's seen only as a shadow (and likely a magically or psionically generated one). Perhaps he even uses his powers only to appear as some sort of shadow puppet. Maybe he appears to those who have displeased him in any place in the city in the same way?

Nibenay's son Dhojakt is monstrous in form, as well. In the canon, this is due to actions of his mother, but I think it might be interesting if Nibenay himself was just rather to only partial human children. Nibenay is not only trying to ascend to a transhuman form himself, but to breed progeny who are also transhuman. He's the family-oriented Sorcerer-King.

Here I would draw inspiration from Gregory Keyes' Chosen of the Changeling duology where the royal family descended from the River God sometimes produce inhuman fish or water aspected children the royals keep locked away. Also, there's the recent comic book limited series the The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides by Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra where a cult of nuns on an isolated mountain are offering up child brides to angels, and then tending the monstrous, Nephilim children.

I feel like Nibenay's Templars are both his cult and the source of his brides. There could be in number of inhuman children sulking about his massive and forbidden palace.

From the Sacred Scrolls: Go Ape in 5e

This post first appeared in 2016...

As presented in the original films, the apes are fairly un-ape-like in characteristics (because of course, they are played by people in masks, but that’s beside the point). Taking what we see on screen and what we are told of ape history as true, we may assume they have been genetically modified/selectively bred to something closer to a australopithecine morphology. They don’t possess the long upper limbs and associated strength, relatively stronger jaws, or opposable great toes of modern apes.

Ability score increase. +1 to any two abilities of their choice.
Speed. The apes of POTA are more bipedal than extant apes, but their foot structure still doesn't appear to be as optimized for upright walking as a humans, and they tend to have a stooped posture. Base walking speed is 25.
Grounded. For whatever reason, apes are less susceptible to illusions and mind control. They have an advantage on saving throws to resist such attacks or attempts at subterfuge.
Keen Nose. Proficiency in smell-related Perception checks.

Subraces/Subspecies:

Chimpanzee
Ability score increase. +1 Intelligence.
Studious. Gain proficiency in either one Intelligence or Wisdom skill, or a tool proficiency.

Gorilla
Ability score increase. +1 Strength.
Menacing. Gain Intimidation proficiency.

Orangutan
Ability score increase. +1 Charisma.
Knowledge Keeper. Gain proficiency in one Intelligence skill.

Wednesday Comics: DC, October 1980 (wk 1, pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of July 10, 1980. 

Batman #328: Wolfman takes over as writer, and his first story is a nice little mystery, marred only by the fact that it's a pretty obvious one. A killer taunts Batman with a video where he confesses his guilt. The problem is, he's already been tried and found not guilty, so there's no way he could be touched legally. Batman vows to bring him to justice somehow by discovering why he committed the murder in the first place and how he got away with it. Meanwhile, the killer is wooing Harvey Dent's ex, and the man he murdered was supposedly the killer of Dent's former assistant. Already, I'm suspicious about the killer's identity. When a frantic visit to Two-Face's former plastic surgeon leads to the killer committing another murder in anger...well, his identity is certain. And we've still got a part two to go! The backup story teams Wolfman with Newton, and reveals something of Gordon's early days on the police force and a little bit about the origins of the batcave (that it was part of an old subway line). Both of these things will be rendered "noncanon" post-Crisis.

DC Comics Presents #26: Wolfman and Starlin give us a team-up of Green Lantern and Superman. This is interesting because we get two DC big guns, which is rare for this title. Jordan responds to a distress call from another green lantern, but it's a trap by a rather second rate Starlin cosmic baddie (something like a b-grade Eon in design). The creature steals Jordan's form, but then Superman shows up and defeats it, though he needs Hal's help to deal with some Kryptonite. Still, Superman is pretty dismissive of the power of the creature and the Green Lanterns. He calls Jordan's ring a "little green trinket." Starlin's art here is not up to his usual standards and his round-faced Superman is off-model, but it's not a bad story--though the New Teen Titans preview that follows by Wolfman and Perez really outshines it in terms of visual storytelling and interest. It's really just a tease, though.

The backup of is "What Ever Happened to...Sargon the Sorcerer." It reminds me of the "continuity clean-up" stories Roy Thomas did in Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight, undoing things done by other creators or otherwise reseting a character. It does explain Sargon's recentish appearances as a baddie, but it feels like it was written just for that purpose.

Flash #290: As is not uncommon with these Bates/Heck stories, the reveal of why Fiona Webb, Barry Allen's neighbor, thinks he is trying to kill her is both sort of convoluted and not as interesting as the setup. It seems Webb saw a mob hit and has under gone some extreme form of witness protection courtesy of King Faraday, where her memories of her previous life as Beverly Lewis were suppressed. Not suppressed enough, apparently, because the guy she testified against looked like Barry Allen, so when a master of disguise hitman named Saber-Tooth (no relation) comes after her, she attributes the danger to Allen. This story does have an interesting bit where Flash as to enter a computer to make its circuits print out the punch card on Beverly Lewis because the computer has (as apparently have all in U.S. law enforcement) been programmed not to release that info. 

The backup story by Conway and Perez/Smith continues Firestorm's origin and recent history. There's not much to it beyond the recap.

Ghosts #93: I feel like this title is declining in quality, but maybe its just in a temporary slump. It probably doesn't help that a couple of the stories feel like reprints due to using Golden Age artists Charles Nicholas and Jack Sparling on the stories. Both of these stories were written by Carl Wessler, whose work also dates back to the Golden Age. The first is about a boy and his ghostly grandfather teaming up to use a toy train and sympathetic magic to save his father from death on a sabotaged train track. The second is about a sadistic prisoner guard who takes a job at an old mental asylum only to find all the patients are ghosts. Only marginally better is the David Allikas/Tom Mandrake story about a fraternity hazing incident leading to a death and a plan to make the instigator of that death confess by means of a fake ghost ploy that turns out not to be fake! Wessler is back a third time with Henson for "The Flaming Phantoms of Frightmare Alley." The story is a confusing and ultimately pointless tale of a reporter that falls in love with a ghost then becomes a ghost himself in a car crash and the bystander that relates the story. It in no way lives up to its title.

G.I. Combat #222: We have the usual 3 Haunted Tank stories from Kanigher and Glanzman. "For Sale: 1 Tank Crew" sees our heroes at the mercy of black marketeers in occupied France who in the end have a change of heart. "God of Steel" has Bedouin raiders trying to use the tank and crew to take out a fort--which they are happy to oblige with when they find out its occupied by Germans. "Cold Meat--Hot War" has the Haunted Tank improbably plunging into the sewers after been blocked in by Drachenzähne and German artillery. Kanigher is always inventive and Glanzman's art is on point, but I'm just not much of a Haunted Tank fan. 

The other stories are a bit better, though none are really outstanding. "Angels--of Death" by Jan Laurie and Alfredo Falugi has a group of Pacific Theater nurses pitching in to launch a torpedo on a beleaguered sub. Boltinoff and Catan shift the action to Korea and have a group of Marines allowing themselves to get frozen in a river so they can use the ice as cover for a surprise attack. Despite the unlikely premise it's probably the best story of the issue. Control coldly sends a couple of trapeze artists on a suicide mission in the O.S.S. installment "Death is an Old Friend" by Kanigher and Cruz.

Jonah Hex #41: Again Fleischer's story has a TV Western morality play feel. Hex brings in the Jody Randolph gang and they're to wait in jail for the arrival of "Hanging Harrow" the local judge. The judge turns out to be a woman who feels she has to be stern in the enforcement of the law to prove yourself qualified for her position. Her real challenge at this point, though, is from her son Rodney who is smitten with a saloon girl, Vanessa. Ostensibly to get money for diamond earrings, Vanessa enlists Rodney in a plan to free the Randolph Gang for $10,000, but it's a set-up: Vanessa is actually the girl of Jody Randolph. Rodney accidentally kills a deputy in the jailbreak and so is forced to stay with the gang even when the truth is revealed. Hex shows up to kill the Randolph gang and apprehend Vanessa and Rodney. Judge Harrow presides over their trial, showing her usual lack of mercy even for her son. Hex rides out of town as Vanessa and Rodney swing from the gallows. Ayers is inked by De Zuniga here so that its hard to see much Ayers in it.

In the Scalphunter backup, man who tried to kill Scalphunter last issue is revealed to be a college professor interested in excavating a burial mound or "ghost hill" as Scalphunter calls it. His assistants proved unscrupulous and tried to kill him once they found valuable grave goods. Scalphunter is none too happy with the mound excavation, but helps the professor stop the thieves--but perhaps ultimately they are slain by the ghosts of the mound, as the ending is ambiguous. Conway's story here feels padded as last issue turns out largely to be filler.

Dark Sun: The Gray

Cosmology is really on comes up and references to certain monsters or magic in the original Dark Sun campaign setting, but in the second edition supplement Defilers and Preservers the "planes" called the Gray and the Black are established. The Black mainly serves a backstory purpose or to be a place for monsters to be from. It's similar to the Plane of Shadow/Shadowfell, a concept I've felt to be of limited utility in most settings, Dark Sun included. 

The Gray is a different story. It at once solves one potential problem with the Great Wheel: there are too many afterlifes. It also provides a thematically appropriate underworld for the this particular setting.

The Gray is described as a "dreary, endless space" or "ashen haze." In conception it's not unlike Hades or Sheol. Like the River Lethe of Greek myth, the Gray steals memory and identity, but in this case the environment leeches it from them. Eventually their spiritual being becomes one with the gloom.

The only thing I don't like about the Gray as described is that I don't think it should be featureless. More interesting to me, would be if it mirrored in most respects the desert landscape of Athas, except perhaps more desolate. It would be doubted with ruins of dead cities and the tombs and monuments to long dead potentates who thought they could carry their riches into the afterlife--and perhaps, in a way they did, for all the good it did them.

Of course it should be possible (though not easy) to visit the Gray, like visiting the Underworld in Greek mythology. The souls of the dead are probably not dangerous for the most part to visitors, but the the ghosts that could pass between the Gray and the mortal realm might well be.

Dark Sun: The Desiccated Sea

Here I'm going to break a bit more with Dark Sun as published than I have in my previous posts. I'm afraid I don't really like the Sea of Silt. I know realism doesn't really have much of a place in a fantasy setting about sorcerer-kings and dragons, but it isn't very realistic. Also, I think it robs the setting of a bit of it's desert feel because it gives kind of an "out." Travel across the Sea of Silt is more difficult that ocean-going travel, true, but it provides some of the same type of adventuring opportunities. This could be a feature, but I see it as a bit of a bug.

Instead of the Sea of Silt, I'd just like to have a dried up sea. A harsh, saltpan basin dotted with a few shallow, hypersaline lakes where only bacteria can dwell, and tall mesas that were once islands. In other words, something like the Mediterranean would have been during the Messinian salinity crisis of the Miocene.

It would be an incredibly harsh environment, potentially. If the Sea of Silt had anything like the depth of the Mediterranean basin the pressure at the bottom would be something like 1.5 times that of "sea level" above it, and the temperatures might soar to 170 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer according to some models.

Given that salt is a quasi-element in D&D lore you would loose the Silt Sea creatures, but you could replace them with bizarre creatures of the the Quasi-elemental Plane of Salt if you wanted. You can still have giants on the islands if you wish (in an inversion of the tendency to insular dwarfism), but you can also have isolated city states in Planetary Romance fashion.

If one wanted commerce across the expanse, that would still be possible, but likely it would be via flight. If not that, land-sailing across the saltpan. It wouldn't be the most pleasant way to travel, but it could be done (if one avoided the summer months assuming temperatures as mentioned above, but we don't have to assume temperatures so high, either).

Once a thriving port, now a dead city on the cliffs

Wednesday Comics: DC, September 1980 (wk 2, pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around June 26, 1980.

Legion of Super-Heroes #267: Conway and Janes continue the evil genie storyline. We find out that the genies left Earth to conquer the space long ago but were defeated by the Guardians and placed in bottles. Bouncing Boy realizes he couldn't make the genie return to the bottle before with his wish because the bottle had been destroyed, and genie's are super-literal. Armed with a new bottle, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel (splitting gives her more wishes) trap the jinn between two wishes he rather not fulfill and trap him in the bottle. The backup story is written by Kupperberg and has rare Legion art by Steve Ditko.

Mystery in Space #111: This revival of a series last published in 1966 is presumably a replacement for Timewarp. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these stories were slated to appear there and just got moved over. The contents are a mixed bag. Brown and Spiegle lead off with an EC-ish tale about murderous aliens who initially appear friendly. The ending gag has the last survivor of the diplomatic envoy trying to warn earth but because he sends the message "collect" it gets rejected. Also good (and EC reminiscent) is a wordless story by Brown and Aparo about a disguised diplomat hiding out among the conquering alien forces. Less good are the stories that remind me of subpar Warren stuff: a story about a time traveling robot and primitive humans, and a gag story about a time traveler getting an overdue tax bill. Then there's a goofy yarn by Barr and Ditko about a ridiculed scholar who steals a time machine to prove "the truth behind fairy tales" only to wind up accidentally manufacturing that truth with his futuristic technology.

New Adventures of Superboy #9: Last issue's mysteries come down to Phantom Zone criminals who are trying to ruin Superboy's life by driving him away from everyone he loves. Ma and Pa Kent manage to break free from the amnesia and hatch a desperate plan to let Superboy know they remember him. It's a weird comic by modern standards because there is never a confrontation between hero and villains.

Sgt. Rock #344: In the main story, Rock and a group of nameless joes are captured and stripped by a group of Germans looking to use their uniforms to infiltrate Easy Company. Only Rock survives and has to make it through the snowy wilderness in his underwear to warn his men. Kanigher and Redondo get creative with these plots, I'll give them that. The four short, uncredited, backup stories in this issue are all bad. 

Super Friends #36: Either Bridwell or Fradon must have been a fan of the Coneheads sketch on Saturday Night Live, because Warhead, the villain of this issue, looks just like one of them. Plastic Man and Woozy also guest star. Most of the issue is Plastic Man causing trouble for the Super Friends. The Wonder Twins backup I actually liked better than the main story. It has art by Tanghal and Colletta and features an astrally projecting. evolved saurian alien inadvertently causing panic by animating dinosaur fossils in a museum.

Unexpected #202: The cover is great, and the first story here has got to be the most disturbing tale I've read in one of these DC horror titles so far. Uslan and Henson present a murderous Easter Bunny out turn the tables on kids by dipping them in chocolate and biting their heads off! The other stories are a giant step down. Palmer and Landgraf/Orlando have a guy selling his soul...to an angel. The angel just thinks its funny to have the guy amuse he's obligated himself to the other side all his life and only reveals the true when the guy is on his death bed. Murders in a national park turn out to be committed by, well, all the animals working together in a silly Day of the Animals riff by Seeger and Geroche. 

Unknown Soldier #243: Haney and Ayers pit the "Immortal G.I." against the Vole, a Nazi spymaster who looks a lot like Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The story involves a secret bomb test in Scotland, a fake Loch Ness monster, a capture to deliver false information to the Germans, and a whole lot of changes of location that don't necessarily add up to much. The "Dateline: Frontline" backup written by Burkett with Tothian art by Ric Estrada is okay. The other backup has a Navy frogman battling a giant octopus. The art looks like it could be from a much older comic, but it's by Randall and Janes, so it just looks that way.

Untold Legend of Batman #3: I can't decide if Wein and Aparo's ending here is daring or hokey. But really, why choose? It's both! The mysterious foe out to get Batman is none other than....Bruce Wayne! It seems a blow to the head causes Batman to develop temporary multiple personalities. Or something. Anyway, no visits to a neurologist or long-term therapy necessary as a fight with Robin dressed up in Thomas Wayne's Bat Man costume party outfit cures him. Despite the hard to swallow ending, it's still a good series for a definitive, Bronze Age origin of Batman and his family. There's a map of the Batcave and schematics of bat equipment in the back.

Warlord #37: Read more about it here. It also has an OMAC backup where Starlin continues (and does a bit of retconning) of Kirby's series.

Weird Revisited: Chances Are Walter Velez Has Illustrated Your Game

The original version of this post appeared in 2016, but it's still true today...

Sure, it's the Frazettas and Fabians, or Blanches and Buscemas--or even Elmores and Caldwells whose art fueled most of our gaming imaginations, but at least for my game, the works of George Velez hit a bit closer to what the reality is at the table.

Exhibit A. See that? That's a pudgy wizard running from a dragon that looks like it doesn't have a whole lot of hit points.

This is all the PCs trying to parley with the leader of the NPCs at once.

The fight didn't go exactly how you planned? Quelle surprise.

Hassled by annoying little people? It's been known to happen.

Dark Sun: The Lion of Urik

Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk...

- The Epic of Gilgamesh

I am Hamanu, King of the World, King of the

Mountains and the Plains, King of Urik, for whom

the roaring winds and the all-mighty sun have decreed

a destiny of heroism...

- Dark Sun Campaign Setting (1991)

Urik's name was no doubt inspired by the ancient Mesopotamian city-state of Uruk. It's Sorcerer-King Hamanu likely got his name and love of law and order from the Babylonian king Hammurabi, but I think his character is a bit more analogous to the Sumerian, mythic hero Gilgamesh. 

Hamanu is the most heroic of the Sorcerer-Kings. Not in the modern sense of being a noble or a fighter for good, though. He is neither. Rather, he is a hero more ancient sense: a doer of mighty deeds. While the Dark Sun campaign setting perhaps intended Hamanu more as a brilliant tactician and military strategist rather than a man of arms, I feel likely he's much more interesting (and differentiated from the other Sorcerer-Kings) if he is a mighty-thewed warrior, imbued with magical might. I envision him something like the titular Exalted of the any edition of the Exalted rpg, or perhaps Solomon David from Kill Six Billion Demons:

A side issue (but an important worldbuilding one, I think): Hamanu's banner. We are told in multiple places that Hamanu's (i.e. Urik's) troops care a "lion banner." The novel The Crimson Legion once describes it as a "lion that walks like a man," but nowhere where else gets this specific. The novel later has Hamanu assuming or projecting a monstrous, leonine form. 

This would suggest Athas, a world with beetle-like draft animals and reptile-bird mounts, has mundane lions. To be fair, Athas has mundane humans, so it's not impossible. It's also possible lions died out back before the cataclysmic times that changed the world from some more typical fantasy setting to its current state and exist now only as semi-mythical heraldic beasts. That's not a bad explanation, but I prefer my Athas to never have been a standard fantasy world, favoring a more Planetary Romance environment. I assume "lion" is a translation--like "Barsoomian lion" is sometimes used for "banth" in Burroughs's Mars series. In fact, I say just choose your favorite depiction of a banth and that's your Athasian lion.

Dark Sun: Tumult in Tyr

In the Dark Sun campaign setting, the city-state of Tyr is presented as on the brink of some drastic change. The Sorcerer-King Kalak has confiscated the slaves of the nobles to build his ziggurat, is taxing the people unmercifully to pay for it, and is neglecting his trade obligations to neighboring states. Kalak's reasons for doing this and the results of his actions for for his city play out in the novel The Verdant Passage and in the module Freedom.

In canon, revolution comes to Tyr as Kalak tries to bootstrap himself into dragonhood, and he's thwarted and killed. These events are reflected in the descriptions of Tyr in the revised campaign setting and the 4e Dark Sun setting book.

There are a few other interesting tidbits regarding Tyr. It has the only iron mines in the region. It has a Senate made up of the city nobles that are marginalized and at odds with Kalak's templar bureaucracy. Kalak keeps the still-living, severed heads of former allies Sacha and Wyan around to advise him, and they live on blood. (There is some discrepancy about who Sacha and Wyan are/were. Verdant Passage has Kalak claim they were chieftains that helped him conquered Tyr, and Sacha is presented as the progenitor of the Mericles noble house. In both later novels and rpg material, they are fellow "champions of Rajaat" killed by the dragon.)

Metaplot aside, resolving "Tyr as powder keg" too quickly in the line feels like a misstep to me. I would drag this out, let PCs get involved with the interplay of the factions. Even if they have no desire to become revolutionaries, there's a lot of interesting gameplay that could be wrung from this, whether the players approach it like Yojimbo or just work to avoid it.

I would ditch the name "the Senate" (too much Roman association) but keep the oligarchy as a faction, maybe remaining it the Council or Supreme Council (which the chief governmental body of Carthage was called) or even "The Mighty Ones" (the literal translation of the council advising Phoenician kings).

I love Kalak's plan to jumpstart himself into a dragon, so that has to stay. I also think the severed head advisors are a great touch. I would borrow a bit from Clark Ashton Smith's "The Empire of the Necromancers" and say that Sacha and Wyan (I would change those names, too) were sorcerers and colleagues of Kalak who all came together to the village of Tyr, which at that time was in a small, marshy, wetland amid the ruins of a more ancient city. The three built the city, perhaps with undead labor, but eventually Kalak betrayed and killed the other two.

Star Trek Endeavour: To Free the Ranger

A continuing campaign in Star Trek Adventures...

Episode 5: "Agents of Influence [part 3]"

Player Characters: 

The Crew of the USS Endeavour, NCC-1895, Constitution Class Starship (refit):
Andrea as Lt. Ona Greer, Engineer 

Bob as Capt. Robert Locke
Gina as Cmdr. Isabella Hale, Helm Chief

Eric As Lt.Cmdr. Tavek, Science Officer

Jason as Lt. Francisco Otomo, Chief Security Officer

and guest starring the crew of  USS Ranger: 

Aaron as Lt.(jg.) Cayson Randolph, Operations

Andrea as Capt. Ada Greer

Dennis, as Lt. Osvaldo Marquez, Medical Officer

Synposis: Continued from last session! The Klingon agent in the Ranger crew has revealed himself by killing Chief Engineer Galv and Ona Greer is next. Thinking fast, Greer charges the spy and knocks the phaser pistol out of his hand. After a short battle, she stuns him with her own phaser.

The combined crews continue their preparations for an impending Orion assault. Tavek gets the idea to modify a sensor buoy to create a sensor shadow that would give the impression of a larger vessel to lure the Orion's away. The engineers manage to get the damaged impulse engine working enough to power the phasers.

Locke and Hale take the shuttle with Starfleet spies and the data for Nogura to make a run for Endeavor. Hale again manages some hotshot piloting to get them away from the Orions. Locke sends a coded message to Endeavour and it seems to be received. The cavalry is hopefully coming.

As the Orions arrive, Captain Greer chooses to share that information with the Orions, warning them that they may soon face two fully armed starships. The Orions decide discretion is the better part of valor and beat a retreat.

Endeavour arrives to rescue the remaining Ranger crew.

Commentary: As mentioned before the kernel of this adventure is the novel Agents of Influence by Dayton Ward. Here the player's deviated to the greatest degree from what the characters in the novel did, which is for the best as it brought it to a close this session. This was a crossover of the two Star Trek Adventure groups, and I think it worked reasonably well, but there are probably limits to how long I was going to be able to keep that many players showing up.