Spirit of the Season

In the City, it's the month of Redfall and Revenant Night approaches.  Read all about it in this classic post.  While you're dipping into the FtSS vaults, you might want to refresh you memory on the Red Dwarf of Motorton, whose powers seem increased on that night.

Monstrous Monday: Jumpin' Jack

He attacked women in the night in the streets of Victorian London, slashing them with knives or claws. He was said to be of hideous, inhuman appearance and able to make superhuman leaps and even breath fire.  Like that other guy a half-century later, he was christened "Jack."  Spring-heeled Jack.

Beneath a black cloak, Spring-heeled Jack wears a slick outfit like an oilskin (or maybe latex or some alien material?) and a helmet. He's said to have eyes like balls of fire and a diabolic countenance. His hands end in metallic claws. Unlike the latter day Jack, the Spring-Heeled gent seems more interested in causing fear than murder. He slashes victims' clothes, claws at them, then bounds away, disappearing to the night.

Read more about his exploits here.

Spring-Heeled Jack 
AC 4  HD 4  #Attacks: 1 claw +1 to hit (2d4) or breath  Special: Fearful Countenance: as per fear spell on a failed save; Leaping: can jump 20 ft. vertically or horizontally; Fire-breathing: 10 ft. cone, 2d6 fire dmg. (save for half) once every 1d4 rounds.

Follow the links below for more MONSTROUS Monday!

Monster Mashup

Classic monsters have uses beyond horror (or horror-themed) games. A number of monstrous crossovers in other media show how they can rear their ugly heads in games of other genres.

The astute Marvel reader may be aware that Solomon Kane fought Dracula (Though don't go looking for those stories in any of Marvel's Essential collections. I hear it's in the Dracula Omnibus, though ), but fewer may be aware that Dracula faced Zorro in Old California in a 1993 limited series from Topps. Frankenstein's monster gets around, too.  He encounters Tarzan in a 1996 Dark Horse limited when jungle lord tries to prevent Thomas Edison from recreating Victor von Frankenstein's experiment. (The collection Tarzan: Le Monstre also includes encounters with the Phantom of the Opera and Jekyll and Hyde).

Wold-Newton afficiandos among you that the pulp hero G-8 is rumored to be one of the pilots that took down King Kong. In "After King Kong Fell" Philip J. Farmer suggests that Doc Savage and the Shadow were hanging around that day, too.

Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series is an alternate history where the protagonists fail to defeat Dracula like they did in Bram Stoker's novel, and the count's villainous real estate scheme leads to a vampiric takeover of the British Empire.  The series goes from the 1888 to the 1980s.  Here's a free sample chronicling the vampiric 70s, with a lot of cameos from the likes of Travis Bickle, Shaft and Blade: "Andy Warhol's Dracula."

The monsters needn't be the villains. "Black as Pitch, from Pole to Pole" by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley takes Frankenstein's monster into Pellucidar. Neil Gaiman's short-story and comic book serial Only the End of the World Again puts Larry (the Wolf Man) Talbot in Innsmouth and pits him against Deep One cultists.

You get the idea. So check out some of these great sources of inspiration in time for Halloween.  Also, take a look at this previous post for more pulpy appearances of classic monsters.

Books That Put the Weird in the West

Here's two book recommendations that bring a little bit of the fantastic into an Old West (or old west type) setting:

I've recommended some of Cherie Priest's work in this vein before--both the Steampunkian Boneshaker and the more horrific historical Those Who Went Remain There Still. Dreadful Skin reminds me more of the latter, though what it reminds me of most is Lansdale's Dead in the West or Collins'  Dead Mans Hand. It's a set of linked short-stories about a former nun pursuing a supernatural menace across Post-Civil War America. It's episodic and none of the stories builds to a climax in quite the way I would have liked, but it's a quick and entertaining read with some nice set pieces: the first story is a cat and mouse game with a werewolf aboard a steamboat trapped by a storm mid-river.

Felix Gilman's "Lightbringers and Rainmakers" is a a free story at Tor.com set in the Western-ish secondary world of his novel The Half-Made World (which I recommended here) and the upcoming sequel The Rise of Ransom City. In brief, a frontier is being made from the more malleable reality of the wilderness, and humanity is caught between two opposing forces: the technologically more advanced, oppressive order of the Line and the violent chaos represented by the Gun. The short story weaves an epistolary tale of frontier towns and confidence hucksters in the rich world Gilman has built.

New Flavors of Frankenstein

I’ve got Frankenstein on the brain after catching TCM’s Frankenstein Double Feature last night. Anybody who has read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein knows the literary monster is pretty different from (most) cinematic and comic book versions.  Why should we be limited to just mute and misunderstood or articulate and angry in our rpgs, though?  What other creatures can some alternate Victor Frankenstein bring to life?

Movie Frankenstein's monster is often a lumbering and destructive brute--and often misunderstood.  He reminds me a bit of King Kong in all except size.  Scale him up, and you’ve got a kaiju. The Japanese have already done that for us, but hey, we don’t necessarily have to use their version. (Actually, Toho got the idea from an aborted Willis O'Brien project with King Kong.) Now Victor’s got an even better reason not to make him a bride!

Or maybe something less monstrous? A gold-skinned artificial man created by scientists playing God would also describe Marvel’s Adam Warlock (originally known as HIm). Maybe their creation is actually mankind’s natural successor.  Gotta make way for the homo superior, as Bowie would have it. This artificial ubermensch and his bride (and progeny) might choose to save the world that hates and fears them, or maybe (in the words of Victor Frankenstein) they’re  a “race of devils…propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”

Vampire Hunter D heads straight from Dracula into the post-apocalypse (and in an interesting twist, Mary Shelley did write an end of the world novel, The Last Man), so why not Frankenstein? Maybe the monster is a gunman dispensing justice in a post-apocalyptic waste haunted by mutants as ugly as him, or maybe the world is overrun zombie apocalypse-style by monstrosities created by a monster following in the footsteps of his mad scientist creator? Either the future might be pretty grim.

Warlock Wednesday

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Warlord Wednesday for special guest column by Jim Shelley of the Flashback Universe Blog.  Here's Warlock Wednesday:

I've often felt that Jim Starlin's comic book stories had elements in them that made them feel like a role-playing game. I'm sure it's just common inspirations or coincidence  but it's there. The Adam Warlock story "Death Ship" (Strange Tales #179, 1975) is a great example.

The issue starts with Warlock recapping the previous issue (wherein his failure to protect a beautiful damsel in distress leads him to vow vengeance on her killers, the feared Universal Church of Truth.) His quest has brought him to a huge slave ship.

It turns out to be much like star-faring dungeon.

Warlock, like a lot of adventurers, doesn't really have a strategy: he just attacks the ship head on. This of course results in his capture. When he wakes up, he is brought before Captain Autolycus, the commander of the Death Ship.

Autolycus is a name taken from Greek mythology, meaning "The wolf itself." Starlin just probably thought it sounded cool. By the name and rank, it's clear that the Captain is the Ship's boss so expect him and Adam to face off before the end of the issue.

After the meeting, Warlock is thrown into one of the ship's holding cells where he meets a bizarre assortment of alien slaves. As the creatures explain their plight to Warlock, Starlin employs a rather clever layout trick to present this portion of the narrative:

This split screen design isn't something normally used comics, but you will find it employed quite a bit in another medium: rpg monster or character write-ups.

Warlock is next introduced to a character who definitely gives the story an rpg feel: Pip The Troll. Now, aside from Pip's resemble to a mythological creature (which is in itself suggestive of his origins), he's a comic sidekick like Sancho Panza or Planchet.  In other words, an entertaining henchman. Pip quickly becomes a welcomed addition to the Adam's entourage.

Pip tries to persuade Warlock to lead a revolt on the ship, but he refuses (but not before recounting a rather hippy-ish parable on the corrupting nature of power.) However, Warlock finally agrees to help them with their uprising (just not lead it) and with that, he's off to spend the next 3 pages attacking the ships guards. To be honest, I'm not sure how this is any less "Dark Force-y" than taking a temporary leadership role, but let's not quibble as it results in this amazing 17(!) panel sequence by Starlin:

So Warlock makes his way through the various "levels" of the ship. He eventually comes face to face with the Autolycus (we all knew it was coming down to this didn't we?), leading to the issue's final battle. Fortunately for Warlock, Autolycus is gracious enough to tell our hero all his stats and abilities before the fighting begins:

Warlock is outmatched by the Captain and spends the next couple of pages getting his golden ass handed to him. Right as Autolycus is about to deliver his death blow, a strange thing happens. The gem in Adam's forehead suddenly seems to come alive and sucks out Autolycus's soul.

That's right. The artifact that the character had, but didn't really know what it did, somehow was integral to solving the adventure. This bit of deus ex machina might reflect on Starlin as a storyteller.  It also might or might not tell us something about what sort of DM he would be.

From here, Warlock leaves with Pip the Troll to continue his quest to defeat the leader of the Universal Church of Truth, the Magus. As the saga progresses, his "party" will be joined by an evil wizard Thanos and a sexy assassin Gamora, but that's a tale for another "session" of Warlock Wednesday.

Automata for the People

In the City today, automata are mostly in the hands of the rich, but the proponents of the technology hope that one day they will be labor-saving devices for all humanity. Since automata have been a focus of our current G+ Weird Adventures game, I though it might be a good time to talk about them a bit here.

The history of automata goes back to the golems and clockwork curiosities of antiquity. When golems relied on an animating spirit to make them move, clockwork devices were often given life by strictly mechanical properties. Modern automata engineering borrows from both these practices. Automata have mechanic joints and internal machinery to give them a wider range of applications but often rely on a vitalizing element like golems.

Theoretical advances over the past thirty years have allowed vast improvements in powering automata.  While the Steam Men of half a century ago were dependent on boilers full of coal, and the clockwork animals of Ealderdish imperial courts had springs that needed winding, the modern marvels of Mikola Donander and Hew Hazzard often utilize power broadcast through the air. So far this broadcast power is short-ranged and possibly susceptible to thaumaturgic blocking, but in the future, whole cities might run on it.

Even more advanced automata harness the power of the sun itself.  Tiny sparks of pure alchemical fire, generated in heavily shielded atomic athanors, allowed the primal force of creation to be used as a power source--and perhaps a "seed" for the germination of a living soul. The City's protector, the Titan, is the only automata known to be powered in such a way, but the future of this technology is truly limitless.