Lies Your Mummy Told You

Far to the west of the City, within the great Stoney Mountains, there are remote places where ancient ruins dot the hardpan, high-desert landscape. From these ruins sometimes come unusual artifacts, none more so than the so-called dwarf  mummies.

Dwarf (sometimes pygmy) mummies look just as their name suggests: they are wizened figures little more than a foot tall, in their usual seated pose. Despite having none of the usual signs of life, the mummies are endowed with the magical semblance of life at least, and though they don’t move (usually) they are aware, and interact with their environment.

The susurration of the mummies can be heard by all, if conditions are quiet enough, but only the one “owner” of the mummy will be able to understand their dessicated whispering, which will sound as if spoken directly into their ear, even if they are as much as ten feet away.

The mummies' utterances will fall (either randomly or at the GM’s whim) into the following categories:

01-02: Pained, non sequitur reminiscences, possibly related to their long ago lives. These are related to times far too remote for modern hearers to relate to them in any useful way.
03-04: Cryptic foretellings of the future (anywhere from 1 week to 10 years hence) which will relate to the “owner.”
05-06: An exact and surprising statement about some predicament currently vexing the “owner.” The mummy will not elaborate.
07-08: A cryptic statement which seems to be about some predicament vexing the “owner,” but is in fact just nonsense.
09-10: Veiled Suggestions that someone the “owner” is close to is in fact conspiring against them. This may or may not be true, but the mummy will have details that make it seem so. Details will only be delivered in a way that makes the mummy seem reluctant to talk about the issue.

The longer a person owns a mummy, the more uncritical they will become about its statements. After a week or more in their possession, the owner will react to the mummy as if it has a Charisma of 18. After a month, a failed save will mean the owner acts as if charmed by the mummy in regard to believing everything it says, and treating it as if it is a trusted confidant.

No one knows who the dwarf mummies are, nor their purposes.  Any answers the mummies' give in this regard will certainly be lies.

Maps of Four-Color Fantasy Lands

When secondary world fantasy made the jump from literature to comics in the wake of Tolkein and Howard it brought the tradition of the world-map along with it.  Of course in comics, they'd have to be full color.

Here are two prime examples, suitable for gaming inspiration:

"I feel like a character from Howard or Tolkein. Pretty soon, though, I'm gonna wake up and find this is a spaced-out dream. And I'm gonna swear off reading sword-and-sorcery sagas!"

-- Jim Rook, Showcase # 82 (1969).

Myrra is the fantasyland that rock musician Jim Rook, and his girlfriend Janet Jones, get transported to in Nightmaster, starting in Showcase #82 (May 1969).  Rook is revealed to be the descendant of Nacht, an ancient warrior of Myrra, and the only one who can wield his ancestor's Sword of Night, and save the world from the evil Warlocks.  Nightmaster was the of writer Denny O'Neil and artist Berni Wrightson.  As some of the place names on the map might suggest (Duchy of Psychos, for instance) there was a bit of a late sixties camp element to Nightmaster's adventures, but not as much as some of the names might suggest.  Nightmaster ran through just three issues of Showcase.

"...On a nameless world in a forgotten time..." is a pretty typical beginning for these sorts of things, and that pretty much sums up Wulf the Barbarian.  The series was from Atlas/Seaboard Comics (helmed by Stan Lee's brother Larry Lieber) and ran for four issues in 1975.  Wulf is the son of royalty, orphaned when trolls in the service of an evil sorcerer, killed his parents.  Wulf spends the next decade training as a warrior to reclaim his kingdom.  As one might imagine, the road to reclaiming that throne is potholed with a number of fantastic obstacles.  Wulf was written and drawn by Larry Hama, and inked by Klaus Janson for his first two outings, with multiple creators pitching in on the last two.  This map is from Wulf the Barbarian #3.

Warlord Wednesday: The Children of Ba'al

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...

"The Children of Ba'al"

Warlord (vol. 1) #23 (July 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: Travis Morgan has left the twilight of the Terminator behind, and we find him back under the eternal Skartarian sun, bathing in a forest pool. Morgan’s “jungle-sharpened” hearing leads him downstream where he finds beautiful, golden-skinned, blonde youths of both sexes frolicking in the water. It’s a tableau of merriment incongruous with his experience of Skartaris.

As Morgan watches, the idyllic scene is shattered by an attack by green-skinned, Neanderthalish brutes. He springs into action, and unarmed, takes out several of the brutes quickly. They have numbers on there side though, and Morgan only defeats the last after a desperate underwater struggle.

When the battle’s over, Morgan confronts the golden-skinned folk. At no time in during the melee did any of them raise a hand to help themselves--or him. Morgan wants to know why. A beautiful woman bids him peace, and expresses gratitude for his help. She offers to tend his wounds and take him to there village where all will be explained.

The people call themselves the Children of Ba’al. Morgan is surprised by the openness of their dwelling. He can’t understand their lack of fortifications any more than their lack of self-defense. He directs his questions to a groovily mustachioed man he takes as their leader, but the man, Arn, tells him they are a society of equals. They don’t fight the green-men, the Orms, because they are too powerful.

That really gets Morgan going, and he gives the golden-folk a speech about the need to defend themselves, or be picked off one-by-one. Perhaps somewhat shamed by Morgan, a group reluctantly leads him to the entrance to the Orms’ subterranean city. Morgan plans to go below, and asks if any will accompany him. Only the woman who first spoke to him volunteers.

The two move underground. Morgan is surprised by a glow ahead in the tunnels.  The woman tells him it comes from the power source of the Orms which gives them light and warmth. Morgan suggests they need to move quietly now, as guards will be near.

Morgan’s intuitions prove correct. He drops stealthily upon a group of them. When one begins to get away, he’s fell by a spear thrown by the woman, much to Morgan’s surprise.

Finally in sight of the city, Morgan is amazed that the primitive-appearing Orms built something so impressive. They find the machine that generates their artificial sun. Morgan sabotages it with a shot from his gun. He and the woman flee the city, fighting as they go.

As they're emerging from the tunnels to the surface, someone strikes Morgan on the head and knocks him unconscious.

Morgan awakens tied to a skull-adorned stake. The Children of Ba’al dance around him in wild abandon. Dead Orms are strung up in front of a grotesquely grinning idol, and a large cauldron. Arn tells Morgan they owe him a debt--and they plan to repay him by affording him the honor of sacrifice to the great god, Ba’al. Morgan politely declines, but Arn tells him that he must be sacrificed so they can proceed with the feast of Ba’al. Only then does Morgan notice the Orm arm hanging out of the cauldron--or cook-pot--and realises with horror what the feast entails.

Before Arn can light the kindling beneath Morgan, he’s impaled by an Orm's spear. The Orms massacre the Children of Ba’al, then turn to face Morgan. He’s recognized as the one who raided their city. Morgan begins to offer some explanation, but to his surprise an Orm frees him. The damage he did to their power source was minor, and they enjoyed watching him squirm as when he thought he was going to end up in the cook pot.

Morgan feels like a fool. The Orm agrees he should. Because of him, the Children of Ba’al, who were only a minor threat before, had to be wiped out. Morgan was going to teach them to fight, and that would have made them too dangerous. Sheepishly, Morgan asks if there’s anything he can do to make it up to them.

The Orm tells him to stay away--or next time he’ll end up in their cook pot.

Things to Notice:

• One of the girl's of Ba'al gives the Vulcan salute as a sign of peace.
• Arn has a groovey seventies' moustache reminiscent of Peter Wyngarde as Jason King.
• Skulls are common sacrifice-stake accessories in Skartaris.  The one Machiste and Mariah were tied to in issue #9 is identically decorated to the one here.

Where It Comes From:
The inspiration for this issue seems have common from a combination of the Star Trek original series episode "The Apple" and a clever inversion of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. 

"The Apple" has the Enterprise crew interacting with a race of beautiful innocents, called "The Feeders of Vaal," who serve a giant monster-head idol, and need to learn to stand-up for themselves.

The Time Machine, of course, has the protagonist siding with the beautiful but ineffectual Eloi, against the bestial, but more advanced Morlocks--who it turns out use the Eloi as a food source.

Ba'al is a Northwest Semitic language title meaning "lord" or "master."  It can be used to refer to any god, but is often used to refer to the primary god of a given people or city.  Baal has come to be used as the name of a demon in Christian demonology.

Orm is a word found in modern languages descended from Old Norse that can mean variously "worm", "snake", or "dragon."

Crisis in Multiple Games

Back in 1985, the comic book crossover wasn’t the perfunctory non-event it is today, but instead something exciting and new. We had had Marvel’s Secret Wars (1984) and Contest of Champions (1983), but then there was DC's twelve-issue “maxi-series” Crisis on Infinite Earths. Even though I was primarily a Marvel fan at the time, Crisis was out “epic-ing” everything that had come before.

In this environment, my cousin and I hit upon the idea of doing a multi-game crossover campaign. At the time, our repertoire included AD&D, Gamma World, and Villains and Vigilantes. We planned to include them all, with one of the two of us on DM/GM duties.

Unlike comic book crossovers, I don’t think it was our plan to have characters meet up--we weren’t interested in that conversion task. Instead, there would be some threat affecting the “multiverse” we took for granted that all our game world’s inhabited. I think the basic idea was borrowed from the plot of Crisis--there would be some sort of device (like the Monitor’s pylons in the early issues) that the characters had to defend to keep their world safe. Or maybe, there was some item they had to find first. Maybe we talked about different ideas at different times, I don’t fully recall.

In any case, we never did it. Maybe just because we never got around to it, or maybe we decided it would be more fun to plan than to play.  I think I did run an AD&D game once were the character's glimpsed their other character's in different game-worlds in the mirrors of an evil sorcerer's sanctum, so I didn't entirely give up on the multiverse idea.

Anybody else every attempted a cross-game crossover, or at least thought about it?

Glamorous

The City may the unofficial commercial capital of the New World, but Heliotrope is the center of its entertainment industry. The Heliotrope of the gossip rags and glitzy film premieres is only part of the story. Old and powerful magics lurk behind its sun-blinded streets and beneath the banner of the famous “HELIOTROPELAND” sign.

The first indication of its secret strangeness, is that Hesperia, the west coast territory encompassing Heliotrope, was once an island, separated from the mainland of the New World by a strait. Maps and accounts of Ealderdish explorers over two centuries are quite clear on this point. As one explorer’s narrative puts it:

“...there exists an island very close to a side of the Earthly Paradise; and it is populated by black women, without any man among them, because they lived in the way of the Amazons. They have beautiful and robust bodies, and are fierce and strong. Their island is the most formidable of the World, with its tall cliffs and rocky shores. Their weapons are of gold and so are the harnesses of the beasts that they domesticate and ride, because there is no other metal in the island."

Legend holds the Black Amazons had a queen and high-priestess named Kalifia, who was a demi-goddess, a daughter of a sun god, who was renown for her magical prowess. What became of the amazons and their queen is a mystery, because by the time the Ealderdish had reached the long-rumored island, it was no more. There was no civilization of warrior women. There wasn’t even an island!

These historic peculiarities might have been forgotten, if it weren’t for what the media has dubbed the “Heliotrope Witch Coven.” Sensationalistic confessional accounts by supposed defectors from the cult describe a secret society, dominated by women, who practice ancient rites and worship a “Black Mother” goddess with orgiastic rituals, and sometimes blood sacrifices. The goal of this cult is said to be a gynocratic magical revolution and an overthrow the the Ealderdish God. To this end, they conspire to gain wealth and political influence, aided by potent magics. These accounts always suggest that prominent citizens are involved in the cult, and that the prime movers of the film industry are either cult acolytes, or else under the glamour of the witches.

Hesperian government officials take the story seriously, and have sought to ferret out the cult.  Black-listing of suspected cult members has occurred (casting doubt on the idea that they control Heliotrope--unless it’s all an attempt at misdirection?)

It has been suggested that the Black Mother of the witch cult is no other than Queen Kalifia. The wise queen (it’s supposed) chose not to fight the invading Ealderish directly, but instead to remove her people to elsewhere, there to begin an occult guerrilla war to regain a continent.

True or not, the theory would probably make a good movie.

Tempted by the Fruit of Another

My gaming group is still in the midst of Pathfinder’s Second Darkness Adventure Path, modified for Warriors & Warlocks--something I find it difficult to generate a lot of GM-enthusiasm for as my interest has drifted over to the City, a place familiar to readers here. The difficulty comes in the fact that my player’s haven’t made that same mental leap.

This is a common problem for me, an expression of the oft-cited “Gamer ADD,” I suppose. I always seemed to be pining for the next game while sitting at the table with the current one. I'll be playing GURPS Fantasy while thinking about Transhuman Space, then half-heartedly exploring Transhuman Space while dreaming about Mutants & Masterminds.

A lot of it, I think, is the time-frame involved. As the GM and “game planner” I’ve spent a lot of quality time with the game-to-be before the player’s get there, and so I get burned out on it sooner. Also, our frequency of gaming as dictated by the difficulty of coordinating busy adult schedules, means weeks (sometimes even a month or more) between sessions, meaning there is no such thing as a “short” campaign, whatever occurs in-game.

Anybody else experience this problem? Any solutions?

Adventuring in the Time of Plague

A little light reading about the Plague of Justinian the other day (and the plague of no home internet access I continue to suffer) got me to thinking about the use of epidemics or even pandemics in gaming. Obviously, succumbing to infectious disease isn’t the most adventurous way to die, but plagues, particularly big ones, have a tendency to cause a great deal of social, economic, and religious upheaval, which is the perfect backdrop for an rpg campaign, or fodder for adventures.

First a few terms. An “epidemic” occurs when the outbreak of new cases of a particular disease exceeds the expected number for a given population. This is, as the definition suggests, somewhat subjective. A “pandemic” is when epidemic conditions exist over a wide geographic area--possibly even the whole world.

The most famous historical pandemic is probably the Black Death which affected Eurasia, and peaked in Europe around 1350. Low-end estimates have it killing a third of Europe’s population. The traditional culprit was thought to be bubonic plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, though their are some new theories.

The societal effects were profound. Depopulation meant fewer people to farm, and that coupled with livestock plagues, and climatic changes lead to famine and starvation. Fearful people blamed convenient scape-goats--often Jews--and Jewish communities were wiped out in some places. Fringe religious groups like the Brotherhood of Flagellants became more widespread.

The Plague of Justinian (541-542 CE) is also thought to have been caused by bubonic plague. This plague may have weakened Byzantium enough that Justinian I was unable to reconquer Italy, shattering any hopes of reconstitute a whole Roman Empire. It may have also weakened Byzantium for its coming face-off with the Arabs a century later.

Y. pestis isn’t the only malefactor out there. Smallpox, influenza, cholera, and typhus caused pandemics before the the 20th century. Measles, yellow fever, and dengue fever never had the same spread, but have caused localized epidemics. Of course, in a fantasy world plagues might be more exotic, even magical in nature.

I can think of three broad ways a plague could be used in gaming. The first is plague as background color. Carts of dead, or oddly dressed plague doctors might just be part of the general ambience of a setting--particularly one with a grubby, "real" Middle Ages feel. It could be treated seriously, or darkly humorous.

The second is plague as apocalypse. As its been pointed out before, there is a post-apocalyptic element to the implied setting of D&D. Perhaps the apocalypse isn’t just a remote event, but ongoing? This could cast the player’s not as pioneers on the frontier, but as defenders of the fire of civilization. This might or might not have implications on the sort of adventures had, or it might just influence the tone.

The third is plague as plot element. Maybe the point of the whole campaign is defeating the forces of evil behind the plague? It could be introduced early, as a minor background element, but as more people succumb to the disease it grows in importance. Eventually, finding a cure might become the PC’s central concern, but only after its grown “naturally”( or unnaturally).