Tagged

Mark, the self-styled evil DM, over at The DM's Screen (check it out) tagged me in one of these blog questionaire sort of things. I'm not going to tak part in the chain-letter part, but I will be a good sport and answer Mark's questions

1. What made you decide to write a blog?
A friend of mine who got tired of listening to my game-related ideas suggested it.

2. What would you say has been the highlight of your blogging career to date?
Publishing Weird Adventures. Get your copy today!

3. Name your favourite animal.
A liger. Ok, not really.  I don't know that I have a nonextinct one.

4. What has been the best thing to ever happen to you?
Answering the next question. Seriously though, I don't know how to compare various good things on the same scale.

5. You are in a lift with a Nun, a middle-aged business man, a Karl Marx look-alike, a twenty-something female charity worker and Stephen Hawking. The lift shudders to a stop, the lights go out. There is a high-pitched scream followed by a thud. The lights come on and the Nun is lying dead on the floor with a knife in her chest. Who did it and why?
Is she actually dead or does she just appear dead? If she's not faking, I would say they're all in on it together.  It will sound more plausible when I'm wearing a deerstalker cap and smoking a pipe.  Which, of course, I would be in the elevator.

6. Name your favourite colour.
To wear: gray.  Just as a color: orange.

7. What has been the scariest thing to ever happen to you?
Automobile accident.

8. You are about to break the world record for the tallest house of cards in front of a crowded room of onlookers and world press. All of a sudden, some idiot parent allows their errant child to charge over, knocking into your table, sending your world record beating attempt crashing around you. What do you do next?
Shake my fist in impotent rage and scream to the heavens.

9. If you had to spend a month on a tropical island, what four luxury items do you take with you?
Internet access.

10. Once on your tropical island you are allowed to have one person of your choice to stay with you. Now this can be anyone famous, living or dead, fictional and from any period of time/history - loved ones are not allowed - who do you choose and why?
Someone with the power of teleportation so I could leave the island when I wanted.

11. What has been the worst impulse purchase of a totally useless item (one you convinced yourself into believing you needed, but didn't)? What was it, and do you still have it?
About the worse impulse purchases I've ever made are books I probably won't read.  I guess I'm either pretty frugal or either I just don't regret much.

What'll It Be?

For a little brand name flash, here are some alcoholic beverages consumed by denizens of the City:

Spirits:

Albecoeurl: A moderately expensive brand of gin imported from Grand Lludd.  It's bottle is decorated with the image a panther.

Brown Jenkin: A whiskey brand from New Lludd.
Caballero: A tequilla imported from Zingaro.
Dyer Corbie: A brand of light overproof rum.
Gentleman Loser: A sour mash whiskey emblazoned with the image of a smiling "gentleman of the road." The brand is nearly a hundred years old, but was marketed in its native South as a "medicinal" for much of its history.
Storisende: A Poitêmien brandy. Expensive.

Beer:
Cold Iron: A light lager brewed in Yronburg.
Eschenbach: Another prominent beer from the Steel League.
Green Griffon Ale: Sometimes just called "Griffon."  It's symbol is (appropriately) a green griffon rampant.

Mushrooms, Pigs, and Cold Light

The thaumaturgic forces unleashed by the Great War have left much of Ealderde strange. For an example of just how weird this transformation can be, one need look no farther than Lumière,the former capital of Neustrie and the Gallian Alliance. Once Lumière’s lights were emblematic of a city that never slept, a place of art and culture. Today, Lumière is a bombed out ruin, and the amber luminescence that crawls or flows through its streets and buildings is something of another world.

The thing is alive; almost everyone agrees on that, but little they agree on little else. Is it matter? Some gelatinous substance similar to the strange denizens of the underground? Or is it pure energy, somehow thickened and held? If it’s the latter, it’s light with no heat.

In the day, it seems to hide in the skeletons of buildings, perhaps fearing the sun. At night it pours forth and spreads out over whole blocks. Rats and vermin flee it. Living things it touches develop strange tumors or growths. When it first rose, victims caught in its path were left rooted to the spot, transformed into masses of cancer.

The glowing touch of the thing seems to have created at least one mutant species. The wild swine that moved into the city to root and scavenge after the devastation of the war have been changed. They've grown large, and bloated and pale as grubs, with eyes that glow with a paler yellow that the thing. Though they can’t speak, they seem to have evolved an evil intelligence. They roam the streets in herds, seeming to take pleasure in spoiling what remains of the works of man, and looking (though they're hardly picky eaters) for their primary form of sustenance: fungal spores.

The Mushrooms, the swines' unrelenting foes, resent their progency being consumed by the swine with a displeasure that's more cold practicality than horror. These fungal sapients likely lived beneath the city even in previous times (certain legends hint at their presence) but when the humans fled they saw an opportunity. From their inhuman alchemical laboratories they create structures from fungal stock and weaponize molds to strike at the swine and keep humans away.

Looters and treasure seekers make forays into the ruin of Lumière, but it's a dangerous undertaking. Even if the poured-honey creeping of the luminescent thing can be avoided, there are the packs of hungry swine to be outwitted, and the silent and dispassionate Mushroom scientists to be dealt with.

Warlord Wednesday: Hail to the Chief

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...

"Hail to the Chief"

Warlord #84 (August 1984)

Written by Cary Burkett; Penciled by Dan Jurgens; Inked by Dick Giordano.

Synopsis: Having just been told he’s been made president of what’s left of the U.S. in a post-apocalyptic 2303, Travis Morgan responses with the appropriate level of incredulity. The representative of Congress explains that Secretary Dubrow had every other official in line for the office killed. With the president’s suicide, Morgan (as leader of the revolution) is basically the only person everybody trusts.

Morgan doesn’t want the job. He’s a leader of men in battle, not in politicals. Shakira suggests he’s the only one who can do this job, otherwise the fighting will continue. Morgan reluctantly agrees.  He's sworn in in front of cheering crowds.

As soon as that’s done, Morgan goes to his office and he’s set upon by people wanting him to make decisions of various sorts. He quickly gets feed up with it and starts brandishing his sword to clear the room.

In Skartaris, Jennifer Morgan, Ashir, Faaldren, and Tinder are still walking toward Shamballah. They’re attack by a pack of bear-dog things. Since Jennifer hasn’t rested enough to use much magic, they’re forced to hide in a cave. Tinder notices a pair of eyes in the darkness. Soon, a strange stench chases the bear-thing from the opening of the cave—and our heroes out of it! But Tinder isn’t among them.

In the future, Morgan is getting feed up with being President:

He figures his only way out of this is to go back and time and make sure the war never occurs! (Now he thinks of that!) Luckly, he’s got a temporal scientist with him. Reno tells him it's theoretically possible to shift this timeline to an even more remote probability.

Reno reveals that despite his previous statements, there are already completed timeships. They’re kept in an ancient cavern miles beneath Reno’s complex in a military base that has no doubt been in the same sort of time-stasis. Leaving V.P. Duncan in charge, Morgan and Reno fly back to Utah.

After talking with the base's commanders, Morgan and Reno go below. Reno summons the elevator with a key card that looks eerily familiar---like the card that operated the timeship. When they arrive in the cavern, Morgan isn’t surprised to see that it’s the weapons cache he entered from the cave tunnel to New Atlantis!

After hearing Reno’s and Morgan’s story, the commander calls his men together for President Morgan to address them. Morgan’s plan is simple:

Things to Notice:

• Ashir and Jennifer saved by a bad smell.  That's heroic.
• The first concern of Morgan's staff after he's elected president is getting him some more clothes.

Where It Comes From:

This issue finally gives the origin of the mysterious weapons cache and hints at the reason there was a card with Morgan's name on it.  The bear creatures that menace Jennifer Morgan and friends are explicitly said to be giant varieties of Ursavus elmensis, a dog-like bear ancestor native to Europe during the Miocene. The "giant" part is important here, as U. elmensis is thought to have only been the size of a small dog.

Presidents That Would Never Get a Day

I'm off today for (U.S.) Presidents' Day, and I thought it was a good time to recognize a few U.S. Presidents who will never have a day to commemorate them.  Not so much because they're forgettable or non-noteworthy, but mainly because they're fictional--and in some cases evil.

Nelson Rockefeller was a real guy, though on our Earth he never became president.  In the Alternate Earth of Marvel's Squadron Supreme, he becomes an evil president.  Power corrupted Rockefeller--the power of the Serpent Crown, an artifact from ancient Lemuria.

Also on the world of the Squadron Supreme, a former superhero named Kyle Richmond also became president.  Richmond's crimefighting identity was Nighthawk; he was essentially the Batman of his world (I think I'd vote for Batman for president).  Anyway, he eventually got controlled by an alien called Overmind, so his administration couldn't be called a complete success.

In the regular Marvel Universe in the 70s, Captain America uncovered a veritable cancer on the presidency: a president who was also secretly the leader of a criminal organization planning a takeover of the U.S. government.  This president's identity is never revealed in the issue, but his suicide after a confrontation with Captain America leads to his replacement with a double so the public wouldn't know.  Suspiciously, this was all around the time of the Watergate scandal.

The president in the somewhat dystopian future (or was it present?) of Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns looks a lot like Ronald Reagan.  This President wraps himself (literally) in the flag and is unfailingly optimistic while invading Central American nations and ultimately leading the country into nuclear war.

So next time you're tempted to complain about the job a president is doing.  Just think of how bad it could have been.  They can't all be Kyle Richmond or Travis Morgan. Or Prez.

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