In the Dharwood

Last summer, I did some picture-based riffing on a setting on Google+. Since only part of that ever appeared on the blog (and without pictures), I thought it might be of interest to my readership here. I did more than these three. If there is interest, I might re-post more. I might even if there's not.

Golden Men of Haoun Dhar: The only inhabitants of the ruins which give the Dharwood its name. The men are seen on occasion amid the tall columns (engraved with demonic faces) performing odd, communal rituals or standing like statues on the central ziggurat for hours on end.  At night they are sometimes glimpsed on the ziggurat’s pinnacle, seeming to make observations of the heavens with unusual instruments. Few dare approach the ruins for fear of the strange men, despite the legends of a fabulous treasure within the ziggurat.

Kro One-Eye : Alcoholic (and possibly consumptive) swordmaster. He lost his left eye either to an insurgent in the Dharwood or to an angry whore, depending on how deep into the cups he his when he gets 'round to the tale. He's a fixture in dives along Wine and Tavern Streets, regaling fellow patrons with daring (and dubious) tales of his youthful adventures, and the occasional demonstration of his skills. For a cup of watered wine he'll give a few pointers on swordmanship. For a bottle of good Kael whiskey, he'll take on a student. For a small cask of vintage Trosian Red, he'll fight at your side--as long as it doesn't take him far from the River District for long.

Mystery cult snake priestess: One of many such agitators in the peasant uprising in the Dharwood.  Nobles have been burned alive in giant wicker statues in heretical rites. Lawlessness and banditry are common throughout the region and travelers should take care.

Cyclopes

By way of example of the sort of thing I was thinking of with the Greek mythology science fantasy setting riff I blogged about, here are some ideas for cyclopes. As any one familiar with Deities & Demigods (or Greek mythology) knows, cyclopes come in two varieities: lesser and greater. Use your system of choice's stats for them.

Art by Chris Lazzer

Lesser cyclopes are biomechanical creations of the Olympians. Perhaps they were weapons in the war with the titans, but now they are used as sentinels or are found roaming free in desolate places. Most are still playthings of one Olympian or another, so tampering with them may well invite a god's wrath.

Lesser cyclopes are giants (20 ft. tall) and have rather simple operating parameters--meaning they tend to regard humans as things to be exterminated. Their solitary sensor (or "eye") is overwhelmingly their primary means of gathering data on their surroundings so that (combined with their limited intelligence) makes them easy to "blind." Some lesser cyclopes may be able to unleash an electrical blast from their single eye.

Greater cyclopes resemble lesser ones in appearing to have one eye, but are actually very different creatures. These are intelligent servitors, created to aid Hephaestus in his efforts. These gleaming skinned giants (about 10 ft. tall) have a constantly moving eye of piercing light in their otherwise featureless faces. Their scanning sensor collects information in array of different modalities. They can fire highly destructive beams if they have the need. They are dispassionate, utterly logical beings, not given to wanton violence, but also utterly without mercy.

Warlord Wednesday: Vengeful Legacies

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...

"Vengeful Legacies"

Warlord #131 (September 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Art by Jan Duursema

Synopsis: Maddox and Morgan are having a drink in Xur-Chemosh, reminiscing about old times. That is until Maddox reveals he was the one flying the MiG that Morgan shot down just before ending up in Skartaris. Morgan is drugged by the wine and when he wakes up he’s in a dungeon. Maddox plans to make him pay for those years he spent in the gulag.

Meanwhile, Aoife wakes up on the beach. She’s captured by soldiers and brought to the palace before Maddox and Mariah. Maddox is interested in her jeweled headband and wants to take it. Aoife realizes Maddox is evil and tries to attack him. He has her taken away. He backhands Mariah when she tries to intervene, then apologizes in typical abuser fashion.

Mariah asks about Morgan. Maddox tells her that he must have wandered off. In reality:

And that’s just the first torture he’s got planned!

Leaving that ugly scene gives us a chance to check in on the rest of Warlord’s cast. Jennifer’s spying on Khnathaiti’s spell casting. The evil sorcereress is calling on some ancient beings of darkness and it’s got Jennifer worried. Shakira is making out with two handsome shepherds when a bolt of energy strikes her and she disappears.

In Xur-Chemosh, a suspicious Mariah is armed and back in her old outfit, sneaking around:

Maddox is convinced Aoife’s headband activates the one mysterious machine in the ship he found. When he leaves to try it, Mariah sneaks in the free Morgan. Unfortunately, Maddox catches her in the act. He chains her up too, so she can watch Morgan die.

Before that though, Maddox tries out the headband and the weird device. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t the summoning of an angry eidolon of a long-dead Atlantean sorcerer—but that’s what he gets! It seems Garn Daanuth’s acolytes escaped the destruction of Atlantis in the ship to start anew in Skartaris. And the device?

Aoife begins to get images in her head. She sees a baby, found with the diadem in the crashed ship. The priests of Xur-Chemosh handed her over to an executioner, but the man couldn’t bring himself to kill a baby outright and set her adrift. She was found and raised by the people of Cuchulainn. The headband was passed down through the generations until it came to rest on Aoife’s brow. Aoife is a distant descendant of the acolytes of Garn.

Aoife manages to tap the devices power to allow her to free herself and Morgan. Just in time too, because the angry eidolon of Garn is beginning to shake Xur-Chemosh apart. They rush to the rescue, but Maddox won’t give up the headband without a fight. Morgan prevails, of course, and Aoife reclaims the diadem just in time to stop a massive wave from destroying everything. Being pure evil, Garn isn’t super-happy about this turn of events, but Aoife is of the proper bloodline, so he lets it pass.

Morgan and Aoife bid their good-byes. Mariah (amazingly) is going to stay with Maddox because he “in spite of everything” she knows he loves her. What’s a little attempt to boil her friend in oil and make her watch, right?  Morgan, prudently, has confiscated all Maddox’s guns.

Things to Notice:

• This is the final chapter of "Maddox's Revenge."
• This issue has a "Bonus Book" story that features the second professional publication of Rob Liefield.

Where It Comes From:
Garn Daanuth is a from Arion, Lord of Atlantis. He's Arion's twin brother and as such some sort of great-uncle to Power Girl.

Gods, Heroes & Super-Science

Reading Lob's and Pichard's comic book adaptation of Homer's Odyssey from the pages of Heavy Metal has got me thinking what a great setting science fantasy Greek myth might be. Not recasting the myths into a science fiction context or something like that, but bringing a little Jack Kirby twist to the proceedings. Maybe a fantasy world that's post-apocalyptic, but where the apocalypse was the Titanomachy.

The heroes (the PCs) would be hapless Bronze Age Achaeans who are playthings for high tech cultures (aliens or extradimensional beings) who are there gods. Guys that look sort of like this:

Art by Pichard

Beings descended (or created) by extradimensional monsters like this:

by Jack Kirby

It would be a world informed by Chariots of the Gods reinterpretation as well as the usual interpretatio graeca. Maybe Nereids are scaled (as Pliny tells) icthyohumanoids from another world. The cyclopes may well be robots.

In addition to Ulysses above, the Orphans of Chaos series (where universe creating Saturn is a rebel against his hyperdimensional species that stands outside of time--and wants to destroy it) by John C. Wright would be a could inspiration. Any of Jack Kirby's mythology related works are also essential, particularly The Eternals.

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.