Gruesome Twosome

Since most of my reviewing of the SRD monsters and re-conceiving them for the Strange New World of Weird Adventures is really a rejection process, I decided to forgo a tedious run-through of them all and focus on some that are easily re-imagined--like the classic lizardman and the hell hound...

“I’ll Kill You Alligator Man! Just Like I’d Kill Any Four-Legged Gator!”

Gator-Men are a species of reptilian primitives found in the New World. They are currently confined to the remote swamps and wetlands of the South, like the Mirkwater Swamp, and the Great Pahayokee Marshes. These areas serve as reservations for them, though constant vigilance is required to keep them in line. In the Southern New World continent of Asciana, vast areas of riverine jungle still belong to their fierce tribes.

Gator-Men in the Northern continent of the New World live in small tribes and eke out a marginal living trapping and fishing. Lurid pulp stories credit them with a taste for human flesh (and sometimes, a perverse lust for human women), but they are more likely to steal and eat human pets, and there are no verifiable accounts of amorous extra-species advances. They do have a love of alcoholic beverages, which are provided to them by unscrupulous traders. This only increases their natural surliness and propensity for violence.


Hell Hound on My Trail
Also called black dogs, these supernatural creatures have been known to haunt certain cursed families from the Old World. They are creatures of vengeance, which can be called up by aggrieved witches or conjure-folk to hunt down the offending party, and drag his soul to hell. Particularly powerful sorcerers might be able to bind a hell hound to their service for a time as a guard dog, though the spiritual price is no doubt high.

As no less an expert than Robert Johnson tells us, they may sometimes stalk the sinful on dark nights, in remote places.

Sucker Punch

This new Zack Snyder film had a fairly high profile at Comic-Con.  I don't know a whole lot about it, but the trailer has samurai, mecha, dragons, biplanes, and a zeppelin, so its got all that going for it.

Check out the trailer.

Now Playing: The SRD Monster Revue

In working on Weird Adventures, I've been taking a look at the monsters in the d20 SRD, thinking about how they might fit (or not) into the Strange New World of the City.  Here, for the creatures whose names are begin with the letters A through D, are my current thoughts, subject to change without notice:

A
Aboleth: evil Lovecraftian fish, surely exist somewhere. Probably somewhere in the deep South--evoking something of the ickiness of walking catfish, and eyeless cave species. Giant, albino, eyeless catfish--intelligent, and evil.

Angel: God’s (or Gods') got these servitors, definitely, but they're not called things like planetars or devas.

Ankheg: These probably exist somewhere, but they probably haven't be seen enough to have a name.

Assassin Vine: Tropical parts of the world are probably full of these things. I bet there’s at least one in some eccentric botanist's collection in the City, too. Or maybe in some unassuming florist shop.

B
Barghest: Things like this might haunt the remote forests of the Smaragdine Mountains, and probably parts of the Old World.

Basilisk: Native to Ebon-Land. Possibly extinct?

Bugbear: Congealed nightmare stuff.

Bulette: Grizzled prospectors and old Natives in the Western Desert tell stories about a predator that moves underground...

C

Centaur: Tragically, these Ealderde natives are now extinct. There was a small preserve of tamed and in-breed centaurs in the private forests of the Sultan of Korambeck, but they are no more. A few taxidermied specimens or skeletons can be seen in Ealderdish museums, though may of these may have been damaged in the Great War.

Chimera: Such fanciful beasts are the products of thaumaturgic experimentation, if they exist at all.

Cloaker: The Ancients left weird things in their underground cities.

Cockatrice: A rare creature that can be magically created, but doesn’t occur naturally.

D
Demon: Evil beings of chaos exist, and "demon" is a catch-all, lay-term for them.

Derro: Distorted tales of the Reds, told by unfortunates driven insane by their fiendish psychic torment.

Devil: The Hells are full of these.

Dinosaur: Found in remote Ebon-Land, or unexplored tropical islands.

Dire Animals: Yokels are always telling stories about over-sized animals (remember hogzilla?). Sometimes they wind up being true.

Doppelganger: Old Country legends are full of tales of this sort of thing, and superstitious immigrants bring those beliefs to the New World with them. And maybe the creatures, too.

Dragon: Another Old World creature believed to have been driven to extinction. There are sightings every year, even tha occasional dubious, grainy photo. The scientific community remains skeptical. They certainly aren’t arrayed in a toyetic spectrum of colors and metallic finishes, though.

Dryad: Tree spirits are known to exist, but tend to stay in more unspoiled forests. They can sometimes cause trouble for logging operations in more remote areas.

Dwarf: They appear in the world's mythology, but the closest thing to exist in historic times are the Dwerg-folk.

The Hills Have Eyes...And Teeth

If the regular human and hilly-billy giant inhabitants of the Smaragdine Mountains weren’t enough to contend with, travellers in remote areas may have to face ogres. Theses misshapen brutes are criminal ne’er-do-wells at best, and man-eating psychopaths at worst.

Ogres are thought to be degenerate relatives of the hilly-billy giants, and as such descendents of the Ancients. While the giants are generally well-formed and human-like in appearance except for their size (the males being a little coarsely featured, admittedly), ogres are misshapen in a variety of ways, akin various birth defects and disfiguring metabolic conditions. Ogres are also of squatter, more Neanderthalish build--they're typically around the height of the tallest giantish females (around 9 feet), but weigh as much as a male of the race.

The cause of the malformations of ogres is a subject of some scientific controversy. Some experts hold that its a result of centuries of interbreeding, combined with possible toxic exposures from the bootleg alchemicals that have been making for generations. Others believe that ogre ancestors made pacts with dark gods, and were twisted by forbidden magics--though even this school of thoughts concedes that a degree of inbreeding occurred when they were driven deep into the hills by the giant-folk. Still others think that ogres may be related to giant-folk in a way analogous to how ghouls are related to normal humans--a view likely to result in one getting “invited for dinner,” if voiced in front of ghouls.

Ogres live in extended family units back in shacks in the backwoods, or in cave lairs. Their relations are complicated due to interbreeding, so many members of the family will have dual relationships reflected in their kinship terms--”mother-sister,” “brother-husband,” or the like. In addition to making bootleg liquor and poor quality alchemicals, they also may waylay travellers on remote roads or trails. Robbery would be the least of one's concerns, as ogres are notoriously promiscuous eaters--they eat any sort of roadkill, and have been known to have a fondness for human-flesh. At the very least, they have a reputation for torture--something like bad children tormenting small animals, but on a larger scale.

Luckily, ogres don’t exist in great numbers. Rampant abuse of substances and violence kills many, and the same genetic defects that lead to their physical deformities cause a high rate of stillbirths. What they lack in numbers, however, they make up for in pure meanness.


Random Ogre Deformity:
Roll of 1d6 determines the number of deformities posessed by each ogre, then roll d20 the requisite number of times on the following table:

1. Eyes not level (1-3 inches difference)
2. Massive jaw with widely spaced teeth
3. Two small, useless, accessory arms on shoulder blades
4. One eye (40% chance of being centrally located, cyclops-like)
5. Cauliflower or absent ear (50% chance of either)
7. fleshy tubers on upper-lip (1d4, 1-2 inches long)
8. One arm boneless (50% chance either useless, or tentachle like)
9. Snaggle-toothed tusk
10. Six-toes on one foot (total toes still 10)
11. Ambiguous sexual primary characteristics
12. Extremely hairy ears
13. Scowling face of only partially absorbed twin on some part of body
14. Horn-like growth on some part of the head
15. Body covered by weeping pustules
16. Hunchback
17. Albinism
19. Excessive wrinkles, giving the skin a baggy appearance
20. Massively oversized  forearms

Warlord Wednesday: Terminator

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...

"Terminator"

Warlord (vol. 1) #21 (May 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: Despite their best efforts, Tara, Machiste and Mariah have been unable to find their way into Deimos’s fortress. They realize their hopes for the rescue of Tara’s son Joshua depend solely on his father, Travis Morgan. And the three have more to worry about as they're set upon by demons.

Meanwhile, inside the fortress, Morgan looks on in disbelief at Deimos’s champion--apparently his own son grown at accelerated rate to adulthood by Atlantean science. In actuality, Deimos has spirited the real Joshua away and replaced him with a clone. Despite the clone's adult form, his mind is still like that of an infant, not a warrior. Deimos uses his power to fill that mind, and change him into an instrument of vengeance.

Outside, our other three heroes (and Tara’s dog Shadow) battle the demons. They spot a cave entrance and run inside. With the demons close behind, Machiste causes a cave in to close the entrance. They might have been lost in darkness, but for the illumination of the hellfire gem Tara carries. Mariah asks why she Tara didn’t use the gem before, to help Morgan. Tara tells her the gem seems to be getting weaker with each use, and she and Morgan had agreed to hold its strange power in reserve for one purpose--to save their son.  Using the light, they search for a way into the castle.

Meanwhile, Morgan refuses to fight his son, but the clone-Joshua has no such qualms and attacks at Deimos’s command. Blow after blow lands rains down, and Morgan’s shield is whittled away and his helm knocked from his head. Finally, self-preservation leads Morgan to fight back, if half-heartedly.

A half-hearted defense proves not to be enough. Morgan takes a blow to his shoulder and drops his own blade. He falls to floor, clutching at his bleeding wound. Deimos laughs with the pleasure of vengeance close at hand. He gleefully orders clone-Joshua to kill Morgan.

Morgan says, “For God’s sake, Josh...I’m your father.” Deimos’s influence over the clone is too strong. He raises his blade to strike...

And Morgan shoots him.

Morgan cradles the body of his dying “son.” Deimos laughs with triumph. He taunts Morgan that he has destroyed him, as surely as if his champion had killed him. Seething with hate, Morgan snatches up his sword and stalks toward Deimos. Fearful, Deimos warns Morgan away as he begins to work some magic.

Machiste, Tara, Mariah, and Shadow burst into the room to find Morgan combating a winged, serpentine dragon, the transformed Deimos. Tara sees the fallen Joshua-clone, and recognizes her son. In her grief, Mariah has to remind her to use the hellfire gem to save Morgan. When the two halves are put together, a green light shoots out an strikes Deimos, transforming him back into a human form. Deimos begins to utter some new threat against Morgan, when Shadow lunges at him--the loyal hunting dog taking down his mistress’s quarry. The two tumble from a balcony to their apparent deaths.

Morgan tells Tara that he was forced to kill their son. He wants to use Deimos’s mask of life to restore him. Tara has heard of the curse of the mask--of how those resurrected by it continue to decay. She shows him the goblet from which Deimos has been drinking blood, to sustain his unnatural existence. She asks if Morgan would condemn their son to that. Morgan is unsure, but Tara isn’t, and she destroys the mask with her sword.

Morgan rails against his fate, complaining that he only wanted a little freedom, a little adventure--he never wanted to be a savior for this world. Mariah reminds him that that’s what he made himself, whether he intended to or not.

Morgan says he needs to go somewhere to get away, to think. He asks if any of the others want to go. Numbed, and saddened, the others refuse, so Morgan rides out alone, haunted by Deimos’s mocking laughter.

A thousand leagues to the south, Ashiya delivers the real baby Joshua into the hands of a farm family and makes them promise to keep the child’s existence a secret. A child, with a wrist-watch worn around his upper arm.

Things to Notice:

• Faithful Shadow makes her last appearance.

Where It Comes From:
The title of this issue ("Terminator") references the land of shadow Deimos's Fortress occupies, but more thematically again reaches back to the Latin root terminus to evoke endings.  This is the end of Morgan and Tara's quest, and the end of the "third book" or story arc of the series, but also the end of Morgan as leader of men and inspiration (at least for a while).

Joshua becomes the archetypical "hidden monarch" found in so much fantasy fiction.  The revelation of his identity, and his reconciliation with his family, is the ulimtate ending that would seem to be need in the Warlord's tale--and ending that doesn't come in this series, at least.

Bootleg Alchemicals

Though alcohol is legal across the New World continent, smuggling still exists to avoid taxation. The largest illicit smuggling of intoxicants, however, involves alchemical substances of various sorts made illegal, over decade ago, in most of the member states of the Union (including the City, the Steel League, and Lake City) thanks to the efforts of church-driven abstinence movements.

This has done little to stem the tide of these substances, which are available in speakeasies or drug dens throughout most major cities. “Bathtub alchemicals” are made in small laboratories within cities or rural areas. Larger scale operations (on some level, likely under the thumb of the Infernal gangsters of the Hell Syndicate) smuggle in alchemicals from foreign countries. Some may even come from other planes of existence, though the origins of such extra-terrene substances are murky.

Alchemical intoxicants come in many varieties, having effects similar to “mundane” drugs (like alcohol, cocaine, opiates, or cannabis) or mixtures thereof--there is an alchemical similar to cocaethylene, for instance. There are also “exotics” which produce magical effects similar to many potions in traditional fantasy worlds. Cheaply made alchemicals may be dangerous, in ways beyond the intended effects, and cheaply made exotics often strangely so.

Here are a couple of alchemicals not uncommon in the City and its world:

Absinthe: In the world we know, absinthe is just a liqueur flavored with essence of wormwood (usually with a high alcohol content), but in the world of the City, it literally harbors a green faerie. Technically, its an alchemical tincture of the larval stage of a spirit creature. These larvae appear to the imbiber as small, pale green, luminescent, and winged pixie-things, but are invisible to others not magically aided. It’s use enhances creativity, and may lead to clairvoyance or clairaudience in a chance which increases with dose (10-40% on first try, with chance increasing by 5% for every week of 4 or more days use. Similar intervals without use lower the chance). With long term use, it allows the user to perceive astral beings, but also causes hallucinations, so telling the two apart is nontrivial. This gives way to paranoia, and possible convulsions if use is heavy and prolonged.

Purpureal ether: Also called mauve enmanation, this alien substance is difficult to describe in earthly terms: it's purplish and has a slight glow, and can be “poured” or contained--something fog from dry ice, though it doesn’t dissipate like any fog, and is, in fact, a radiation from somewhere in the outer dark. It can be collected on moonless nights with little cloud cover on alchemically prepared cloth screens.  These are pressed or squeezed to yield the substance, which is then bottled in opaque receptacles--sunlight will degrade it within others. After 24 hours, it becomes more violatile, and is used by inhalation from bottles, or from cloths on which some of the substance has been pored.  It’s use deadens pain, increases strength (+1 with commiserate damage bonus) and heightens the mind (making the user immune to illusions and the like) for 1d4 hours. It also, however, reduces coordination (reducing anything reliant on dexterity by -1). Longterm use (daily use for a period of 1-4 months), causes degeneration first of the nerves (further dexterity loss, though this time permament), then of the flesh (charisma, and finally constitution loss).

Do We Want to be that Popular?

Back from Comic-Con finally, and I have to say I’m glad its over. Three days is more than enough. One more Comic-Con related note before returning to my regular programming, but this one bears more relevance to role-playing gaming.

At a panel I attended, I heard Michael Uslan hail the victory of comics. He’d attended the first comic convention ever (120 people), when it was an outsider hobby and fans didn’t know each even existed. He pointed out just how far we fans have come to day when comics properties are big business, and an the entertainment industry is paying attention. “We’ve won,” he said.

Whitney Matheson’s observations carried a counterargument, though. She pointed out how the comics and artists related booths at SDCC got squeezed into less and less acreage, and got pushed progressively into the hinterlands, while movie studio and video game pavilions grew and grew, and too the prime real estate.

I think this is an important observation and lover’s of any niche hobby like table-top rpgs might do well to remember: fringe hobbies/art forms “accepted” into the larger culture don’t triumph, they're subsumed. Wider interest means moneyed interests get into the driver’s seat.

Greater acceptance would mean the spirit of DIY that runs through most of the rpg-world would be driven out or marginalized. Some might say this already occurs, but its nothing like what would happen if the kaiju Global Media Conglomerate turned its radioactive gaze on helpless RPG City. Granted rpgs are perhaps not as “exploitable” as comics, in terms of IP, but I’m still pretty sure there’s a lot of bad that could come from it.

In that same panel Brad Meltzer pointed out the golden, ornate, Throne of Odin display (advertising, the upcoming movie) as the perfect metaphor for Comic-Con: “it’s big--takes up a lot of space, gaudy...and empty.”

Well, except for the occasional big photo-op:

Maybe in rpg-land our king’s not terribly photogenic, and his throne-room’s kinda shabby--but he rules at our sufferance, not that of some occupying army.