The Alliance

The Alliance is unique in the Strange Stars in representing interspecies cooperation on an interstellar scale. It was formed by seven peoples displaced by the Great Collapse. Initially distrustful of each other, they came to fear the lawlessness of the Zuran Expanse and religious strife in the center of the Radiant Polity more than sacrificing a bit of their own sovereignty.

Previously, we've touched on the smaragdines, the blesh and the gnomes.  Here's an overview of the other Alliance members:

The hyehoon are humanoids spliced from avian and hominid DNA. They have lighter frames than humans, but are strong for their weight. Hyehoon are a dynamic and inquisitive culture, producing explorers, scientists, diplomats and traders. They face internal strife from conflict with the minority religious faction known as the Eden Seekers.

The neshekk banking and investment clans are the financial backbone of the Alliance. Neshekk are greatly concerned (possibly obsessed) with security and privacy. They never go into public without their elaborate privacy screeens/firewalls called nizara in place. Off-worlders are restricted to certain areas of Kuznuh, the neshekk homeworld, and it is a misdemeanor to view any public space unfiltered by the metascape.

The Alliance's greatest warriors are the thrax. A clone race, created for war, they still structure their society along martial lines. They are known for their elaborate battle armor and their enthusiasm for hand to hand weapons.

The winged deva are the most mysterious of the Alliance's members. They can survive in hard vacuum unprotected and through space under their own power (at least for short distances). In their home system of Altair, they're repairing damaged moon-sized brains.

The Man of Steel

I have a couple of friends whose primary request for a new Superman movie is that "Superman punch stuff" (action of that sort being in short supply in Singer's Superman Returns and Donner's Superman, too). I can unequivocally say the Man of Steel delivers in that department, that's not the only thing to like here. This new origin story for Superman follows on the heels of Nolan's Dark Knight films are delivers a pretty well-crafted film that just happens to be about a superhero rather than  working primarily on spectacle to disguise a lacking script--not that there isn't a lot of spectacle.

The film starts on Krypton. It's take has little references to several recent versions: Byrne's Man of Steel, Silver Age stories, and stuff more recent. There's also a bit of Russian cosmism and post-Alien techno-organic look. The headgear of the ruling council of Krypton reminds me a lot of Aelita.

When we get to Earth. Baby Kal-El is grown into an adult Clark Kent, set apart from the rest of humanity and drifting like Hugo Danner in Wylie's Gladiator. His growing up in Smallville is delivered in flashbacks interspersed throughout. Some reviewers have felt this made the film feel disjointed but I wasn't bothered by it. Lois Lane and Phantom Zone criminals appear in short order, making this film feel like it has a shorter ramp up than a lot of other origin stories to me.

There are some changes to the Superman mythos (as if there was one unified version) that may bother some people. Jonathan Kent's portrayal, for instance, seems to be the many thing people have a problem with--though I don't think that's the biggest change.

The film is very serious; it's definitely in a different vein than the Marvel films. It works, but it could have had a few more bits of levity without much changing the weightiness they seemed to be going for. The film's palette is muted: from Krypton to Kansas there isn't anything colorful here. Several reviewers have said the action sequences sometimes go on a bit too long, and I can see that (though I really wasn't bothered by it), but what really got to me was how many bystanders were probably killed off-screen in all the destruction. This breezy attitude toward mass destruction is a trend in summer (uh, spring) blockbusters in general, so it's not flaw of Man of Steel alone, but I still feel like it's a flaw.

So anyway, that's my take. Check it out.

The Torturers

Art by Brom

There are a lot of bad things that can happen to travelers in the Zuran Expanse, not the least of them is falling into the hands of the people of Algos. They're often called "algophilists," and though the ancient term was originally synonymous with masochist, the Algosians are not as particular about whose pain they enjoy.

Algosians are disciplined in their pleasure-seeking. There is an almost monastic structure to their society and a purity (if such a word applies) of purpose. They worship the historic torture cult of the Faceless Ones like gods. It's thought that they may in fact be the bioroid creations of those ancient sadists, designed to satisfy their creators' need for playthings who were durable, resilient--and even appreciative. The Algosians learned much from their masters and now apply that knowledge to those that fall into their hands.

Not usually given to direct attacks on vessels, the Algosians rely on kidnappings to get most of their victims. They operate clubs or brothels in some spaceports, though their involvment is usually secret. Some physicians and medical researchers seek them out in an attempt to gain access to their extensive observations  on the physiology of various in regard to pain tolerance or pleasure responses.

 The Algosians appear as pallid, thin humanoids. They are physiologically similar to baseline humans in most respects but have higher than average constitutions (minimum 12) and resistances to pain. Their natural recovery of hit points is at twice the normal rate, though medical care or biopsionics effect them the same as they would anyone else.

Warlord Wednesday: Past Lives

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 Vision Quest"

Warlord #130 (July 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Art by Jan Duursema

Synopsis: Morgan is bathing in a pool when he thinks he hears a voice calling his name from behind a waterfall. A vision of Tara emerges from the falls; she seems to be trying to tell him something. Then, the vision’s gone. Aoife tries to comfort him. Morgan’s still too caught up in grief to see the woman right in front of him.

Meanwhile on Xur-Chemosh, Maddox has practically become a god, using the alien spacecraft (apparently designed to be an all-purpose colonization tool) to plant crops and even build a city. There’s just one machine in the craft he can’t figure out; the helmet won’t tell him about it. The craft does, however seem to take control of his arm to make him fire a weapon when the ship is attacked by a plant creature.

The evil sorceress Khnathaiti has retrieved the amulet Jennifer gave Tara from the volcano and is trying to control its magic herself. Her use of it forces Jennifer to constantly guard against her opening a conduit between the two of them.

Morgan and Aoife are almost at the Tourmaline Sea. Aoife has another vision:

She is convinced her destiny awaits her on the island.

They’ve reached the coast but how do they get to the island? Aoife’s got that covered.

Over the open ocean, they run into a storm. The lightning does something weird to Aoife. She faints and the carpet plummets from the sky. Morgan loses Aoife in the waves.

In Xur-Chemosh, Maddox and Mariah are getting close. A sneak attack by a group of priests spoils their good time. Danny handles it with brutal efficiency:

Morgan washes up on a beach. He makes his way to a city where he chances to encounter his old friend Mariah in a lizard drawn carriage.  Unfortunately, she’s also with his old nemesis, Danny Maddox:

Things to Notice:

• This is the second chapter of Maddox's Revenge.
• Shakira (in her brief freelance exterminator appearrance) is a lot beefier than usually drawn.

Where It Comes From:
This issue references explicitly Morgan's previous relationship with Maddox as mentioned before.

Magic carpets are a fairly common fantasy trope, but this is the first one in Warlord.

The Weird Town: Investigative Sandbox

Watching the 2012 Dark Shadows move this weekend got me thinking about the original show and just how many unusual things happened in that sleepy little Maine town. (True, some of them required time travel and even visits to parallel timelines, but still the same town.) It occurs to me that it would interesting to do a campaign set in a town with weird secrets like Collinsport, Twin Peaks, Crystal Cove from Scooby-Doo, Mystery Inc., or the titular Happy Town (in a show that died too young). A sufficiently large single edifice would do, too--like maybe Gormenghast.

The difference between these settings and larger settings is that investigation not exploration is the order of the day. They differ from traditional investigative settings in that the locale itself is mysterious, unlike New York City in any police procedural or Arkham in Lovecraftiana. This kind of campaign may be better suited to a game that has more of an investigative focus like GUMSHOE or even good ol' Call of Cthulhu. The PCs are probably new in town to heighten the mystery, but some may well have past connections to it: A connection that should give them a reason to investigate.

If you want to do more action-adventure stuff, you probably need something like more of a mysterious island like in Lost or--well--Mysterious Island. There, exploration and investigation can go hand in hand. Just make sure to play up the uncovering as much as the discovering.

Wanderers

The Wanderers are named for their habit of roaming the Zuran Expanse. While this might not be a remarkable activity for more common sophont types, the Wanderers are figures of mystery and wonder because they are posthuman minds the size of asteroids or small moons.

No one knows much about them. It's speculated that their former homeworld is some devastated planet or habitat within the Expanse. The popular belief is that, as they watched their civilization dying in the Great Collapse, they uploaded their minds and rejected humanity.

Whatever their origins, the Wanderers are currently hypersophonts whose minds reside in vast honeycombs of computronium, covered by a protective crust of rock or diamondoid. They vary in size from 15 to 20 km in diameter. Its unclear how many exist, but there are thought to be no more than a hundred. They are occasionally encountered in a group of as many in five, but such meetings are rarely observed as they tend to take place in the outer edges of solar systems.

The Wanderers don't seem to leave the Expanse; whether this is due to their leisurely sub-light speeds or some attachment to the area is uncertain. They rarely engage in communication with other sophonts, but sometimes they send a remote (varied forms, but mostly humanoids) to trade with other beings. The things they seek are sometimes necessary supplies but other times artifacts of no apparent value.

Occasionally, thieves get the idea that Wanderers have valuables in their interior--or at the very least, they can be relieved of their computronium. If this has ever actually been tried, it doesn't seem that it has ever been successful. The Wanderers zealously guard their privacy.

[Check out the Strange Stars Index page link in the sidebar for more on the setting.]

The Strange Stars

With nearly 40 posts in the Strange Stars setting, the sagacious Robert over at Rogues & Reavers suggested it might be time for an overview post to make it easier for people to see how these far-ranging elements sort of fit together. I’m not sure the best way of doing that (one might want to start with the inspirations here), but I’ll sort of summarize what’s been presented so far:

The Strange Stars is the sphere of the human phyle in the far future, a time millennia after the first human expansion and the rise (and fall) of builders of the hyperspace nodes, the Archaic Oikumene. In the current era, the Strange Stars are fragmented into smaller cultures and civilizations.

The former cradle of the Archaic Oikumene is a depopulated area without a central authority known as the Zuran Expanse. The Expanse is home to dangers like the inhuman ssraad (in three colors), and ruined worlds that entice treasure-seekers like Tenebrae and the Library of Atoz-Theln. It’s also home to unusual cultures like the invertebrate zhmun of Aygo and the self-improvement cult of Aurogov.

Art by Peter Elson

Spinward from the Expanse is the Alliance, a union of species allied for protection and trade. Members of the Alliance include the green-skinned psionicists of Smaragdoz, the privacy obsessed neshekk of Kuznuh, the avian-humanoid splice hyehoon of Omu, the human-alien blended cyborg Blesh, the gnomes of Dzrrn, and the angel-like deva of Altair.

Bordering the Alliance is the expansionistic and theocratic Instrumentality of Aom.

On the other side of the Expanse is the Vokun Empire. Besides the decadent vokun, the empire contains several client species. The cybernetic crustacean-like Engineers build much of Vokun technology. The yellow-skinned ibglibdishpan are their biologic computers. The kuath are bioarmored child-soldiers.

There are a number of other interesting cultures and worlds: the oneirochemist Phantasists, the ancient mind excavators of Deshret, and the warrior-poet moravecs of Eridanus, among others. The major galactic powers are at least openingly cordial (whatever may go on behind the scenes) and trade takes place between the two “civilized” portions of the galaxy that must pass through hyperspace nodes in the “wilder” areas (not just the Expanse, but the Rim and Coreward Reach, as well). New cultures, lost since the Great Collapse are discovered from time to time, and their are number of ruined worlds with treasures to loot.