Stories from the South Seas

The South Seas is a vaguely defined area of the Tranquil Ocean extending from Pyronesia east and north to unnumbered islands extending south from Southeast Eura and south to the mysterious south polar continent of Australis. The area is a crossroads of trade and a meeting place of exotic cultures that has captured the popular culture imagination of people in the City.

Many of of the islands in the South Seas are inhabited by people called loosely grouped as Oceanians who are believed to be the descendants of ancient Mu. Though this continent long ago disappeared beneath the waves, mysterious ruins attributed to it are sometimes found on isolated isles.

Most Oceanians are friendly--but not all. There are still rumors of strange rites and even cannibalism. Exaggerated sailors’ tales, perhaps.

There are dangers other than humans in the South Seas. Utilizing primitive smoke-belching steamships, the Demon Islanders have claimed a territory in the wake of the Great War. Here it’s hoped they can be contained, but they remain a menace to the region. Also, the Crab-men, ancestral enemies of the Oceanians, still attack settlements and even unwary ships.

The Worlds of Leigh Brackett

Burroughs’s was there first, and C.L. Moore was there first with an anti-hero, but Leigh Brackett made Mars her own. I don’t know why it took me so long, but for my birthday, I treated myself to the second and third Haffner volumes collecting Brackett’s planetary fiction: Lorelei of the Mists: Planetary Romances and Shannach-The Last: Farewell to Mars (the first volume is titled Martian Quest: The Early Brackett in case you were wondering).

Brackett’s most famous creation is probably Eric John Stark--raised Tarzan-like among primitive nonhumans on Mercury.  As a man caught between two worlds, Stark gets caught up in various struggles on the Earth colony worlds of Mars and Venus. Often, like in Moore’s Northwest Smith stories, this involves ancient secrets. Unlike Smith (who just seems lucky to survive the weird horror he encounters), Stark is a more of man of heroic action.

The stories in these volumes take place in the same solar system, but feature protagonists generally less “larger than life” than Stark, though usual just as hard-boiled. Most have the tension of colonizers versus native cultures that underlie the Stark stories. Often the conflict changes both sides.

There's a lot of good game inspiration in Brackett's world-building. There are the colorfu.l gaseous seas of Venus that boats can sail, but in which humans can also breath.  The drug scourge of colonial Mars is shanga--radiation from certain jewels can cause a temporary atavistic transformation. A deep valley on Mercury holds the slowly pertrifiying last survivor of a psychic species.

That's just the beginning.  If you've never read Brackett or you only know her Stark novels and stories, you should check these out.

Art from original pulp magazine

Warlord Wednesday: All the President's Men...!

It's my birthday today--but it's still Wednesday and time for another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"All the President's Men...!"

Warlord #83 (July 1984)

Written by Cary Burkett; Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Dan Adkins.

Synopsis: Separated by hundreds of years, Travis Morgan and his wife Tara each lead men into battle. In 2303, Morgan and a group of escaped slaves prepare to seize an aircraft hangar. In the present of Skartaris, Shakira and her band prepare to retake their ship from the New Atlanteans.

Husband and wife both achieve victory with some clever tactics. Morgan breaks into the aircraft and turns its guns on the troops guarding it. Tara utilizes some grenades (“strange eggs”) she took from the ancient weapons cache to sink the New Atlantean vessel.

Morgan plans to find Reno and Shakira and free the slaves from the other compounds. Looking over the complex’s floorplan, Duncan discovers that the whole place is dependent on the solar power center. A small band could seize it and control the whole place.

In occupied Shamballah, the people suffer under the cruel boot of the New Atlanteans. In the wilderness outside of town, forces gather that plan on changing that. Ashir, King of Kaambuka and second best thief in Skataris, meets Jennifer Morgan and Tinder.

In 2303, Morgan and his men continue to fight toward the power center. Morgan almost gets shot in the back of the head but a black cat saves him. It’s, of course, Shakira. She been prowling around and found a secret passage. Morgan asks how she asked the imprisonment:

At the end of the passage, the rebels are surprised to find a futuristic oval office replica--and the President of the United States behind the desk. The President is confused and doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on. Secretary Dubrow does, though—and he’s got a gun. In villainous fashion he lays things out for our heroes: The president had a mental breakdown over his guilt at triggering the war that killed millions. Dubrow has been running things ever since.

Morgan is mad as hell. He gives the President a “buck up” talk that seems to snap him back to reality a bit. Realizing what he’s done, the President makes an executive decision and whacks Dubrow with a big presidential seal. Morgan follows up with a punch to Dubrow’s jaw. He snatches the flag from Dubrow’s floundering grasp, and stands the pole upright.

The President gives a speech ending martial law and restoring the slaves to citizenship. Then he tells Morgan he wants some time alone in his office. Morgan hasn't gone far when he hears the gun blast. The President has committed suicide.

Later, Morgan is trying to repair his broken shoulder armor. Duncan and Shakira come to summon him to the Congressional Hall…

President Travis Morgan?!

Things to Notice:

• The President here looks a little bit like Bill Clinton to me--which is obviously coincendental since he wasn't elected until 1993.
• I guess in the post-Revolution U.S. of the future their a little loose with the Constitutional requirements for office--unless somewhere off-panel they checked Morgan's age and citizenship.

Where It Comes From:

The issue's title is a reference to the 1976 film All the President's Men based on the 1974 book of the same name about Woodward and Bernstein's investigation of the Watergate scandal. 

A Valentine from the Sorcerer's Skull

Happy Valentine's Day to all you folks in Internet Land.  I've got a lazy post--FtSS classic--for you today.  Last year's look at "Love (and Sex) in the City."  If you haven't read it, it's new to you!

Oh, and here's a little something from Enoch Bolles:

Afterlife During the Wartime

Explorers in the planes beyond have recorded two noumenal realms devoted to the concept of war, though from two different perspectives. One is a shining realm of trumpets sounding the call to glorious battle for a righteous cause. The other is a grim place of endless, grinding war of attrition, leading to an apocalypse they may never come.

The Halls of Valor or the Fields of Glory is the name given to the after-life for the heroic warrior dead of several pagan faiths. Its trappings are pre-modern, though never in history did swords and spears so gleam, or armor so shine. The warriors revel all night in feasting halls and walk out at dawn (strangely hangover free) to do battle with representatives arriving from places of evil and chaos (or at least the representations of such beings). Occasionally (if that word has much meaning in a timeless place) tourneys are held, and the warriors pit themselves against each other. While dire wounds are suffered, they heal quickly and wound and pain are forgotten in the face of glory.

There have been some warriors of the Oecumenical faith, or even soldiers from modern times, who fell in battle and were taken to Halls of Valor in some sort of cosmic error. Some warm to the place after a while, but others seek a way out by appeal to the pagan gods who rule there. Sometimes, angels try to recruit such misplaced warriors to serve in the Heavenly Hosts. This is considered by the eikone Management a tidy solution to the problem of a misplaced soul.

The other realm is a place of blood-red skies, where clouds of ash are buffeted by winds thick with the smell of death. This is the Plains of Armageddon, the Eternal Battlefield. Here, the souls of warriors damned by their actions in war are conscripted as soon as they arrive into the army of one faction or another. Weapons are supplied by agents of the Hell Syndicate or the demon lords of the Pits; They use the armies here as proxies for their own agendas. Warriors from infinite worlds and all of history do battle in bleak and blasted landscapes where no one is truly trustworthy and most hands are actively raised against every other.

Some of the damned delight in bloodlust and slaughter and give themselves over fully to their not entirely metaphorical demons. Others seek desperately to escape and sign faustian deals to return the the Material world as diabolic thralls. Others are lucky enough to make contact with the agents.of Heaven and make other deals for a chance at working off the stain on their souls.

When Rise the Stone Giants!

Some islands in the Tranquil Ocean are noted for their rough-hewn monolithic statues. Sometimes these are whole human figures with oversized heads, other times just the heads. Explorers have wondered at these statues and proposed various theories of their origins. Only a few have witness first hand the statues' most startling secret: They aren’t statues at all.

The stone giants of the Tranquil Ocean are living things. It is believed that they are the remnant of a once wider spread species (similar beings have been encountered in other parts of the world), but they now only exist in numbers on scattered islands. Though they appear to be constructs, post mortem examination suggests they are living beings (though composed of more earth elements than humans) with a rocky integument. It's is theorized that (like gargoyles) the body of a stone giant slowly petrifies further over their long lifespans. It appears that this process may lead to the giants spending longer and longer periods immobile until they become sessile--statues, for all practical purposes.

It’s unclear how stone giants reproduce--or if they reproduce at all. Specimens which appear different ages (based on size and their level of activity) have been observed, but there are no apparent sex differences, nor do their appear to be infants or children requiring the care of adults. Some have suggested the stone giants came (or were brought) here from some distant world, but the true is unknown.

Stone giants spend long periods of time in torpor. They can stay immobile so long that they can be partially buried by sediment. Whether this is strictly physiologic or partially purposeful is unknown. Mobile stone giants can speak in booming, sonorous voices, but the immobile aged become incapable. There is some evidence that stone giants possess telepathy, and the ancients of their kind may continue to communicate in this fashion after they are immobile. Human psychics often report uneasy or fearful feelings around them that have been theorized to result from the giants’ attempts at communication at frequency below that which can be interpreted by the human mind, but can be “felt."

Caution should be taken in dealing with stone giants. They are territorial, and may attack those they feel have trespassed. Natives of islands with stone giants placated them with blood sacrifices in previous times, though it’s unclear the giants took any particular notice.

[Treat these stone giants as stone golems or greater stone golems, except that they aren’t constructs. Oh, and just in case anybody missed it, I did an interview about the origins of Weird Adventures with Chris Kutalik over at the great Hill Cantons blog last week.]

Welcome to the MEGADUNGEON!

Looking for something for a little weekend family fun?  Why not a little delving? Sean Robson--half of the creative duo at Hopeful Monster Creations knows just the place.  He's developed a simple and fun update on the dungeoneering board game.  Megadungeon! delivers what you remember from that classic game of yore, but updates it with modular dungeon tiles and multiple levels.  And it's recession-priced at a mere $2.00.

I had the pleasure of checking this game out while in playtest, and I can say Sean has built a lot of detail into a fairly simple ruleset.  I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl with the nephews when I can pry the game-controllers from their hands.

Get it here.