Say the Secret Word and Win a Prize

If you purchased the Weird Adventures pdf at any point up until 9:00pm (East Coast U.S.) today (January 12), contact me if you want a $10.00 discount on either the hardcover or softcover (or both, if you're a completist!).

Email me at the address in my profile with your purchase date and RPGNow/Drivethrurpg customer number and I'll send one or both discount codes (specify your choice).

Look What Came in the Mail

Well, that and this:

That's the hardcover and the softcover.  Here's a peak at the insides:

Warlord Wednesday: Doom's Mouth!

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...

"Doom's Mouth!"

Warlord #78 (February 1984)

Written by Cary Burkett; Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Mike DeCarlo

Synopsis: Morgan, Tara, and their companions sail the newly-christened Wind Shadow in the sea-passage cave lit by “weirdly glowing minerals” in its walls on their way to New Atlantis. They're scarcely inside the tunnel when they sight a New Atlantean warship headed their way. It doesn’t take long for the Atlanteans to realize the Wind Shadow isn’t one of their own, and they open fire.

Our heroes don’t have weapons to match, so Morgan decides to play a game of “chicken.” The Lizard-headed captain of the other vessel believes the crew of the Wind Shadow must be mad as the ship picks up speed and appears to be preparing to ram his ship. He panics and orders a rash turn to starboard:

Their enemy sank by their own hand, our protagonists sail on. Exploring the ship, Morgan discovers (to his delight) that the New Atlanteans have discovered tobacco and have a barrel full of cigars. He tries one:

The lesson: Don’t smoke, kids.

Soon, the ship reaches the place where Morgan blasted a whole out of the weapons cache cave. They anchor the ship and enter the passage. After travelling a distance, they discover they’re not alone:

Scarhart and Krystovar manage to kill the creature, but not before its tail-spine skewers one of the Shamballan guards.

When our heroes reach the cache, the others are as impressed as Morgan was when he first saw it. Krystovar comments that the saucercraft alone would give them an advantage over the New Atlanteans, if they could only figure out how to use them. Looking for a way to open one, Morgan notices a slot that the silver cassette he had would fit perfectly.

He takes a cartridge from the stack on the floor. It does fit, but it doesn’t do anything. After chastising Shakira for knocking over a stack of them, Morgan finds a surprise: A cartridge with his name on it!

Krystovar notices the saucers have numbers on them like the cassettes and suggests they try to match them. Putting the cartridge with his name on it in the matching saucer, Morgan finds the top opens. Krystovar and Morgan climb in to check out the inside.

Meanwhile, Shakira has tracked a rat:

Running in fear, she jumps into the arms of a surprised Morgan. He falls backwards into the saucer’s controls. The canopy closes and the craft disappears in a whirl of smoke!

Things to Notice:

• Tara never wastes an oppurtunity to show her dislike of Shakira.
• A comic book protagonist smoking?  Wouldn't happen in kid's comics of 2011!

Where It Comes From:

The battle with the giant arthopod was possibly inspired by the giant scorpion fight in the original Clash of the Titans (1981) perhaps with influence from the clash with the giant crab in another Harryhausen film Mysterious Island (1961).

Weavers in Darkness

If the rumors are to be believed, in the places below the City, one can sometimes encounter creatures half-woman and half-spider. Unfortunate creatures--and dangerous ones.

The spider hybrids are the result of past illegal and immoral thaumaturgic practices in the City’s garment industry. Before the muckracking exposés and the formation of the Garment Workers Union, destitute young girls were preyed upon in a horrific way. Using thaumaturgic arts stolen from pagan temples of the Far East, unscrupulous sweatshop owners had these girls transformed, into spider centaur-things. The silk produced by these creatures was valued for its strength and its ability to hold enchantment better than mundane fabrics (halves the time for creating magical items).

After the practice was put to an end, not all the hyrbids were accounted for. It’s possible some escaped into the underground beneath the city. Here they spin--and hunt. Their minds shattered by the trauma they have undergone, they’re given to unpredictable, murderous rages.

Spider-woman: HD: 5; AC: 3; Attacks 1 bite (1d4+poison) or with improvised weapon; Move 12.

The City Indexed

The Weird Adventures Index is online.  It can be reached from this post or the link under "Pages" in the sidebar.  It continues to be a work in progress, but there are already a lot of posts in a wide away of topics to review.  Which topics got a heading and which ones didn't is a bit arbitrary--and subject to future revision.

On the Weird Adventures hardcopy front: The files have been accepted by the printers, and I'm awaiting my copies to proof.  Assuming everything looks good, expect those to be available for purchase soon.

Work in Progress

As I wait for the proofs of the hardcopy versions of Weird Adventures to come back, I've been following a suggestion of sagacious Porky and working on an index of all the related posts on the City and the Strange New World.  It's still in progress, but here's a sample.  More to follow.

PEOPLE:
Adventurers
    Failed: "Spectacular Losers"
    Famous: "Lifestyles of the Adventurous and Famous", "Tall in the Saddle", "Adventurers of Yesteryear"
    Men of Magic: "Magic Men"
    Tough Guys: "Two Tough Guys"
Adversaries
    Criminals, Wanted: "Most Wanted"
    Femme Fatales: "Random Femme Fatale Table"
    Gaunt, Hieronymus: "Rogue Elephant"
    Hell Syndicate: "Hell's Hoods", "A Piece of the Action"
    Knights-Templar of Purity: "Legion of Hate"
    Sorcerers: "Five Sinister Sorcerers", "The Unknown"
Anomalous Beings
     Beings from the Void: "Out of the Void"
     Dead God Drag-Racers: "The Dead Travel Fast"
     Red Dwarf, the: "In Deep, Crimson Shadows", "Season of the Witch"
     Well-Dressed Man from Elsewhere, the: "The Well-Dressed Man from Elsewhere"
Druids: "The City's Druids"
Eikones/God-Like Beings
     Cat Lord: "Stray Cat Blues"
     Doll: "Spirits of the Age"
     Lords of Beasts: "Stray Cat Blues"
     Management: "Spirits of the Age"
     Maker: "Spirits of the Age"
     Phile: "Spirits of the Age"
Ethnic Groups
     Dwerg-Folk: "Short People, Big Worm"
     Ibernian Little People: "Luck of the Little People"
     Immigrants: "Random Immigrant Urban Encounter Table"
     Mer-folk: "The Life Aquatic"

Take the Subway to the Wizard's Sanctum

You may have heard this one: A homeless newsboy in a nameless city follows a mysterious stranger into a subway station. 

The stranger leads the boy aboard "a strange subway car, with headlights gleaming like a dragon's eyes," and decorated inside and out with weird, perhaps mystic, symbols.  The car "hurtles through the pitch-black tunnel at tremedous speed."  Their destination:

And beyond, a cavernous hall decorated with grotesque statues of the iconic failings of man.  At the end of the hall, a hierophant sits immobile on a throne, a square block of granite hanging precariously over his head by a slowly unraveling thread.

The wizard is, of course, Shazam and the Boy is Billy Batson.  Billy is about to be given the power of six mythological figures. At that point this story becomes a superhero origin, but at all times it's a fantasy story, too.  Grant Morrison (in Supergods) sums it up like this:

"the train carries Billy into a deep, dark tunnel that leads from this world to an elevated magical plane where words are superspells that change the nature of reality."

My point is bringing up Whiz Comics #2, is that I think fantasy in an urban setting ought to have a bit more of this and a bit fewer succubus streetwalkers, werewolf bikers, or angels in white Armani suits.  Not that there's anything wrong with those things--but they've gotten commonplace.  Perfunctory.

There's no reason why fantasy in a modernish setting can't be infused with weird or wonder.  We've got plenty of examples: Popeye's pet jeep, the Goon's antagonists, or in a less whimiscal vein, VanderMeer's city of Ambergris suffering under occupation by fungoid invaders. I can't be the only one that wants fantasy in the modern world to be something other than 90's World of Darkness retreads.