The Penitents

They often call themselves “Penitents,” though the rest of the Strange Stars know them as Deodands—if not some other slur. By whatever name, they are a people viewed as cursed and bringers bad luck. They’re marked by their peculiar coloration: white on one side and black on the other, with a sharp division in between. A few try to hide it, but most accept it as a sign of their crimes as a people.

Deodands are believed to have been a prosperous people at the time of the Great Collapse. They were kept safe through the years of crisis that followed by a godlike posthuman mind. At some point, the people that would be the deodands commited some great crime against their god. They were punished with their unusual appearance, but also with a peculiar form of immortality. Any time a deodand dies, a nanomod in their bodies sends a signal via quantum entanglement to some hidden body bank. A copy of the dead person’s mind is downloaded into a new body, which is delivered back to the deodands' home station via a casket-like, adamantine, life support pod falling from a small hyperspace node. Whatever a deodand may accomplish in life, death causes him or her to start over as a naked beggar on streets of their decaying habitat. They remember only that they have lived previously, but only the barest details of their past lives.

While a few may come to view this immortality in a positive light, most do not. A few have tried to find a way to cheat resurrection, but things only seem to prolong the time to resurrection rather than preventing it. Attempts to remove the nanomods only lead to the deodands death. Deodands are incapable of having biological children, and few try any other method.

Each deodand handles their curse differently. Some become extremely repentant and join ascetic or flagellate cults. Others revel in debauchery (the better to show their sinfulness and guilt) and become sybarites or criminals. Most live marginal lives of poverty and substance abuse in their native habitat or elsewhere. None of these groups contribute anything positive to the reputation of their people among other culture.

The few wealthy deodands would pay almost anything to someone willing to end their curse buy finding the source of their unwanted resurrection and shutting it down.

Warlord Wednesday: The Queen is Dead!

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...

"The Queen is Dead! Long Live The Queen!"

Warlord #126 (February 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Pencils by Jan Duursema, Inks by Tom Mandrake

Synopsis: Machiste, Jennifer, and above all Morgan, grieve Tara’s death, while (in her lair) the evil Khnathaiti laughs. Tara really isn’t dead, merely soulless and in the sorcereress’s thrall. Soon, she will rise and be the plaything of the Scavenger of Souls.

The Scavenger sneaks into Tara’s pyramid tomb:

Meanwhile in Siberia, Mariah is being interrogated by the KGB. They know who she is and how she disappeared at Machu Picchu. They think she’s a CIA spy. Ultimately, she’s dragged off by guards to be “disposed of.”

In Kiro, Tara walks through a barracks full of sleeping guardsmen, stealing their souls as she goes. The soldiers rise and follow here. She enters the kings chamber and awakens Machiste, who at first thinks he’s dreaming. The Scavenger forbids her from taking the king’s soul: He wants it for his own. He grabs Machiste by the throat and begins sapping his soul away. Machiste doesn’t go down that easy:

Machiste tells them both to get the hell out before he gets really angry. They slink away with the souls they have, warning that their mistress’s day is coming.

Sometime later, Machiste bursts into Morgan’s chamber and tells him he’s seen Tara alive. Morgan doesn’t believe it, until Machiste mentions the Scavenger. Morgan, Machiste, and Jennifer go to the cave beneath the volcano. Jennifer leads them through the cave to find:

Our heroes attack Khnathaiti’s thralls. Morgan makes his way to Tara, but she struggles against him and he can’t get her away.Morgan fights with the Scavenger, but the villain gets the better of him. Hearing her mate’s name and seeing him close to death somehow frees Tara from evil’s control. Before the Scavenger can strike the killing blow against Morgan, she attacks. The Scavenger throws her aside and she falls from height. Morgan strikes off the Scavenger’s head with his sword.

With the Scavenger dead, Khnathaiti looses the power she infused in him, she flees. Our heroes are victorious, but at what cost?

Despite appearances, Tara (still) isn’t dead—but Jennifer keeps the truth from her father. Khnathaiti still has Tara’s soul, so she is in a state between life and death. Jennifer could restore her, but only to a state of “unlife” and torment. Jennifer entombs her body with protective spells, hoping that she can find a way, someday, to restore her fully.

Things to Notice:

• The flashback to the events of First Issue Special #8 shows Morgan with the goattee he didn't have at the time he first met Tara.
• The cover of this issue is very 80s.

Where It Comes From:
Mariah's Russian captors make reference to events of her first appearance way back in Warlord #6. Government agents thinking she's a spy mirrors Travis Morgan's ecperiences with his own government on two different occasions.

Labyrinths of Shadow

The planet Tenebrae in the Zuran Expanse lives up to its name. In the gloom beneath perpetually darkened skies, the all but lifeless wastes hold the ruins of two civilizations  These ruins draw treasure seekers and archaeologists, but they don’t easily give up their secrets.

Tenebrae was a terraformed world and once home to thousands of colonists. A few large surface craters suggest this civilization was destroyed by meteor impacts and the nuclear winter that followed. This is believed to have been a purposeful assault rather than chance encounters. Most life above the unicellular level was destroyed.

Sometime later, the enigmatic zurr arrived. As on every other world with a zurr presence, only what appear to be ritual sites have been found: Three labyrinthine structures the size of small cities are evenly spaced along the equator. They’re made of a rock-like material with the appearance of basalt not found elsewhere on the planet.

Artifacts are found within the labyrinths, seemingly at random: small, nonrepresentational sculptures, pieces of the elaborate ceramic masks the zurr seem to wear (seen in the holographic images with the appearance of mid-reliefs embedded in the walls), and oddly, personal items the previous human civilization the zurr or someone else must have excavated from older ruins.

These trinkets can bring a few credits in the right markets, but the most valuable of the Tenebraean artifacts are the obsidian pentachorons. These items (or perhaps their 3 dimensional shadows) are found ensconced in rare alcoves in the walls of the labyrinths, where they have the appearance of glassy, black pyramids. When held by a sapient being the pyramid takes on the appearance of a 4-dimensional solid rotating through 3-dimensional space. The rate of rotation of a pentachoron changes in the presence of a hyperspatial node. Psi sensitive individuals holding a pentachoron hear a multitude of whispering voices. The objects are resistant to damage, but they can be destroyed—though only utterly. No one has ever succeeded in fragmenting or shattering one.

The pentachorons and the other treasures are zealously guarded by short humanoids called “skulkers.” Little is known about them, except that they appear to inhabit subterranean warrens beneath the labyrinths, they shun bright lights, and they are utterly hostile to other species.

Harryhausen

Gamers & Grognards suggested a blogfest in honor of Ray Harryhausen's passage. I didn't figure I could do much better than this post I wrote back in 2010:

"Swords & Stop-Motion"

Enjoy.

Aliens to Know and Fear

I keep thinking I'm going to stat these guys, but I haven't got around to it yet, so I figured it was time to share. I don't know the original artist or source, but this should prove a handy reference for "real world" close encounters. You can't tell the players without a scorecard.

1. Roswell, 1947. As described by Beverly Bean, who reportedly had the bodies described to her by her father who had guarded them: "He said they were smaller than a normal man--about four feet--and had much larger heads than us, with slanted eyes, and that the bodies looked yellowish, a bit Asian-looking."
2. Valensole, 1965. Maurice Masse a French "agriculturalist" saw a spaceship and these guys
3. Villa Santina, 1947. An Italian artist was able to sketch his close encounter.
4. Salzburg, 1957. A soldier in the U.S. Army supposedly described these guys to a Canadian newspaper.
5. California, 1952. Orthon of Venus gave a message to George Adamski about nuclear energy.
6. São Francisco de Sales, 1957. Antonio Vilas Boas was abducted by these smartly uniformed guys who took him to have sex with an alien babe.
7. Voronezh, 1989. Robotic alien shows up in Russia to hassle teenagers as witnesses look on.
8. Aveley, 1974. Weird aliens abduct a whole family.
9. Pascagoula, 1973. Carrot alien. Only in Mississippi.
10. Caracas, 1954. He had a sphere motif going on.
11. Greensburg, 1973. Bigfoot-UFO team-up.
12. Kelly, 1955. Better known as the Hopkinsville Goblin Case--which I have statted.
13. And the Chupacabra needs no introduction.

Warlord Wednesday: Queen's Requiem

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...

"Queen's Requiem"

Warlord #125 (January 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Pencils by Jan Duursema, Inks by Tom Mandrake

Synopsis: The Shamballan survivors of the volcanic eruption numbly work to bury their dead. A cloaked figure arrives to add to their misery: the newly made Scavenger of Souls. Morgan rides up and catches him crouching over one of the dying. Morgan recognizes him and they scuffle. His barest touch on Morgan’s bare arm paralyzes it, allowing him to escape. Morgan realizes if he hadn’t pulled himself free, the touch would have killed him.

In the palace, Jennifer shares what’s she’s learned about recent events with Tara. The volcano eruption and the eclipse aren’t separate events, but harbingers of a doom that threatens the world. Jennifer has discovered an evil lurking in a cave beneath the volcano. Tara says she’ll go check it out. Jennifer suggests maybe she should wait for Morgan, but Tara sets her straight:

Jennifer gives her the magic talisman given to Morgan by V'Zarr Hagar-Zinn (is issue #114).

In that cave, the Scavenger has returned to his mistress and is regurgitating the souls he collected for her nourishment. Khnathaiti tells him her origin story: how she ruled over Mu, sucking souls, until all their greatest wizards teamed up and imprisoned her in the sarcophagus. The Scavenger isn’t paying a lot of attention as he’s watching Tara approach in the scrying pool, and drooling over her. Khnathaiti tells him he can have Tara’s body—as long as she gets Tara’s soul.

Elsewhere in Skartaris, Mariah, wandering in the wilderness, enters a cave to rest and winds up walking through to Siberia. She sees Soviet soldiers setting up a satellite dish. When a pteranodon flies past her through the cave and attacks. Mariah jumps out to help them. She repaid for her heroism by getting taken captive to be taken to the KGB.

Morgan, still feeling drained by the Scavenger’s attack collapses into bed. Shakira in cat form comes out of hiding to curl up beside him. While he sleeps, Tara enters the cave.

She encounters the last remaining lackey of Khnathaiti. A ring she’s wearing seems to drive him away, but then, the Scavenger appears. She strikes at him with her blade, but he is unaffected by mortal weapons:

Meanwhile, the dead rise in the Shamballan streets. They began shambling toward the volcano—and the cave.

Morgan wakes up. He feels a presence in the bedchamber--and he’s barely able to dodge the cloaked figure’s sword slash! Morgan pulls his own sword, but his only holding his own against his attacker. In a last ditch effort to avoid a descending blade, he flips the figure off a balcony—and see’s it’s Tara!

Things to Notice:

• Duursema has eveybody suddenly with exuberant Bon Jovi-esque hair.
• You would think Jennifer (as supreme Skartarian sorceress) might get more involved in fighting a magical menace.

Where It Comes From:
As she tells the Soviet soldiers in this issue, Mariah Romanova is indeed a citizen of the U.S.S.R. (and former national fencing champion!). It isn't something that has come up a lot since the seventies Grell issues. Morgan too emerged from Skartaris into Soviet territory (back in issue #52), though he didn't use a cave.

At this point in the history of the title, DC Comics editorial policy is that Skartaris is in a separate dimension accessible via the Poles, rather than an inner earth.

Mountain Lair Map

Remember back in the early days of the "War on Terror" when bin Laden was suppose to have a cool super-villain (or orc chieftain, what have you) lair beneath a mountain in a cave complex called Tora Bora ("Black Cave" in Pashto, which only adds to the mystique)? Turns out that wasn't true, but in the those days of fevered speculation, the Times of London produced this cool cross-section:

Obviously, you could put some sort of terrorist mastermind there, but it could also double as the sanctum of Cthulhu cultists or goblins, or whatever. Reality's loss is your game's gain!