INFERNO-LAND!

Beneath the wilds east of the domain of the dwarves, there is a series of caves and grottoes, lit crimson and cast in flickering shadow by ever-burning fires. This subterranean realm is know as Hell.

Hell’s most famous entrance (though there are rumored to be many) is located in a lonely ruin near the sea. It’s accessible through a door in the mouth of statue of a giant head. Near the head is a runic legend that resists translation: “D NTE’   NFEFNO-L N !” The head’s leering and horned visage is said to be in the likeness of Hell’s sardonic ruler. He names himself Mephisto (though he has other names) and appears as a Man of ancient times, save for the small horns on his brow and the ever present flicker of flame in his eyes.

Lord Mephisto is not confined to his domain. He tends to appear when people are at their most desperate to offer a bargain. And a contract. Souls are typically his price and stories say that he doesn’t wait until a person’s death to collect them. Unwise bargainers and those who blunder into Hell unaware find themselves in the clutches of Mephisto and his minions: snickering fiends with crimson skins, horns, and often, batwings. Smiling, they escort captives to one grotto or another and enthusiastically apply some torture or torment.

There have been a lucky few to escape Hell’s clutches. Their tales are difficult to comprehend, even considering the strange nature of the place. They speak of a room full of copies of Mephisto in repose upon slabs and glimpses of ancient devices of Man behind the torture tableaux.

Roll Credits and A Roundtable

With "Team Victory" having completed their first mystery in the City, I figured it was time to give credit to the players and nonplayer's alike:

"THE NIGHT CITY"

A Weird Adventures Mystery

starring:

Tim Shorts as BORIS BROVSKY

Pat Wetmore as "AMAZING" CRESKIN

Chris Sims as DON DIABOLICO

and featuring:

Ann Southern as VIVIANE VANDEMAUR

Joseph Cotten as INDRID BLISS

Lillian Gish as URANIA VANDEMAUR

Angus Scrimm as ZACHERLY GRAVES

Errol Flynn as HEWARD KANE

Cousin Eerie as TOOMBS

Tuesday Weld as Sue Ann Wilde 

Also, last night Erik came in from Wampus Country and Jason managed to shake off the Dust so we could sit down and discuss fantasy America and its use in gaming.  If the three of us talking like experts arouses your interest or your schadenfreude, check out the video at one of their sites linked above.

Where Goblins Come From

When sleeping in isolated villages, it’s prudent to shutter the windows and bar the doors, for goblins hunt the night. They crawl from their underground warrens and scramble forth in a gibbering, mumbling, mob. They overrun farmhouse, manor, and hamlet--and even strike the outskirts of cities--in their search for victims, whom they snatch up and carry back to their lairs.

What do the goblins do with the folk they carry off? It has long be supposed that goblins don't reproduce in the manner of most man-like creatures.  All (or almost all) appear to be of the same sex, and while most goblins are small, scrawny and sickly green, there is an extreme degree of variability in form and features among members of the race.

The subterranean lairs of the goblins are always built within ruins of the time of Man.  There strange machinery--hissing valves and wheezing pumps--surround large pools of viscous liquid. These are the goblin spawning pools.  Their surfaces eddy and bubble and finally erupt with protean goblin life: here a hopping thing with one leg and one arm, there a headless giant (compared to his kin) with a slavering maw in his belly, and between a snickering thing with a goblin’s head on spider’s bloated body.

These neonates crawl from the muck and soon take their place with their fellows, apparently directed to tasks suited to their particular forms by their elders.  Some tend the strange machinery, while others guard their den, but many are assigned to the raid gangs.

The gangs are essential, for the spawning pools need a substrate. Through the working of the machines and the fluid, and a process beyond the kin of anyone in the current age--including the goblins themselves--the unfortunate folk kidnapped are rendered in the pools into the stuff of more goblins.

Gargoyles, Guns, and Money

Last night, "Team Victory" made it to the end of the trail and brought a murderer to brutal, shotgun-blast justice--and made themselves a tidy some in the process.

They confronted Viviane Vandemaur about the murder of her husband over a continental breakfast served in her penthouse suite on the Upper Eldside. She was too tough an egg to crack easy, so they forced her into the pocket dimension bolthole accessible through the palimpsest they stole.

There, she bared her claws and went on the attack.  It took several shotgun blasts and sword cane stabs, but she finally fled through one of the openings in the floor to--well, whatever strange dimension was outside the cube.  Even there she tried to crawl across the outside surface and escape, but Boris was dogged, and Ivanka still had shells.

The thing that called itself Viviane Vandemaur eventually went flying off into otherspace.

Her gargloyle mook demanded the orb that kept him at bay in return for leaving them alone and--uncharacteristically trusting--the guys handed it over, after extracting a promise from the gargoyle to do them a solid at some point in the future.

That done, the gang headed over to Urania Vandemaur’s mansion to collect the bounty on her son’s murderer. They were surprised to find Indrid Bliss there with her.  Under the sharp eye of Urania, and with the other orb to exchange, Indrid filled in some of the missing pieces of the puzzle:  The original Viviane was the cigarette girl in the picture with John Vandemaur, whose identity and likeness his partner (the Viviane they all knew) stole.  Then, she got greedy and tried to steal Vandemaur’s identity (and his fortune) and cut Bliss out all together.  Bliss claimed to have botched the ritual that would have allowed her to steal Vandemaur's identity sufficiently to fool most magics, but she got the jump on him and put him in the coffin.

Bliss wanted the alien glass sphere back in return for this information, and Creskin (against his better judgement) was coaxed into giving it to him by Urania.  Bliss left, and no one was sorry to see him go.

The guys then collected their substantial payment, and left the games of the rich and sorcerous behind--for the moment.

Warlord Wednesday: Devil's Wings

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...

"Devil's Wings"

Warlord #93 (May 1985)

Written by Cary Burkett; Art Ron Randall.

Synopsis: In the windswept Bloodrock Mountains, Old Gris, a grizzled scout for the Husklaar Tribe, sees Lord Sabretooth leading a New Atlantean army through a pass that will take them to the gates of Shamballah.  Old Gris urges his pony to a gallop…

Meanwhile, in the Shamballan camp Morgan spars with one of his troops while Tara looks on in disapproval. She thinks a warlord’s time would be put to better use elsewhere. 

Beneath Fire Mountain, Jennifer’s still “studying” the Evil One’s gem. She asks Ashir to keep an eye on Tinder, as he may not yet be completely free of the gem’s influence. When Ashir asks why she doesn't just destroy it Jennifer has a “Gollum moment” and clutches the gem tightly to her chest. She recovers and says that she hopes to find a way to control the gems power. Ashir leaves with a worried look on his face.

Old Gris arrives at Warlord’s camp. “Tempering his salty language only slightly in deference to the Queen” he tells her war council what he saw:

If Sabretooth can join his forces with those already in Shamballah, the change of Morgan and his friends retaking the city will evaporate. They need a diversion to keep Sabretooth’s force from reaching the city until the Shamballan insurgents are ready to march.  Morgan and Trogero will lead a small force to try to delay the Atlanteans.

Far to the South, at the mouth of the Ramphos, Morgan has left a contigent of men encamped, awaiting Captain Hawk’s arrival with freed slaves.  Swift and deadly, the hooded Vashek assassins overrun the camp. They plan to set a trap.

Elsewhere, Sabretooth’s scouts find the trail of a group of men on horseback. They lead to what appears to be an encampment—flying the Warlord’s banner! Sabretooth can’t believe his luck.  He sounds the charge—and his troops charge right into Morgan’s trap.

In the battle that follows, Morgan and Sabretooth grimly strive to work their way toward each other, but when Old Gris calls out that the rest of Sabretooth’s army has arrived, Morgan and his raiders beat a retreat.

Morgan and crew come to a fork in a canyon pass. The left trail is the safe way through; the right leads to Devilwing Canyon. Morgan decides that they will go left, but first sweep the entrance to the right as if they were trying to cover tracks. My Sabretooth arrives he falls for Morgan’s ruse and soon:

Sabretooth tries to lead the tatters of army out of the canyon, only to have rocks rained on them courtesy of Morgan and his men. Morgan also suggests to Sabretooh that his camp is somewhere in the mountains: a lie. 

The enraged devilwings force the Shamballans to retreat, as well, so they’re unable to finish the Atlanteans off.  Morgan charges Old Gris with hanging around and leaving false trails and the like to further confuse Sabretooth.

Back near the Shamballan camp, Tara removes her sword and armlet to take a dip in the river. Tinder and Chakka see the armlet, the one that Tinder views as his—and ironically it is, but also it’s an unrecognized link to his true parents, Morgan and Tara. Tinder considers taking it but he doesn’t want to hurt the Queen. He hesitates.

When Tara emerges returns from her swim, she finds the armlet, her momento of the son she believes dead, gone.

Things to Notice:

• The New Atlantean Hell apparently has sixteen layers.
• To Ashir, "keeping an eye" on Tinder involves teaching him to pick padlocks.

Where It Comes From:
The corrupting power of the Evil One's gem was probably inspired by the One Ring in Lord of the Rings or maybe from Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The tribe of Husklaars probably owe their name to the term huscarl, referring to personal troops or bodyguards. Gris is the French and Low German word for "gray."

WaRPing Weird Adventures

I didn't rush to download any 5e playtest documents this last week, but I did download the WaRP system rules released by Atlas Games the week before under the OGL.WaRP stands for "Wanton Role-Playing," but what it is is the basic system used in Over the Edge. New OGL systems tend to pique my interest, so I thought it might be fun to try for a Weird Adventures game.

I got together the Sunday before last with most of the potential players for character creation. Despite the fairly "rules lite" nature of the system, it still took the players a bit of time to come up with concepts and traits. Being able to do just about anything can some times be as paralyzing as having too many skill or feat options to pour over.

Ultimately, a fairly interesting party began to take shape.  We've got a Yianese professor of arcane antiquities and amateur sleuth, a hoodoo woman, a former professional assassin, an international thief for hire, and an enigmatic woman who can change into a cat (or is that vice versa?). A disparate group, for sure, but hey--the City's a melting pot. It looks like it's going to be an interesting game.

Dustbowl Gothic

Fantasies set in a 1930s sort of setting are pretty rare, so when I heard about Robert Jackson Bennett's Mr. Shivers it piqued my interest. The titular Mr. Shivers is a scar-faced murder roaming Depression era America, a boogie-man among hobos and itinerants--and perhaps a supernatural entity.  The novel tells the story of group of disparate individuals, their lives destroyed by an encounter with Shivers, who set out on the road to find him and bring him to justice.

Bennett's prose is probably most reminiscent of Stephen King.  The view it presents of the American Dustbowl touched by creepy horror recalls HBO's Carnivale.  Still, the tale it tells is its own and is engaging in a gritty, pulpy sort of way.  Bennett sometimes tends to have the characters give a little more exposition about the facts of the Dustbowl or the Great Depression than seems realistic, but this is a minor complaint.

The novel would certainly make good inspiration for a Depression era horror or dark fantasy campaign.