Warlord Wednesday: Dragon Doom

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...

"Dragon Doom"

Warlord #95 (July 1985)

Written by Cary Burkett; Art by Adam Kubert.

Synopsis: At the end of last issue, Morgan and Shakira were caught between a cliff overlooking a waterfall and a band of Vashek assassins! An assassin jumps from above and accidentally knocks them all over the edge.  They plunge into the deep water below.  Only Morgan and Shakira come up.

As soon as they’re back on dry land, Morgan is off after Hawk.  The pirate drugged them and took off with the Princess Hooranami and her slave—and also stole Morgan’s helmet.  The two come across a dead tyrannosaur, which puzzles Morgan because he wonders what could have killed it.  There are cloven-hoofed tracks around it of unknown origin.  They don’t have too long to consider this mystery as a hungry pack of hyenadons show up, making a hasty exit wise.

Far away in the Shamballan camp, Ashir is looking for Tinder, whom he suspects of stealing his lockpick. When Jennifer tells him that the Evil One’s gem has been stolen from the locked chest, they’re both certain that Tinder is possessed by that ancient evil.

Back on the island, Hawk is walking along, bantering with the haughty princess, when Morgan’s helmet is lifted off his head. He looks up to find Morgan pointing a sword right at his eye. Morgan figures it’s high time the two had that duel to see who’s the better swordsman, but…

The odds aren’t in our heroes’ favor, though. The Vasheks are too numerous. Unfortunately, the princess and her old slave are too slow and would get caught if they tried to run for it.  There are no good options.

A horn sounds. The cavalry arrives—literally.

The Vasheks are tough, but in the end they’re outmatched. As soon as the battles over, the princess tells the knights that Morgan and crew kidnapped her from the palace. Luckily, Odanak backs up the true story. Khord, leader of the knights, decides to take them all to Lord Kaldustan, Hooranami’s father.

Kaldustan knows his daughter well.  He proclaims Morgan and the others honored guests and offers them great rewards. He offers Hawk and Morgan both a pair of tricorns. When Hawk refuses (he wants money), he gives both pairs to Morgan, and lets Hawk take some diamonds from the treasure room.

Morgan tells Kaldustan of the war he’s fighting. The island lord is willing to help, but the sea monster traps them on the island. Morgan offers to kill it in exchange for the help of Kaldustan and his knights.

But how to kill it? It has scales too tough for any blade. Morgan’s got a plan.  He builds a giant crossbow that can be mounted on a ship and constructs a giant bolt with a diamond point to shoot from it.

The promise of more riches gets him Hawks help, and the two sail out to slay the monster. All doesn’t go as planned when it comes up behind them and smashes the crossbow with its tail.

Morgan will have to improvise. He snatches up the diamond-headed spear…

Kaldustan gives them more diamonds in gratitude and pledges his support of Morgan’s cause.

Morgan makes the exchange with Hawk for the former slaves.  As the pirate captain sails away, Shakira notices he’s stolen of the chest of diamonds Kaldustan gave Morgan.

Things to Notice:

• Everyone one but Hooronami and Odanak seem stereotypic comic book golden-skinned Asians. Why are those two different?
• The island is pretty large to be unknown to mainland Skartarians.  It certainly has quite a bit of megafauna on it.

Where It Comes From:
The tricorns have goat-like cloven hooves and goatees like the classical image of the unicorn.

The cultural of the island is clearly intended to reflect cultures of East Asia. It's the first time we've seen this in the Warlord saga. The names (with a few exceptions) don't tend to go along with the Chinese/Japanese mashup of the material culture.

The Slime Emotional Spectrum

If power rings can come full spectrum, so can slimes.  Let's run the list:

Red: The color of blood, these slimes are drawn to violence or displays of anger. They show up just after battles to absorb victor and victim alike. As they dissolve prey, their color deepens.
Orange: In some ways, these slimes (which have the look and consistency of pulped oranges) are the most sinister. Drawn to cheerful moods, they wait to take adventurers leaving dungeons after successful delves. Chemicals in their substance cause uncontrollable laughter in those they attack.
Yellow: Timid in their movements, these slimes feed off cowardice and fear. Fleeing adventures or monsters will draw their attention.
Green: Greed and avarice bring this species oozing out of the darkness. They tend to lie in wait around treasure troves.
Blue: Sadness and depression are the lures for these. They tend to try to trap creatures in a room for which there is no escape. They move in slowly, seeming to savior the despair as it builds.
Indigo: More rarefied in their appetites than others (if a slime can be said to be rarifed) these slime seek to absorb magic-users and others seeking transcedence through knowledge. Magic tomes and ancient inscriptions draw them. They may wait quiescent for years for a victim in the right mindset.
Violet: These slime do something positive on their own perverse way.  As they flow over victims they bring calm and soothe negative emotions.  This is no doubt a solace to the person so consumed.

WaRPed D&D

Getting ready for this afternoon's Weird Adventures game using the WaRP system (the OGL rules set derived from Over the Edge, just in case you haven't heard) got me to thinking about how WaRP and D&D could be hybridized, at least partially. Why would anyone want to? Well, because they're there.  More seriously, because I wonder if D&D with a more freeform style character creation system would still work pretty much like D&D?

And I saw somebody do it with Tunnels & Trolls, which gave me the initial idea.

Anyway, characters in WaRP are defined by three traits and a flaw.One of these traits is a central trait (i.e.more central to the character concept), and the other two are side traits. These are freeform and player-defined with GM input. These traits are all related to dice pools, where their rating is the number of dice used.

You could adapt this to D&D by having the central trait be character class (or race/class, if you like). You could do these strictly D&D , so player's just choose from a list, or freeform (within reason) defining new classes would be relatively easy, so long as their abilities could be analogized to old classes. Now, instead of dice pools, for D&D you would just use bonuses.  Maybe the central trait isn't associated with a bonus, or maybe it gives a +1 to abilities related to your class (to hit for fighter, spell slot for magic-users, rolling for some thief-y thing for thieves--whatever).

The side traits could handle special character defining abilities, but could also take the place of ability scores. Ability scoreless D&D has been discussed before since they don't do much in OD&D besides (at best) provide a bonus for a limited number of specific situations. You could define these two side traits as one for "physical" and one for "psychic/social." So a player could be "strong" or "quick" for the former and "learned" or "natural leader" for the latter with an associated bonus (+1, +2, or whatever depending on the edition of D&D your working with). Of course, they could stay completely open too. Any ability coming into play where one didn't have a bonus from a trait would just be the equivalent of an average, bonusless "10."

Flaws would work like the side trait except in reverse: "clumsy"or "frail," for instance.  Or, it could be a freeform trait.

Random generation of characters is part of what a lot of people enjoy about D&D, but you could do that here, too.  Just make a chart of side traits with appropriate bonuses, and flaws with appropriate penalties, and have the players' role.

Cool Maps, Weird World

I've talked about Marvel's fantasy series Weirdworld before. If you missed it, go read that post.  I'll wait.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a couple of maps that appeared in the saga:

This one's the same thing, but with some locales noted:

Ferris Wheel, Longship, and A Dinosaur Graveyard

You might have seen Berlin's derelict Spreepark in the film Hanna or in photos on the internet. In any case, it seems like it would make a great setting for an adventure.  Post-apocalyptic gaming comes immediately to mind, but it wouldn't take much imagining to turn it into some wizard's bizarre garden in a fantasy game.

To make that easier, here's a map:

Here's the Dragon-prowed longship:

And the swan boats:

How do these things fit together? You decide.

Warlord Wednesday: Assassin's Prey

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...

"Assassin's Prey"

Warlord #94 (June 1985)

Written by Cary Burkett; Art by Mike Chen.

Synopsis: Morgan has barely returned to the camp, when he’s leaving again to go meet the pirate, Captain Hawk. Shakira decides to tag along.

When the two reach the camp at the mount of the Ramphos River they find an ambush by Vashek assassin’s waiting:

Morgan’s gun and Shakira’s transformation give them the element of surprise, and they’re able to make a break for it. The assassin’s catch don't let them get far, though. The Vashek are deadly warriors, but they’ve pissed off the Warlord and he goes all berserker on them. Cutting his way to Shakira, he throws her over his shoulder and scrambles up a tree—then starts doing his Tarzan imitation carrying an unconscious woman! The Vashek assassins can’t keep up, or are too stunned to.

Morgan’s luck runs out when a branch breaks in his hand. He falls to the forest floor and is knocked unconscious.

Back in the camp, Tara is lonely and sad over the loss of the armlet Morgan gave her. She’s looking for someone to talk to and sees Graemore, but she knows she needs to stay away from her former lover.

Meanwhile, Ashir continues to “watch out” for Tinder by teaching him lockpicking skills. After the lesson, Ashir puts the pick he was letting Tinder use back in its hiding place under his belt.

Morgan and Shakira wake up to find themselves surrounded by Hawk and a group of his pirates. Hawk starts to extort more money from the Warlord, but they’ve both got another enemy. The Vashek assassins attack. Outnumbered badly, Hawk, Morgan, and Shakira make a run for Hawk’s boat on the shore. They escape the assassins and have a moment for Hawk and Morgan to try star each other down again:

Then, an orange sea reptile attacks and overturns the boat. All the men are killed but Morgan and Shakira are able to swim to a nearby barge—where Hawk has already hauled himself aboard and has his sword point at the throat of an old man in a loincloth.

The barge belongs to a Princess Hooranami who gets all imperious and demanding with them until Shakira knocks her on her ass. The old man suggests they should sail back to the island of Kasamaga. Hooranami ran away against her father’s wishes. The people of the isle are forbidden from crossing to the mainland due to the danger of the monster.

Meanwhile, the Vashek assassin’s haven’t given up. They climb a cliff to use the Dakoth-Shurka Technique—which means building hang-gliders to fly over the head of the monster.

Back at Fire Mountain, Ashir goes looking for Jennifer and finds her staring at the Evil One’s gem looking all evil and possessed. She turns her him and she says: “I’ll fry you to a patch of stinking grease,” but then she manages to shake free. Despite what just happened, Jennifer is still mainly concerned that the gem will corrupt Tinder. He won’t be able to resist its narcotic like effect. Ashir again suggests she destroy it, and she says she will after a rest. As Ashir leaves, he notices his lockpick is missing from it's hiding place.

Back on the island, Shakira has left the others to hunt and falls asleep in the sun after her meal. Hawk gives Morgan some drugged soup and Morgan is out, too. They awaken to the Vashek assassins bearing down on them—and a precipice at their only route of escape!

Things to Notice:

• It seems odd that our heroes aren't familiar with Kasamaga island when it's so close to an area they do seem familiar with.
• Attention to detail is important: the very modern looking padlock on the box where Jennifer keeps the Evil One's gem has a bat on it.

Where It Comes From:
The orange (a common color for prehistoric monsters in Skartaris) sea creature looks sort of like a mosasaur.

Given the Japanese-evoking names of Kasamaga and Hooranami, the loincloth clad elder Odanak probably derives his name from Oda Nobunaga.

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.