Crime & Amusement

A covert war is being fought along the boardwalk, and in the places of amusement, on Lapin Isle on the southeastern coast of the City. The war is between two lords (or one lord and one lady) of petty crime. The stakes are the illicit earnings from all the beach’s pick-pockets, quick-grab artists, petty confidence tricksters, and part-time prostitutes. Neither of these would-be kingpins are human, but are, in fact, coin-operated fortune telling machines.

In the middle of the boardwalk, a penny arcade is the domain of Mister Chax, the All-Knowing Homonculus. Inside his glass case, Mister Chax appears as a ventriloquists dummy in a natty suit with dead (yet still too-knowing) eyes and a leering, plastered grin beneath a pencil-thin moustache. His communications come on cards, neatly printed and filligreed. Chax’s gang is mostly scruffy urchins who seem innocuous when encountered singularly, but sinister in packs. They speak in a ridiculous child-argot never completely intelligible to adults, without magical aide. Some of them are very large for their age.

Chax also has been known to employ inky, spider-things the size of wharf rats with almost human faces and derisive, whispering voices. Their bites cause painful pustules and nightmares.

Mister Chax’s rival can be found in a novelty shop near the entrance to Lunar Rabbit Park. Her glass case gives her name as Grisselda, but her followers--her “ducklings”--call her “auntie” or “great aunt.” Grisselda appears as an old woman, like an Old World grandmother. She tells fortunes by the use of playing cards, and this is also the way she communicates with her followers. These are mostly young girls, either in their teens or early twenties, who dress like prim young ladies, perhaps on a church trip. Their dainty purses hide switchblades, maybe pocket revolvers, and nasty, back-alley magic items. The cryptic meanings of Grisselda’s cards are interpreted by an oracle. She's a girl a little older than Auntie's standard soldier, with eyes older still, and porcelain skin. She typically dresses like an aspiring torch-singer, and smokes a cigarette through a holder. Her name is always Esme.

Chax and Grisselda try to keep their war sotto voce. They have no wish to attract the authorities, but also no wish to draw the interest of the malign godling of Lapin Isle, the dark personification of the rabbit in the moon; the thing like a man in a bunny suit that is not a man.

Warlord Wednesday: The Back-Ups Are Back

For the majority of issues 29-88, Warlord featured a back-up story. Let's take a look at another couple of the series featured there in:

CLAW THE UNCONQUERED
First Appearance: Claw the Unconquered #1 (1975)
Last Pre-Warlord Appearance: Claw the Unconquered #10 (1978)
Featured as Back-up: Warlord #48-49
Next Seen: Wonder Woman #21 (2008)
His Story: Claw is a barbaric warrior from the world of Pytharia who has the right hand of a demon thanks to a curse.  Claw recently got a revival at Wildstorm and a crossover with Red Sonja.
How He's Like the Warlord: he's a sword-wielding tough-guy in a fantasy world.

THE BARREN EARTH
First Appearance: Warlord #63 (1982)
Featured as Back-up: Warlord #63-88
Next Seen: Conqueror of the Barren Earth #1 (1985)
Its Story: The Barren Earth is really just plain old Earth--only in the far future after the Sun has become a red giant.  Jinal Ne'Comarr (our heroine) is a human from intergalatic space on a mision to reclaim mankind's homeworld in her civilization's war with the alien Qlov.  The Barren Earth graduated from back-up status to a limited series...and then it was gone.
How She's Like the Warlord: Jinal swings a sword (well, an energy blade) and carries a gun.  She's from a more advanced culture hanging out in a primitive one amid the remnants of advanced technology.

Clipped in the City

Here, once again, are a few pictures from various periodicals published in the City, and their accompaning headlines:

ROGUE AUTOMATON MENACES CITY

A novelty automaton from a boardwalk attraction inexplicably began to rob patrons at gunpoint.  Where the automaton got the gun has yet to be discovered.

ARMED GIANT ON CRIME SPREE IN FREEDONIA

Across the plains of central Freedonia, authorities are chasing an armored giant (likely a hillybilly giant, but possible a golem) responisble for the robbery of several banks and at least one train.

SORCERER PREFERS BLONDES

A cadre of adventures rescued women kidnapped by a rogue thaumaturge before he could preform the ritual he presumably had planned.  Whatever their original hair color and style, all the women had been magical transformed to long-tressed, platinum blondes.  The women were unharmed by their fifteen hour ordeal, and in fact evidenced little emotion due to mesmerism.

Ideas I Wish I'd Had First

Recent travel and conference attendance has impaired my post writing and general blogosphere presence, but has given me time to read other stuff while in hotel rooms and airplanes. In finally getting around to reading China Mieville’s latest fantasy novel Kraken, I’ve found it has several cool ideas to steal for gaming.

Kraken is set in modern London and concerns a curators descent into the city’s occult underbelly after the theft of a specimen of giant squid. It’s a Tim Power-ish set up and story (in a way, so was Mieville’s last modern novel, The City and the City), I think, but written in Mieville’s distinct prose style.

Anyway, there are several good ideas in here that I wish I had thought of first. There is a general strike amongst magical familiars, being lead by the spirit of an ancient Egyptian shabti, who took part in an uprising against the dead they were meant to toil for in the after-life. There's the menacing duo (there are a lot of menacing duos in fiction, aren’t there?) Goss and Subby, who get into a magically protected house by having themselves folded up and mailed in a box.

Best so far, though, is Mieville’s description of the “memory angels” which guard various London museums:

“In the Museum of Childhood were three toys that came remorselessly for intruders--a hoop, a top, a broken video-game console--with stuttering creeping as if in stop-motion. With the wingbeat noise of cloth, the Victoria and Albert was patrolled by something like a chic predatory face of crumpled linen. In Tooting Bec, the London Sewing Machine Museum was kept safe by a dreadful angel made of tangles and bobbins and jouncing needles...”

If there's anything the City needs its genius loci like that!

Gloves of Gold

The gloves of gold appear like a set of modern boxing gloves, red in color, but with a golden glimmer, which appears as a bright glow to those with magical sight. Some scholars believe they are items of great antiquity and have changed their appearance with time, originally being only simple leather straps of the kind worn by ancient Ealderdish pugilists.

The gloves are often found in gyms or boxing training centers. They will appear as normal items until “activated”, though it is unclear what is necessary for this process to occur. Some claim they reveal themselves when they know they’re needed.

There are some legendary previous uses of the gloves. Most recenlty, in 5880, Basher Brant went ninety-nine rounds with Death’s champion in a match refereed by an avatar (or senior representative) of Management for the lives of his adventuring companions.

Once activated, the gloves are usable by anyone. They imbue the wearer with pugilistic skill, whether the individual possessed it before or not. Gloves allow the wearer to strike creatures who can only be harmed by magical weapons. Further, they enhance a wearers ability to “K.O.” even magical opponents.

Benefits: The gloves are a +3 magical weapon. On a a natural twenty, the opponent gets a saving throw. Success means they are stunned for a round and unable to act. Failure means they are knocked unconscious for 2-20 rounds.

Weapons of Choice

[Article by H.L. Candor, reprinted (with permission) from True Adventure magazine, month of Pluvial, 5887.]

The general public of the New World sometimes finds it amusing to see adventurers, delvers, and other sorts of modern soldiers of fortune, decked out with an array of improvised weapons. Even more puzzling, and usually viewed as colorful eccentricity, are the publicity and autograph photos of such characters brandishing ancient weapons in this age of the machine gun.

These practices are not mere affectations, but rather coldly practical and pragmatic choices made by professionals (mostly) who know their business.

Consider the assort pick-axes, wrecking-bars, truncheons, and over-sized knives the City’s adventurers are wont to carry when bound for the wilderness or some subterranean ruin. These implements are tools as well as weapons--handy for the spelunking, entry-breaking, cracking treasure chests, and other utilitarian tasks facing them. If they can also be used to break the skull of a man-eating troglodyte, or dissuade an inebriated hillbilly giant, so much the better. Bullets are, of course, effective in these sorts of situations, but the prudent--and therefore long-lived--adventurer is always prepared.

In the case of delvers equiped like Medieval men-at-arms, we must look to history. The union of the ars thamaturgica and the practical sciences is uneasy at best, and of recent vintage. Mankind has possessed gunpowder for centuries, but only rarely in all that time have the sorcerer’s talents been used to enhanced these sorts of weapons. Rarer still are they in the ruins and crypts of the New World, where the Ancients never deployed mundane weaponry that advanced. This sort of aid is essential; hard won experience has taught generations of adventurers that there are some creatures which prove resistant--or indeed impervious--to all but magical weapons, whatever the weapon’s deadliness otherwise.

For this reason, adventurers looking to improve their odds of survival and material reward have had occasion to take up the use of weapons found in some tomb or trove which would otherwise be considered archaic. Swords, battle-axes, and assorted pole-arms are found in the arsenals of modern professionals. For some, the use these weapons is merely as adjuncts to their use of firearms; for others, the magical archaic weapon becomes their signature.

So, next time you see a photo of one of the City’s famous adventurers sporting a weapon that looks more at home in a museum or even the tool-yard, remember: these may not be just weapons of choice--they maybe be weapons of necessity!

Ruby Ring - Adventuress, pin-up girl, and sometime actress, posing with her magic scimitar 

Behind the Blurry Veil

...Or, “The Creation of a Petty Goddess”

Yesteryday, James Maliszewski of Grognardia gave me the good news that my Petty Gods submission, Drasheeng of the Blurry Veil was accepted, and he posted a great depiction of the deity in question by Mark Allen.

Drasheeng was conceived as the godling of misperception due to intoxication--and deception utilizing that misperception. She aides the aging harlot who relies on her client’s drink-blurred eyes to enhance her beauty, the roguish youth plying the reluctant maid with wine, and the confidence man who supplies intoxicants to muddle his marks’ better judgement.

The inspiration for this goddess came from the term “beer goggles” and musing on what that concept's patron diety would be like. How might she best exemplify it?  I surmised she’d probably have a body like a Frazetta babe, and behind her blurry veil, a face like:

But of course, nobody ever sees that until the next morning...