All Those Monsters

Most role-playing games that run more than one book prove a catalog of monsters. D&D in its various incarnations provides us with more than one. I would suspect most gamemasters are like myself and have never employed every monster in any of those books, much less all of them. I wonder, though, how people decide which monsters to play versus which to leave on the bench?

In my oft-revised, ever-evolving D&D to GURPS to Wizards & Warlocks setting (now answering to the named The World of Arn), I first employed whatever monsters struck my fancy from the three AD&D monster manuals and various issues of Dragon. I had the vague notion that any monster was fair game, but some spoke to me more than others--and some were just lame.

Later, when the world took a Sword & Sorcery turn, under the heady influence of Leiber and Howard, actually monsters (except humanoids) became rarer--human foes were the order of the day, and various prehistoric animals (the setting being in a mythic prehistory in good Howardian fashion) in wilderness adventures. Later, I wanted my own "signature" monsters (like Tolkien had his orcs) so I played up obscure entries from Dragon over standards. Why have the same old orcs when you can have cynamolgi (from Dragon #141 for you completists)? I mean, even the cartoon set itself apart from the norm by pushing bullywugs to prominence.

The latest iteration brought me full circle in a way, with all the glorious, crazy, D&D creatures stalking the world, albeit perhaps in a more “rationalized” fashion. And still some of the dregs got ignored. (Sorry flumph.)

The world of the City presented a challenge of adaptation. Here, I’ve been more planful about what monsters I’m gong to use. They have to be able to “work” with the more modern setting, and I really want to have in mind what the beastie's roll is in the setting--even if that’s just “monster of the week.”

So how do you decide what monsters are in your setting, be it D&D or otherwise? Grand plan? Whimsy?

Warlord Wednesday: Nightmare in Vista-Vision

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...

"Nightmare in Vista-Vision"

Warlord (vol. 1) #45 (May 1981)

Writing and art by Mike Grell; inks by Vince Colletta

Synopsis: On a remote Skartarian beach, Jennifer Morgan tries to communicate with the brutish, hooded man who found her, but finding the language barrier difficult. Jennifer mentions the name of her father, “Travis Morgan,” the eyes of the man harden. Suddenly, he lashes out with his sword...

...and slashes a sabretooth tiger as it pounces. Jennifer feels she misjudged the man--he just saved her life, after all. The man’s attention is now focused on his bronze-bound, wooden box which has been overturned. He rushes to it swiftly and closes it. Calling it “master” he whispers to it that he’s certain the girl did not see. And yes, he heard her say the name of his master’s mortal enemy--Travis Morgan.

Meanwhile, Morgan, Aton, and Shakira ride into the tree village of the dwarfs. Morgan asks if they’ve happened to find his old sword he left on his last visit. The mayor of the dwarfs leads him to it. Morgan just taken it in hand, when they hear a scream from outside. Running toward it, they find:

The fight doesn’t favor our heroes.  Morgan and Aton wound out sprawled out, while the cyclops lumbers away with the sack full of dwarfish maidens. Morgan’s got a question for the mayor:

But there is something Morgan can do. He and his companion race after the cyclops. They soon come to a fallen tree bridging a ravine. They stop a moment to strategize.  When the plan is made, Aton stays behind while Shakira and Morgan cross the bridge.

They come open a cobbled together skeleton strapped to a cross. Morgan thinks its some sort of warning; it means they’re on the right track. He’s proved right as they come around a rock outcropping and find a cave with three cyclopes tending a fire--and a cook pot. The dwarf women watched worriedly from a nearby hanging cage.

Shakira’s also worried, but Morgan reminds her he has a plan. Soon, Shakira (in cat form) is creeping across the branch toward the dwarf ladies. When she’s close enough, she jumps to the cage and changes to human form so she can set them free.

As they’re making there escape, the cyclopes notice and give chase. That’s when Morgan comes swinging in on a vine and slams into them. Despite their size, the giants are staggered. Morgan drops to the ground and pulls his sword.

He deals the closest a deadly blow, then runs for the tree bridge. The other two cyclopes give chase. Morgan is half-way across the tree, with the cyclopes behind when he shouts “cut it!” to Aton. Aton chops through a large root that seems to be holding the tree in place.

As the tree falls into the ravine, Morgan jumps to safety. The cyclopes aren’t so lucky. One falls to his death, though the other manages to grab hold to the cliffside.

Before he can climb out, our heroes push a boulder off the cliff onto him. Morgan’s plan worked! Still, Aton’s got a good question:

Things to Notice:

• The dwarf men (last seen in issue #33) look like munchkins from The Wizard of Oz, but the ladies are decidedly cuter and more curvaceous--like Elinore from Bakshi's Wizards.
• This issue features filmic transition captions.

Where It Comes From:
The title of this issue references vistavision, a widescreen film format developed by Paramount as a competitor for CinemaScope.  This fits in with a number of film references in the issue.  Captions between scene changes in the issue are all film transition terms. 

Also, there are a couple of set-peices seem homages to specific sequences in film.  The tree bridge greatly resembles the who from the original King Kong (1933).   The bone scarecrow on a cross resembles who the Talyor (Charlton Heston) and his fellows come across in Planet of the Apes (1968).

Mantis Prey

The Mantid Sisterhood are ascetic warrior-nuns and servants of Law from the outer planar realm sometimes called the Octachoron of the Archons. They appear as full-scale, porcelain, marrionettes (without visible strings), in the form of insectoid centaurs, with feminine upper bodies, like slim ballerinas. They wear sphinx-like expressions on their perfect, identical faces.

They are sent out to the Prime Material to hunt down those guilty of transgressions against the Grand Algorithm of the Archons of Law. Transgressors need not know they have committed error--the judgement of the Archons is final; the punishments of the Sisterhood precise...and always delivered with the utmost serenity.

#Enc.: 1d6
Move: 40’(120’)
AC: 3
HD: 7
Attacks: 2 (strikes)
Damage: 2d8
Save: C7
Mantid sisters have the abilities of the Monk class at 7th level (except for feign death, and resistance to ESP, which are superseded by other abilities). As constructs of a sort, they possess darkvision, immunity ot mind-affecting effects, and immunity to poison, sleep, paralysis, charm, and disease--anything that requires a target be a biologic living being.  They are able to travel via dimensional doorways from plane to plane at will.

Mosquito, Repellent

In San Zancudo, from the shade of a cantina, one can watch a colorful parade in honor of the national “bird”--the mosquito.

San Zancudo straddles the treacherous strait between the northern New World continent of Septentrion and the southern Asciana. The way through is difficult due rocks and a peculiarity of geology which causes the depth of the passage to change--the volcanic rock pushed up periodically by subterranean pockets of steam. Only the San Zancudan pilots know the timing of these movements, and the way through, from the Meropic Ocean to the Tranquil.

The strait isn’t the only unusual thing in San Zancudo. In previous times, it’s jungles were home to a speices of mosquito that could grow to the size of a small dog. These creatures were never numerous when compared to their smaller cousins, but dangerous due their voracious hunger for blood. A eradication campaign earlier in the century was thought to have wiped them out entirely, though there is some evidence this may not be the case.

The celebration of mosquitos San Zancudo may not be innocent frivolity.  There are rumors that the pagan cult which once worshipped an obscene, vampiric mosquito goddess still exists in the deep jungles. The old temples may still hold orgiastic rites where victims are sacrificed to the god-thing, manifest in a monstrous cloud of mundane (but ravenous) mosquitos. The giant insects are held to be the goddess' prize servitors and the enforcers of her will.

More Elephants on Parade

Last week, I talked I chronicled an unusual elephant-shaped building in the City. The inspirations for that post were the three exemplars of zoomorphic architecture constructed by James V. Lafferty in the late nineteenth century. The first (and the only one still in existence) was “Lucy,” built in 1881 in what is now Margate, New Jersey. Lucy is 65 feet tall and 60 feet long. Here’s the plan for Lucy filed with the U.S. patent office:

Lafferty built one larger. The Elephantine Colossus, built on Coney Island in 1888, was 122 feet tall. It was destroyed in a fire in 1896, but here’s a diagram of its insides:

The third was 40 feet tall, and built in Cape May, New Jersey, in 1884. It was named “The Light of Asia,” but known as “Old Dumbo” to the locals. Never financially successful, it was partial torn down, and what left of it was burnt in 1900.

I think any of these structures would make an unusual set-piece in a Victorian (or perhaps an unorthodox Old West) game. They certain could inspire similar structures for use in any era or setting.

Rogue Elephant

To adventurers in the City, the question, “have you see the elephant?” has a different meaning than elsewhere. Some have encountered an infamous, wandering hotel in the shape of an elephant, now the residence of a dangerous (and possibly insane) sorcerer.

The Mastodon Colossus, or Hotel Elephantine, was built as a tourist attraction on Lapin Isle in the City’s barony of Rook End. The (admittedly eccentric) architect Jamis Maguffin constructed it through consultation of certain codices of the Ancients--and some magical materials probably dating to Meropis dredged from the City’s harbor. The elephant was twelve stories tall and had stout legs 60 feet in diameter. It had 31 guest rooms, a gallery, tobacconist's shop, and an observation deck shaped like a gigantic howdah.

Most spectacularly, the whole thing was planned to move. Maguffin promised that when all of the thaumaturgic glyphs and enhancements were complete, the elephant would be able to ambulate without any seeming change to the rooms on its interior. These enhancements, unfortunately, would take some time.

Eleven years later, when the thaumaturgical working was (supposedly) nearly complete, the elephant walked away one night with a compliment of guests. Most have turned up dead in various locales, all over the world and beyond, in the four decades since.

The theft and the murders were laid at the feet of Hieronymus Gaunt, lich and (self-styled) wicked sorcerer. He and a band of miscreants entered the elephant and completed the rituals to give in motion. Since that time they've travelled the world in decadent style, taking their seemingly unending orgy of dark thaumaturgy, baroque perversity, and deadly amusements where they may. Sometimes, when it amuses Gaunt, they take others aboard and survivors have reported stores of plunder, both mundane and magical.

I may do a post on the real elephant-shaped buildings of our world in the next week. Until then, read more about them at your local library.

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?