Living Fast

Art by Gregory Manchess

Quicklings are a clade found on numerous worlds in the Strange Stars outside the control of the hegemonic powers. They bear some resemblance to the fairies from the legends of Old Earth: they are approximately 8 cm tall humanoids with insect-like wings. They are actually bioroids (sapient despite their small size) who get their name from their short lifespans and their faster neural "clockspeed."

Quickling tribes or collectives live geographically close (even within) cities and habitats of other humanoids, but live apart due to the difficulty of interaction. Quicklings find other humanoids unbearably slow, while neural baselines have to use special devices for all but the most rudimentary communication. Quickling tribes can be hired for various purposes, and they care little for legalities, but given their attention spans, all plans must be relatively simple.

Their small size and necessarily low weights (for flight) mean their brains must be made of nonbiologic materials. Even still, they are less intelligent than the average baseline (Int 8). However, groups of quicklings form a partial neural composition and have some sharing of of cognition, so the more quicklings in close proximity, the smarter they are (+1 for every 2 additional quicklings, max. 20).

Art by Aaron Sidall

No. Appearing: 2-20 (up to 300 in swarm)
AC: 0
HD: 1-2 HP
Saving Throw: 16
Attack Bonus: +4
Damage: 1 point
Movement: 40’ fly
Morale: 8
Special Abilities: Quicklings move so quickly they appear as blur to unenhanced baselines. Attacks against them have a 20% chance to miss (roll before attack roll). Quicklings are never surprised by unenhanced individuals and always roll for initiative as normal, no matter the circumstance.

Remember the Titans

The Olympians wrested control of the Cosmos from its creators (and theirs), beings known as Titans. Though the name is often used for all pre-Olympian entities of power, it most accurately refers to the children/creations of the Primoridals (noumenal beings born from Chaos) Ouranos and Gaea. For reasons not fully known to anyone but himself, the titan Kronos sought to create a more permanent world of matter and time, something less mutable than the idea-space where the titans existed. Eleven of his peers were either dupes or co-conspirators in the creation.

The Titans were lessened by their participation in the Cosmos project. They were forced to embody and support fixed aspects of the architecture of Kronos's world: They entered as creators but became as much prisoners as those that came after them.

In the end, the dimunition and split attention forced upon them in the Cosmos led to their undoing. The much weaker Olympians and their allies were able to exploit flaws and weaknesses in the universe that the titans had been blinded to by their perspective. Those that opposed the Olympians' coup were imprisoned in the extradimensional realm within Tartarus.

The titans avatars (only a part of their vastness can be seen, even in their diminished state within the Cosmos) appear as humanoid giants. Their primary self-nodes often reside at other places in the universe: for instance, Hyperion's intellect resides in a quantum collective constructed in the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, while Theia's is distributed in the stellar nursery of the Orion Nebula.

Meet the Olympians

The Olympians are alien beings of great power and advanced technology worshipped by humans under a variety of different names. A group of them staged a coup against their creators/forebearers, the alien god-monsters called titans, and imprisoned those that did bow to their rule in the extradimensional prison, Tartarus.

While generally humanoid in appearance, Olympians were engineered with capabilities beyound those of earthly humanity and have a much greater resistance to damage and injory. Their technology also allows them to project the illusions and even to modify their physical forms. Olympians appear to be inter-fertile with humans, though this may be accomplished by their science. 

Olympians spend much of their time in a flying city shrouded in clouds. It can sometimes be found above Mount Olympos, but it isn’t limited to that location. Olympian theoretically allows surveillance of virtually anywhere in the world, though they seldom are paying attention to the information gathered.

Powers: All Olympians possess the equivalent of the Mutant Future powers of Regenerative Aility, and Ability Boost.They possess other abilities on an individual basis.

Technology: Using simply the capabilites of their home on Olympos they can access its library databanks for a vast array of information, communication with their fellow Olympians anywhere in the world, or teleport at will.

Fourth of July Freak Out

On this Independence Day, you can do worse than kick back with a beer, watching a cult or trashy movie (I'd suggest Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, Harley Davidson and the Malboro Man, or Rolling Thunder) and ordering your copy of Jack Shear's psychotronic, post-apocalyptic Americana rpg setting Planet Motherf*cker. Freakout is optional.

Here's a mix of musical moods to get you in the right frame of mind:

"Psychobilly Freakout" by the Reverend Horton Heat:

"White Lightning" by Charles Bernstein: 

"Chase the Devil" The Eagles of Death Metal:

"Comanche" The Revels:

"Too Drunk to..." Nouvelle Vague:

Warlord Wednesday: The Worm of Heaven and Hell

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 Worm of Heaven and Hell"

Warlord #132 (November 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Art by Jan Duursema

Synopsis: Khnathaiti rides a tentacle worm creature, Sesanaga the Lava-Serpent, and bids it to sing out so that its weirdling song can be magnified by the mystic “doom-crystal” and rouse Anu from the God-Plane to ravage the multiverse.

Another, even more huge tentacle worm-thing erupts through the ground in Skartaris near Morgan and Aoife. It writhes and reaches toward the sky and where it pierces it, alien beings and fragments of their worlds fall through. One of them is crying out in pain, part of his body fused into a piece of rock. Morgan reluctant thinks of drawing his pistol and putting the alien out of his misery. He’s beaten to it:

Aoife is futilely striking at the worm with her sword. She gets a vision of a future where everything was turned to stone. The vision worries the starfish-headed alien who flies up and uses his power to close the riff in the sky left by the worm's passing. He fears it will do little good if the cosmos ends.

Meanwhile, Jennifer has magically summoned Shakira to Shamballah. She hopes to enlist her aid in finding Morgan. She’s overheard some of the spells Khnathaiti was casting:

A serpent-haired Khnathaiti head emerges from the pages of the book to attack. Jennifer beats it back with her magic, but unfortunately destroys the book that might have helped in the process.

Elsewhere, Morgan sleep,s and the spirit of Tara tries to make contact with him, to warn him of Khnathaiti’s plan. Before she can, the sorceress shows up and banishes her. Morgan wakes up with a start to find himself alone.

In her lair, Khnathaiti barters Tara’s troublesome soul to extra-dimensional merchant. She’s led off in a coffle:

Starfish fills Aoife and Morgan in on a lot of cosmology. His name is Ishum, and before the advent of the cosmos, the great god Ea bade him sound his horn and summon the great worm Anu from the void. Anu’s writhing and undulations created the world. Tiamat, She-Dragon of Chaos, was upset about this state of affairs and killed Ea in his sleep. Then (since she couldn’t undo the cosmos) she decreed that the horn would be sounded again at so future point to call forth Anu to end it. Because he had failed to warn Ea, Ishum was confined to “a darksome realm” where only Anu dwelled. It was his job to make sure Anu stayed satisfied with an occasional tasty planetoid.

His life went on in that way until Khnathaiti found a way to fake the horn’s sounding and summon Anu. Now:

Meanwhile, somewhere amid the nine worlds, the caravan with Tara in it reaches its destination:

Things to Notice:

• This is the penultimate issue of Warlord.
• Jan Duursema is listed as "co-plotter."

Where It Comes From:
The cosmic deities in this issue have names borrowed from Mesopotamian mythologies. Ishum is the name of a minor Akkadian god, related to the sun but also a herald of war. Ea is a Akkadian and Babylonian deity who is god of creation and seawater. Tiamat (perhaps more famous from her Dungeon & Dragons namesake) is indeed a chaos dragon, and primordial goddess of the ocean.

There are several references to there being nine worlds or realms in this story. This is a new edition to the Warlord cosmology. It was probably an idea borrowed from Norse mythology.

Weird Pirate (Doomed) Romance

In my continuing WaRP Weird Adventures game last night, the PCs were tasked by the loathsome swamp witch (supposedly once a pirate queen, Eliza Bonney) with finding a way of freeing her from her ship turned prison, stuck incongruously in a lake deep in a Southron swamp. The gang went back to town for supplies and left poor Professor Pao as the witch's hostage.

Rue consults the spirits and discovers that the witch can be harmed by something that belonged to her lover and former partner--something that can "cut her flesh and pierce her heart." Luckily, the town has a small museum with a pirate history display and a lovelorn curator, Imogenia Frump, who falls for the charms of international man of mystery, Jacques.

Our heroes find out that two pirates came ashore to bury treasure here: Eliza Bonney and Red Marguerite. The two had a falling out over the loot, or so the story goes. In the museum's possession is an old cutlass and a small, wooden chest. Jacques uses his influence over Imogenia to "borrow" the items for study at a prestigious City university.

Fairly certain that Red Marguerite and Eliza were lovers, the PCs figure the cutlass will come in handy. Investigating the box reveals a secret compartment with a heart-shaped necklace of ruby and silver. So armed, they head back out to the swamp for a showdown.

Things don't go exactly as planned (when do they ever?) but the PCs manage to cut the locket--piercing the witch's heart--and making her vulnerable to their attacks. She appears to fall away into the depths, her bulk destroying the ship in her death throes.

Our heroes escaped but without the treasure some of them hoped for, other than the suggestion they had done a community service by destroying an ancient evil.

The Underworld

Few of the Olympians are as feared by humans as the gloomy and sardonic Hades, the Unseen One. They believe him to be the King of the Underworld, but their primitive worldview misunderstands his true roll: Hades is both archivist and warden for his people.

After the Olympian coup against the titans, they found it necessary to imprison some their defeated foes. They placed the titans outside the Cosmos, in the mindspace or thought-body of the primordial Tartarus; One of their progenitors was to be the titans' new prison. The Olympians built an underground fortress to protect the Tartarean Projector (the only means of entering the prison--or letting anything escape) against attack by any of the titans' allies.

The new rulers of the Cosmos also decided to create a library to commemorate their conquest and the world they ruled. It was placed in the same fortress to be kept safe for future generations. The artifice of Olympians and the titans before them had recorded the history of the Cosmos; they had even recorded the experiences and personalities of selected humans and peserved them. These artificial "spirits" were given realms (created in the archive's network) to inhabit: paradises for the favorites of the Olympians and eternal punishments for those that displeased them. These archived records can be accessed in holographic projection at any time; the archive (the Underworld, to the superstitious Greeks who have glimpsed it) is a place full of ghosts.

The saturnine Hades is content among the collection is his charge. He has a companion, Persephone, a pale and beautiful young woman, friendlier than her lord, but with the same dark interests. Hades is mostly annoyed by humans that blunder into his domain, but Persephone's influence tends to lead him to only frighten them, rather than kill them outright. That mercy doesn't extend to those who are disrespectful or interfere with his servitors.

Hades carriers a bident that appears to be made of a black metal, but is actually a sophisticated technological device made of a polymer. He can shoot a beam from it to destructively scan and record all the information about a target. The bident can download this information at a later time. He also wears a black metallic skullcap on occasion, through which me can neurally access the databanks of the archive.

HADES'S BIDENT: 4ft. long (but capable of collapsing to 2 ft.). Once an hour, as per the Mutant Future power disentigration (up to 300 lbs.), except a total digital record of the target is created.