Smaug and his Desolation in 48 fps and 3-D

I saw The Hobbit II: The Legend of Smaug's Gold this weekend (in faux-IMAX, high frame frate, and 3-D for the full Jackson). There are no doubt a number of negative reviews out there and a number of positive ones, so you can mix and match or pick what goes with your preconceptions. Rather than trying to persuade you one way or another from an overall perspective, I'll just say: 1) it is not (as you're already aware if you saw the first one) Tolkein's Hobbit, particularly; and 2) it's got  swashbuckling action set-pieces in the Pirates of the Caribbean or Lone Ranger (2013) vein.

That out of the way, I'm going to talk about things I like about the movie that might be worth stealing for gaming.

Overall, Mirkwood and the fortress of the wood elves made me wish that Guillermo del Toro had directed, as I think he would have given them both a fairy tale-ish feel that would have been visual interesting and perhaps more in keeping with the book. However, Lee Pace's haughty and fay King Thranduil is pretty much spot on. There's a part where he let's his glamour slip and allows Thorin to see the scars he bears from fighting a dragon that does evoke elves of fairy tales or legendry that was a really good bit.

My another nice bit was Laketown. It evokes a very different feel from the Laketown of the book, but it's given a look sort of like a ramshackle Medieval Russian version of Venice. It's people are multi-ethnic and have clothing styles mixing the vaugely slavic, Tibetian, and even a bit of Mongol thrown in, but blended pretty well. It's Master is a rather Terry Gilliam-esque bumbling noble, equipped with a suitable obsequious assistant. The coldness, squalor, and police state ubiquitous informer culture the Master oversees, seems to be meant to evoke Soviet era Russia. The whole evoke is utterly un-Tolkeinian, but very interesting as a potential gaming locale.

After all of that, the movie finally arrives at Lonely Mountain and a solitary dragon. Smaug is menacingly portrayed (vocally) by Benedict Cumberbatch. The cgi design is nice, too; there's a little bit of Dragonslayer there, I think. Smaug's treasure horde is ridiculously large. There most be no more gold in all of Middle-Earth. As Dunsany would say: "Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it." The encounter with Smaug in this treasure den does remind one how frightening dragons ought to be, something that has been lost a bit with their perfunctory appearance in fantasy games.

Desolation of Smaug isn't a book brought to life or even a great achievement in cinema, but there are things is in it to like and nice details to appreciate.

Charting the Stars

Some reason G+ discussion last week got into resources for real world star maps for science fiction gaming. Not everyone will find this necessary, and still fewer will be concerned with "accurate" habitable systems and planets, but for those that are here are some links I've found useful:

The Internet Stellar Database allows to to search for a star and find out its various catalog names, spectral data, coordinates, and distance from Sol. Very handy.

If you're interested in calculating the habitable zone around a star, this page is a quick and (relatively) easy reference. Sol Station has got that calculated for you for many stars and has some decent online star maps.

Maybe you want someone else to put in a lot of the work for you. Winchell Chung makes great real world star maps and you can purchase in print on demand a few varieties here at the aptly named 3-D Star Maps.

I haven't presented a map of the Strange Stars yet, but I intend to do so eventually. I will reveal a few of the modern designations of some of the locations I've already written about:

• The green ssraad, as mentioned in the post about them live around the white main sequence star Sirius A. The blue ssraad call the white dwarf Sirius B home.
• The Library of Atoz-Theln is in the Lalande 25372 system. Its primary is a red main sequence dwarf (M1.5 Ve).
• Gogmagog, the site of giant robot battles, orbits β Comae Berenices, a yellow main sequence dwarf some 9.13 parsecs from Sol.
• Aygo, the homeworld of the inverterbrate zhmun, and its co-orbital world of Erg are in the 82 Eridani system--which also has 3 super-earths we already know about.

Intoxicated in the Strange Stars

Within the borders of the Strange Stars there are a innumerable recreational substances available from the botanical relics of Old Earth to the ubiquitous, chemically facile ethanol and a whole galaxy (almost literally) of polychrome uppers, downers, screamers, and thinkers developed by across a million habitats. Here's a sampling of them:

aku: Also known as "ink." Aku is both the name of a small cephalopod-like creature whose native world or place of manufacture is lost and the pigmented mucoid substance it produces. The user places the live cephalod over there face and squeezes it to induce the creature to squirt its pigment into their mouth. The ink is a local anesthetic (causing "aku tongue"), but has central nervous system effects similar to cannabis. Long-term use permanently darkens the oral mucosa in idiosyncratic swirling patterns. 

alcohol: Though ethanol substitutes that produced comparable effects without end-organ damage are known, their use is not as widespread as might be expected. The most primitive civilizations only know the original, and the most advanced ones use their mastery of nanobiotechnology to fix any damage their indulgence might cause. Cheap bars use synthesizers that can dispense alcohol of any variety, while high-class ones pride themselves on having finely crafted varieties.

chroma: A white, iridescent crystalline powder typically insufflated or inhaled from exploding "bouncing balls", but it can be ingested or injected intravenously. The substance has psychedelic and mild euphorigenic properties. It's particularly known for producing illusions of color alteration. Druggie lore holds that some users have experienced new primary colors like jale or ulfire.

momentomori: A rare and expensive drug, produced by a spider-like bot that, when released, clamps itself on the forehead of a corpse and injects its nanite payload into the brain. Within 15-20 minutes, a teardrop black shape begins to form from an orifice in the bot. It condenses into an almond-sized jewel. When allowed to dissolve on the tongue, the jewel delivers a vivid experience of the departed's last minutes of life (no more than half an hour, depending on how long it's been since their death. Bodies dead longer than 24 hours yield only fragments, if anything).

Warlord Wednesday: The Forgotten (part 2)

Here's another installment of my examination of  the adventures DC Comics' Travis Morgan--The Warlord.  The earlier installments can be found here...

"The Forgotten" (part 2)

Warlord (vol. 4) #8 (January 2010) Story & Art by Mike Grell

Synopsis: The beast-men attack. Morgan tries to scare them off with a shot fired into the air. That only cows them briefly. Morgan is forced to fight them with sword and pistol.

The scene cuts to Morgan and a group of warriors (some of whom look familiar: like members of the group he fought to save the woman) on a balcony overlooking the ruins of the city.

They enter a great hall, lined with alcoves containing statues that Morgan figures are gods. The warriors joke about the half-ruined statues, but one of them, Garn, gives a warning: Gods have power so long as a single person believes in them.

One of the men asks Morgan what he believes. The Warlord finally replies:

Morgan tells them that most people where he comes from believe in a god, but they have many names for him or her and they fight about who's right. One of the men suggests that men don't need a reason for war. As if to prove his point, another man suddenly takes an arrow in the throat. Brigands are attacking!

Morgan goes into a rage and starts killing. A peal of laughter feels the air. Morgan turns:

The woman or goddess pronounces him her champion. She tells him he has always served her, and she has always been at his side. Through Vietnam, through the slave rebellion he led, his defeat of Deimos. Every violent deed. She made him the Warlord.

As she presses her blood-stained lips to his, she promises that when he dies it will not be "feeble from the infirmities of age but blood-spattered in the glory of battle" with his name shouted in the hall of heroes.

Morgan hears his name being called--but it's Shakira shaking him awake. He asks what happened. She suggests maybe it was an ambush while she was off hunting. Morgan says, "no, it was only a kiss." Shakira thinks he's hallucinating.

She hands him his sword, saying he'll need it. Morgan agrees.

They mount Morgan's horse. He asks Shakira if she believes in the old gods. She says "no." Morgan responds:

Things to Notice:

• It's left a bit unclear (at least to me) exactly how Morgan's men died.

Where it comes from: 
This issue is largely a retread of issue #14. There, the supernatural woman telling Morgan she had always been with him was explicitly Death, rather than a more nebulous goddess. Death is depict as a raven-haired beauty in Skartarian attire with some Indian accessories, whereas this goddess is white-haired and attired in a white tunic, but perhaps they're both different aspects of the same being.

Thorgal

Thorgal is another Franco-Belgian fantasy comic, but it does happen to have been translated into English by Cinebook--and it's well worth checking out. Created by Belgian writer Jean Van Hamme and Polish artist Grzegorz Rosiński in 1977, the series continues in periodic albums to this day.

The protagonist is Thorgal who was found as an infant in a small raft (resembling a miniature Mercury mission splashdown capsule a bit) by a group of Vikings. He's taken in and raised by their ruler, Leif Haraldson and given the name Thorgal Aegirsson, in reference to the two gods who perhaps brought him to the Vikings. The first English volume (Child of the Stars, not actually the originally beginning of the series, but the earliest chronologically) is a series of short stories as Thorgal comes of age. The most fantastic of these is Thorgal's quest to help a dwarf (Rosinski draws them like the common conception of gnomes) bring a "metal that doesn't exist" to the dwarfish king and save him from the serpent Nidhogg. This adventure ends in the birth of Aarica, Thorgal's soul-mate and daughter of his nemesis Gandalf the Mad. Young Thorgal later saves young Aarica from nixies, who have malicious led her to a mountain to die. This establishes the friendship between the two, which is important because the Northern folk otherwise reject Thorgal as an outsider.

Later volumes see Thorgal and Aarica marry (and eventually have kids) and leave the North. Their travels don't seem to bring them much but more danger. They tangle with 3 aged sorcerers who kidnap Aarica and set up an elaborate contest only meant to ensure their continued immortality. Later, Thorgal is falsely accused of a crime and carried off as a prisoner on the Black Galley to be punished by the tyrant of the city-state of Brek Zarith. Thorgal escapes of course, but then is told Aarica (and their unborn child) are dead. This ultimately leads to a journey back to the Second World (the realm of gods and fairies he had visited as a boy), and to a meeting with the capricious personifcation of Fate, before a descent into the Underworld.

That's all in the first 3 volumes!

Thorgal has a feel that reminds me a bit of older works like Prince Valiant as much as modern comics. This effect is probably enhanced by Rosinki's illustratorly style. Thorgal is not as violent as many American comics. Not that there's not a lot of action, but thinking seems to get him through scrapes as often as fighting. It provides an interesting mix of mythology, science fantasy, and adventure--and really great art.

Map en français

Here's another comic book map, but this one is from a French comic Forest of Opal (Les Forêts d'Opale) written by Christophe Arleston and drawn by Philippe Pellet. It's a fantasy in a secondary world (Opal) with a number of nonhuman species. It has not, unfortunately, been official translated into English as far as I know, though scanlations exist.

The map's in French, too, but I don't think that will limit its use.

Touring the Strange Stars

The great luxury star liners afford passengers the opportunity to see the civilized worlds in high style--and their are no more opulent ships in known space than those in our Galburac-class. These vessels provide accommodations and recreation for thousands of guests in a variety of different artificial environments.

An endless party awaits travelers, enlivened by stops at exotic resorts and a full array of the latest recreational cybernetics and chemicals.

But these festivities are only a small part of the recreational experiences our star liners offer...

When on safari in our hunting preserve habitats, make sure to follow the instructions of the djägga guides. They'll be sure to remind you that blushing shraik always travel in mating pairs!

Or for those looking for adventure of a more spiritual variety, an aero-sled ride through the canopy of the jungles of Dodona surrounds you in the songs (both auditory and psychic) of its contemplative trees.

Book your star liner cruise today!