An Evening With the Nocturnals

Nocturnals is a series of comic book limiteds and one-shots written and drawn by Dan Brereton. Its main characters are a vigilante team of--well, monsters--who tangle with gangsters, supernatural menaces, and an evil corporation that serves as a front for Lovecraftian invaders. If it sounds like role-playing game fodder, Green Ronin beat you to it with a 2004 sourcebook for Mutants & Masterminds. I also count the Nocturnals among the inspirations for my Strange New World of the City setting.

It all started with an eponymous limited series published by Malibu Comics’ Bravura imprint in 1995. It’s since been collected under the subtitle, Black Planet. It introduces the mythical Northern California town of Pacific City, and its resident extra-legal heroes, Doc Horror (a two-fisted scientist from an alternate dimension with a dark secret), and his gang. The group includes: Polychrome, a ghost; Firelion, an artificial, pyrokinetic samurai; babe from the Black Lagoon, Starfish; reptilian genetic chimera, Komodo; and undead gunslinger, Gunwitch. Also tagging along is Doc’s daughter, Evening, who likes to be called Halloween Girl, and carries creepy toys inhabited by spirits.

Their foes are the forces of the corporation Narn K and their mob allies. Narn K manufactures artificial humans and human-animal hybrids in its Monster Shop, but, more sinisterly, is a front for an invasion force. The alien Crim overran Doc Horror’s homeworld, the Black Planet, and only the Nocturnals stand in the way of them doing the same to Earth.

The adventures continue in another limited, The Dark Forever, in 2002. Halloween Girl gets her own stories in Witching Hour (1998), and the Troll Bridge one-shot in 2000. Gunwitch takes center stage in Outskirts of Doom, also in 2002. After a hiatus, the gang was back in Carnival of Beasts in 2008. Green Ronin’s Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion, isn’t just a gaming supplement, but a “bible” to the series’ characters and their world with material written by Brereton, himself.

Anyone who’s a fan of psychotronica, or just good comics, should probably spend an evening or two with getting to know the Nocturnals and the mean (and weird) streets of Pacific City.

Dungeon, American Style: The L.A. Lizard Underground

On January 29, 1934, The Los Angeles Times published a stunning report on an ancient, underground city beneath the streets of L.A. That’s enough for an American dungeon, but it gets even better. The city wasn’t alleged to have been built by Native Americans, pre-Columbian explorers, or even Atlantean survivors, but rather by Lizard People.

Cue Sleestak hissing here...

“Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually than the highest type of present day peoples, in the belief of G. Warren Shufelt, geophysicist mining engineer now engaged in an attempt to wrest from the lost city deep in the earth below Fort Moore Hill the secrets of the Lizard People of legendary fame in the medicine lodges of the American Indian.”
- Jean Bosquet, L.A. Times, 1934

It must be said, that Shufelt was a man with some unusual ideas even before the whole lost lizard city thing. He had designed and built an apparatus which he claimed could detect any substance by honing in on its vibrational character.. The device--which was a pendulum in a glass box, attached to a black box affixed with compasses--could not only be used to detect gold and valuable minerals, but could even track down a person using a hair sample.

Using this miraculous device, Shufelt was able to discover a subterranean complex beneath Los Angeles and running under Santa Monica Bay. When he mapped it out, the system of tunnels looked (to him) like a lizard.

In researching the mystery of the complex’s creation, Shufelt was told about a race of “Lizard People” by a Hopi Indian, Chief Little Green Leaf. Indian legends (according to Little Green Leaf) held that a “great catastrophe” had sent the Lizard folk underground 5000 years ago.

Like any good dungeon, this one’s got treasure. First off, the Lizard People kept all their knowledge on gold tablets 4 ft. long and 14 in. wide. On one of these was supposed to the “record of the origin of the human race.” They also had imperishable food supplies “of the herb variety” and a chemical solution which could cut through rock, that they had used to build the tunnels in the first place.

By the time the story broke in the L.A. Times, Shufelt and crew had been digging shafts to get into the city. Updates on the project appeared in newspapers. Then, abruptedly, the project was cancelled. By March 5, 1934, the shafts had been filled in and the contract cancelled.

Maybe, it came to an end because Shufelt was a nut, and his story a fantasy. Or maybe that’s what Enik and his boys want us think.

Roadside Distractions

When travelling beyond the City, across the roads and highways of the Strange New World, you never know what you might find...

Bring Me The Head...

A down-on-his-luck adventurer with a broke-down car is stranded at an abandoned roadside diner. He carries a strange bag, that turns out to hold the head of a Zingaran bandit hero stolen from his grave--a head that's still very much alive due to a spell cast by a bruja.  He plans to sell the head to a cabal of wealthy cultists for a substantial sum. The only problem is, he’s pursued by Zingaran revolutionaries who want it back, and Hell Syndicate thugs playing to collect on the soul-debt the bandit chief welched on.

Nightmare Town

Strange doings, in a small, isolated, desert town with a secretive sort of excavation--guarded by out of town thugs--on its outskirts. The locals are tight-lipped and scared, but what they do say is interesting.  They tell how the town has been taken over by the urbane, but menacing, Llewellyn Wail--the enormous, hairless, and almost-albino overseer of the dig--and his hired guns. They're looking for the meteor that crashed near the town about a hundred years back--in a place animals avoid, and old-timers call haunted. Townsfolk have seen weird burns on injured diggers, and heard them discuss the need for welding torches--maybe even magic ones.  Then there's the odd glow, and unnerving hum, coming from the excavation site that makes folks want to close their shutters and cover their windows at night.

A Burial Is Arranged

In a roadside oddities museum, the mummy of a Native medicine man puts out a psychic plea: "Return me to my ancestral grounds for burial and I'll show you the hidden riches of my people."  What the mummy doesn't know--and neither does anyone else--is that the road back now cuts through a stretch of badlands swallowed by a black dust elemental and crawling with zombies.

The Blood-Spattered Bride

A late-night sighting of a woman in a white dress on the side of the highway leads to the discovery of a ghost-town where a macabre wedding is in the offing.  The vampiric bride, and the rest of her undead wedding party, are waiting for the groom--and they're not too picky, as long as he's living.

Kaiju Dissected

Ever hve a game session grind to a halt when your players needed an anatomical diagram of a giant monster and you, as GM, were unable to produce one?

No?  Well now you'll never have to worry about it ever happening!

Here's two diagram's of the innards of gamera, a giant mutant fire-breathing turtle, but it could easily be--well, another giant, mutant fire-breathing turtle.  Or maybe the Tarrasque. 

Here's a flavorful Japanse-language diagram, like something froma forbidden text in the hand of the nefarious Black Dragon Society, perhaps:

And here's an English language version courtesy of Shout! Factory:

Clipped in the City

Here are some pictures from daily newspapers on sale on street corners in the City:

The Intrepid Subterreners to Take Fight to Reds

Advertisement for Djinn Cigarettes

Comissioner to A Frightened City--"Slimes No Longer A Threat"

Phantom Soldier Seen Again in Subway Station

Warlord Wednesday: Song of Ligia

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...

"Song of Ligia"
Warlord (vol. 1) #24 (August 1979)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: A Kiroan merchant ship plies the southern coast, bound for marketplaces in Kallistan. One passenger is the subject of shipboard conversation--Travis Morgan, the man called the Warlord. Morgan takes no pleasure in that recognition. It reminds him he was once a man with a purpose. Now, he’s just a wanderer.

He doesn’t have long to dwell on self-pity, because he sees a ship bearing down on his vessel--not a good sign, as the captain avers that these waters harbor only pirates and slave-raiders. As the pirate ship closes, Morgan comes alive with anticipation of the coming battle, and takes command of the frightened crew and passengers. He leads a charge on to the pirate vessel, bringing slaughter where he goes, until a pirate’s arrow pierces his shoulder. He topples from the ship, into the sea.

Morgan manages to fight his way back to the surface where he clings to a piece of mast. The merchant vessel, still in the clutches of the pirate ship, burns in the distant. Adrift, alone, and losing blood, Morgan’s thought drift to Tara, his wife. In his delirium, he hears Tara accuse him of killing their son then abandoning her. Shouting her name, Morgan lets go of the piece of mast and raises his sword high, as he sinks into the depths.

Unconscious, Morgan somehow comes into the hands of a beautiful, green-skinned woman. His presence is an unexpected gift from the sea. She removes the arrow from him, then heals his wound by using her magical song to transfer it to her own shoulder, where it then fades--though plainly, the process causes her pain.

Morgan’s pain continues, too, though his physical injury is gone. The woman reads his emotional torment in his memories. Again, she sings, and takes it away. Morgan awakens in an idyllic world fashioned from his dreams, without any memory of his past life. With the woman in his arms, his memory loss doesn’t seem to matter.

Morgan and the woman, Ligia, live together in love in the magical dream-world she created in an air-filled bubble for him at the bottom of the sea. She provides food and everything else he needs. But as time passes, Morgan becomes increasing preoccupied with his lack of memory. He’s nagged by the feeling he’s forgotten something important. He spends his moments alone staring at his rusting weapons and armor, hoping they will give him some clue.

Abruptedly, their peace is shattered by an attack of the Piscines-- fish-men--who capture Ligia. Without a thought, Morgan arms himself and plunges through the skin of the bubble, into the ocean, to try and rescue her. The battle-fever returns, and he slaughters all the Piscines but one. That one throws a trident at Ligia.

Morgan dives to deflect the weapon, but his timing is off, and instead it pierces him in the stomach. Ligia is in despair. She has wanted to protect Morgan, and now he lies dying. She realizes she has been wrong to take away his past and try to make him something he could never fully be.

She doesn’t wish to lose him, but neither does she want to see him die. She must use all of her power to save him--her magic will be at an end. So she sings, and the bubble collapses, and the sea washes away the dreamworld.

Travis Morgan washes up on a beach. His memories are returned, but now he has a new one to haunt him. The name “Ligia” is on his lips.

In the ocean depths, a green dolphin frolics in the cool waters and hunts among the coral. Occasionally, she passes a tiny, ruined castle on the ocean-floor, and she, too, remembers.

Things to Notice:

• Despite carrying a shield, Morgan doesn't seem to use it much for actual defense.
• Ligia seems to have scales around her eyes, giving her a "fish-woman" sort of appearance--which is odd given the reveal of her nature at the end of the issue.

Where It Comes From:
The title of this issue references the fact that Ligia (sometimes Ligeia) is often given as the name of one of the sirens in Greek mythology.  Grell's Ligia acts as the exact opposite of a siren, since she saves Morgan, rather than using her song to lure him to his death, but the element of beguiling is still there.  Though the sirens were island-dwelling creatures in the original myths, later folklore and art has given then an aquatic, often mermaid like character, again similar to Ligia here.

This issue seems to draw inspiration from a couple of episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series.  Ligia's ability to heal by taking wounds on to herself was likely inspired by the identical abilities of Gem, the title character of "The Empath," a 1968 episode. The basic plot--a woman who is not quite what she seems who builds a world/sanctuary for the human man she's in love with--is essential the same as a 1967 episode "Metamorphosis." 

And while we're on the subject of Star Trek references, Ligia's green-skinned, black-haired appearance might have been suggested by the Orion slave girls--if not from a certain green-skinned goliath popular at DC's competition.

The Quality of His Enemies

Everyone knows the importance of the cultivation of a good villain, or ideally an entire rogue’s gallery, in a superhero game. After all, supervillains need to be at least as interesting as superheroes--maybe more so. People probably think about it less in fantasy rpgs, but its sitll something worth considering.

A lot of fantasy villains tend to be one-off, true enough. Anra Devadoris only bedeviled Fafhrd and Gray Mouser once, and any number of evil sorcerers didn’t survive one encounter with Conan’s mighty thews. Still, there are recurring bad guys--Conan’s got his Thoth-Amon, after all, and Sauron keeps menacing Middle-Earth like he’s Dr. Doom after the Fantastic Four.

My high school gaming group had a lot of fun with their foe Kulu the Illusionist. Kulu was the creation of my cousin who introduced me to gaming, and showed up in his campaign, and in virtually every iteration of my campaign after that. Players came to recognize the bald, purple-robed wizard by description alone--and man, did they want to kill him. In true super-villain fashion, Kulu always escaped the the player’s wrath to fight another day. A super-villain can easily become annoying if they seem protected by the GM, but I think the player’s were always able to soundly defeat Kulu so that he never got on their nerves in that regard.

Another, less conventional, nemesis was Kallus the Merchant (and yes, I think its just coincidence that both these villains have names that start with “k”). Kallus had funded some shady ventures that had put him at odds with the PCs, and a hot-tempered barbarian assassinated him for it. Kallus was gone, but his legacy lived on to vex the players. The merchant guild in town erected a statue in his honor, and people were always talking angrily about his unjust death. The PCs had to keep quiet, lest they face justice, and they were frustrated as the crooked merchant was lionized in death. Then, relatives of the merchant started hiring bounty hunters to track down Kallus’ murderers.  The PCs would find themselves periodically having to either fight off and misdirect these guys at the most inopportune times. All of this only occasionally intruded on the lives of the PCs, but it was a source of amusement for the players--well, at least for their DM.

So anybody have any good recurring villains in their games?