The Unknown

The most feared thaumaturgists of the City are the cabal sometimes called the Inconnu, or the Unseen Lodge, but most often called simply the Unknown. In bars frequented by mages, or in thaumaturgical lodge houses, it's not uncommon to hear “friend of a friend” stories, or paranoid urban legends about them. The Thaumaturgical Society of the City refuses to publicly acknowledge the existence of this powerful group--but privately makes sure to stay out of there way, while trying to collect as much information on them as possible. If the conspiracy theorists are to be believed, even the Hell Syndicate tends to avoid confronting them directly.

Beyond their shadowy existence, little is known for certain about them, though there is a lot of speculation. No more than ten ever appear at one time, but it's unclear whether this represents their entire membership. None of the members names or faces are known as they tend to appear in carnival masks, and sometimes costumes, thought to have occult significance, but their meanings remain obscure. Powerful mages are believed to become members by invitation, and are only admitted after achieving some incredible feat of magical prowess.

The strangest rumors about the Unknown are related to their activities. Minor mages have found themselves given the formulae of new spells, which have led to spectacular results for good or ill at times, but at others have appeared to do absolutely nothing. Prominent businessmen or up-and-coming adventurers have been destroyed by invisible entities, and it has been rumored the Unknown were responsible, but no one knows why. However, town fathers generally consider them friends of the City, apparently for actions they have taken in the past, which are not discussed, and only recorded in the most secure of records, if at all.

A Life in Sorcery

In the City and the New World in general, thaumaturgical practice and education are not as finely developed as they were in Ealderde, the Old World, prior to the Great War. There are no equivalents to the grand, old thaumaturgical academies like Hoagworts (tragically destroyed by prismatic-bombs from Staarkish zeppelins) or Germelshausen (closed to new students after its previously periodic synchronicity with this plane became unpredictable).

The New World does have a few small, private academies which vary greatly in quality. Most were started by wealthy practitioners with a particular theoretical model they wished to promote. Such training leads to students highly skilled in illusions, for instance, but with little facility in other areas; or graduates all pledged by blood oath to some extraplanar power.

Most thaumaturgists are trained by means of an apprentice system. Old practitioners take on students and train them to a point they are able to safely (supposedly) carry on their own independent study. Just as with the academies, this tends to lead to students with highly varied skill-bases and theoretical orientations.

The upshot of this is that many thaumaturgist lead short careers---and possibly lives. Some die or are disabled in magical experimentation. Others become the plaything of malign entities. Most just find the extent of their talents really isn’t all that far, and wind up trying to eke out a livings as hedge-sorcerers in small towns, or find work as shabby carnival mentalists, or laboratory workers for unscrupulous, or fly-by-night alchemical companies.

Thaumaturgical societies, common in most large cities, have tried to ameliorate these problems by providing standards of proficiency, and a ranking system. Critics charge that such societies are at best trusts attempting to drive out competition, and at first cabals seeking to gain political power.

It’s these factors that lead to the common man’s frequent skepticism and distrust in regard to magical practice and practitioners. Lurid confessionals have stories of depraved, sex magic cults and newspapers carry reports of charlatan grifters.

Still, public opinion is schizophrenic when it comes to magic. Newspapers and newsreels are full of stories of celebrity sorcerers, and pulp magazines, radio dramas, and movie serials fictionalize their exploits. Confidence is also stronger in alchemistry and other sorts of applied thaumaturgical sciences.

Most sorcerers take the public’s love-hate in stride. For most, learning secrets beyond the kin of most mortals, and wielding, in whatever limited way, the primal forces of reality, tend to heady enough thrills to push other concerns aside, at least for a while.

Plugs

Why is this gorilla crying?  I have know idea, when there are so many cool things on the internet to salve his wounded soul.

For instance, Scott, pround owner of a Huge Ruined Pile, has constructed a like-named forum for the discussion of fantasy fiction of the classic and pulp varieties.  Come join us.

John Stater, blogging east of Eden in the Land of Nod, has released Pars Fortuna Basic as a free pdf.  I've only had time to give it the briefest perusal, but several cool bits caught my eye.  Check it out!

Looking for an alternative to bog-standard fantasy worlds?  Harald, in the pages of The Book of Worlds, is gradually unfolding a setting which uses liberal portions of White Wolf's Mage and the Cthulhu Mythos, seasoned with Dieselpunk, and served up epic fantasy-style.  See, Space Nazis!

Finally, somewhere out in the Hill Cantons of Texas, Ckutalik is masterminding a Pulp Fantasy Society to bring past masters back into print.  No James Branch Cabell yet, but surely that can be rectified...

Warlord Wednesday: Gambit

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...

"Gambit"

Warlord (vol. 1) #35 (July 1980)

Written and Pencilled by Mike Grell; Inked by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: We open where we left our heroes last time: Morgan is about to bid farewell to Mariah, Machiste, Mungo Ironhand, and the Age of Wizard Kings, and use the hellfire sword to return to Skartaris. Morgan is indeed transported out of Wizard World, but instead of Skartaris he finds himself in some body's 20th-Century Earth living room, in what he intuits to be (perhaps) New Jersey.

Morgan doesn’t have a lot of time to consider this strange development, because an armored woman named Agnes announces her presence and declares her intention to battle the mighty Warlord. Morgan is dubious, but Agnes attacks, so he’s forced to fight back. The two fight there way into a den. Morgan demands to know how he got here and how he can get back to Skartaris.

Agnes claims to know, but distracts him with thrown pool balls, and makes a dash for a gun cabinet. She snatches up a rifle, but in some higher realm someone cries “foul!”

Giant figures in shadow seem to be looking down at the combatants, discussing the events as if they’re part of some game. One declares Agnes a “Chaotic Good Primitive, without a knowledge of modern weaponry.” The other concedes the argument: “Point, Morgan!” he says.

Morgan quick-draws his pistol and fires at where Agnes was, as she fades out of existence. Morgan thinks he could use a drink right about now, and suddenly there’s a bar and bartender in the room to oblige. He pours Morgan a scotch, but also pours something else out of a small vial. Morgan drinks. By the time he’s realized he’s been slipped a Mickey, he’s sliding to the floor.

Red robed figures enter a door behind him. They bear Morgan away for “the sacrifice.” Morgan is placed on an altar--or table. The lead cultist raises an electric carving knife over him. In the other realm, two dice roll and one player decries “a lucky throw.”

Morgan suddenly awakens and grabs the leader. He tosses him into his fellows, then snatches up his sword. Morgan cuts into the cultists. The leader realizes the only way to keep Morgan from “winning” is to spill blood and release the demon--even if its his own! He stabs himself with the carving knife.  Elsewhere, a demon playing piece is placed on board, while Morgan faces a being of fire, emerging from the burners of the stove.

Morgan fights back, but he can’t cut what isn’t solid. The demon blasts him out a window and into the front yard. It comes charging out after him. He picks up a car off the curb, then tosses it at Morgan. Dice roll. Morgan dodges, and the car hits a hydrant. The torrent of water released reduces the demon to a cloud of smoke.

Morgan tries to lean against a tree--and it topples over. It’s not even real. A piece with two figures is placed on a board. The sound of a chainsaw starting gets Morgan’s attention. He turns to see Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, with a chainsaw and battle-axe, respectively.

Again, dice roll. Morgan fights the two, and discovers they aren't real either--they have no blood or internal organs. Morgan finally defeats them, but by that point the house is engulfed in flames from the demon.  Morgan fears he’s trapped in this lunatic world.

Elsewhere, gods (with familiar names) finish a game:

The gods box up their game of Devils & Demons, promising they have even more in store for Morgan.

The hero in question arrives back in Skartaris, where Shakira and the mayor of the dwarves have been waiting. Shakira asks where he’s been, but Morgan replies she wouldn’t believe him if he told her. Morgan accidentally cuts his thumb on the hellfire sword, and Mungo Ironhand’s admonition that the sword must always draw blood holds true.

Things to Notice:

• Dungeons & Dragons seems to have provided some inspiration for this issue.
• Morgan can somehow tell he's on the east coast, probably New Jersey.

Where It Comes From:
The last panel of this story gives its inspiration  as a nightmare:

Like most representations of these characters, Grell's renditions of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee seem informed by John C. Tenniel's illustrations.

"Agnes" may have been inspired by Robert E. Howard's swordswoman of the same name, Agnes de Chastillon.

The "gods" gaming with Morgan's life are Mike Grell, Jack C. Harris, and Joe Orlando.

Livin' on Marvel Time

Gary Gygax said: “You can not have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept.”

I wonder if that applies to superhero games, too? If so, its a bit difficult to find that strict time-keeping in the source material--at least at Marvel and DC. Both companies long ago adopted de facto “sliding timelines,” and have since enshrined them in company policy, more or less.

For the uninitiated, in the Marvel Universe, this means that the current “heroic era" never gets more than about 10-15 (depending on who you ask) years-old. The Fantastic Four originally got their powers in the sixties. In the Lost Generation limited series in 2000, that event seems to have occurred in the late eighties-early nineties; now, it probably happened around 2000.

Now, the number of events between the beginning of the current age and the ever-advancing now keeps increasing, though the distance between those two points remains constant. Eventually, there'll be a major crossover everyday of Peter Parker’s life since he was 16.

It was not always thus. As George Olshevsky’s Marvel indices show, early Marvel, seemed to follow “real time”, more or less. The reason comics abandon it, like most serial media, was presumably to have evergreen brands.

A superhero rpg campaign doesn’t need brands. There’s no reason why heroes in a Marvel-inspired rpg campaign couldn’t grow old, have children, and retire and make way for the next generation. DC has toyed with this in comics themselves (safely placed on Earth-2, for the most part), but this would be fairly new territory for Marvel.

I’ve run a Mutants & Masterminds campaign based on that premise in the past, constructing a timeline from Olshevsky’s work, and my own collection of date references from comics. I could have saved myself some work, had I discovered the The Wastebasket blog and Tony’s chronology work on what he calls The Original Marvel Universe. Though my conclusions sometimes differ from Tony’s, the detail and analysis he puts into the OMU is great.

I suspect if I ever run that campaign or a similar one again, I’ll find the OMU indisplensible.

How About Masters of Fantasy?

Showtime’s Masters of Horror was in the grand tradition of TV horror anthologies and aired over two seasons from 2005-2007. It featured famous names in horror film (Argento, Gordon, Carpenter, Miike, and Hooper, among others) directing episodes, several of which were based on famous short-stories, or stories by famous authors, including Lovecraft, Barker, Bierce, Matheson, and Lansdale.

Masters of Science Fiction was a short-lived ABC show with a similar premise, though devoted, as the title suggests, to a different genre. It featured adaptations of stories by Robert Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Sheckley among others.

It would seem to me that in the wake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter films, and with A Game of Thrones on its way to HBO, the way might be paved for a fantasy anthology--a Masters of Fantasy, perhaps?

In thinking of stories to adapt, one would have to think of things that could be done justice in an hour time-frame, in the budgets it would likely have, and for the audience of cable TV. Like the anthologies mentioned above, a mixture of classics and new stories would probably be what we’d see.  Of course, while their would probably be a temptation to go with stories set in the modern era, what I'd want to see would be a mixture of settings, both mundane and fantastic. 

Here are some stories, off the top of my head, I think would work in those parameters:

• “The Charnel God” by Clark Ashton Smith
• “People of the Dark” by Robert E. Howard
• “Only the End of the World Again” by Neil Gaiman. (I would love to see “Murder Mysteries” but it might be a bit ambitious)
• “Undertow” Karl Edward Wagner
• “O Ugly Bird!” by Manly Wade Wellman
• “Mai-Kulala” by Charles R. Saunders
• “The Sustenance of Hoak” by Ramsey Campbell
• “The Cloud of Hate” by Fritz Leiber

What about you guys: What would you like to see? What would work?

Down South

art by Glenn Orbik

“...snake-charmers, phoney real-estate operators, and syphilitic evangelists.”
-H.L. Mencken

The region between the hegemony of the City, the Smaragdine Mountains, and the eastern coast of the New World is known generally as the South. Popular conception holds a dim view of the South, and its people are painted with various unflattering stereotypes. The poor are viewed as over-religious, unwashed dullards, and its would-be gentry as grandiose eccentrics living in the past.

It is true that the South has been slower to embrace the industrialization and engagement in the wider world that mark its neighbors like the City and the Steel League, and its folk are often hidebound and insular. These traits aside, there are many things which might draw adventurers here.

There is one industry the South excels at—bootlegging. Though the South’s tradition of fire and brimstone Old-Time Religion ensures that most counties are “dry”--and even more liberal localities prohibit alcohol sales on Godday--this hasn’t stopped the manufacture and smuggling of alcohol. The lowland moonshiner typically sticks to alcohol; he’s is less likely than his Smaragdine brethren to also be involved in bootleg alchemicals in general (though it may only be a matter of time). Southron bootleggers are famous for their skill behind the wheel of their suped-up automobiles (sometimes even magically enhanced) used to outrun authorities on rural highways and back-roads. Both sides of the moon-shining equation offer opportunities for people of action.

In addition to the highways, the lesser travelled waterways of the South are conduits for bootleggers, smugglers, and criminals on the lamb. Bayous and swamps can hide a multitude of sins, if one can deal with the hostile locals (including conjure-men or hoodoo doctors), skunk-apes, gator-men, and dangerous animal life. Outsiders should be cautious before choosing to follow a local fugitive into the interior. The largest of these swamps are the closest thing the Northern continent has to the Grand Cinnamon River basin in Asciana.

There is also perhaps a little money to be made, and a lot of justice do be done, in defending Black or Native communities from terrorizing by the Knights-Templar of Purity. This can be a dangerous proposition as Black-Folk are legally disenfranchised in much of the South, and the Knights-Templar wield more power here, so near there place of origin, than in most other places. Some whole towns are under their sway, so that knowing who is an enemy and who is not can be difficult to discern.

If adventuring, or perhaps just do-gooding, wears thin one can always visit one of the cities the South does have to offer. The old and decadent canal-city of New Ylourgne, largest city in the South, offers a respite from the rural. It also boasts a higher concentration of magical practitioners than even the City, and magic shops well-stocked with exotic material components.