A Tale of Two Cities

On some moonless night in the City, you can look across the Eldritch River and see on the other bank a shining, alien city with buildings that look as if there made of blown glass and infused with a pale, fluorescent glow. In the morning, you might look again at the same place on the far bank, wondering if the strange city had just been dream, and you’d see the gray smokestacks and worn docks of humdrum Hoborxen, and you’d be sure you that it had been.

And you’d be wrong.

Since the earliest days of Ealderdish settlement, strange things have been seen and heard in the area that would eventually become the city of Hoborxen. These irruptions from elsewhere have only increased over the centuries since. Now, in the night, the working class neighborhoods and decaying waterfront of day Hoborxen are intruded upon, and sometimes replaced, by an otherworldly city of tall spires, all its buildings made of something resembling glass, warm to the touch like the mantle of a recently lit lantern.

Every night, some part of Hoborxen is replaced by the intruder--sometimes only a single structure, other times an entire neighborhood. On nights of the new moon, Horboxen is entirely replaced. The city begins to appear at dusk, as if emerging from an unseen but evaporating fog, or coalescing from the dying light. The strange glow of its structures rises slowly; it's brightest at midnight and wanes toward dawn.

No human inhabitants of the alien city are ever seen, but it's not completely deserted. Fairy-like creatures--obscenely jabbering, cinereous, and moth-winged--sometimes buzz about its streets or lewdly call from high perches. A low growl, a sound as much felt in the bones as heard, periodically reverberates through the streets, and some explorers have claimed to heard a woman crying or laughing softly.

Exploration of the glassy structures usually turns up everyday detritus from Hoborxen, most of which is of little value. Sometimes, things lost elsewhere in the world turn up here, but again seldom anything of real value except perhaps to the one that lost it. It’s a common tale among adventurers that there's a great treasure haul somewhere in the city, but no one has retrieved anything more than a few enigmatic, otherworldly trinkets.

Would-be treasure-hunters should weigh the likely gain against the potential dangers.  A number of people entering the areas of the alien city are never seen again. 

The people of Hoborxen are inured to these nocturnal visitations, and rarely remark on them, though addiction, violence, and suicide are more common there than in neighboring towns. No one knows where they go when they’re elsewhere. “Nowhere,” they say, and shrug and turn away.

Some thaumaturgist muse darkly that there may come a time when Hoborxen will be gone entirely, every night. And after that, will the incursion spread?

Warlord Wednesday: The Gamble

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 Gamble"

Warlord (vol. 1) #44 (April 1981)

Writing and art by Mike Grell; inks by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: On a lonely Skartarian beach, Jennifer Morgan awakens to the sound of a voice commenting on her beauty, and finds herself under the gaze of a hooded man carrying a brass-bound wooden box on his shoulder.

Along the Terminator, the rim where the outer North Pole meets the inner world of Skataris, Morgan and Aton arrive at the city of Bantuhm.  Finding Jennifer is their goal ultimate, but Morgan's brought them to this “den of thieves and assassins” because he needs a good swordsmith.  He must have a replacement for the magical Hellfire sword which he was forced to give up to escape its malign influence.  Morgan tells Aton to find a bar and he’ll meet him later.

Aton hasn’t even gotten his drink before he’s enticed into a game of chance by the roguish Tevalco El Cint, over the warnings of the establishment’s barmaid.   A simple shell game is what el Cint offers—and a small wager.

When Morgan finds Aton later he’s looking downcast over his ale.  Morgan has had no luck finding a blade, and it doesn’t improve his mood to hear Aton lost their horses gambling!  Morgan’s response to this news:

The Tevalco el Cint intervenes to offer Morgan a deal.  There’s “a certain jewel in a certain tower at the center of a walled maze” that el Cint will exchange for their horses.  Morgan reluctanting agrees, and soon the three are standing outside the large gates in the wall around the tower.

Morgan wonders why there are no guards.  El Cint tells them they're not needed.  He ushers the two through the gate, telling them the difficulty isn’t getting in, but getting out—and he slams the gate behind them, locking it somehow.  The key to the gate, he assures them, is in the same chamber as the jewel.

Morgan and Aton have no choice; they start out through the hedge maze.  The correct path is hard to find—and the maze has deadly traps, including rabid dogs that come running at them out of the darkness.  Morgan and Aton have to dispatch them without getting bitten, which they succeed in doing, but at the cost of Morgan’s remaining ammunition.

Making it through the rest of the maze without incident, the two come to the door in the base of the tower, guarded by two apparently empty suits of armor—one which turns its head to follow them when they’ve past!  They're only a little ways up the tower stairs when they realize the suits of armor are behind them.

Morgan knocks one down with a handy flaming brazier, proving for certain that no one is inside.  More suits of armor join the chase, and with the fire is spreading.  The two run into a room where they find the key and the jewel.  Aton snatches up the key, but the room is ablaze, and Morgan isn’t about to let them burn to get el Cint his treasure.  The two are forced to jump from a high tower window into water below.

When the two walk back into the tavern, el Cint is surpised to see them—he had bet 100 silver pieces that they wouldn’t make it!  Since they don’t have the jewel he won’t return the horses, but he does offer Morgan an attempt at his game: a chance to win the horses against their service in another enterprise.  Morgan agrees.

El Cint works his shell game again, and asks Morgan to guess where the pearl is.  Morgan’s response:

Then Morgan tells the now one-handed el Cint how it is:

Morgan and Aton walk toward their horses, and encounter a black cat that transforms into Shakira.  She tells Morgan not to be so surprised: she told him they’d meet again.  She asks where they're going.  Morgan doesn’t know, but he does know they’ll have to make a side-trip to pick up more ammo first.

Much later, the trio ride into the ruined city where Morgan stashed his ammunition.  While Morgan and Aton retreive it, Shakira walks into an old room and activates a monitor, making it show an image of how the city must have looked in ages past.  Shakira sheds tears, staring at it.   Then, she turns the computer off and leaves the room.

Things to Notice:

• The Terminator tavern girl sports the raccoon-eye make-up not seen in Warlord sense the seventies.
• Was Shakira following Morgan and Aton all this time?  It doesn't seem likely she'd just turn up in the same city.
• We get a hint at Shakira's mysterious past.

Where It Comes From:
The hard-to-breach tower with treasure inside is a Sword & Sorcery staple, perhaps starting with the Conan story "Tower of the Elephant" (1933).

Bantuhm is perhaps derived from Ban Thum, a district in Thailand, or Bantoom, a Barsoomian city-state.

"Tevalco el Cint" is a pseudo-Spanish name; "el cint" is apart of several Catalan place names.

Prez's Day

I missed the real Presidents Day, but maybe American Presidents-Might-Have-Been have their own separate day? There are a lot of these guys, as a quick look at tvtropes will reveal, but one of the craziest is America’s first teen president--Prez.

This idea was the brainchild of writer Joe Simon (most famous for his work with Kirby--solo he gave us Brother Power the Geek) and artist Jerry Grandenetti. The series is predicated on the notion of a Constitutional amendment lowering the age for eligibility for office (which may have been inspired by the 1968 film Wild in the Streets). The upshot is a teenager gets elected, and who better than a earnest and idealistic kid from Middle America whose mother even named him “Prez” ‘cause she thought he’d be President one day?

Prez Rickard served for 4 issues. An unpublished story appeared Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2. Prez also had a continuity-busting crossover with Supergirl.

President Rickard had an evenful time in office. There was a U.S.-Russia chess match resulting in chess-based crime, and an act of war by Transylvania,  with vampire bats as a bioweapon.

Then there were domestic threats. Prez's attempt to outlaw firearms (as one might expect) earned him the ire of a group called the Mintueman--and an an assassination attempt. From this misadventure, the young president learned peace and love weren’t the answer to everything.

Prez’s tale was told again in Sandman--recast as a sort of modern fairytale which fits the material nicely, even though the original comic was more goofy than anything else.

So let’s take a moment this Un-President’s Day to remember Prez: The First Teenage President of the U.S.A.

A Piece of the Action

Lake City on the Inland Sea is foremost among the municipalities of the Inland Sea Combine, and the second largest city in the Union. It’s also completely controlled by organized crime.

Traditional government broke down toward the end of the last century, in the wake of vicious gang warfare. Finally, the boss of the Strillo crime family made a Faustian deal with the Hell Syndicate. Granted hellish powers and infernal soldiers to swell his ranks, he quickly overwhelmed the other gangs and took control of the city. Since then, a succession of gang bosses have controlled the city through use of patronage and influence-peddling, though they are certainly not above the application of violence and intimidation.

Lake City’s mayor and city council are elected, but all are indebted to the gangs. The city is divided up into territories doled out to “underbosses” who not only oversee criminal enterprises, but also control voting precincts and act as unofficial magistrates, in a sort of  de facto feudal system.

Poor youth look up to the gangsters, and hope to join their ranks one day. Every neighborhood has stories of a local kid who rose up through the ranks to get his or her own piece of the action through judicious application of street-smarts and gunplay.

What only a few of the wide-eyed youth ever live to see--an unlucky few--is the boss of bosses.  They never have to take part in the ritual visits of "made men" to pay fearful homage and offer sacrifice to Ziacomo Mostruoso, imprisoned behind strong thaumaturgic wards in the sub-basement of an old prison, his immortal body and devious mind ravaged and mutated by a lifetime’s exposure to the raw energies of hell.

Midnight in the House Tenebrous

There are places in Nla-Ogupta--that ancient, decadent, Venusian Venice--where Terrans do not go. The Street of Blue Vines was one of those. The buildings along it crowded close, as if trying to conceal some secret. The uncanny glow of bioluminescent lantern-jellies that cling to haphazard lines seem dimmer than elsewhere--as if they too were conspirators. It's said that in millennia past, when Egypt was young, the Street of Blue Vines was a place where cultists trafficked with inhuman gods. Old Venus-hands, deep in their cups, spin tales of cannibalism, and alien sexual rites. That's what the rumors say.  No Terran knows, and if any polite Venusian knows, they don't speak of it to offworlders.

But on this night, a Terran does wind his way down the serpentine Street of Blue Vines. His stride is unhesitating--he hasn't come this way accidentally. He moves purposely to the darkened, leaning structure which bears no sign or legend, but nevertheless is known to the denizens of Nla-Ogupta's underworld as the House Tenebrous. He has come seeking this house, and the service it sells.  He's come to buy a man's death.

The Street of Blue Vines gets its name from the eerie, electric indigo vines and foliage that entwine 'round its most infamous denizen, the House Tenebrous. The House only permits entrance at night--in fact, it may be that it can only be located at night.

A seated, robed figured, appearing as a short and portly man, his features completely hidden in a cowl, asks any visitor who he or she might wished kill, and why. The figure’s voice sounds distant, and tinny, and seems to emanate from all around. The man never moves, even in the slightest.  Sometimes visitors get the impression that there are others in the room--the feeling of eyes upon them, or the hint of motion in the shadows of the audience chamber. Psychically sensitive individuals report “hearing” distant, unintelligible, whispers, and an unpleasant mental sensation not unlike smothering.

If the man chooses to accept the comission, the price is variable, and not always in money.  If a goal can be discerned from House's representative's payment demands, it is that they seem to be aimed at reducing Terran influence on Venus.

Eventually, though a space of week or months may pass, all victims of the House Tenebrous are found dead somewhere in Nla-Ogupta (or in one case, on a ship having recently departed there) without any apparent signs of violence or physical injury. Victims always appear to have died in their sleep, though often their face and bodies are contorted as if in fear or pain.

AD&D Cosmology: A Defense

The so-called “Great Wheel” of AD&D cosmology takes its lumps from folks who feel its non-mythic, too mechanical, and over-complicated. To these charges, I find the system guilty--but I’d add for the sake of fairness that one should look at its virtues. After a discussion of this nature over at Dreams in the Lich House, Beedo suggested I offer a counterargument here. I’ve touched on ways I feel the Great Wheel can be reconceptualized before (twice)--but I’ll summarize my argument in favor of it here, before diving into a slightly new way to look at it.

So, to it’s virtues:

1. It’s complicated: That’s right--this can be be both a deficit and an asset. The system of correspondences, associations, and the like in hermetic magic is a lot less streamlined than fire and forget or comic book-esque magic blasts, but its got a little thing called verisimilitude. Ptomelaic epicycles are complicated as hell (and terribly wrong) but they’re authentic. The Great Wheel, ironically, has some of this “almost too convoluted to make up” charm about it.

2. It’s consistent: The implied setting of AD&D has morality (i.e. alignment) as a tangible force with teams, and secret languages, and auras (or something) that can be identified by spells. It makes sense that the realms of gods, devils, and the afterlife would operate on this same system--as above, so below, as it were. In fact, any cosmology that doesn’t take into account the reality of alignment in AD&D as written, is really an incomplete one, as there’s an odd, omnipresent force unaccounted for.

3. It’s weird: By this I mean its cobbled together (syncretic might be a better term) and idosyncratic. It’s strangely uniform in some ways, and oddly random in others. In other words, it reminds me of crackpot theories of physics, or theosophic ramblings, and whole swathes of occultism. Looking at that diagram in in 1E Deities and Demigods is like hearing about the Philadelphia Experiment, or reading an occult tome that claims to be the “real” Necronomicon. It’s crazy, but the sort of crazy that makes one curious.

All well and good, you might say, but what do you do with it? This a complicated question.  First off, I’d say take a look at it through these principles:

1. The Outer Planes are representations of “human” ideas/concerns (the Anthropic Principle).

2. The Outer Planes are not material places but conceptual ones: their appearance is malleable, and they're perhaps more symbolic than literal: perhaps like being in a dream in Inception, or maybe like Ditko’s surrealist portrayal of magical realms in Doctor Strange comics.

3. Each plane is sort of symbolic or representational of some aspect of its alignment: Hades might be the archetypal prison, for instance.  Deities don't so much dwell there in the sense they someone might live in the suburbs, they dwell there in the sense that are associated with its archetypes or ethos.  In this respect, they might resemble the sephiroth of Qabalah as portrayed in hermeticism-- Alan Moore’s Promethea being a great (and gameable) representation of this.

If this generates any sort of interest I might give some examples in a future post--or maybe I’ll give ‘em regardless, if I’m of a mind.

Urban Monsters

Over time, metropolises like the City extend urban sprawl into areas which were formerly wilderness--wilderness haunted by monsters. Some monsters are pushed further out into the wilds, but others adapt to the new environments in which they find themselves. Then their are other creatures who have always been associated with man and his habitations in a variety of ways, from freeloader to predator. Here's a sampling of creatures one might encounter in the City and perhaps other urban areas:

Gargoyles: are Old World creatures who have been roosting in human cities since ancient times. Historically, some Earlderdish cities are reported to have formed pacts with gargoyle colonies for mutual protection. The creatures must have either stowed away or been purposely brought to the New World. Though admittedly ill-tempered and certainly capable of violence, they're generally not dangerous (except to small animals like pets) if given wide berth. Researchers in the City have tried to make contact with the sometimes temperamental creatures as its hoped that an understanding of the metabolic curse, pertrifactio progressiva, that causes gargoyles to age into stone statues might lead to an alchemical cure for petrification of various sorts.

Oozes/Slimes/Molds: These organisms can be found in underground areas like sewers and subway tunnels which they colonized from deeper strata of ruins, or where they were dumped by irresponsible alchemical concerns. These organisms have been known to spread up into basements, or even through the walls of decaying buildings.  Such incursions often occasion a call to the Municipal Department of Animal and Pest Control.

Undead: Ghosts are common in cities, with other incorporeal undead somewhat less so.  Spectral automobiles phantom trains, and the like are more common in cities than in rural areas.  Freelance specialists do a brisk business in disposing of many sorts of hauntings. Zombies are utilized (illegally) in underground fighting competitions for the purposes of gambling, or as cheap labor. Skeletons are less frequently used because they attract too much attention, but some ostentatious necromancers employ them as (ahem)--muscle--for just that reason. Barrow-wights are sometimes found haunting potter’s fields, old catacombs, and occasionally upscale cemeteries, though the dark processes that initiate a wight infestation are not understood. Ghouls of the Strange New World are not actually undead, but have a taste for brains which make them dangerous, particularly if handled less than courteously. Vampires--blood junkies--tend to slide over their unlife from more respectable areas to slums where their victims are less likely to be missed.

Devils: The Hell Syndicate prefers to use human agents, keeping its infernal troops in reserve, but there are a few exceptions. Succubi and incubi are heavily involved in higher-priced prostitution rings. Hit-Fiends, mostly disguised (barely) as mundane muscle, back up particularly high-placed human gangsters, and are sent rub out particularly annoying adventurer-types.