Something to Do With Death

Far to the south, and west of the City, beyond the southern border of quarrelsome Freedonia, is Zingaro, a nation torn by civil war, and home to a peculiar brand of the Oecumenical faith marked (or tainted) by the mysteries of death. No where is this influence more felt that the strange city of Cujiatepec.

Cujiatepec (or sometimes Cueyatepec) is an old town, older than the City, and founded to exploit rich silver veins by immigrants from Ealderde. Though much of the silver was mined out long ago, the city has held on to its wealth in subterranean vaults, and would be a target for one revolutionary army or another, if not for the cities association with (un)death that causes many to superstitiously give the picaturesque town wide berth.

The cemeteries to the west of the city have been found to have eldritch properties. Most of the dead buried there were somehow mummified, and don’t decay at a normal rate--but that’s the least part of the strangeness. The corpses there interred are transformed in a month’s time into undead. These creatures remain in a torpor until exhumed, but once this is done they’re as active as any zombie, and as intelligent.

The town fathers of Cujiatepec place a stiff “grave tax” on all burials. Families that can’t pay have their loved ones dug up and sold as undead slave labor. The same is done to vagrants or strangers that die in town, and to criminals. The local church supports this practice by suggesting that those dead thus employed are serving penance for sins in life, and earning their soul’s way into heaven by the labor of their soulless bodies. At any given time, a hundred undead may be working in the city as labors or auxiliary police.

It’s rumored that the heretical clergy of the local church long ago discovered blasphemous rites which may allow a ritually prepared body buried in the weird soil of Cujiatepec to retain more of its intellect and personality following transformation.  These differ, it is said, from the usual abdead of Zingaro in that they are animated by unholy energies and wholly malevolent. Some believe that there is a secret lich cabal of such creatures that rules the city behind the scenes and controls its riches.

Warlord Wednesday: Battle Cry

Let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"Battle Cry"

Warlord (vol. 1) #20 (April 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: Morgan and his companions lead “a ragtag band of soldiers, adventurers, and mercenaries” north into twilight lands, and toward the Terminator--the cusp between the outer and inner earth--and eternal darkness. There they hope to find Deimos, and Morgan's and Tara’s kidnapped son.

Within his fortress, Deimos watches their approach in his crystal ball, with Ashiya and Joshua nearby. Deimos tells Ashiya that the son will be the key to the defeat of the father. The scrolls of blood have shown him how to use the technology of their ancestors to bring about his vengeance. He uses a knife to take a scrape of skin from the infant boy, then places it inside the sphere of an ancient machine. As Deimos works the controls, Ashiya watches in stunned silence, as the sphere fills with energy, and the speck of skin grows and swiftly develops into a clone of Joshua. Deimos plans to hedge his bets by keeping the real heir to Shamballah in his power, no matter what. He sends Ashiya and the original child away to make his final preparations to greet Morgan.

As the Warlord’s band nears the city, Deimos turns his magic upon them. He causes an earthquake to bring a canyon walls down on them, decimating their group. No sooner have the rumbles of the avalanche died away, then a swarm of bat-fiends attacks the few survivors. Only our four (named) heroes are left alive to storm the castle.

Soon, the heroes are at the Grayskull-esque drawbridge of the fortress. The way is clear, and unguarded, which makes them suspect a trap. Thinking only of finding his son, Morgan moves across the bridge alone--only to have it fall away beneath him. He manages to grab a chain and keep from falling onto the spikes below. Then, his sharp reflexes save him again as the portcullis falls. He’s inside the castle, but separated from his friends. And the bat-demons are coming.

Morgan fights them savagely, but it looks like he might be undone by their numbers, when flaming oils falls on them. Morgan tells Deimos his aim is bad, but Deimos says his minions got too eager--and he wants the Warlords for himself. He taunts Morgan to climb the stairs and enter the open door.

Morgan moves through dimly lit corridors warily, always taunted by the laughter of Deimos. Finally, he enters a room where he finds teh devil priest seated upon a throne. Deimos demands he bow before him. Morgan responds by stabbing his sword through Deimos’s chest, and the chair behind him.

But Deimos only laughs. He can’t die now due to the power of the Mask of Life, which Morgan unwittingly delivered to his disciple, Ashiya. Unfortunately, while the mask gives him life, it doesn’t keep his body from decaying in the sun, so he must replenish himself with human blood.

Deimos tells Morgan that since killing him would be too easy, he’ll have Morgan fight his champion instead. He pulls back a curtain to reveal Joshua held in the grip of another Atlantean device. Morgan tries to rescue him, but Deimos holds him back with flames. Morgan can only watch in horror, as Deimos activates the device, causing Joshua to grow to a full grown man before his eyes.

This is Deimos’s champion--the Warlord’s own son. Morgan can kill him, or be killed himself. “Either way,” Deimos taunts, ”you are destroyed.”

Things to Notice:

• Deimos bears some resemblance to the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz (1939): he watches his enemies in a big crystal ball, and he's got winged monkeyish servitors.

Where It Comes From:
Grell reaches into the mythic storytelling tropes well to pull out a little father-son conflict here, which echoes through Greek mythology, Le Morte D'Arthur, Shelley's Frankenstein, and Star Wars. 

The name of the foreboding Terminator region where Deimos's castle lies has nothing to do with killer robots from the future, but instead derives from (the misapplication of) the astronomy term for the dividing line between the bright and shaded regions of the disk of the moon or an inner planet. It also helped, I'm sure, that it has then same Latin root as "terminate," both deriving from terminus, "boundary marker."

Lost Worlds...Found!

Any regular reader of my blog knows I have at least a passing interest in lost worlds, given that I devote one day a week to the exploration of one, and have digressed, at times, into examination of others. So imagine how pleased I was when I discovered a website with an overview of a whole lot of them.

Dinosaur Central’s Lost Worlds of Dinosauria, is both pretty comprehensive, and well categorized. You can browse by era (between 1860 and the present), or by location (Polar region? Other planet? Lost valley? You’re covered). The usual suspects are present--Pellucidar, Maple White Land,Skull Island--but there are also a load of others from more obscure sources (E\ever heard of the Hollow Mountain? Or the planet Nova, home of King Dinosaur? I hadn’t).

It goes without saying that these worlds provide a lot of fodder for pulp gaming, but of course, there’s no reason a lost world can’t be stocked with magical monsters as well as dinosaurs to provide a locale for fantasy gaming, as well.  For sci-fi games, there's always those wonders of convergent evolution the Dinosaur Planet.

So check out the site, and get yourself lost for a bit.

Five Million Years to the Dungeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Wrong Direction

Apparently I did something offensive along with the way.  I've lost two followers in the past three days, though I looking over the list, I can't tell who it would be. 

Or maybe I'm not being edgey enough?  Perhaps I need more political rants, or taking folks to task for not engaging in rightthink.

Ah, well.

Strange Things at the Automat

A phantom automat stalks the streets of the City. Horvendile & Hawberk’s may appear any where, but is less likely to be found on a busy thoroughfare or crowded street. It seems to thrive in the shadows. It's never found in the same place twice, and less than half of people who have been there have visited it more than once--and urban legend holds that to encounter it more than seven times is a bad omen, and harbingers death.

Horvendile & Hawberk’s, or sometimes “Double H’s” (used somewhat superstitiously), looks new, though its decor and signage looks a decade or more out of date. Decorative glass fixtures around the upper walls are etched with astrological symbols. The staff is always crisply dressed and pleasant, but doesn’t engage in conversation. In addition to the automat staples like coffee, pie, sandwiches, and macaroni and cheese, the coin-operated, hinged glass slots at double H’s sometimes hold (seemingly random) unusual items:

1. A Subway and Elevated Rail-Lines map of the City, with unknown stations identified.

2. The egg of an Oriental Griffin, worth a fortune -- had it not been cooked sunny side up. Eating it leads to heightened sight for 48 hours.

3. A girasol ring, worth $200 to a fence, but evaluation by an expert reveals it to mark the bearer by tradition as the heir to a micronation in Eastern Ealderde.

4. A risque postcard of a Poitêmienne prostitute, imbued with the power of the eikone Doll, so that the owner has the power of charm over members of the opposite sex as long as they carry it on their person.

5. A used napkin with the address of a warehouse where a Staarkish Imperial military manhunter golem has been stored. It’s battered, but only needs a power source to return to operation.

6. Four-and-a-half pages of illuminated text in a magical script from a grimoire. on which someone has over-written a series of bawdy limericks. Contains 1-4 spells, but must be recopied to separate the formulae from the limericks.

7. A post-bill asking after a lost dog named “Jakey.” The crude drawing of the dog is so vague as to be unhelpful, but it's strangely unsettling to the viewer. Any one who touches it will have vague nightmares and unrestful sleep that night.

8. A ornately engraved antique sixgun. It's intelligent (Int 17) and will attempt to dominate any bearer to force him or her to seek out its original owner who’s taxidermied corpse is currently on display in a roadside curio and oddity museum in the Dustlands. When used, it confers a +2 to hit.

9. A slice of preternaturally tasty pecan pie, that the consumer will talk about from time to time with some nostalgia for 1d20 years after.

10. A pocket note-pad with a glossary of hobogoblin cant and signs, which, if utilized improves reaction when encountering the tramp humanoids, and provides other helpful information for to “gentlemen of the road.”

Spirits of the Age

As I mentioned earlier, despite the professed monotheism of most of the people of the City and its world, there are beings or powers, bearing some resemblance to the pagan gods of old. Scholars call them eikones, whereas the common man doesn’t even officially recognize their existence--despite often evoking them in a variety of ways. Some mages, however, are aware, and treat with these entities to gain their aid.

The exact number of eikones is unknown, mainly because there’s no consensus on where the line between these beings and lesser spirits or thoughtforms should be drawn, if at all. Here are a sampling of the most commonly recognized, and recognizably powerful ones:

Management
Is the personification of government, bureaucracy, order, law, and the status quo. He’s also known by such names as High Muckamuck, Final Authority, and the Chief Bureaucrat. It’s his acolytes people unknowing condemn when they disparage “city hall” or complain about “pencil-pushers.” His authority is called upon every time a “proper procedure” is quoted, a regulation cited, or a problem referred to a superior.

Management can be call upon to lend false authority to a request and thus cut through red-tape or bureaucratic delay, or his power invoked for spells that lend the power of doublespeak for obfuscation. Unwanted attention from Management can lead one to bureaucratic entanglements, imprisonment, or even execution in extreme cases.

Some hold that Management is an avatar of the actual creator of the universe--a harried. bureaucratic demiurge, that his the true creator of even the god venerated by the monotheists. Manifestations of Management ignore this question unless submitted through the proper channels--a feat no one has yet to accomplish, as far as is known.

Management is often depicted in the garb of a wealthy gentleman of the end of the last century, though his depictions are as various as his rolls.


Phile
Is the spirit of solidarity, and fraternalism. He is invoked when people unite in common cause, and, more darkly, when they turn on the outsider. His power is felt in armies marshalling for war, and workers trying to unionize, but also in the anti-minority raids of the white-hooded Knights-Templar of Purity.

Invoking Phile can help create a feeling of solidarity in a group, bolstering moral. His influence can also be used to sway mobs and move to or from a particular course of action.

Phile always appears as a stereotypical (one might say exemplar) member of whatever group is gathering at the moment.

Doll
Is the spirit of sex, sexual attraction, and to a lesser extent feminine beauty. She resembles ancient fertility goddesses in some ways--though she has no association or role with fertility or procreation. Doll is invoked by those looking to impress or seduce, or in any way gain power over another through the use of sexual attraction. Her energy is felt in performances of dancing girl revues, and her regard can be felt in the smoldering gaze of Heliotrope “it” girls, or the coquettish glances of “spicy” magazine models.

Doll’s depictions are legion, but her pose and expression always suggest more than they show.

Maker
Is the builder, the planner, and the engineer--the spirit of progress from science applied. Blueprints are his scrolls, schematics his sigils. His hymns are the hum of machinery.

Maker is invoked by those involved in any task of engineering or industry.  His influence can be used to solve mechanical or engineering problems. His power can coax “a little extra” from engines, or get something working at a critical moment.

Maker is depicted as a steely-gazed man in a hardhat, or as a anthropomorphic piece of machinery.